Millie Bobby Brown’s planned Netflix film about Olympic gymnastics hero Kerri Strug has been scrapped after the actress departed the project due to creative differences, two sources with knowledge of the situation have confirmed.

Perfect, which was announced last September, would have seen Brown star as Strug, the gymnast who famously performed a vault on an injured ankle to help the United States win gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, becoming one of the most enduring images in the sport’s history. 

Brown had also been set to produce the film under her PMCA production company.

The project had already undergone one significant change before Brown’s exit, with original director Gia Coppola departing and being replaced by Cate Shortland. 

Ronnie Sandahl had been attached as screenwriter. 

Nik Bower of Riverstone Pictures and Thomas Benski for Magna Studios were on board as lead producers.

Strug’s story remains one of sport’s most remarkable moments. At just 18, she completed her vault despite a badly injured ankle, landing cleanly before collapsing in pain. 

Her coach carried her off the mat and later to the podium when her team insisted she join them for the gold medal ceremony. 

The moment became iconic, leading to a wave of media appearances, an SNL parody and a spot on the Wheaties box. 

After retiring from gymnastics, Strug built a career as an elementary school teacher and later worked in roles at the White House and the Justice Department.

Despite the setback, Brown’s Netflix slate remains busy. 

She has just wrapped five seasons of Stranger Things, with Enola Holmes 3 due to premiere on the platform this summer. 

She has also completed production on the romantic comedy Just Picture It, in which she stars and produces alongside Gabrielle LaBelle, and is developing Nineteen Steps, an adaptation of her debut novel.

• Four astronauts flew farther from Earth than anyone before.
• Mission marked first human voyage to moon in half century.
• Atmospheric re-entry posed key test of capsule’s heat shield.

The Artemis II capsule and its four-member crew streaked through Earth’s atmosphere and safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday after nearly 10 days in space, capping the first voyage by humans to the vicinity of the moon in over half a century.

Nasa’s gumdrop-shaped Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, parachuted gently into the sea off the Southern California coast shortly after 5 p.m. PT, concluding a mission that took the astronauts deeper into space than anyone had flown before.

The Artemis II flight, travelling a total of 694,392 miles (1,117,515 km) across two Earth orbits and a climactic lunar flyby some 252,000 miles away, was the debut crewed test flight in a series of Artemis missions that aim to start landing astronauts on the lunar surface starting in 2028.

The splashdown, about two hours before sunset, was carried by live video feed in a Nasa webcast.

Recovery teams were standing by to secure the floating capsule and retrieve the crew – US astronauts Reid Wiseman, 50, Victor Glover, 49, and Christina Koch, 47, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, 50.

The crew’s homecoming cleared a critical final hurdle for the Lockheed Martin-built Orion spacecraft, proving it would withstand the extreme forces of re-entry from a lunar-return trajectory.

It followed a white-knuckle, 13-minute fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere, generating frictional heat that sent temperatures on the capsule’s exterior soaring to some 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius).

At the peak of re-entry stress, as expected, intense heat and air compression formed a red-hot sheath of ionised gas, or plasma, that engulfed the capsule, cutting off radio communications with the crew for several minutes.

The tension broke as contact was re-established and two sets of parachutes were seen billowing from the nose of the free-falling capsule, slowing its descent to about 15 mph (25 kph) before Orion gently hit the water.

It was expected to take Nasa and US Navy teams about an hour to secure the floating capsule and assist the four astronauts out of the vehicle and fly them to a nearby recovery ship to undergo an initial medical checkup.

Stepping stone to Mars

The quartet blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 1, lofted into an initial Earth orbit by Nasa’s giant Space Launch System rocket before sailing on for a rare journey around the far side of the moon.

In so doing, they became the first astronauts to fly in the vicinity of Earth’s only natural satellite since the Apollo programme of the 1960s and ’70s. Glover, Koch and Hansen also made history as the first Black astronaut, the first woman and the first non-US citizen, respectively, to take part in a lunar mission.

At the flight’s peak, the Artemis astronauts reached a point 252,756 miles from Earth, exceeding the previous record of roughly 248,000 miles set in 1970 by the crew of Apollo 13.

The voyage, following the uncrewed Artemis I test flight around the moon by the Orion spacecraft in 2022, marked a critical dress rehearsal for a planned attempt later this decade to land astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in late 1972.

The ultimate goal of the Artemis programme is to establish a long-term presence on the moon as a stepping stone to eventual human exploration of Mars.

In a historical parallel to the Cold War era of Apollo, the Artemis II mission has played out against a backdrop of political and social turmoil, including a US military conflict that has proven unpopular at home.

Unlike the Apollo era, when the United States was racing to land astronauts on the moon ahead of the Soviet Union, the Artemis programme is seeking to beat China.

For many in a global audience captivated by the latest moon shot, it reaffirmed the achievements of science and technology at a time when big tech has become widely distrusted, even feared. Opinion polling showed broad public support for the aims of the mission.

The return to Earth put the Orion spacecraft through a critical test of its heat shield, which sustained an unexpected level of scorching and stress on re-entry during its 2022 test flight. As a result, Nasa engineers altered the descent trajectory for Artemis II to reduce heat buildup and lower the risk of the capsule burning up.

Last week’s successful launch was a major milestone for the SLS rocket, handing its principal contractors, Boeing and Northrop Grumman, long-sought validation that the launch system, more than a decade in development, was ready to safely fly humans to space.

The two R&B heavyweights announced a joint concert tour on Friday, 10 April, with a shared Instagram post that read simply “IT’S TIME,” accompanied by hashtags for “R&B Tour” and “Raymond & Brown”, a nod to Usher’s full name, Usher Raymond IV. 

They also released a video showing the pair revving motorcycles before removing their helmets to face each other. 

“It’s time,” Usher said. Brown replied: “Hell yeah.” 

No further details about the tour have been revealed yet.

The announcement marks a significant update in a relationship that hit a very public low point in May 2023, when the two reportedly clashed at Brown’s 34th birthday party in Las Vegas. 

Footage obtained by TMZ showed Usher appearing to confront Brown for allegedly ignoring fellow guest Teyana Taylor. 

Brown left the venue, and Usher was later seen returning inside with what appeared to be a bloody nose. 

Neither man publicly addressed what happened, and both went on to perform their sets at Usher’s Lovers & Friends Festival the same night, with both posting upbeat messages about the evening afterwards.

The falling out was particularly notable given how close the two had been. 

Their friendship stretches back to 2005, when Brown first broke through, and they went on to collaborate on tracks including New Flame and Party. 

Even at the height of the tension, Usher had spoken warmly about what a joint project between them could look like. 

“If that ever happens, it’ll be one of the biggest things that anybody has ever experienced in entertainment in celebration of two people who love each other,” he told BigBoyTV in April 2023. 

“I love Chris. He’s my little brother, and he’s always been there for me.”

It appears that moment has now arrived.