"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" smashed the opening night record in the United States and Canada and was poised to become one of the biggest grossing movies ever, industry experts said Friday.

The latest installment of the highly anticipated space epic raked in $57 million for its opening night Thursday, easily beating the previous record -- $43.5 million -- held by "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" in 2011.

A month after the assault in Paris on a concert by Eagles of Death Metal, prominent music groups are covering one of the band's songs to raise money for the victims.

The California rockers on Friday announced a campaign to encourage other groups to record interpretations of their song "I Love You All the Time."

France's "Mustang" and Hungary's "Son of Saul" are among nine films that have made it onto a shortlist in the contest for the foreign-language Oscar, Academy Awards organizers said late Thursday.

The nine films -- seven of them from Europe, one from Colombia and one from Jordan -- were selected from 81 submissions.

British singer Rita Ora, a onetime protegee of rap mogul Jay Z, filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to leave his company, charging that his interests have wandered elsewhere.

The Albanian-born artist remains popular in Britain, where she was a judge on the latest season of "The X Factor" music competition, but has not released an album since her 2012 debut.

Michael Jackson has broken another music record even after his death, with "Thriller" certified Wednesday as the first album to sell more than 30 million copies in the United States.

The Recording Industry Association of America announced that the 1982 work was its first "30 times platinum" album, with platinum defined as selling one million copies -- meaning roughly one out of every 10 Americans has a copy.

The wait is finally over. \One of the most hyped films of all time, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", opened in cinemas in France, South Africa and several other countries Wednesday, a decade after the last episode of the space saga.

After months of teasing trailers that raised more questions than answers, and a Hollywood premiere Monday from which the celebrity audience emerged smiling but sworn to secrecy, the franchise's millions are finally getting to see it for themselves.

The final "Hunger Games" installment topped the North American box office for a fourth week with the monster of a whale from "In the Heart of the Sea" landing in second place.

"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 2," the fourth and last movie in the blockbuster franchise that turned Jennifer Lawrence into a Hollywood megastar, earned $11.4 million in ticket sales, box office tracker Exhibitor Relations said Monday.

Disgraced TV icon Bill Cosby, who allegedly used his celebrity over the years to sexually assault more than 50 women, has filed a defamation suit against seven of his accusers, his attorney said Monday.

The famed comedian, 78, once among America's biggest television stars, filed suit in a court in Springfield, Massachusetts, his attorney Monique Pressley said in a statement.

Hollywood rolls out the red carpet Monday for the premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," the first film in the epic space saga in a decade, and fans are frantic.

The star-studded screening of the most anticipated movie of the year will be followed by a global release starting Wednesday. It officially hits U.S. theaters Friday.

A large crate tucked away in a musky storage room reveals a treasure: a pair of meticulously crafted wings covered with swan feathers made for a final film Charlie Chaplin never completed.

The seminal filmmaker had the surprisingly heavy contraptions made for his daughter Victoria, whom he envisioned in the role of "The Freak" -- a winged girl who brings hope to humanity, but also exposes its deepest flaws.