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What's The Buzz Robert Downey Jr's $50m Avengers cheque.
Robert Downey Jr stands to earn over $50m for his role in The Avengers. This pay cheque is well above what any of his Avengers co-stars are earning to appear in the blockbuster Marvel movie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Robert signed a deal incorporating box office bonuses and back-end compensation in addition to his salary for appearing in the movie. He apparently renegotiated his deal with Marvel after the first Iron Man movie grossed $585m in 2008. The Avengers has already surpassed the $1bn mark at the worldwide box office, just 19 days after its release. Robert's deal means that his share of the profits from The Avengers will increase as the movie grosses more money. By comparison, Robert's Avengers co-stars Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Chris Evans (Captain America), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk) will each make only $2m to $3m for their participation in the movie. The Avengers is set to become the third highest grossing film of all time, if it surpasses the $1.32bn haul of 2011's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, behind James Cameron's two massive hits: Avatar ($2.8bn) and Titanic ($2.2bn, including grosses from the re-release earlier in 2012).This kind of backend movie pay deals are not new to Hollywood. Johnny Depp is said to have made at least $250m from the four Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and Forbes reported that director Michael Bay took home $80m from the first Transformers movie. - Channel24 John Lennon's killer transferred.
John Lennon's killer has been transferred to another maximum security state prison in New York state. The Buffalo News reports that 57-year-old Mark David Chapman was transferred on Tuesday from Attica Correctional Facility to the nearby Wende Correctional Facility. A spokesperson for the state prison system says the agency doesn't disclose why inmates are transferred. Chapman shot Lennon in December 1980 outside the Manhattan apartment building where the former Beatle lived. Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced in 1981 to 20 years to life in prison. He was denied parole for the sixth time in September 2010. He's eligible again for parole in August. - AP Russia delivers crew to ISS.
A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and an American on Thursday successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS), two days after their launch from Earth, officials said. The Soyuz TMA-04M capsule with Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and American Joseph Acaba on board automatically docked with the ISS at 04:36 GMT, Russian mission control said. The trio blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday morning in Russia's first manned space launch for almost five months after their start date was put back due to technical problems. On board the ISS, the three newcomers will join Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Nasa astronaut Don Pettit and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers who have already been on the station almost five months since their December launch. The hatches are expected to be opened at around 08:00 GMT and the three newcomers will then enter the ISS itself and be given the traditional welcome by the incumbent crew. Their mission has been cut down to an unusually short 126 days due to the launch delay but is expected to be intense, taking in dozens of experiments and the expected arrival of the first private cargo vessel at the ISS. Private firm SpaceX is seeking to launch its Dragon spacecraft carrying cargo for the ISS on May 19 from Cape Canaveral, Florida in what the company hopes will be the first step toward an eventual private manned mission. – News24 Solar eclipse blazes a 'ring of fire' this weekend.
People lucky enough to be in Southeast Asia and the western U.S. this weekend will have the chance to view the first annular solar eclipse of its kind since 1994, according to NASA. Rather than a complete blocking out of the sun, as seen in a total eclipse, a "ring of fire" will radiate from behind the moon as it passes in front of the fiery globe. The transformation will begin on Sunday as the moon makes its voyage across the sun; at one point, as much as 94 percent of the sun will be covered, according to NASA. "Hundreds of millions of people will be able to witness the event," NASA Science's Tony Phillips wrote on NASA's Science News Web page. "The eclipse zone stretches from southeast Asia across the Pacific Ocean to western parts of North America." Typically these types of eclipses happen twice a year but usually can only be seen from few places on Earth. Those in Southeast Asia will be able to see the eclipse on Monday, and people in the U.S. states like Oregon and California will be able to start viewing around 5:30 p.m. PT on Sunday. The entire show should last about two hours with the "ring of fire" happening in the U.S. around 6:30 p.m. PT and lasting up to 4.5 minutes in some locations, according to NASA. "Because some of the sun is always exposed during the eclipse, ambient daylight won't seem much different than usual," Phillips wrote. "Instead, the event will reveal itself in the shadows. Look on the ground beneath leafy trees for crescent-shaped sunbeams and rings of light." – CNET
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