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Congratulations are in order for R&B songstress Kehlani. The 23-year-old starlet broke the Internet on Friday afternoon with a single social media post revealing that she and her partner are expecting a baby girl. Visibly overjoyed in photos posted to her personal Instagram page, Kehlani is seen outfitted in a crochet crop top and a […]

The post Surprise! Kehlani Reveals She’s Pregnant With A Baby Girl appeared first on Essence.

Will Smith has sealed a stellar legacy in entertainment. He’s starred in several blockbuster films, a successful TV sitcom, and earned five Grammy Awards along with multiple Oscar and Golden Globes nods. But the Hollywood star isn’t done yet. Following an illustrious 30-year career, Smith is now embracing social media in his next act.

Last week, the acclaimed actor and rapper opened up at New York Advertising Week about his successful career and his new journey as a YouTube star. “I feel like I’m getting a fourth bite of the entertainment apple,” said the 50-year-old superstar during a session with Google VP Adam Stewart.

Here are five lessons Smith shared about personal growth, rebranding after 50, and the next stage of his life and career:

1. Get Into Tech

Technology has been a major disruptor in almost every industry and especially in Hollywood. According to Smith, making a blockbuster movie is no longer as easy as it once was because social media has forced directors and producers to improve the quality of their films, rather than depending on movie trailers to sell movie tickets.

“We used to say ‘We’re not in the movie business, we’re in the trailer business,'” Smith said candidly. “Once you have a good trailer you’re done. Now, what’s happened with technology, on Friday night at 7:30, people are tweeting, ‘Hey, Will’s movie sucks, go see Vin Diesel’s.'”

Because news, whether good or bad, spreads so quickly on social media, movie makers don’t have the luxury of time to build box office success. “We no longer [have] the three-day window,” Smith said. “If you had a great trailer, it was Monday at noon before everybody knew that Wild Wild West sucked. You had already made your money.”

Although some people may still be resistant to the changes tech has created, Smith’s point serves as a reminder that businesses must embrace social media in order to grow their brand in the digital era. Smith, for example, has partnered with YouTube to launch his own channel, which now boasts 3.7 million subscribers. He also has a massive following on Twitter and Instagram, which has allowed the Men in Black star to connect with younger audiences and remain relevant.

2. Face Your Fear

“Fear is so constricting, it keeps you from exploring.” - @iWillSmith #AWNewYork #WillSmith pic.twitter.com/0bwWx0BGpF

— Black Enterprise (@blackenterprise) October 3, 2018

During the session, Smith talked about how he recently conquered one of his biggest fears – death – to mark his 50^th birthday. He celebrated the special occasion on Sept. 25 by bungee jumping out of a helicopter and into the Grand Canyon. The heart-pounding experience was live-streamed on YouTube.

“I’ve had an interesting relationship with fear my whole life,” said Smith in the video, titled Will Smith: The Jump. “[When I was younger, my family and I], we drove to the Grand Canyon and I remember having a deeply meaningful experience of how beautiful it was, but I was terrified of walking to the edge. All my family walked up to the edge but I stayed back, too scared to take in the beauty. I’ve made it a point in my life to attack anything that I’m scared of.”

At AdWeek, Smith admitted the 1,000-foot leap into the Grand Canyon was an “absolute complete terror.” However, confronting his fear empowered him to take risks in other areas of his life and drown out an inner voice that repeatedly tells him “‘you’re going to die.’” He’s realized that the voice will be right only one time in his life and he shouldn’t let it stop him from taking chances. “[Until] that one time comes, why should you give a f–k? Just have fun.”

3. Trust Your Gut

Use #metrics to do the extraordinary..
Listen to this sage advice from #WillSmith at #AWNewYork. #BeLegendary pic.twitter.com/bJJehwfv8j

— Marketing Cloud (@OracleMktgCloud) October 4, 2018

Smith advised the audience of ad executives not to become consumed by data and metrics. Instead, he encouraged them to listen to their intuition and defy data when necessary. “Nothing is more valuable than your gut,” he said. “The metrics are there to help you train your gut because, at the end of the day, you have to make the call on the extraordinary. The metrics keep you in the ordinary. The thing that succeeds is going to be way outside what somebody even thought was possible.”

Smith’s advice is applicable to business owners and professionals in all settings. Sometimes your biggest rewards lie outside of your comfort zone. So don’t be afraid to take a leap of faith when the opportunity presents itself.

4. It’s Not About Winning

“Don’t get caught in trying to win” @willsmith at @advertisingweek #AWNewYork pic.twitter.com/mmUn4cPhEy

— Yeiniz (@YeinizN) October 3, 2018

Don’t let social media data, analytics, and quantitative feedback make you lose sight of your purpose. Rather, Smith encouraged the audience to focus on connecting with people, growth, and being happy. He also admitted that for the first time in his career, his work is not centered on an agenda, which has granted him a greater level of creative freedom and expression and the ability to have fun in the process. “It always has to be for joy and expansion,” he said. “You can’t get caught in trying to win. If you get caught in trying to win, you can completely lose contact with the audience and with the intention.”

5. The Secret to Business Success

Another gem Smith dropped was about using your individual experiences to drive your creativity and overall success. Focus on personal growth, which, in turn, can translate into growth for your company and brand, he said. “As much focus as you can have on expanding yourself and expanding your wisdom and expanding your best qualities, I think is the best way to create better businesses.” Simply put, he added, “be a better you.”

The post 5 Lessons Will Smith Shared at AdWeek About Rebranding and Staying Relevant After 50 appeared first on Black Enterprise.

For the last few months, there’s been a two-pronged teaser attack targeting Overwatch fans. Lego and Blizzard were teaming up on something… but what? In August, Blizzard offered up a clip of a […]

The post The First Lego Overwatch Set is a Limited Edition Buildable Bastion appeared first on Geek.com.

If 2015’s Goosebumps aimed to connect with more than just the generations of kids raised on R.L. Stine’s enormously popular book series, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween seems to narrow the scope of its appeal to target fans of that previous film, and their younger siblings. That’s not at all a bad thing—kids need scary, or “scary,” stories of their own, and Ari Sandel’s follow-up delivers plenty of startling surprises for family-friendly audiences. But the fact that Haunted Halloween is peculiarly disinterested in the events of the first Goosebumps film – except as a Google search result – makes it a fascinating curio as the franchise evolves, since its predecessor introduced the author as a character within its world, offering virtually limitless opportunities for creative crossovers even if the real Stine didn’t have literal volumes of great material for filmmakers to adapt.

Jeremy Ray Taylor (It: Chapter One) plays Sonny, a Nikola Tesla-obsessed nerd who reluctantly joins his pal Sam (Caleel Harris, Think Like A Man Too) for a business venture hauling away junk for the adults in their neighborhood. While digging though the remnants of an abandoned house, they discover a hidden room containing a manuscript by R.L. Stine (Jack Black, The House With A Clock In Its Walls) entitled “Haunted Halloween.” Unlocking the manuscript releases Slappy (Black again), a ventriloquist’s dummy with magical powers who announces plans to join Sonny’s family whether or not they want him to be a part of it.

When Slappy proves too mischievous for the two of them, Sonny and Sam enlist his sister Sarah (Madison Iseman, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) to rid themselves of the supernatural pest. But what happens instead is Slappy creates an army of minions made out of Halloween decorations to enact his fiendish plan, and they are forced to figure out a way to return the town to normal and return their diminutive foe to his prison inside Stine’s manuscript – if they can survive the onslaught of evil creatures Slappy has unleashed.

In a 2018 landscape littered with horror films from Hereditary to Halloween, Goosebumps 2’s scares are decidedly pint-sized – a poppy, all-ages tone enhanced by music that’s more Danny Elfman (who did the score for the first film, but not the second) than Bernard Herrmann. Still, they seemed to work on the kids in the audience when I saw the film, especially since Sandel keeps proceedings moving so quickly that even a quick turn of Slappy’s head can register as a surprise. But what’s less clear than how scary Slappy can be is exactly how much we’re meant to identify or sympathize with his motives, given that he supposedly “just wants a family of his own” after we saw him put Stine and the cast of the first film through their paces for no other reason than he’s a supernatural being who likes to cause trouble.

Even without being well-versed in Stine’s work, it feels like there are dozens of great creatures or concepts ready to be explored and expanded on the big screen. Other than his skeleton-key powers to manipulate people and objects at will and seemingly without rules, why Slappy again? And why not include the fictional Stine more? Black shows up only for a few short scenes, and more or less immediately acknowledges that these new kids have the situation well in hand. But in spite of that, the movie inexplicably repeats several key ideas from the previous one – including the premise that completing the unfinished story that set these events in motion will resolve them. And weirdly, it does so without any prior cast members other than Black, making this expanding mythology feel like a series of footnotes rather than new chapters.

At the same time, there’s a fascinating thread in this film about taking responsibility, both for yourself and for others, that it doesn’t tread too heavily upon but nevertheless leaves as an afterthought to Slappy’s Halloween-themed shenanigans. (Mind you, the events of the film feel like good examples where these hapless kids are not at fault for what’s going on, but it’s still a worthy note to end on, even if it’s more likely to be absorbed by adult chaperones than the kids they’re bringing to the theater.) Ultimately, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween is an energetic lark, a thrill ride that feels likely to entertain its target audience – but is it truly worthy of the author’s expansive bibliography, or merely a successful spin-off? Given the way the movie ends, the filmmakers seem confident that it will keep viewers coming back for more; but the one thing these films are determined to reiterate is that it can be really tough to predict how a story will end, especially when Stine isn’t involved enough.

3 out of 5

Images: Sony