While many ring in the New Year by taking part in celebrations including parties, others prefer to vandalise. Or so was the case with the landmark ‘Hollywood’ sign in California which was vandalised by a prankster in the middle of the night. Instead of Hollywood, it read “Hollyweed” on the morning of January 1. Someone in America has a wicked sense of humour.
While the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) investigated the incident, people gathered and took pictures and the episode is now a part of the Internet world. Though the sign has been tempered with before, it’s the second time it was twisted around to read the word “Hollyweed”.
Hollywood Sign Trust, the non-profit responsible for maintaining the landmark, said after the issue that security will be beefed up. The ‘Trust’ told The Hollywood Reporter that it “will be deploying additional technology to tighten up surveillance and thus deter unwanted visitors in the future.”
Moving on, Hollywood studios are hoping that the year 2017 will be better, in terms of numbers, than 2016. Though Hollywood films collected 11.36 billion dollars in revenue last year on the North American box office, there were plenty of big-budgets films which underperformed significantly leading to the loss of millions in production costs alone. Time will tell if this meteoric failure will be repeated this year.
