The daily gossip: October 16, 2019

(Image credit: David Livingston/Getty Images)

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1. Elton John says the new Lion King was 'a huge disappointment'
2. Jennifer Aniston joins Instagram with a Friends reunion pic
3. A TV show about Uber is in the works
4. Guns N' Roses 'Sweet Child O' Mine' hits 1 billion views on YouTube
5. Lady Gaga: 'What's fortnight'

published 16 October 2019

1. Elton John says the new Lion King was 'a huge disappointment'

Disney's photorealistic remake of The Lion King earned more than $1.5 billion at the box office over the summer — but Elton John, who co-wrote the music for the 1994 Disney animated classic, admitted in an interview this week he cannot feel the love. "The new version of The Lion King was a huge disappointment to me, because I believe they messed the music up," said John, in one of the kinder reviews the new Lion King has received to date.

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In a world where The Emoji Movie is a thing that exists, pretty much anything can be adapted for film or TV — which is why it wasn't necessarily a surprise when Showtime announced it's in the early stages of launching a TV show about Uber. If you're picturing "Cash Cab, but the passenger stares at a little map on their phone for five minutes before the car arrives," never fear: The series will actually be based on the true story of the behind-the-scenes battle that led to the ouster of controversial former CEO Travis Kalanick, which was at least as dramatic and interesting as anything that happened in Game of Thrones' final season.

As noted modern philosopher Axl Rose once said: Where do we go now? The answer, it turns out, is YouTube, where one billion people have streamed the music video for Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" as of Wednesday, making it the first song from the 1980s to achieve that honor. If you don't feel like clicking over to YouTube for some GNR, head to your nearest radio and put on literally any classic rock station, because "Sweet Child O' Mine" is probably playing right now.

On Tuesday, Lady Gaga took to Twitter to channel the same question raised by countless baffled parents who are chaperoning middle-school sleepovers: "What's fortnight"? And while there were probably a thousand simpler ways Lady Gaga could have gotten the answer to this question — do celebrities not have Google? — for the record: Fortnite is an insanely popular video game Lady Gaga will never, ever play.

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Scott Meslow is the entertainment editor for TheWeek.com. He has written about film and television at publications including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, and Vulture.