Mission Impossible?: Can Tom Cruise Launch a Box-Office Franchise with ‘Jack Reacher’?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Paramount hopes it’s launching a franchise with “Jack Reacher,” the Tom Cruise action thriller that hits theaters Friday.

It will be tricky in a crowded holiday marketplace, and Cruise isn’t the box-office bonanza he once was. But one need only look back to last year’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” to see how it might work. That film opened to $ 12 million on December 16 and went on to make $ 209 million and nearly $ 700 million worldwide for Paramount.

“Jack Reacher” will be in about 3,200 theaters, and it will have plenty of competition. Universal’s Judd Apatow comedy “This Is 40″ opens wide Friday, and Paramount‘s ‘Guilt Trip” and Disney’s 3D re-release of “Monsters Inc.” opened Wednesday.

A slew of limited releases, led by Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” along with this year’s winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes “Amour,” and tsunami survival tale “The Impossible” are also competing for moviegoers’ attention, along with a number of holdover hits.

No movie, though, will come close to catching reigning box-office champ “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which remains in more than 4,000 theaters. Peter Jackson’s latest Middle-earth epic will take in north of $ 40 million, industry analysts say, with “Jack Reacher” and “This Is 40″ battling for second with less than half of that.

Warner Bros.’ “Hobbit” has rolled to $ 106 million in the U.S. since opening to $ 85 million last weekend. Its international total – $ 188 million as of Thursday – is even bigger.

In “Jack Reacher,” Cruise plays an ex-military investigator; the film is based on bestselling author Lee Child’s novel “One Shot” and written for the screen and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. It’s from David Ellison’s Paramount-based Skydance Productions and was produced for about $ 60 million by Cruise, Don Granger, Paula Wagner and Gary Levinsohn.

Robert Duvall and Richard Jenkins co-star in the PG-13 crime thriller, which has a 53 percent positive rating at Movie Review Intelligence.

No is expecting “Jack Reacher” to match “MI:4″ at the box office. The Reacher novels have a following, but nowhere near that of the “Mission Impossible” franchise. Cruise’s recent box-office record has been uneven, and the film’s Facebook and Twitter activity is not particularly strong.

“Jack Reacher” could wind up playing more like Cruise’s “Knight and Day,” which opened to $ 20 million and went on to make $ 76 million for Fox in 2010, or “Valkyrie,” which did $ 83 million in 2008 after opening to $ 21 million. Cruise was critically lauded for his foray earlier this year as an aging rock icon in the musical “Rock of Ages,” but that was one of the year’s bigger box-office duds.

“Jack Reacher” should play strongly with action fans, but Cruise’s personal problems could limit its broader appeal.

“I can’t imagine his divorce from Katie Holmes and the custody battle hasn’t hurt him some with women,” BoxOffice.com vice president and chief analyst Phil Contrino told TheWrap Thursday. “Actions fans will come out, but going beyond that demographic is going to be tough for him.”

On the other hand, Universal says that it tracking suggests “This Is 40″ will do quite well with women — and women over 25 in particular.

“This Is 40,” is, as the marketing campaign points out, a “sort of sequel” to Apatow’s “Knocked Up,” which opened to $ 30 million and went on to make nearly $ 150 million five years ago. Like “This Is 40,” that one was written and directed by Apatow and starred Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann.

“40″ is the fourth film Apatow has directed, all for Universal (“Funny People” and “40-Year-Old Virgin” are the other two). The ensemble cast also features Albert Brooks, John Lithgow, Megan Fox, Maude Apatow, Iris Apatow, Chris O’Dowd, Jason Segel, Melissa McCarthy and Lena Dunham.

It’s R-rated and has a 62 percent positive rating at Movie Review Intelligence. The production budget was $ 35 million.

“This looks like the strongest comedy of the season,” Jeff Bock, senior analyst at Exhibitor Relations told TheWrap, “but it’s still a bit of a wild card. It’s going to connect with the New York and L.A. crowds; the key will be whether the Heartland audiences embrace it or see it as a little too hip. It will take time to tell, because of the season.”

Films released at this time of year tend to open lower because the marketplace is so crowded – by Friday, 11 new films will have hit opened this week – and the fact that many potential moviegoers are districted by shopping and other holiday preps. On the other hand, they often show lasting power and make up what they don’t take in on the weekend with stronger showings on the weekdays.

“Things could well come in lower than people are expecting across the board this weekend,” Bock said, “but look for many of these movies to make it up over the holidays.”

Summit will be looking for that kind of slow build on “The Impossible,” the English-language film from Spain based on a true story about a family’s fight to survive the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, who received a Best Actress nomination from SAG recently, star.

Summit is releasing it Friday in 15 theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Toronto. The plan is to go nationwide early next year.

“The Impossible” already has taken in $ 52 million in Spain, the home of the real-life couple upon whom the story is based as well as director Juan Antonio Bayona (“The Orphanage”) and screenwriter Sergio Sanchez.

Other limited rollouts set for Friday include Paramount‘s 3D concert film “Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away,” in 800 theaters; “On the Road,” IFC Films’ adaptation of the Jack Kerouac’s beat generation novel, in four theaters; and “Not Fade Away,” the Paramount Vantage tale of a group of 1960 New Jersey friends launching a rock band, written and directed by “Sopranos” creator David Chase, in three locations.

Sony’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, got off to a terrific start Wednesday. It racked up $ 124,848 from five theaters in its first day of release. That’s an average of $ 24,969, making it one of the biggest limited mid-week openings in history.

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Feds call for new safety review of airport scanners

Responding to critics, the Department of Homeland Security is launching another safety study of full-body scanners used to screen passengers at the nation's airports.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Transportation Security Administration, plans to award a contract to the National Academy of Sciences to perform the review.

But the nonprofit group of scientists will only be asked to review previous studies on the safety of a particular type of scanner used by the TSA.

The study comes in response to pressure from TSA critics, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who introduced a bill this year to test the safety of the scanners.

[Updated, 3:35 p.m. Dec. 20: In a statement, Collins said she welcomes the new review.

"While TSA has told the public that the amount of radiation emitted from these machines is small, passengers and some scientific experts have raised questions about the impact of repeated exposure to this radiation," she said.] 

In an interview, TSA Administrator John Pistole said several previous studies have already shown the scanners do not expose passengers to dangerous levels of radiation, even for frequent travelers.

But he said he welcomes another study to address the concerns of members of Congress. "After all, they fund us," he said of the Senate and House.

The TSA uses two types of full-body scanners, both of which help the agency look for objects hidden under the clothes of passengers. About half of those scanners expose passengers to X-rays to see through their clothes, with the rest using non-ionizing radio frequency energy, known as millimeter waves.

The scanners that use X-rays, or backscatter technology, have received the most criticism from passenger advocates and scientists, including professors from UC San Francisco. The European Union last year banned the use of backscatter scanners at European airports over health concerns.

The Department of Homeland Security posted an advisory last week, saying it was awarding the National Academy of Science a contract to convene a committee to review whether exposure to backscatter scanners complies with health standards. The academy also is asked to determine whether the design of the machines and the procedures used by TSA staff prevent overexposure of radiation to travelers and the workers.

The proposal does not say when the academy should complete its review.

ALSO:

How new TSA body scans will work

TSA scanners pose negligible risk to passengers, new test shows

LAX's controversial full-body scanners out; new, faster scanners in

Follow Hugo Martin on Twitter at @hugomartin

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FBI: Video shows escaped bank robbers getting into cab

There have been more developments today in the story of two men who escaped a Chicago prison yesterday.

Two fugitive bank robbers who slid down the side of a high-rise federal jail on a rope constructed from bedsheets made their getaway by hopping a cab a few blocks away, authorities said Wednesday as they continued the manhunt for the elusive convicts.

Federal agents obtained surveillance video of Joseph "Jose" Banks and Kenneth Conley jumping into a taxi at Congress Parkway and Michigan Avenue at about 2:40 a.m., FBI spokeswoman Joan Hyde said. The video showed the two wearing light-colored clothing.

The break helped investigators pinpoint the timing of the bold nighttime escape from some 15 stories above the street at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

Banks and Conley, both convicted bank robbers awaiting sentencing, were last accounted for at 10 p.m. Monday during a routine bed check.

Hours after the pair fled south in the cab, they banged on Conley's mother's door in far southwest suburban Tinley Park but were quickly sent on their way, according to a family member.

The two were last seen walking away from the home about 7 a.m., Hyde said.

FBI agents were analyzing the video for more leads, including the identity of the cab company and the number of the taxi.

The FBI also announced on Wednesday a $50,000 reward for information leading the capture of the two fugitives. Banks, 37, was described as black, 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 160 pounds, while Conley, 38, is white, 6 feet and 185 pounds. Conley has a tattoo of a devil on his shoulder and a sun tattoo on his back.

With the pair on the loose for a second day, new details were emerging about Conley, the lesser known of the two.

Unlike Banks, who was considered by the FBI as one of the most prolific bank robbers in Chicago history, Conley was facing sentencing on just one bank holdup.

According to court records, Conley has a long criminal history. He has been convicted in Cook County of offenses ranging from retail theft to weapons violations and was sentenced to eight years in prison for an armed robbery in 1996.

Conley also was sentenced to six years in prison in San Diego County for petty theft with a prior conviction, according to California records. Less than a year after his parole in 2010, Conley robbed a bank in suburban Homewood of less than $4,000 cash, the heist that landed in him in the MCC.

Federal court records show Conley had been involuntarily committed at a hospital not long after the May 2011 bank robbery and that he was arrested at the Tinley Park Mental Health Center for violating his California parole.

A brother of Conley's who asked that his name not be printed said he wasn't home when Conley and Banks arrived at the family home early Tuesday, but he spoke to his mother and sister minutes after the pair's visit.

He said Conley turned up at the Tinley Park home with a man whom family members later identified as Banks.

"He was pounding on the door, and the doorbell was going crazy," said his brother.

Conley came in, looking frazzled and wearing a white shirt and gray pants, the brother said. "He said, 'Hey, I'm out on bond,' which we thought was strange, because usually the family gets some notice."

They asked him to leave, although one brother gave him a winter coat.

"Do I think he's capable of doing something dangerous?," the brother said. "I don't know. I hope he just turns himself in."

Banks, too, has a criminal history, court records show. He was sentenced to three years in prison each for a 1994 burglary and a 1995 attempted burglary.

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Miss USA Olivia Culpo is crowned Miss Universe

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A 20-year-old Boston University sophomore and a self-described “cellist-nerd” brought the Miss Universe crown back to the United States for the first time in more than a decade when she won the televised contest Wednesday.

Olivia Culpo beat out 88 other beauty queens to take the title from Leila Lopes of Angola during the two-hour competition at the Planet Hollywood casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Culpo wore a tight navy blue mini-dress with a sequined bodice as she walked on stage for the competition’s opening number. Later in the night, she strutted in a purple and blue bikini, and donned a wintery red velvet gown with a plunging neckline.

Culpo’s coronation ends a long losing spell for the U.S. in the competition co-owned by Donald Trump and NBC. An American had not won the right to be called Miss Universe since Brook Lee won the title in 1997.

Culpo was good enough during preliminary competitions to be chosen as one of 16 semifinalists who moved on to compete in the pageant’s finale. Her bid lasted through swimsuit, evening wear, and interview competitions that saw cuts after each round.

She won over the judges, even after tripping slightly during the evening gown competition. Telecasters pointed it out but also noted her poised recovery.

Minutes before the middle child of five was crowned, she was asked whether she had she had ever done something she regretted.

“I’d like to start off by saying that every experience no matter what it is, good or bad, you’ll learn from it. That’s just life,” she said. “But something I’ve done I’ve regretted is probably picking on my siblings growing up, because you appreciate them so much more as you grow older.”

Miss Philippines, Janine Tugonon, came in second, while Miss Venezuela, Irene Sofia Esser Quintero, placed third.

All the contestants spent the past two weeks in Sin City, where they posed in hardhats at a hotel groundbreaking, took a painting lesson, and pranked hotel guests by hiding in their rooms.

Culpo was the first Miss USA winner from Rhode Island when she took the national crown in Las Vegas in June.

She grew up in Cranston with two professional musicians for parents and has played the cello alongside world-renowned classical musician Yo-Yo Ma. On her Miss Universe page, she said she hopes to pursue a career in film or television, and cites Audrey Hepburn as a role model because of her “generosity, intelligence and grace.”

With Culpo’s promotion, Miss Maryland Nana Meriwether becomes the new Miss USA.

The Miss Universe pageant was back in Las Vegas this year after being held in Sao Paulo in 2011. It aired live on NBC and was streamed to more than 100 countries.

Organizers had considered holding the 61st annual Miss Universe in the popular Dominican Republic tourist city of Punta Cana, but Miss Universe Organization President Paula Shugart said that country’s financial crisis proved to be too much of an obstacle.

The panel of 10 judges included singer Cee Lo Green, “Iron Chef” star Masaharu Morimoto and Pablo Sandoval of the San Francisco Giants.

Asked on the red carpet whether he found playing in the World Series or judging the beauty pageant to be more difficult, Sandoval said both were hard.

Sharply dressed women and men, including a large contingent from South America, held banners and cheered on their favorite contestants.

The pageant started as a local revue in Long Beach, Calif., organized by Catalina Swimwear. It is not affiliated with the Miss America pageant and unlike that contest, does not include a talent section.

Contestants in the pageant cannot have been married or have children. They must be younger than 27 and older than 18 by Feb. 1 of the competition year.

As Miss Universe, Culpo will receive an undisclosed salary, a wardrobe fit for a queen, a limitless supply of beauty products, and a luxury apartment in New York City.

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Europe Proposes New Tobacco Rules

BRUSSELS — Health warnings should cover 75 percent of cigarette packs but governments should also have leeway to require plain packaging, the European Commission said Wednesday.

Yves Logghe/Associated Press

European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy Tonio Borg held up a mock package of cigarettes during a news conference on proposals to revise the Tobacco Products Directive, at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday.

The commission’s proposal would also ban cigarettes containing large quantities of flavorings including menthol and vanilla, restrict the sale of slimmer cigarettes and maintain a ban in most of the European Union on a form of chewing tobacco called snus.

The proposals still are less strict than in Australia, where a prohibition on logos and colorful designs went into effect this month. But the proposed ban on slim and super-slim cigarettes that are marketed to young women “is a positive development and a world first,” said the Smoke Free Partnership, a European organization that promotes tobacco control and research.

Tonio Borg, the E.,U. commissioner for health and consumer policy, said the overall goal of the so-called Tobacco Products Directive was to make smoking less attractive and to discourage young people from tobacco consumption.

“Consumers must not be cheated,” Mr. Borg said. “Tobacco products should look and taste like tobacco products, and this proposal ensures that attractive packaging and flavorings are not used as a marketing strategy.”

But Unitab, a European association of tobacco growers, said regulators had declared “total war” on their industry. The increased restrictions on branding would make price the deciding factor in tobacco sales; that in turn would favor suppliers from countries with lower production costs and put thousands of jobs in Europe at risk, the association said.

Written health warnings already must cover about 40 percent of a cigarette pack in the Union, although some countries also use pictorial warnings. In the future, Mr. Borg would like pictorial warnings to be mandatory, and for the warnings to cover three-quarters of the front and back of each pack of cigarettes, and half of each side.

E.U. officials conceded that the entire top and bottom sides of cigarette packs sold in Europe still could be used for branding under Mr. Borg’s proposals. Member states could opt to require plain packaging, however.

The directive also would require that smokeless electronic cigarettes providing more than a certain amount of nicotine should be available only in outlets like pharmacies. National or Europe-wide “test panels” would determine what quantities of flavoring like menthol should be banned, they said.

Much of the interest in the legislation in recent months had focused on apparent attempts to influence its wording.

Mr. Borg’s predecessor, John Dalli, resigned in October after the commission concluded that he had probably known about an attempt by a lobbyist to solicit a multimillion-dollar payoff in exchange for easing the ban on snus. The product can be sold only in Sweden, where some people consider it a safer alternative to smoking.

Mr. Dalli denied the allegations and said he was forced to resign under pressure from José Manuel Barroso, the president of the commission. Mr. Dalli also said his ouster had jeopardized chances for the revised directive to be passed before the current term of the European Parliament, which must approve the legislation, expires in 2014.

Mr. Borg suggested Wednesday that the law still could be adopted before the Parliament’s term expires, and go into force in 2015 or 2016.

But the Smoke Free Partnership warned that lobbying still could water down the proposals on labeling and packaging, as well as the ban on flavors and slim cigarettes. Governments and members of the European Parliament “are likely to face attempts by the tobacco industry to further block, weaken and delay this important legislation,” said Florence Berteletti Kemp, the director of the partnership.

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Chicago electric bills set to rise $1 a month next year

In the new year Chicago area residents can expect to pay about $1 more per month on average to have ComEd deliver electricity to their homes.

The new rates, approved Wednesday by the Illinois Commerce Commission, affect all 3.7 million residential electricity customers in ComEd's service territory, including those who have switched to other suppliers. ComEd, which owns the wires that flow into homes, delivers electricity and is responsible for fixing outages regardless of which company supplies the power.

The rate "update" is the second under a law enacted in 2011 that changed the way electricity delivery rates are determined. Rather than intensely debated court-like proceedings, electric rates are now set according to a fill-in-the blank formula. The formula devised by the ICC in May, however, has been controversial. ComEd has taken the regulators to court over 12 items that amount to $100 million per year for the utility.

For now, ComEd must use the formula.

Consumers saw lower bills through 2012 with thhe first electricity rates set under the law. Despite Wednesday's hike, customer bills remain lower than they were before the Energy Infrastructure and Modernization Act was passed. That law allows ComEd to charge customers to modernize the electric grid and recover those costs each year.

ComEd will file for another rate update in May to take effect in January 2014.

Separately, the ICC approved an electricity procurement plan by the Illinois Power Agency -- the government agency that procures electricity on behalf of ComEd and Ameren for  customers who continue to have their electricity both supplied and delivered by their legacy utility -- that has it not purchasing additional power in the New Year. The agency said that with about 1.5 million residential electricity customers recently fleeing for alternative electricity suppliers,  it has enough power on hand to serve the customers who remain.

At the same time, the plan helps a so-called clean coal plant slated for Morgan County, Ill. clear a major financial hurdle by requiring the state's electric utilities to purchase electricity from the power plant for 20 years. The federally-backed FutureGen project, long stalled, would mean retrofitting a coal plant in Merdosia in order to largely prevent carbon dioxide and other pollutants from entering the atmosphere. The plant is not expected to generate electricity until 2017 but its backers needed to prove the plant would have customers ready to purchase the electricity in order to receive government approval to move forward with preliminary design, pre-construction and engineering work.  

jwernau@tribune.com

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Document shows CPS had detailed school closing plans

An internal Chicago Public Schools document obtained by the Tribune shows for the first time that the Emanuel administration has weighed how many elementary and high schools to close in which neighborhoods and how to manage the public fallout.

Labeled a "working draft," the Sept. 10 document lays out the costs and benefits of specific scenarios — revealing that the administration has gone further down the path of determining what schools to target than it has disclosed.

While schools are not listed by name, one section of the document contains a breakdown for closing or consolidating 95 schools, most on the West and South sides, as well as targeting other schools to be phased out gradually or to share their facilities with privately run charter schools.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his top school leaders have said they are in the early stages of making difficult decisions and that the city cannot afford to keep operating deteriorating schools with dwindling student populations in the face of a billion-dollar budget deficit. The document goes well beyond what the administration has outlined to the public.

Amid a September teachers strike, the Tribune reported that the Emanuel administration was considering plans to close 80 to 120 schools, most in poor minority neighborhoods. Administration officials have repeatedly denied they have such a figure.

"Unless my staff has a hidden drawer somewhere where they've got numbers in there, we don't have a number," schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said in November.

But the internal document, prepared at a time when school leaders faced a December deadline to make their decisions public, lays out multiple scenarios for closing neighborhood schools and adding privately run charters — a key component of Emanuel's plans for improving public education. Chicago Teachers Union members, aldermen and other charter school critics have accused the administration of favoring the charters while depriving schools in poor neighborhoods of needed improvements.

The document discusses how to deal with public reaction to school closing decisions, with ideas ranging from establishing "a meaningful engagement process with community members" to building a "monitoring mechanism to ensure nimble response to opposition to proposed school actions."

It is unclear how closely the administration is following the ideas in the 3-month-old document; sources told the Tribune the school closing plans are being constantly updated and subsequent proposals have been kept under close wraps.

The detailed document obtained by the Tribune comes from a time when a Chicago teachers strike interrupted the beginning of the school year and Jean-Claude Brizard was still Emanuel's schools chief; the embattled Brizard quit soon after. Byrd-Bennett was a top education official at CPS under Brizard and was named by Emanuel to succeed him.

CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said Tuesday that "this plan was proposed by past leadership at CPS and is not supported by CEO Byrd-Bennett."

"In terms of whatever document you have, I don't care when it's dated, as of today there's no list and there's no plan," Carroll said. "Maybe there were multiple, different scenarios passed around at some point, I don't know, but there's no list of schools.

"When CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett took this position, she made it very clear that we were going to do this differently than how it's been done in the past," which is why she appointed a commission to take public input on school closings, Carroll said.

But under Byrd-Bennett's tenure, at least one of the proposals outlined in the secret document has come to pass — the idea of a five-year moratorium on further school closings after this school year.

First mention: The September document raises the idea of a moratorium that would extend beyond Emanuel's first term in office as part of the rollout of school closings. But the mayor's first public mention of a moratorium came in November, when he offered it as a sweetener that helped persuade state lawmakers to extend the December deadline for announcing school closings to March.

Critics called the delay a ploy to give opponents less time to organize against the closings. But Emanuel said school officials needed the time to gather community input on the "tough choices" about school closings.

Byrd-Bennett said her decisions on what schools to close won't come until after she receives recommendations from the commission she created. The Tribune reported last week that the commission chairman doesn't plan on issuing recommendations until days before the March 31 deadline for announcing school closings — and even then, there are no plans for the commission to identify individual schools.

While CPS has not released a list of schools to close, it has made publicly available a breakdown of how much a building is used, performance levels per school and how expensive the facility is to keep open. School officials have said underenrollment is a key factor in school closing decisions this year. The school system recently released a list of about 300 "underutilized" schools — nearly half the district — that have dwindling student populations.

But the document obtained by the Tribune contains clues as to how the administration could make those decisions.

Closing breakdown: The most stark page in the document is a graphic that breaks down the 95 schools that could be closed in each of CPS' 19 elementary and high school networks.

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Leak reveals Polaroid’s Android-powered camera with interchangeable lenses

Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy Camera and Nikon’s (NINOY) Coolpix S800c are just the beginning of a swath of Android-powered cameras. Newly leaked images and specs point to Polaroid reviving its camera business with what could be the world’s first Android camera with interchangeable lenses. With no official name yet, the tentatively named IM1836 camera will reportedly feature a 18.1-megapixel sensor, 3.5-inch touchscreen, pop-up flash, Wi-Fi, HDMI and Android 4.0.

[More from BGR: A guide to all the insane predictions made by Google’s new engineering director]

The Galaxy Camera and Coolpix S800c do a fine job taking pictures that are considerably better than what you get from a smartphone, but they still can’t match a mirrorless camera with a good lens. At first glance, Polaroid’s camera looks to be a rebadged Nikon 1 J2, but the resemblance only runs skin deep, as PhotoRumors reports the camera only takes MicroSD cards.

[More from BGR: How not to fix Apple Maps]

Polaroid might not be a major player, but as more companies start incorporating Android into their cameras, there’s going to be a shift in the features consumers expect from them. In the next few years, novelty features such as Wi-Fi, cellular data and photo editing apps will be the norm and we’ll laugh at how we ever lived without them.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Cassadee Pope wins Season 3 of ‘The Voice’

NEW YORK (AP) — Cassadee Pope, who was country singer Blake Shelton‘s protege on the third season of NBC‘s “The Voice,” has won the show’s competition.

The 23-year-old singer is stepping out into a solo career after performing with a band called Hey Monday. Her victory over Scottish native Terry McDermott and long-bearded Nicholas David was announced at the end of a two-hour show Tuesday.

“The Voice” has grown into a hit for NBC and was the key factor in the network’s surprising success this fall.

The show’s status was affirmed by the stream of hitmakers who performed on the finale. They included Rihanna, Bruno Mars, the Killers, Smokey Robinson and Peter Frampton.

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Property purchase near McCormick gets OK

Convention officials on Tuesday took a step toward acquiring properties north of McCormick Place for the potential development of hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues.

The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority board approved the purchase of a parcel at 2101 S. Indiana Ave. for $5.1 million, with closing expected by year-end. A two-story building on the 23,126-square-foot property is now leased to operators of a methadone clinic.

The property is on the same block as a contested 1.23-acre parcel at 230 E. Cermak Rd., owned since 2005 by Olde Prairie Block Owner LLC. The company, led by developers Pamela Gleichman, Karl Norberg and Gunnar Falk, is fighting in U.S. Bankruptcy Court to retain that parcel as well as the entire block immediately to the east, at 330 E. Cermak, which it has owned since 1998 and hopes to develop as a convention hotel, a smaller boutique hotel and restaurants.

If Olde Prairie fails to show its plan is financially plausible at a hearing Dec. 27, Judge Jack Schmetterer has said he will dismiss it, opening the door for lender CenterPoint Properties Trust to take over the parcels and put them up for auction. Olde Prairie has been in default since early 2009.

Jim Reilly, CEO of the authority, the state-city agency that owns McCormick Place, declined to comment on whether the authority would pursue the Olde Prairie Block properties if they become available.

The authority, commonly known as McPier, has been in talks with DePaul University about the possibility of building an arena for men's basketball near McCormick Place, but Reilly said the purchase of the South Indiana parcel is an independent move aimed at ensuring the authority has room to develop such add-ons as more hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues. DePaul, whose Blue Demons play at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, also has been in talks with the owners of the United Center.

Meanwhile, speculation has resurfaced about building a casino near McCormick Place, with questions about whether the Olde Prairie blocks would be considered. Reilly said he thinks they are too close to the exhibit halls. Convention officials have said a casino on the convention campus or its immediate vicinity could pull trade show attendees away from the show floor.

McPier's latest acquisition will add to a nearby parcel it already owns at 2100 S. Prairie Ave.

"Ultimately, our goal is to develop a more vibrant and interesting neighborhood for McCormick Place," Reilly said.

McPier will purchase the parcel on South Indiana from RZR Equities LLC, Noah LLC and Hinsdale 111 LLC.

A financial restructuring approved by the Illinois General Assembly in 2010 gave the authority additional borrowing capacity for expansion projects. McPier will use proceeds from expansion bonds to fund the purchase.

kbergen@tribune.com

Twitter @kathy_bergen

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