HBO
HBO Announces Two Bonus Episodes of Euphoria, Including Christmas Special
On the heels of Zendaya’s Best Actress win at the Emmys, HBO has announced two special bonus episodes of Euphoria. The first, titled “Trouble Don’t Last Always”, will air on HBO and stream on HBO Max beginning December 6th. According to a plot synopsis provided by HBO, the episode takes place during Christmas, in the aftermath of Zendaya’s Roe being left by Jules at the train station and relapsing. Series creator Sam Levinson wrote and directed the episode. The title and premiere date of the second episode are forthcoming. Both specials were produced under COVID-19 guidelines. Euphoria wrapped up its first season in August 2019. Due to the pandemic, production on Season 2 was postponed until early 2021, so HBO is hoping these bonus episodes will tide fans over in the meantime. Last month, ...
Stephen King Confirms Season 2 of HBO’s The Outsider
HBO has been tight-lipped about whether their recent adaptation of Stephen King’s The Outsider would be coming back for a Season 2. Well, the loquacious King shares no such compunctions, and in a recent interview with EW he confirmed that “there’s going to be a second season of The Outsider as soon as they can get the production going.” The news came in a conversation about King’s beloved character Holly Gibney. She leads one of the novellas that make up the new collection If It Bleeds, and plays a big part in both The Outsider as well as the TV adaptation of Mr. Mercedes, which just migrated from the defunct Audience Network to Peacock. King was excited about Holly’s arc on The Outsider, though he didn’t think it would lead into the e...
George R.R. Martin Explains What Happens to Hodor in the Books He Has Yet to Finish
George R.R. Martin has broken his silence on Hodor. In James Hibberd’s new oral history on the series, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, the blockbuster author digressed on the fate of the fan favorite character and how it differs in his forthcoming novels. Rest assured, there are spoilers ahead for both the HBO series and his highly anticipated and much-delayed follow-up, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. “I thought they executed it very well, but there are going to be differences in the book,” Martin explained. “They did it very physical — ‘hold the door’ with Hodor’s strength. In the book, Hodor has stolen one of the old swords from the crypt. Bran has been warging into Hodor and practicing with his body, because Bran had been trained in swordplay. So telling Hodor to ‘hold the door’ ...
Game of Thrones Prequel House of the Dragon Casts Paddy Considine in Lead Role
HBO has crowned the king of its upcoming Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Paddy Considine will play King Viserys Targaryen. Considine most recently played ex-con Claude Bolton in HBO’s excellent Stephen King mini-series The Outsider. He’s also known for his roles in The Death of Stalin, Peaky Blinders, Hot Fuzz, and more. Now, after an extensive casting search, HBO has tapped Considine to topline its next major title. He will portray Viserys Targaryen — the successor to the Old King, Jaehaerys Targaryen, as chosen by the lords of Westeros — at the Great Council at Harrenhal. “A warm, kind and decent man, Viserys only wishes to carry forward his grandfather’s legacy. But good men do not necessarily make for ...
Dev Hynes Details New Score for Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are
Dev Hynes helmed the music for Luca Guadagnino’s new coming-of-age miniseries We Are Who We Are, which debuted on HBO last week. Now, Milan Records has announced that his score will be officially released next month. The Blood Orange mastermind has provided music for the screen in the past, including Melina Matsoukas’ 2019 film Queen & Slim. However, this We Are Who We Are project marks Hynes’ first-ever score for a TV series. The collection features 12 tracks written, produced, and performed by Hynes, alongside four previously shared instrumental pieces from composers Julius Eastman and John Adams. In an interview with Variety, Hynes said he and Guadagnino initially bonded over “quite similar tastes in more contemporary classic music.” He added, “I was talking to him about h...
Emmys So Black: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Regina King, Zendaya & More Snag Golden Lady Statuettes
Source: ABC / Getty it was a fantastic night for Black Hollywood during the 72nd annual Primetime Emmy Awards. Despite the COVID-19 global pandemic still being a thing, the show went on as television’s brightest all converged on Hollywood virtually, while in the safety of their own watch party bubbles and homes. We not gonna lie, while watching Schitt’s Creek sweep all comedy categories, which meant that Insecure coming off its best season, nabbed one award out its 8 nominations, we were beginning to worry if it was gonna be a long night. BUT, it was refreshing to see Dan Levy, who won awards for writing, directing, and supporting actor shoutout of Issa Rae’s hit HBO comedy series in one his acceptance speeches. “I want to recognize Issa Rae and the writers on Insecure for writi...
Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are Lingers on the Limbo of Adolescence: Review
The Pitch: Adolescence is rough enough in the best of circumstances; hormones rage, rebellion rises, and you’re left wondering about the state of the world you’re growing into. But try growing up on a military base in a foreign country during the 2016 election — surrounded by conformity in a terrifying year for budding authoritarianism — with the promise of joy and freedom just one town over. That’s the world in which rebellious iconoclast Fraser (Jack Dylan Grazer) lives, his mother, Sarah (Chloë Sevigny), having just been promoted to the commander of a US military base in Italy. He bristles against the move, taking out that frustration in exasperated shrugs and outbursts at both Sarah and her partner, a fellow soldier named Maggie (Alice Braga), who tries to negotiate their dysfunct...
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Renewed for Three More Seasons
HBO has announced a three-season renewal for its award-winning satirical news show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The new deal will keep John Oliver dissecting socio-political shortcomings and feuding with Connecticut towns through at least 2023. “We’re all extremely happy to be able to continue to do our show on HBO for another three years, or until the end of the world, whichever comes first,” said Oliver in a press statement. Since Oliver moved from The Daily Show correspondent to premium cable host in 2014, Last Week Tonight has earned two Peabody Awards and an astounding 16 Emmys. That includes four last year, including taking home the Outstanding Variety Talk Series trophy for the fourth year running. It will have a chance to extend that streak to five at this year’s ceremony, w...
That “Strange Case” in HBO’s Lovecraft Country We Can’t Stop Thinking About
Warning: This editorial discusses scenes depicting rape and sexual assault. HBO’s Lovecraft Country has been a wild ride so far. In just four episodes, we’ve seen haunted houses, vampiric monsters, and mysterious cults, along with the real world horrors of Jim Crow laws and white supremacy. The series’ fifth episode — this past Sunday’s “Strange Case” — manages to top all of that with one of the most disturbing scenes in recent memory. In a twist on Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku), a Black woman takes a potion and wakes up in a white body. At first, she’s shocked and horrified, but begins to see the value in this new “currency” of whiteness. The potion eventually wears off, causing Ruby to violently shed her new skin in bloo...
HBO’s Coastal Elites Feels Like a Carefully Curated Twitter Feed: Review
The Pitch: Amidst the backdrop of 2020 — the heady and often unpleasant mix of an impending presidential election and a worldwide pandemic that’s hitting the United States especially hard — five people deliver five different monologues (or, as they’re briefly dubbed, “unhinged rants”) about the Way We Live Now in the satirical HBO “special presentation” Coastal Elites. Look at the Camera: Because of the very nature of the coronavirus pandemic, Coastal Elites is a decidedly un-flashy glimpse into the lives of a quintet of Americans. From sly writer Paul Rudnick, the 90-minute special presentation (that’s what HBO is calling Coastal Elites, and although it’s movie-length, frankly, the descriptor fits) is meant as a mix of earnest sincerity and dry wit. How is this disparate handful strugglin...
The 25 Most Anticipated Movies of Fall 2020
“New year, new decade, new films, right?” That was January, back when we were still looking ahead at 2020 with blind optimism and ill-fated excitement. Sigh, hindsight is 20/20 they say, right? Who knew. At the time, we had 50 exciting new titles we were anticipating, most of which have since been either postponed, dumped to VOD, or relegated to a limbo state. It’s been an unnerving year for the film industry, to say the least. A year fraught with shutdowns, furloughs, layoffs, bankruptcies, and re-evaluations. All of that change has prompted a seismic shift in how everything’s run across the media landscape, and no one truly has a grip on things just yet. Odds are they won’t for quite some time. Because of this, anticipating anything right now — let alone anything in pop culture — seems l...
