Film
Warner Bros. Shelves Finished Batgirl Movie Despite $90 Million Price Tag
The Batgirl film set to star Leslie Grace, Michael Keaton, and Brendan Fraser has been scrapped by Warner Bros. Discovery, The Wrap reports. The DC Extended Universe movie was slated to stream on HBO Max, but it will no longer be released. Directed by Bad Boys for Life filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah from a script by Christina Hodson (Birds of Prey, The Flash), Batgirl was filmed from November 2021 to March 2022 with a $90 million budget. Yet, despite COVID delays, reshoots, and all that money spent, Warner Bros. Discovery recently changed management, and the new studio heads decided the film simply didn’t work. Warner Bros. Discovery hopes to produce DC Extended Universe films fit for theatrical releases, and Batgirl — which would have been the firs...
Jake Gyllenhaal to Star in Road House Remake
Prime Video has greenlit a remake of the classic 1989 film Road House starring Jake Gyllenhaal. It will be directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity), with Joel Silver returning as producer after serving in the same role for the original. The reimagining centers around a former UFC fighter, played by Gyllenhaal, who takes a job as a bouncer at “a rough-and-tumble roadhouse in the Florida Keys, but soon discovers that not everything is what it seems in this tropical paradise.” Gyllenhaal has some big shoes to fill. The late Patrick Swayze starred in the original as the now-iconic Dalton, a bouncer with a philosophy degree hired to clean up the rowdy Double Deuce bar in a small town in Missouri. Though it was nominated for five Razzie awards — including Worst Picture and Swayze f...
Michael Keaton Says He’s Never Seen a Full DC or Marvel Movie
You’d think most Hollywood actors would be diligent about watching the box office’s biggest films, but Michael Keaton is too busy to sit in front of a screen for two consecutive hours — or at least, that’s the excuse he gave in a new interview with Variety, wherein the man known for playing Batman admitted that he’s never seen a DC or Marvel movie from start to finish. About 30 years after starring as Bruce Wayne in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, Keaton will get back in the suit soon for The Flash. Though the Beetlejuice star expressed his admiration of Richard Donner for directing 1978’s Superman — thus igniting the superhero flick flame — he said that he’s really not one to watch movies like that. “I know people don’t believe this, that I’ve never seen an...
Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek’s Uhura Dead at 89
Nichelle Nichols, immortal forever as the original Nyota Uhura of Star Trek, has died at the age of 89. The actress was renowned not just for her decades playing the character in the original television series as well as subsequent feature films, but also for her activism and volunteer work. Her legacy includes encouraging entire generations of diverse candidates, including women and people of color, to explore careers in STEM. Nichols was originally cast as the groundbreaking crew member of the U.S.S. Enterprise in 1966, and infamously considered leaving the show in its first year, before being talked into staying on the show by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King had told her that Uhura was an invaluable role model for young Black women, a fact which might be considered anecdotal — except fo...
R.I.P. Pat Carroll, Who Voiced Ursula in The Little Mermaid, Dead at 95
Pat Carroll, who famously voiced the villainous Ursula in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, has died at the age of 95. According to Deadline, Carroll passed away on July 30th while recovering from pneumonia. Carroll’s career spanned over seven decades, beginning with her work as a a civilian actress technician in the United States Army in the 1940s. Upon leaving the military, Carroll became a mainstay in the world of TV variety shows, appearing on programs like The Steve Allen Show, The Red Skelton Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. Notably, her work on Caesar’s Hour earned her an Emmy Award in 1956. Related Video In the late 1970s, Carroll’s one-woman theater show on on Gertrude Stein earned universal praise, including a Grammy for Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama. Advertisement Carroll c...
Marcia Gay Harden on Depicting the “Universal Heartbreak” of Netflix’s Uncoupled
Marcia Gay Harden feels like one of the hardest-working actors out there; since winning her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Pollack (she was also nominated for Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River) she’s made countless appearances across film and television, often appearing in multiple episode guest-starring roles across shows including The Morning Show, Damages, The Newsroom, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, How to Get Away With Murder, and more. So it’s not a huge surprise to see her appear in Uncoupled, the new Darren Star (Sex and the City) comedy now streaming on Netflix, though it is a pleasure. The series focuses on how Michael (Neil Patrick Harris), a 40-something residential real estate agent in New York, copes with the sudden end of a 17-year relationship; Harden appears as C...
Disney Signs Open Letter Advocating for Federal Same-Sex Marriage Rights
Disney has a lot of work to do to scrub their reputation clean after they reportedly donated to every sponsor of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill earlier this year. Next up on the company’s agenda, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is signing an open letter in support of codifying some same-sex marriage rights into federal law. The open letter is spearheaded by the Human Rights Campaign, and Disney is just one in the handful of Hollywood studios taking part. With more than 170 signatories representing more than 5.3 million employees, the letter urges the US Senate to pass the Respect for Marriage Act. “Americans from all walks of life, across demographics, geographies, and party lines agree that loving, committed couples have the right to be respected and protected under the law,” th...
Leonardo DiCaprio to Star in Martin Scorsese’s Shipwreck Thriller The Wager
Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese can’t seem to get enough of each other lately: After wrapping production on the upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon, the actor and director are teaming up for another Apple Originals Film called The Wager, as first broken by The Hollywood Reporter. Just like Flower Moon, the upcoming project is an adaptation of a non-fiction book by journalist David Grann. This time around, Scorsese is taking on Grann’s The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, which is due out in April 2023. The Wager is set in the 1740s and tells the story of a British naval ship of the same name. After it crashed in South America’s Patagonia region while chasing a Spanish ship filled with treasure, the remaining 30-person crew somehow braved the seas in...
Rocky Spinoff Drago in the Works from Writer Robert Lawton
Brace yourselves: Another Rocky spinoff is coming. MGM Studios has tapped Robert Lawton to write the screenplay for Drago, the latest addition to the iconic boxing franchise. Drago centers Ivan Drago, the Russian boxer who took on Sylvester Stallone’s beloved fighter in the 1985 film Rocky IV. Decades later, Ivan’s son, Viktor Drago, appeared in Creed II, the second spinoff following the amateur boxer Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan). Dolph Lundgren played Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and Florian Munteanu portrayed Viktor in Creed II, but it’s unclear whether either of them will reprise their roles in Drago. Lawton, who contributed to 2006’s Sex & Sushi and 2012’s Crave, scored the Drago gig after writing the spec script Becom...
Ben Affleck Confirmed to Return as Batman in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
Who knows what’s going on with the DC Comics Extended Universe, except to say this: Once you play Batman, you’re never really done playing Batman. That’s the best way to explain today’s news that Ben Affleck will be returning as the Caped Crusader in the upcoming sequel film Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Aquaman himself, Jason Momoa, confirmed the news with a very cute Instagram post. “REUNITED bruce and arthur. love u and miss u Ben WB studio tours just explored the backlot alright. busted on set all great things coming AQUAMAN 2 all my aloha j,” Momoa shares along with photos of him and Affleck snuggling together, followed by video of the two of them (as promised) encountering a Warner Bros. studio tour in progress. Affleck first played Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of J...
Madonna Says Directing Biopic Was “Preemptive Strike”: “No One’s Going to Tell My Story But Me”
Madonna has further explained why she took the reins for her own biopic, which the pop icon will be both directing and co-writing. In a new interview with Variety, the singer gave an update on the film’s progress and offered insight into why she considered it “a preemptive strike.” “I have a very long script that is really hard for me to make shorter,” Madonna told the magazine. “I’ve been whittling away at it, but it’s like hacking off my limbs.” After hinting at pressure to make an “extraordinary” film due to her “extraordinary life,” the Material Girl alluded to “misogynistic men” who made similar attempts in the past. “It was also a preemptive strike because a lot of people were trying to make movies about me. Mostly misogynistic men,” she said. “So I put my foot in the door and said, ...
B.J. Novak Deals Out Some Intriguing But Muddled Vengeance: Review
The Pitch: Ben (B.J. Novak) is a guy who doesn’t necessarily have something to say, but he wants to be the type of guy who says stuff worth hearing. That’s why, despite being a working writer in New York, with publication credits including The New Yorker, what he really wants is to make a podcast. “Not every white guy needs a podcast,” producer Eloise (Issa Rae) tells him when he tries to hard-sell her on his ideas at a party, but things change when a former hookup of Ben’s ends up leading him to podcasting gold. Awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call from a stranger, Ben finds out that a girl named Abilene Shaw, who he’d slept with a few times and texted casually, has died, and her family back home in small-town Texas thinks he was the love of Abby’s life. So, after a guilt t...
