TV
Stranger Things Cast Gets Huge Pay Bump Ahead of Final Season
The cast of Stranger Things has received a huge pay bump ahead of the show’s fifth and final season. According to Matthew Belloni of Puck News, as Stranger Things features 20 series regulars, Netflix created four separate tiers with which to negotiate. The first tier, comprised of adult actors Winona Ryder and David Harbour, will receive $9.5 million. The second tier, consisting of original kid actors Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, and Finn Wolfhard, as well as Sadie Sink, will earn just over $7 million. (For comparison, the kids made $25,000 per episode in season one.) Advertisement Related Video The third tier is made up of the older teen actors, such as Natalia Dyer, Maya Hawke, Charlie Heaton, and Joe Keery. They’ll each receive over $6 million for this upcoming seaso...
How Will HBO’s The Last of Us Be Different From the Game? And Other Questions Answered
One of 2023’s first big premieres draws viewers into a dark alternate timeline of societal collapse and mold-infested zombies — a world that’s already quite familiar to video game enthusiasts, because they’ve played it. This is why The Last of Us executive producer Craig Mazin says that in adapting the award-winning video games for HBO, he and executive producer Neil Druckmann made sure that any changes they made during the adaptation process were “always purposeful.” “A lot of people, they go, ‘I want to adapt a thing.’ And someone says, ‘Great, you can.’ And then they’re like, ‘I’m changing all of it.’ And I’m like, ‘Well then why did you want to adapt it?’” Mazin tells Consequence during a roundtable interview. “Sometimes counterintuitively, I’m the one that’s saying, ‘You know wh...
10 Bluey Episodes That Explain Why I’d Die for Those Dogs
Children, while cute, have questionable taste in television. And although first-time parents might be willing to put up with anything for a few minutes of precious silence, by the time of your thousandth re-watch you might find yourself flipping off Blippi or going loco at Cocomelon. When that happens, we inevitably cast about for kids’ programming fit for an adult intelligence. Thankfully, in our time of need, there’s Bluey. Created and written by Joe Brumm, this Australian series is centered not just on young sisters Bluey and Bingo, but also on their hilarious parents, Bandit and Chilli. Despite being full of magic and mystery, it’s more realistic than your usual pre-school entertainment: The kids’ toys are rarely picked up, the back seat of their car makes me feel a lot ...
Blimey! Hulu Unveils Trailer for New Crime-Fighting Cartoon Koala Man: Watch
Things get weird down under. For proof, look no further than Hulu’s latest animated series Koala Man, which gets its official trailer today. Koala Man was created by Aussie director Michael Cusack, who also stars as Kevin, the titular hero. Kevin’s a regular old bloke who tries juggling his family with his burning desire to solve petty crime. Results are mixed. Armed with a marsupial mask, Koala Man traverses the city to rectify potentially catastrophic mishaps like a cat stuck in a tree, a messy lawn mowing job, and janky office Wi-Fi. He’s clearly still getting the hang of things, and his various anthropomorphic animal enemies aren’t making things any easier. Advertisement Related Video Along with Cusack, Koala Man features the voices of Hugh Jackman, Demi Lardner, Jermaine Clement, and ...
Christoph Waltz Menaces Employees in Trailer for The Consultant: Watch
Thanks to his dry delivery, Christoph Waltz has a knack for portraying characters with evil undertones. In the new teaser trailer for the upcoming Prime Video thriller series The Consultant, he puts that talent to good use by menacing employees at the gaming company he’s hired to improve. “My purpose is to improve the business,” Waltz’s Regus Patoff says in the clip. “If it helps you to see me as a monster, so be it.” Sure enough, his methods lead CompWare employees to describe him as a “sociopath.” Watch the full teaser trailer below. Based on Bentley Little’s 2015 novel of the same name, the logline for The Consultant reads as follows: “When a new consultant, Regus Patoff (Christoph Waltz), is hired to improve the business at the App-based gaming company CompWare, employees experience ne...
Hunters Try to “Bring Hitler to Justice” in Trailer for Final Season: Watch
You might think Hitler is dead, but the Hunters think differently in the new trailer for Prime Video’s alternate history revenge thriller. The second and final season comes debuts on January 13th. “You bring Hitler to justice and it’s done, Jon,” Meyers Offerman (Al Pacino) tells Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman) to kick off the trailer. “You can finally be free.” His presence might be somewhat unexpected given the events of Season 1, which he hints at by saying, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” These flashbacks give way to Heidelbaum putting together a team of old friends and new faces and heading off to South America. Guns and explosives are definitely involved, and there might even be a “skull up the ass,” as a cover of Kelis’ “Milkshake” bops in the background. Advert...
Chris Ledesma, The Simpsons’ Longtime Music Editor, Dead at 64
Chris Ledesma, who served as music editor on The Simpsons for 33 seasons, has died at the age of 64. Ledesma had worked on the animated sitcom since its series premiere in 1989 up until his departure in 2022 due to health issues. All told, Ledesma contributed to 735 episodes of The Simpsons as well as to multiple shorts and other specials. He documented much of his work on a blog called Simpsons Music 500. In a 2013 video profile from SAE Institute USA, Ledesma explained his role on The Simpsons. Primary working in conjunction with longtime composer Alf Clausen, Ledesma said, “We sit down and plot out where all the music is going to go in every scene, and what the music’s motivation is. The composer dreams up the music, and I’m the technical guy who makes sure it fits in the picture ...
What Is Kaleidoscope? Creator Eric Garcia Explains Netflix’s New Heist Series With a Twist
Netflix’s newest heist drama has a fun, technologically-assisted twist to it — one that leads to over 5,000 different possible experiences for the viewer watching. Kaleidoscope, starring Giancarlo Esposito, Rufus Sewell, Jai Courtney, Paz Vega, Tati Gabrielle, and more, tells the story of daring thieves attempting to steal billions from one of the world’s most advanced safes. But the story is not told chronologically — instead, the show’s eight episodes are designed to be watched in any order, capturing specific time periods in relation to the heist, from 24 years beforehand to six months afterward. It’s a complicated concept, but creator Eric Garcia tells Consequence that “I think there’s a lot of fun in mixing it up,” especially when married to a well-loved genre. “People love heist stuf...
Barbara Walters, TV’s Most Fascinating Anchor, Dead at 93
Barbara Walters, the pioneering television anchor and journalist, has died at the age of 93. Walters “passed away peacefully in her home surrounded by loved ones,” her representative said in a statement released on Friday, December 30th. “She lived her life with no regrets. She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists, but for all women.” A native of Boston, Walters was a trailblazer in the television industry. After getting her start as a writer and segment producer on The Today Show in the early 1960s, Walters worked her way up the ranks to become the first woman to host an American news program as co-anchor of Today starting in 1974. Two years later, she moved to ABC News and became the first woman to host an American evening news program as anchor of ABC Evening News. Between ...
George R. R. Martin Says Game of Thrones Spinoffs Shelved After “Changes at HBO Max”
Warner Bros. Discovery has been enacting a content Red Wedding over at HBO Max, and it’s now come for the author behind the actual Red Wedding. George R. R. Martin revealed in a new blog post that some Game of Thrones spinoffs have been shelved due to “changes at HBO Max.” Martin didn’t elaborate on which projects have stalled out, though more than half a dozen were known to be in the works, including three series — The Sea Snake (previously Nine Voyages), 10,000 Ships, and a story set in Flea Bottom — as well as Tales of Dunk and Egg and multiple animated projects. “None have been greenlit yet, though we are hoping… maybe soon,” Martin wrote on December 28th. “A couple have been shelved, but I would not agree that they are dead. You can take somethi...
Paul T. Goldman Is Hard to Describe, Impossible to Forget, and One Wild Ride: Review
The Pitch: “In 2012, a man named Paul T. Goldman tweeted at me,” is how director Jason Woliner (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Nathan for You) begins a note to the press about his new Peacock series. “He said that he had an incredible story to tell and had written a book – and a screenplay – about it. He asked for my help bringing it to the screen.” Ten years later, Woliner has done exactly that — though the form this story has taken probably wasn’t what Paul T. Goldman anticipated. Instead, the series is less a shocking tale of sex and crime and more a fascinating portrait of a man and his ambitions: his desire for fame, for revenge, or maybe just being seen. And seen he is, through a lens that is alternately dark, strange, bizarre, and, more often than not, very funny. Pieces of a Man: In t...
Everyone Is Older but the Basement Is the Same in That ’90s Show Trailer: Watch
Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp) is back to slinging snacks, Red (Kurtwood Smith) is still exhausted with the dumbasses, the basement once again smells like smoke, and a new generation is getting cozy on the couch in the latest trailer for That ’90s Show. It premieres January 19th on Netflix. This newest preview of the That ’70s Show sequel series introduces Jay Kelso (Mace Coronel), the handsome son of Michael Kelso (Ashton Kutcher) and Jackie Burkhart (Mila Kunis). “Hey, new girl,” he says while sidling up to Leia Forman (Callie Haverda), smart but awkward daughter of Eric Forman (Topher Grace) and Donna Pinciotti (Laura Prepon). Leia is up from Chicago visiting her grandparents, but soon she’s right next to Jay, seated on the hood of what appears to be the same old 1969 Vista C...
