Viral plush toy is heading to big screen after a deal was signed with details still unclear over whether it would be live-action or animated
Labubus could be headed to the big screen. Sony Pictures has acquired the screen rights to the plush toy sensation and is in early development of a feature film which, if successful, would anchor a new franchise.
The deal, first reported by the Hollywood Reporter, was signed this week between the Chinese toy makers and Sony Pictures, whose animation division is fresh off the global success of KPop Demon Hunters. No producer or film-maker is attached to the project yet, and it’s still unclear if the film would be live-action or animated.
Maro Itoje and company have talked the talk and are hungry to follow through with a first win at home over New Zealand since 2012
For better or worse it has been lashing down in south-west London. Good news for restocking the reservoirs but rather less so for dry-ball rugby. Had England played New Zealand 24 hours earlier it would have resembled a game of outdoor water polo and, although the matchday forecast is less biblical, a decidedly damp, grey afternoon awaits.
Is it some kind of celestial clue that England’s on-field drought against the All Blacks might be about to break? It is now 13 years since the last men’s victory over New Zealand at what was once called Twickenham, so long ago that Maro Itoje was still at school. Troublemaker by Olly Murs (featuring Flo Rida) topped the UK charts and the nation was basking in a warm, fuzzy post-London Olympics glow that was supposed to last indefinitely.
Deal would also require multibillionaire family to give up ownership of the Connecticut-based firm
A federal bankruptcy court judge on Friday said he would approve OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma’s latest deal to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids that includes some money for thousands of victims of the epidemic.
The deal overseen by US bankruptcy judge Sean Lane would require some of the multibillionaire members of the Sackler family who own the company to contribute up to $7bn and give up ownership of the Connecticut-based firm.
Protesters blockaded the main entrance to the Cop30 climate conference for several hours early on Friday morning, demanding to speak to Brazil’s president about the plight of the country’s Indigenous peoples.
About 50 people from the Munduruku people in the Amazon basin blocked the entrance with some assistance from international green groups, watched by a huge phalanx of riot police, soldiers and military vehicles.
Thomas Tuchel wants his England substitutes to channel any anger they feel at not starting into making the difference when they can because the team that win the World Cup will be defined by productivity off the bench.
The head coach will prepare a heat-proof gameplan for the finals next summer when temperatures at many of the venues in the United States, Mexico and Canada are expected to be stifling and a major part will involve how best to use his substitutes.
Now Auger-Aliassime, dressed in purple, is making Zverev, clad all in black, wait for the coin toss. The match may not have started yet, but the mind games certainly have. Zverev wins it and elects to receive. Laura Robson is going for a Zverev win; Tim Henman opts for Auger-Aliassime. I think I’m sitting on the fence. Auger-Aliassime has the bigger momentum, but of course it’s Zverev with the greater pedigree.
Coach hopes to match spirit of his 2021 Chelsea team
Tuchel needs strong bench ‘after a long, long season’
Thomas Tuchel wants his England substitutes to channel any anger they feel at not starting into making the difference when they can because the team that win the World Cup will be defined by productivity off the bench.
The head coach will prepare a heat-proof gameplan for the finals next summer when temperatures at many of the venues in the United States, Mexico and Canada are expected to be stifling and a major part will involve how best to use his substitutes.
The Cop30 climate summit, blackouts in Kyiv, immigration raids in Chicago and super-typhoon Fung-wong: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Exclusive: Almost all Palestinians have been displaced to ‘red zone’ where no reconstruction is planned
The US is planning for the long-term division of Gaza into a “green zone” under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a “red zone” to be left in ruins.
Foreign forces will initially deploy alongside Israeli soldiers in the east of Gaza, leaving the devastated strip divided by the current Israeli-controlled “yellow line”, according to US military planning documents seen by the Guardian and sources briefed on American plans.
Club hope to have Frenchman in charge next weekend
Any compensation not regarded as problematic
Celtic are to accelerate talks with Wilfried Nancy over the weekend as the Columbus Crew manager edges closer to replacing Brendan Rodgers in Glasgow. Celtic are understood to have informed the Major League Soccer side on Friday of their plans, with any compensation required to coax the Frenchman not regarded as problematic. Nancy is believed to be keen on the switch.
Celtic hope to have Nancy in place by the time they visit St Mirren next weekend, which would bring an end to Martin O’Neill’s caretaker spell. O’Neill was due to meet Celtic’s main shareholder, Dermot Desmond, in London on Friday. The second tenure of Rodgers in Glasgow ended in acrimony in late October, with Desmond taking public aim at the former Liverpool manager.
Botched briefing operation was proof to many that PM is leading an ineffectual No 10. How did it go so wrong?
If there’s one thing the Labour party can agree on this week, it is that efforts by Keir Starmer’s allies to shore up his position backfired spectacularly.
By briefing journalists that he would face down any challenge and accusing Wes Streeting of leading an advanced plot to overthrow him, figures around the prime minister managed only to expose the weakness of his position.
Donald Trump agreed to cut US tariffs on Switzerland from 39% to 15% as part of a new trade pact, lowering duties that strained economic ties and hit Swiss exporters.
The two countries have signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding”, the Swiss government announced, following bilateral talks in Washington and intense lobbying by Swiss firms.
In attacking a vital broadcaster, the US president is once again holding others to standards he flouts. But the Maga faithful might not let his links to the disgraced financier go
To confront Donald Trump is to engage in asymmetric warfare. It is to enter a battlefield that is not level, where he enjoys an immediate and in-built advantage over those who would oppose him or merely hold him to account. That fact has cost Democrats dearly over the past decade – exacting a toll again this very week – but it has now upended an institution central to Britain’s national life: namely, the BBC.
The key asymmetry can be spelled out simply. Trump pays little or no regard to the conventional bounds of truth or honesty. His documented tally of false or misleading statements runs into the tens of thousands: the Washington Post registered 30,573 such statements during Trump’s first term in the White House, an average of 21 a day. In a single interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes earlier this month, Trump spoke falsely 18 times, according to CNN.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US?
On Wednesday 21 January 2026, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path.
Book ticketshere or at guardian.live
German far-right party urges Berlin and other European nations to also designate ‘antifa’ groups as terrorist organisations
Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party has welcomed the US government’s decision to classify a prominent German anti-fascist group and three other European networks as terrorist organisations, calling on Berlin and other European governments to follow the example.
But historians of anti-fascism warned that at a time when far-right groups were making electoral gains across the continent, the move set a dangerous precedent that could prepare the ground for a broader crackdown on leftwing activism.
Vincent Karremans called semiconductor supply chain crisis a ‘wake-up call for western leaders’
The Chinese government has expressed “extreme disappointment” with the Dutch minister at the heart of a row over chip supply to the car industry.
A spokesperson for the ministry of commerce was responding to a Guardian interview with Vincent Karremans on Thursday in which the politician described the standoff between China and the European Union as a “wake-up call” for western leaders.
As the year draws to a close, Guardian Live invites you to a special event with columnist Tim Dowling, film and TV writer Stuart Heritage, and cook and author Meera Sodha. They will join comedian, broadcaster, and occasional Guardian contributor Nish Kumar for an evening of sharp observations, seasonal reflections and behind-the-scenes stories from the Guardian.
Chao Xu, 33, may be one of worst sex offenders in British criminal history, police fear
A businessman has been jailed for life fordrugging women then subjecting them to sexual attacks which he recorded for his pleasure, as well as committing hundreds of other sexual offences.
The judge said Chao Xu’s offending was “calculated and planned” and he posed a high risk to women.
Marine Mammal Center in Morro Bay and local harbor patrol teamed up for mission to reunite pup with its mother
It was a foggy October afternoon on the central California coast when the Marine Mammal Center got a call on their public hotline: there were distressed cries coming from the frigid waters in Morro Bay.
The center’s experts were able to determine that the calls – which sounded almost like a human baby screeching – were coming from a roughly two-week-old sea otter pup that had been separated from its mother.
Investigators believe an explosion that killed 13 people may be linked to group operating in the disputed region
Police have carried out raids and made several arrests across the Indian region of Kashmir in the aftermath of a car explosion in Delhi that left 13 people dead.
Anthropic says financial firms and government agencies were attacked ‘largely without human intervention’
A leading artificial intelligence company claims to have stopped a China-backed “cyber espionage” campaign that was able to infiltrate financial firms and government agencies with almost no human oversight.
The US-based Anthropic said its coding tool, Claude Code, was “manipulated” by a Chinese state-sponsored group to attack 30 entities around the world in September, achieving a “handful of successful intrusions”.
A lack of experience has lessened the impact of the All Blacks as many key players are ineligible for selection after moving to Japan
Thursday afternoon, and the All Blacks are out on the training ground around the back of the Lensbury hotel on the banks of the Thames, it’s a warm autumn day, and the mood is pretty free and easy. Will Jordan is practising catching high balls, Beauden Barrett is taking shots at goal, the forwards are packing up after running some drills, head coach, Scott Robertson, is chatting happily with the media before his press conference. Someone asks if his team are looking to make a statement against England on Saturday, the sort that reminds everyone exactly how good they are.
“A statement performance?” Robertson says, perplexed. “We’re just looking for a result.” Time was when every All Blacks performance was a statement performance, and their head coaches didn’t go looking for results against England, or anyone else, they expected them. The remark hung in the air for a moment. It’s only Robertson’s manner. For 20 years the All Blacks press conferences have felt like being called in for an audience with the family patriarch in the back room of a wedding, Robertson’s are more like a catch-up chat with the uncle you are pleased to bump into at the buffet.
Third series of TV drama spiked interest in anti-anxiety drug amid warnings over illicit production of ‘benzos’
In the third series of the hit TV show The White Lotus, the entitled North Carolina housewife Victoria Ratliff is often shown reaching for her lorazepam. Now researchers say internet searches for the anti-anxiety drug surged after the show’s release.
Lorazepam, also known by its brand name Ativan, is a type of drug known as a benzodiazepine, or “benzo”. It is thought to work by boosting the effect of a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the brain.
Football Daily, for research/self-loathing purposes, recently sat through Cristiano Ronaldo’s latest chat with Piers Morgan. Among many moments of hubris, self-celebration and smoke being blown up the great man’s rear end by the ever-willing Morgan, Ronaldo took a typical moment of quiet self-reflection. “I think in the world, nobody is more famous than me,” he trumpeted, Piers nodding along obediently. “Let’s debate it – who’s more famous, me or Donald Trump?” Though such a pointless debate might provide welcome distraction for a president rather uncomfortably named in some emails making the news at the moment, it has very little to do with what Ronaldo is famous for. While doing his day job he had a very bad time in Dublin, as Portugal went down 2-0 to an inspired Republic of Ireland side.
Loosely on the theme of the Wythenshawe FC story doing the rounds (Football Daily letters passim), I have a mildly amusing tale from the late 90s. I played in a bang-average, typically hungover, Sunday League pub team in Exeter. Several of my teammates and I were friends and occasional drinking buddies with a couple of the younger Exeter City players, who popped in the boozer in their downtime. After a particularly enjoyable Saturday night in the pub, following a rare Grecian home win, one of the players had joined us to celebrate, and, inevitably, we cajoled him into playing for us the following morning. No one expected the player to show, but there he was, boots and all, outside the pub at 9.30am. We didn’t think he’d actually play! We were away to a village team, miles away, and with a TQ postcode. None of us knew the place, but the collective assumption was that it ‘must be near Torquay’, reducing the likelihood anyone would recognise the player. He was normally an unused sub, with the occasional run-out. So we were confident he’d blend in. As we approached the car park at the pitch, there was a collective meltdown when we were greeted by a couple of lads in Exeter shirts! It turns out this village is split between City and the Greenies down the road. The postcode was a total red herring! So our ringer decided to risk it, gave the ref a fake name, and proceeded to boss the entire game. One of the City shirt-wearing lads asked us outright if that in fact was the player. We nonchalantly explained it was actually his younger brother, and that we were chuffed that he plays for us when he visits ‘big bro’. They bought it. We had to sub him, though. He was running rings around the opposition, to the point that a rather robust midfielder, who only had one arm, got sent off for trying to crock the player. We feared what his colleagues might do, and not wanting a showdown with Peter Fox and Noel Blake (ECFC’s management duo at the time), we decided not to chance it again. After that, the player himself seemed to spend more time in the pub than playing and was unsurprisingly released” – Jim Hughes.
I can’t be the only avid reader of literary novels to wonder where Lee Child gets his inspiration for naming characters in his Booker prize-winning Reacher series. By page 44 in his latest I’ve come across a David Moyes, a Steve McClaren, a Kelleher, a Walker and a Dominic (Szoboszlai or Solanke?). By page 66 I’m expecting the supervillain to be a certain Bruno Fernandes. Or does your other reader have another suggestion?” – John Murphy.
A look at the editor-in-chief’s Vogue covers from her first radical combination in 1988 to her final ‘weird’ shoot
During her 37-year tenure as editor-in-chief of American Vogue, Anna Wintour has presided over more than 400 covers. December 2025’s, on newsstands this week, will prove her last before she steps away to focus on roles as Vogue’s global editorial director and chief content officer at Condé Nast.
The cover is certainly memorable: an image of the actor Timothée Chalamet photographed by Wintour’s long-term collaborator Annie Leibovitz in a Celine white polo neck, long cream coat and embroidered jeans, standing on a “planet” with a backdrop of a star-filled nebula provided by Nasa.
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