The Trump-led board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has voted to move forward with a new plan to shutter its main building for renovations, according to the New York Times.

Under the plan, the Kennedy Center’s main building will be closed while a newer extension called The Reach will remain open for limited programming and operate as an active memorial to John F. Kennedy.

The decision follows an “independent and objective analysis” of possible options by an outside consulting firm, which determined that keeping the main building open during renovations would be significantly more expensive.

The board’s resolution states that it is “fully committed” to continuing arts and educational programming during the closure and maintaining the “historic and architecturally significant nature of the center’s main building.”

Representatives for the Kennedy Center did not immediately return TheWrap’s request for comment.

The new plan is subject to approval from a federal judge who temporarily blocked the board’s previous plan to shutter the entire Kennedy Center’s for a two-year renovation, ruling that the original vote was “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.”

At the time, the judge said that the Trump-led board was “derelict” and based its decision on an “insufficient, one-sided presentation of information.” It also “neglected to consider the full range of its statutory obligations and potential adverse consequences of closure on programming and memorial functions.”

After Trump lashed out at the judge’s decision, officials at the Kennedy Center appealed the ruling and subsequently scheduled a meeting to vote on the new plan on Thursday morning.

More to come…

Gayle Rankin (House of the Dragon) has wrapped a lead role in Ashley Wright, an indie also starring Evelyn Grace Kite (Elijah), Weapons Oscar winner Amy Madigan, Golden Globe winner Ed Harris (Westworld), Steven Ogg (The Walking Dead), Michole Brianna White (BMF), and Lily Harris.

Directed by Logan & Noah Miller (Touching Home), Ashley Wright stars Rankin as a homeless mother of two kids trying to scrape out a sense of dignity in a world that is working against her.

Kite plays Ashley’s nine-year-old daughter Peanut, with Madigan as Ashley’s court-appointed attorney, Donna Terry, who advocates for her to retain custody of her children. Ed Harris plays Judge Allen, a sympathetic judge presiding over Ashley’s child custody hearing, while Lily Harris plays Peanut’s court-appointed attorney, Jessica Steiner. This marks the first time the Harris family has appeared together in a feature film.

Recently wrapping production in Los Angeles, Ashley Wright is a very personal project for the Miller brothers, who told us, “The main character is a synthesis of our experience: our father’s twenty years of homelessness and our mother’s struggle with mental illness.”

The friendship and filmmaking collaboration between Harris, Madigan and the Miller Bros. began with a Hail Mary approach in a San Francisco alley on their first film Touching Home — they charmed Harris, but it was the script that sealed his participation in the movie. With Ashley Wright, again the material spoke strongly to Harris and Madigan.

“Great script, great directors, great cast,” Ed Harris said. “Amy, our daughter Lily, and I had a great time working on it. The Miller Brothers are the real deal.”’

The film’s lead, Rankin, commented: “I hadn’t encountered a challenge like Ashley Wright in my career before. She is the most fulfilling character I’ve ever had the opportunity to build. I feel wildly grateful to have been invited into Logan and Noah’s world — and privileged to tell this mother’s story, to reveal the truth of her bravery, and to illuminate the humanity in her that we could all stand to recognize more fully.”

Producers on Ashley Wright are Yolanda Bishop Martin, Katie Hausman, Kennedy Martin and Jackson Beall. Executive producers are David & Lucie Brown and JC Krause.

Most recently seen on House of the Dragon as the enigmatic healer Alys, Rankin is otherwise known for her work in projects like GLOW, The Greatest Showman and The Meyerowitz Stories. She is repped by B-Side Management, UTA, and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman.

Following her Oscar win for Zach Cregger’s Weapons, Madigan has set a slate including Ryan Coogler’s X-Files reboot, the Apple thriller Sponsor, and the Netflix series All the Sinners Bleed. She is repped by Paradigm and Anonymous Content.

Most recently seen starring in Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch and Apple TV’s comedy The Dink, opposite Jake Johnson, Ed Harris is repped by CAA and Ziffren Brittenham.

Brothers Logan & Noah Miller previously collaborated with Ed Harris on the indies Touching Home and Sweetwater. Additional credits for the duo as writers include White Boy Rick and G20. They are repped by CAA, Canopy Media Partners, and Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.

Kite is repped by Osbrink, East Coast Talent Agency, and Brave Artists Management; Ogg by Buchwald, The Way, and Ethos Entertainment; White by SMS Talent and Silver J Management; and Lily Harris by KTM Artist Group.

Matthew McConaughey compared meeting Pope Leo XIV to preparing an Oscars acceptance speech, jokingly telling “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon: “We went off script.”

The Oscar winner stopped by “The Tonight Show” on Wednesday night to discuss his new film, “The Rivals of Amziah King.” Early in their conversation, though, McConaughey opened up about his experience meeting the Pope and revealed why preparing to speak with the religious figure felt a little bit like preparing to win an Academy Award.

“I had some things I wanted to talk to him about. But if you prepare things to talk to the Pope about, it’s kind of like preparing a speech before the Oscars,” he said. “You don’t know if you’re going to win, so if you win and you pull out a speech, it’s kind of arrogant, right? To go like, ‘Well, I had a speech written.’ So you show up to meet the Pope and you have some things to say and we went off script anyway.”

“I got to talk to him about some nice things, man,” McConaughey continued. “He made me laugh, which is one of the things that I think is consistent about the holiest and most spiritual people I’ve ever met in the world. They all got a great sense of humor.”

“In the words of my buddy [‘Dazed and Confused’ filmmaker] Richard Linklater: ‘You make humor the default emotion, we’re all going to be getting along a lot better,’” he added.

Later on, Fallon and McConaughey discussed a scene in “The Rivals of Amziah King” in which the actor holds an entire hive’s worth of live bees on his arm. The scene was filmed practically with real bees, and while McConaughey said he managed to make it through the scene without getting stung, he was not so lucky during rehearsals. 

As a matter of fact, after Fallon showed a photo of McConaughey with one of his eyes swollen shut, the actor revealed how he found out the hard way that he is actually allergic to bee stings.

“This is a week before we started shooting, and I did get stung,” McConaughey recalled of the photo in question. “The beekeeper goes, ‘Are you allergic?’ I go, ‘No, absolutely not.’ He goes, ‘We’ll wait 20 minutes and see if you swell.’ I said, ‘Sure.’ 20 minutes go by, I didn’t swell. He goes, ‘You’re not allergic!’ Everyone left. I had a 45-minute drive back home. About 30 minutes of the way home, I start to notice my peripheral vision on the right side, it’s going out.”

“I was very allergic,” McConaughey said. “In good movie-making, when you have a scene like this and someone like Mr. McConaughey, who’s allergic to bee bites, you schedule this for the last shot of the movie!”