The developer of Austin's Moody Center has been pardoned by President Donald Trump several months after he was indicted.
Trump granted the "full and unconditional pardon" to former Oak View Group (OVG) CEO Timothy Leiweke, who was accused this summer of rigging a contract for the multi-purpose center on the University of Texas at Austin campus.
Leiweke's indictment Back in July, Leiweke was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department after being accused of trying to ensure a competitor did not place a bid on the Moody Center's development.
According to the indictment, Leiweke said in 2017 that he was interested in "talking to [the competitor] about not bidding [and receiving certain subcontracts]."
Then in early 2018, Leiweke allegedly gave subcontracts to the competing CEO as an exchange so they wouldn't enter a separate bid for the arena's development.
Leiweke's company was granted the bid for the Moody Center project, and the arena opened its doors in Austin in spring 2022.
As of July 2025, the Justice Department said the OVG "continues to receive significant revenues from the project to date."
Following the indictment, Leiweke faced a $1 million fine and up to 10 years behind bars if convicted. His company also agreed to pay a penalty of $15 million, and he was shifted from CEO to Board of Directors' vice chairman.
Prosecutors said Lewicki avoided fair competition in his actions, and he was charged with violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which prohibits monopolies in an effort to ensure fair competition.
Alexandra Shipp, Lili Reinhart, and Victoria Perfetti in Forbidden Fruits.
There was a time when Dallas was a prime location for movies, whether it was for films set in and around the city, like Tender Mercies, or ones that used it to stand in for other locations, like Robocop. Dallas is getting its first notable shoutout in a long time thanks to the new film Forbidden Fruits, which premiered at South by Southwest (SXSW) this March.
Set mostly in a NorthPark Center-like location called Highland Place Mall, the film centers on a group of young women known as the Fruits. Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Perfetti), and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) all work at a clothing store called Free Eden, with the three of them essentially lording over everyone else in the mall. That includes Pumpkin (Lola Tung), who works at the pretzel store Sister Salt’s and who wants to join their group.
Pumpkin soon discovers that, apart from being an entitled clique, the group also claims to be a coven of witches, with Apple especially using their combined power to get back at anyone who’s wronged them. When Pumpkin starts noticing Cherry and Fig going astray of the group’s code, she uses this knowledge to get in tighter with Apple, although she’s unprepared for how far Apple will go to protect her interests.
Written and directed by Meredith Alloway (who grew up in Dallas and graduated from both Lake Highlands High School and SMU) and co-written by Lily Houghton, the film seems to have the aim of combining movies like Mean Girls and The Craft. The peer pressure of being part of an exclusive group is evident from the start, as Apple essentially forces the others to live by her code or be ostracized (or worse).
One of the biggest problems the film runs into, though, is that any conflict comes from within the group itself. With no pressure coming from other friends, family, or co-workers, the group has to create its own drama. The story quickly gets redundant and stagnant, with almost no plot movement until the final act of the film, when it’s almost too late.
Alloway is clearly aiming for a campy vibe with the film, but the execution leaves something to be desired. The four characters are established in a perfunctory manner, and even as they get fleshed out as the film goes along, there’s nothing to compare them with, so it’s as if they’re just acting off-the-wall in a vacuum.
Those who know the Dallas area well will enjoy the local references (the women hail from Plano, Irving, Grapevine, and Highland Park), and Alloway makes sure to include the looming threat of a tornado into the plot. But since the film was actually filmed in Toronto, there are no visuals that make it feel like Texas, and so any goodwill she gets from setting the film in the city is muted by that lack.
While Reinhart (Riverdale) and Shipp (Storm in X-Men movies) have been around longer, both Pedretti (You) and Tung (The Summer I Turned Pretty) have made big impressions on streaming shows in recent years. The foursome play off each other well even when the story is not that compelling.
If there was a message in Forbidden Fruits that Alloway wanted to get across, she didn’t communicate it clearly enough. Her solid cast can only do so much to sell a story that doesn’t have enough on the bone to be filling. It would have been nice for the movieto be filmed in Dallas, but such is the way of the world in modern Hollywood.
