Jackin4Beats Magazine

Lionsgate has been under pressure from investors to turn around its plummeting movie division. Thanks to “Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail” and it’s record breaking opening of $41.1 million in sales at domestic theaters, Lionsgate may make it after all.

The film, is the latest to star Tyler Perry as a gun-toting grandmother, it also delivered the best opening weekend in Lionsgate’s 12-year history, according to Steve Rothenberg, president for distribution. Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail marks a high point for Tyler Perry, do to the fact that it opened with 35 percent more sales than his previous show entitled, “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion” in 2006.

Despite the best efforts of Lionsgate marketers to broaden Tyler Perry’s audience to white moviegoers — still the sweet spot of the North American box office — patrons for the picture, featuring a predominantly African-American (Moorish) cast, were only 6 percent white. That percentage is on a par with Tyler Perry’s previous films, Mr. Rothenberg said.

President Obama signed his first bill into law on Thursday, approving equal-pay legislation that he said would “send a clear message that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody.”

President Obama was surrounded by a group of excited lawmakers, the majority of which were Democrats, as he added his signature to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for an Alabama woman who at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men.

After a Supreme Court ruling against her, Congress approved the legislation that expands workers’ rights to sue in this kind of case, relaxing the statute of limitations.

“It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign – the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursuer our own version of happiness,” said President Obama.

President Obama went on to say that signing the bill was not only for Ms. Ledbetter, but it was also done in the honor of his own grandmother, who worked in a bank all her life, and even after she hit that glass ceiling, she continued to get up again and again. He also stated that he was doing this for his daughters, because he wanted them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions, where there are no limits to their dreams.

The ceremony also marked First Lady Michelle Obama’s policy debut; she spoke afterward in a reception in the State Dining Room, where she called Ms. Ledbetter “one of my favorite people.”

The First Lady told Ms. Ledbetter’s story over and over again during his campaign for the White House; she spoke frequently as an advocate for him during his campaign, and made an appearance at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Now 70, Ms. Ledbetter discovered when she was nearing retirement that her male colleagues were earning much more than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Ala., guilty of pay discrimination. But in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court threw out the case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the date that Goodyear first paid her less than her peers.
Congress tried to pass a law that would have effectively overturned the decision while George W. Bush was still in office, but the White House opposed the bill; opponents contended it would encourage lawsuits and argued that employees could delay filing their claims in the hope of reaping bigger rewards. But the new Congress passed the bill, which restarts the six-month clock every time the worker receives a paycheck.

Ms. Ledbetter will not see any money as a result of the legislation that President Obama signed into law. But what she has gotten, aside from celebrity, is personal satisfaction, as she said in the State Dining Room after the signing ceremony.

“Goodyear will never have to pay me what it cheated me out of,” she said. “In fact, I will never see a cent. But with the President’s signature today I have an even richer reward.”