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TV

*Caution: Spoilers for Survivor season 45 ahead!*

Survivor crowned its newest winner on Wednesday, marking the conclusion of the show’s wild and exciting 45th season.

Of the 18 castaways who began competition in March, only five remained ahead of this week’s finale episode: Dee Valladares, Austin Li Coon, Jake O’Kane, Katurah Topps and Julie Alley

The exciting conclusion covered the group’s final three days of competition, as the field was whittled down until the jury of their fellow castaways voted for the “Sole Survivor.” After all the votes were cast, Dee Valladares ended up being crowned the new champ, and walked away with the $1 million prize.

The 26-year-old entrepreneur nabbed the title of Sole Survivor by a vote of 5-3-0 over Austin — who would be the season’s runner-up — and 3rd place finisher Jake.

Julie and Katurah were eliminated earlier in the episode, ahead of the final jury deliberation.

Dee wound up winning the final immunity, she brought her showmance partner, Austin, along with her to the final three, and pitted Jake against Katurah in a fire competition — which Jake won handily.

Dee Valladares and Austin Li Coon on 'Survivor 45' – CBS

However, it wasn’t impressive enough — especially in the face of Dee’s masterful gameplay and general dominance — to earn him any votes.

Congrats to the new Sole Survivor!

ET spoke with host Jeff Probst ahead of this season’s premiere, which is when he first revealed that the show would be particularly jam-packed this time around.

“The biggest change is we have 90-minute episodes,” Probst told ET’s Rachel Smith. “If you’re a Survivor fan, there’s so much more that happens that we can’t show because of limits, so that allows you to do more fun things on the show.” 

Twenty-three years in, Probst said he was still excited to get things moving for season 45. “I still remember season 1, tracking through the jungle because we had a very small crew and everyone carried a tripod and equipment,” he said. “We knew we were creating something, we just didn’t know what it would be. I will savor every moment that I’m out here.” 

Season 46 of Survivor is set to kick off Feb. 28, 2024.

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*Caution: Spoilers for Survivor season 45 ahead!*Survivor crowned its newest

What to Watch

Madeline Voyles as Alphie in 20th Century Studios’ ‘The Creator.’ Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Visionary director Gareth Edwards creates a futuristic world where humans have declared war against Artificial Intelligence, who has created a mysterious and powerful weapon that threatens the end of mankind.

The Creator

Where Can I Watch ‘The Creator’?

John David Washington as Joshua in 20th Century Studios' 'The Creator.'

John David Washington as Joshua in 20th Century Studios’ ‘The Creator.’ Photo by Glen Milner. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

‘The Creator’ had its world premiere screening on September 18, 2023, at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. It was released domestically on September 29 in various formats, such as IMAX, Dolby Cinema, 4DX, and ScreenX.

Buy Tickets: ‘The Creator’ Movie Showtimes

The movie has been in theaters for over 60 days since its release and may no longer be showing in theaters. Missed its theatrical run? Don’t worry. ‘The Creator’ has already made its way to PVOD. You can purchase the movie digitally in 4K for $19.99 on mainstream services such as Amazon Prime Video, Google Pay, YouTube, Vudu, and Microsoft.

For those waiting on a home release, the movie will be available on December 12, 2023 on UHD, Blu-Ray, and DVD, just in time for the holidays. The physician release will feature a variety of bonus features, including a 55-minute behind-the-sene featurette titled “True Love: Making The Creator,” where director Gareth Edwards, film crew, and actors talk about the filming experience and the film’s documentary-style approach.

Buy ‘The Creator’ Movie On Amazon

‘The Creator’ has a total runtime of 2 hours and 13 minutes

When Will ‘The Creator’ Be Available For Streaming?

A still on the set of 20th Century Studios' 'The Creator.'

A still on the set of 20th Century Studios’ ‘The Creator.’ Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The movie was released by 20th Century Studios, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company. It was recently announced that the movie will debut Wednesday, December 20, on Hulu.

Where to Watch: ‘The Creator’ Online

Disappointing Box Office

A still on the set of 20th Century Studios' 'The Creator.'

A still on the set of 20th Century Studios’ ‘The Creator.’ Photo by Glen Milner. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

‘The Creator’ is an ambitious film with excellent world-building, interesting character designs, and the promise of an expansive original sci-fi film, the excitement around the movie continued to build. Edward’s vision for the film was inspired by his love of Vietnam war films, mixed with robotics and sci-fi. The budget for ‘The Creator’ cost around $80 million. Unfortunately, the buzz did not result in a stellar box office performance as one would expect. It opened at a little over $14 million, and has grossed $40.7 million domestically. For the global box office, the movie recently passed $100 million at the worldwide box office.

Watch the official trailer for ‘The Creator’ below:

What is the Plot of ‘The Creator’?

Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alphie in 20th Century Studios' 'The Creator.'

Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alphie in 20th Century Studios’ ‘The Creator.’ Photo by Oren Soffer. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The official synopsis for ‘The Creator’ is below:

“From writer/director Gareth Edwards (‘Rogue One,’ ‘Godzilla’) comes an epic sci-fi action thriller set amidst a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence. Joshua (John David Washington, ‘Tenet’), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife (Gemma Chan, ‘Eternals’), is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war… and mankind itself. Joshua and his team of elite operatives journey across enemy lines into the dark heart of AI-occupied territory… only to discover the world-ending weapon he’s been instructed to destroy is an AI in the form of a young child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles).”

Who Is In The Cast of ‘The Creator’?

Allison Janney as Colonel Howell in 20th Century Studios' 'The Creator.'

Allison Janney as Colonel Howell in 20th Century Studios’ ‘The Creator.’ Photo by Oren Soffer. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

'The Creator' opens in theaters on September 29th.

‘The Creator’ opens in theaters on September 29th.

Other Movies Similar to ‘The Creator’:

To watch our interview with director Gareth Edwards about ‘The Creator,’ please click on the video player below.

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Madeline Voyles as Alphie in 20th Century

Awards

SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about the season finale of CBS‘ Survivor.

Five contestants, Austin, Dee, Jake, Julie and Katurah, went into the finale of Survivor‘s Season 45. Three hours later, Dee emerged as the sole survivor.

It wasn’t a smooth ride for the Florida native who was on her way out as the first eliminated contestant in the finale but a last minute vote switch by Katurah got Julie booted off instead, with Dee and Austin getting a clear path to the final tribal council.

Katurah payed for her hesitation by getting voted off next. Meanwhile, Dee followed through on her planned strategic moves, culminating in her reveal to Austin and the final tribal council jury that she told Julie about the plan to vote her out. The bombshell and it perfect timing sealed the victory for Dee with 5-3 votes, earning her the title of Sole Survivor and the $1M prize.

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SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about

Docs

With This Light is an emotionally powerful, fascinating, and sometimes downright devastating look at the truly incredible life and work of the late Sister María Rosa Leggol, a Honduran nun who devoted her whole life to helping children escape poverty.

Directors Nicole Bernardi-Reis and Laura Bermúdez begin their documentary with a brief voiceover and some archival footage of their subject. Sister María Rosa briefly explains some of the dire troubles facing youth in Honduras today. She is an immediately compelling subject; from her first moments on screen, she comes across as a compelling and passionate speaker. The film then alternates between in-depth interviews with María Rosa, footage of the programs she helped start, and the stories of two teenagers (coincidentally named María and Rosa) currently being assisted by these programs. Given the relatively wide scope of subjects, With This Light can definitely feel a bit disorganized and overstuffed at times. Still, the stories we see and the people we meet are engaging enough that it more than makes up for this apparent aimlessness.

“…a Honduran nun who devoted her whole life to helping children escape poverty.”

As we learn María Rosa’s story of growing up as an orphan before becoming a nun and starting her wide-reaching network of charitable homes and programs, we also see the huge impact that these programs have on the lives of the young people they service. María is a 14-year-old girl who is traumatized by domestic and sexual violence and has entered an abusive relationship with an older boy named Alfredo. Especially for her age, María speaks with a truly incredible vulnerability, and the camera is granted immense access to her life. We see her in class, and we see her and Alfredo in free couples counseling provided by the group home that Sister María Rosa established.

Rosa is a slightly older teenage girl who is also deeply traumatized from childhood abuse. The film definitely focuses a bit less on Rosa, but we also learn about her dreams of going to college, and it is absolutely crushing when she finds out that she has not passed the college entry exams. As captivating and important as these stories are, I must admit that specific sequences brought up very troubling questions about the ethics of some of the filmmaking. For example, at one point, we witness one of the young girls tell her doctor about being molested by a close family member. Being privy to such an intimate conversation felt somehow voyeuristic and wrong, but it does not take away from the power of the rest of the film.

Aside from ethical questions, the film also fails to provide any real historical or political context in Honduras. While we hear about and see the effects of poverty, violence, and misogyny in the country, events such as the 2009 coup or the migrant crisis are totally ignored, leaving the viewer uninformed about the setting as a whole. Even so, With This Light is a very well-made piece of documentary filmmaking that tells an essential and underrecognized story. Furthermore, the film gives a powerful voice to subjects who are almost always portrayed as faceless and nameless statistics. With This Light ends with a touching tribute to Sister María Rosa in the form of a slideshow that shows several of the (now grown) children who went through Sister María Rosa’s homes and did great things in life. Like the rest of the documentary, this ending felt like a perfectly fitting tribute to an incredible human being whose work has remained mostly unsung.

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With This Light is an emotionally powerful,

Global

2023 has been a year of travel rebound—especially for the Asia-Pacific region—after a yearslong decline in flights due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The one-hour trip between Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia and Singapore’s Changi Airport proved to be the busiest international route of 2023, according to new analysis by global travel data provider OAG.

In its annual roundup released Wednesday, OAG, which measures the number of scheduled airline seats between destinations each month, found that the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore route had 4.9 million scheduled seats this year, a 50% increase from 2022.

Seven of the world’s top 10 busiest international routes and nine of the top 10 busiest domestic routes were in the Asia-Pacific region, which lagged behind Europe and the U.S. in opening up in the wake of the pandemic. Last year, the only international route in the Asia-Pacific region to break into the top 10 was between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, which ranked fifth.

The only Western flight in the top 10 busiest international routes of 2023 was between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and London’s Heathrow Airport.

Read More: Southwest Praised for Giving Free Extra Seats: How U.S. Airlines Handle Plus-Sized Passengers

No U.S. flights broke into the list of busiest domestic routes for the year, which were all within the Asia-Pacific or Middle East regions. But Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport remained the busiest airport globally, according to OAG, with 61 million seats in airline capacity for 2023. The Atlanta airport was previously OAG’s busiest airport in 2019 and 2022.

In the U.S., the busiest domestic route of 2023 was between Honolulu and Kahului, with 3.6 million scheduled airline seats traversing across the Hawaiian cities. It was closely followed by the Atlanta-Orlando and Los Angeles-Las Vegas routes, which each had about 3.5 million scheduled airline seats flown back and forth between them.

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2023 has been a year of travel

Tech

I don’t know about you, but I’m less excited about Christmas Day than I am about Boxing Day, particularly because I’ve just taken delivery of a kilo of goat meat that I intend to cook for a very long time indeed to make an absolutely epic Boxing Day curry. And it looks like I’m not alone in being more Boxing Day-focussed, as Simba’s just launched its Boxing Day sale indecently early (not quite as indecently early as Emma, though) and it’s brought back its Black Friday pricing.

That means 45% off all Simba’s hybrid mattresses, getting you the lowest prices of the year on the Simba Hybrid Pro, which right now will cost you just £879.45 for a double. And if you’re after a complete bedroom refresh you’ll find deals on bed bundles as well as some rarely-seen discounts on pillows, duvets, toppers and more.

Simba is one of the best mattress brands in the UK, and its Boxing Day mattress sale is an excellent chance to grab a bargain if you missed out on its Black Friday deals. Here’s what you need to know.

As mentioned, it’s not just mattresses getting great discounts in Simba’s Boxing Day sale. If you’re after a new pillow there’s 25% off Simba’s entire range, which means the high-end Simba Hybrid Firm pillow is reduced to £119.25, while the simple but effective Stratos Pillow is down to £45; find out more about it in my Simba Stratos pillow review. There’s even a discount on Simba’s Cooling Body Pillow, now available for £81.75 and a great choice if you need all-over support (and have room for it in your bed); my Simba Cooling Body pillow review can give you all the details.

You’ll also find discounts on all Simba’s duvets as well as 35% off the Simba Hybrid Topper. But to get the details on every single one of Simba’s Boxing Day savings, head straight to Simba’s sale page to see everything in one place.

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I don't know about you, but I'm

Video

Ava DuVernay and Michael Mann go way back. In 2003, DuVernay was a publicist on the set of Mann’s “Collateral.” Watching the auteur shoot in her old stomping grounds of East Los Angeles gave her the idea to pick up the camera. “That made me think, ‘Wow, this is possible,’” recalls DuVernay, sitting opposite the Oscar-nominated Mann to discuss where their careers have taken them in the 20 years since.

Now, DuVernay, an Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker, tackles her most complex story yet with “Origin,” a sprawling yet intimate adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” The biographical drama follows Wilkerson (portrayed by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) as she writes her book at the same time that she grapples with her grief over a series of deaths. Meanwhile, after three decades, Mann accomplished his dream of bringing race car magnate Enzo Ferrari’s story to the big screen. Adam Driver stars in this thrill ride about the Ferrari founder’s struggles with his wife, Laura (Penélope Cruz), after the death of their son — made more complicated by his second family — and the flailing car company that hangs in the balance.

AVA DUVERNAY: I’m so thrilled to be here with you. You know how I feel about you?

MICHAEL MANN: Yes, Ava, mutual.

DUVERNAY: When I see you, I just want to hug you, and I want to talk to you so much and ask you 10,000 questions and laugh with you. And most people think that you’re very serious. But I say, “Michael Mann? He’s my guy.” Why do I know one Michael and everybody else knows another Michael?

MANN: Well, usually, from working professionally, everyone is pretty much focused on what we’re doing. So the objective is that you’re trying to make something happen; that’s where all your intention is. You’re not relaxed and concentrating on …

DUVERNAY: … that fun stuff.

MANN: Yeah.

DUVERNAY: But is it fun.

MANN: Well, my kids also think I’m very fun.

DUVERNAY: I think you’re hilarious.

MANN: You shot “Origin” in 38 days. What was your process?

DUVERNAY: My biggest action sequence was the book-burning. We were in the actual location in Berlin — somehow they let a Black woman from Compton take over the real square. I said, “I’d like to have people dressed up as Nazis, to fly the flag and build a fire in the middle. Will you allow me to do that?” And they said yes. We only had one very cold night and five hours to get it done, with a couple thousand extras, six cameras and eight different setups. This is the same way that I did the bridge scene in “Selma.” They said, “We could close this bridge for four hours and you have to get it all” — horses, guns, marchers, troopers.

In trying to find the story of Ferrari, how did you hone in? Because one of the things that the films have in common is they deal the ways in which personal histories impact the culture at large.

MANN: What was so unique was all the tempestuous internal dynamics and emotional dynamics between Enzo and the unique life he was living with his wife Laura, and his second family [with Linda Lardi] and his kid. He had lost his son Dino a year earlier. All these forces came into a dynamic collision in three months of 1957. Those three months became a fractal of the way life really is, meaning that we have conflicts within ourselves that only resolve in motion pictures. They don’t resolve in real life — we take our contradictions to the grave. Directors take a section of life and the circumstances that they’re really living in and make them so intensely tangible that they impact the audience.

DUVERNAY: “Ferrari” — teach me the tricks.

MANN: I look at it from inside the character — what’s actually driving the emotional work has to be built from the inside out. The film is very much, here’s these two people in a silo because of the grief of the loss of their son, Dino, after years of illness. People talk about these cloying terms like “healing.” You don’t heal after the loss of a child.

DUVERNAY: Interesting. As you were talking, it made me realize how much both of our films deal with grief. Grief is the beating heart of everything that’s happening, propelling both our lead characters forward.

MANN: When I saw your film, there was one moment that was just so stunning: when Aunjanue is building within herself the courage to walk forward into a social situation. Because you know intuitively there’s that impulse to withdraw. Withdraw into sadness, into widowhood, but she’s driven by a very healthy intellectual ego, that she’s got to go forward with life. That is all encapsulated by one brilliant moment.

DUVERNAY: Thank you, sir. I’m glad you saw that.

MANN: She is absolutely fabulous — what was different directing her than other actors?

DUVERNAY: She’s different than anyone I’ve ever directed. She is very internal in her process and doesn’t like to talk a lot. But when she wants to talk, it’s so specific that I better be ready. Her questions are so precise, and our conversations were really about how she was connecting what Isabel was experiencing in the film to her own experience with grief. Isabel’s grief was our anchor. That’s what we’d always go back to. The best thing I did was step back and give her the room.

MANN: Did you borrow the biography, build the biography?

DUVERNAY: The script stayed very closely to the real Isabel Wilkerson’s life and story. But Anjanue put herself into these spaces in ways that were so tender and vulnerable, and I put myself in it. When Isabel Wilkerson was telling me the stories about the loss of her family, I could only equate it to my own loss. When I lost the people who were close to me, I was in a black hole. I felt that I wanted to be buried with them. That’s the beautiful thing about filmmaking — you’re telling this person’s story, but you’re able to leave our fingerprints on it.

I look up to you so much because you’ve always got a project going, and you are part of a class of filmmakers who continue to make films. There’s no retirement happening.

MANN: That’s right.

DUVERNAY: The car chase scenes that you’re staging now just keep escalating, growing and blossoming into something new. You’re not repeating yourself. You are continuing to reach and push. You’re just going to keep blowing our minds. Is that the plan?

MANN: First of all, I love making films. And second, it’s ambition. I’d like to think I’m a little tiny bit smarter than I was. There are certain skill sets that accrue from experience. My close friend is an architect; he’s 89 and building 13 buildings right now. So if you have the fire, you just keep going. You’ve talked about this too.

DUVERNAY: I have.

MANN: Yes, you have.

DUVERNAY: Yes. It’s a huge goal. It’s an inspiration. It’s something to look towards.

MANN: Where do you want to be next?

DUVERNAY: You know what? This is the first time I’ve ever finished a film and don’t have another one waiting. And I love it.

MANN: Yeah?

DUVERNAY: I always was afraid that the window or the door would close for me…

MANN: Right.

DUVERNAY: … so I always kept them stacked up. And this is the first time that I’ve said, “It’s OK not to have the next thing waiting.” So I like it. I’m going to see how it feels.

Variety Directors on Directors presented by “CreedD III”

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Ava DuVernay and Michael Mann go way

Entertaintment

DISTRIBUTION

Bohemia Media will release “Memory” across U.K. and Ireland cinemas from Feb. 9, 2024. Written and directed by Michel Franco (“Sundown,” “New Order,”) “Memory” stars Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard. It premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival where Sarsgaard won best actor.

“Memory” follows Sylvia (Chastain), a social worker who leads a simple and structured life revolving around her daughter, her job and her AA meetings. This is disrupted when Saul (Sarsgaard) follows her home from their high school reunion. Their encounter profoundly impacts both of them as they open the door to the past.

The cast also includes Merritt Wever, Brooke Timber, Elsie Fisher, Josh Charles and Jessica Harper.

The film is produced by Franco, Eréndira Núñez Larios, Alex Orlovsky and Duncan Montgomery. It is a Teorema Production in collaboration with High Frequency Entertainment, in association with Screen Capital/Screen One, MUBI and Case Study Films. It commences its U.S. theatrical release on Dec. 22 through Ketchup Entertainment.

Founders of Bohemia Media, Phil Hunt and Lucy Fenton said: “We are delighted to be sharing this superbly acted and compassionately told story, by Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco. Exploring the vulnerability of our memories and the desire for human connection in spite of traumatic history, ‘Memory’ is a welcome addition to our slate of films which share experiences from underrepresented and marginalized voices.”

BROADCASTING

The BBC has appointed Steve Lai as chief presenter in Singapore on news channel BBC News, where he will host the broadcaster’s flagship Asia morning programs, “Newsday” and “Asia Business Report,” as well as reporting on-location, including the upcoming elections in Taiwan.

Lai joins from Channel NewsAsia, where he was co-host of the morning news program and an anchor of special event programs. He helmed coverage of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the 2018 Trump-Kim summit.

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DISTRIBUTION Bohemia Media will release “Memory” across U.K.

Movies

In August, the first trailer for “Maestro,” a biopic of Leonard Bernstein, the composer of “West Side Story” and so much more, set off a backlash almost immediately: Bradley Cooper was wearing a prosthetic nose for the title role.

Critics on social media accused the star, who is also the director, of playing into an antisemitic trope with the Size XL prosthesis — and asked whether someone who is Jewish would have been more sensitive about makeup choices

Cooper and Netflix, where “Maestro” will begin streaming on Wednesday, declined to comment. In a statement at the time, Bernstein’s three children, who had been working with Cooper on the film, came to the actor’s defense, noting in a series of posts on X, “It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose.” (The family declined to offer additional comment.)

It’s hardly the first time an oversize septum has made an onscreen appearance or courted controversy. Here are 12 of the most memorable fake noses in cinematic history, sorted by size from dainty 🥸 to elephantine 🥸🥸🥸🥸🥸.

Like Edmond Rostand’s poet and swordsman, Cyrano de Bergerac, Orson Welles was obsessed with his nose. (He believed his was too small; it was, of course, completely normal.) But instead of channeling his fixation into a healthy pursuit like, say, helping another man win the affections of his own beloved, he sported dozens of fakes over his career. One of the largest was the pugnacious pair of nostrils he wore as the corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan in the 1958 murder mystery “Touch of Evil.”

Nicole Kidman may have delivered a stirring performance as Virginia Woolf in “The Hours” (2002), but Denzel Washington joked that it was the prosthetic beak she wore that won her the best actress Academy Award. (“The Oscar goes to, by a nose, Nicole Kidman,” he joked when announcing her win.) Kidman wore a fresh one each day on set, though she told The Associated Press that she hung on to a silver one she was given when shooting wrapped.

Is that thing even functional? Probably not; snakes don’t have noses — just nostrils — and smell with their forked tongues. We wouldn’t be surprised if J.K. Rowling’s reptilian baddie in this 2011 franchise finale had one of those, too. But at least we may finally have an answer as to what Voldemort’s unnaturally long fingers are good for: Nose-picking.

Like Kidman, Meryl Streep rode the prosthetic nose she donned to play the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Lloyd’s 2011 biopic to an Oscar win (her third). But this time, the transformation’s genius was in its subtlety — when the first photos of Streep on set were released, the press made nary a peep about the nose.

Unlike Welles, Laurence Olivier didn’t habitually don a fake nose for his roles because of a perceived insecurity about the size of his own; rather, it was just one of the suite of theatrical accessories, including masks and wigs, that he, and many other actors, used to transform into various characters. In “Richard III” (1955), which Olivier also directed, his character’s nose is, as one blogger put it, “majestically prominent.”

Credit…Rankin/Bass Productions and NBC

With a workshop of Santa’s elves nearby in this 1964 special, the best Rudolph’s dad, Donner, could do to help his son fit in at school was make a fake nose from mud? He won’t be winning any father-of-the-year awards for that effort.

Margaret Hamilton came by some of the goods to play the Wicked Witch of the West naturally: She was known for her overlarge nose, which her own father had encouraged her to have surgically altered. But she got the last laugh when she landed the role of the now-iconic villain in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) — for which her nose was made even longer (and greener).

Sure, there are performers with bigger noses on this list, but Matt Damon might be the only one who planned a con around his. In this 2007 sequel, his character, Linus, dons the prosthesis — which Damon nicknamed “The Brody” in a nod to the actor Adrien Brody’s well, you know — in a bid to disguise himself and gain access to a case full of diamonds.

Steve Carell’s souped-up schnozz in this 2014 true-crime tale may have left some people scratching their heads — the real-life version of his character, John du Pont, the millionaire wrestling enthusiast-turned-murderer, wasn’t well known, so the attention to detail seemed excessive. But the nose did serve another purpose: It made audiences forget they were staring at Carell, who was known mainly for comedies at the time.

Charles Dickens wrote Fagin in “Oliver Twist” as a thoroughly antisemitic villain, and in the 1948 film adaptation, Alec Guinness, the non-Jewish actor who played the character, spoke in a droning lisp and appeared with hooded eyes and an enormous prosthetic hook nose. The nose was deemed “incredibly insensitive,” as The Jewish Chronicle wrote, and it provoked significant anger from Holocaust survivors.

Billy Crystal was already so funny in “The Princess Bride” (1987) that the director, Rob Reiner, claimed that he had to leave the set during Crystal’s scenes as Miracle Max because he was unable to contain his laughter. Adding a bulbous tomato of a nose took Crystal’s physical comedy over the top. (Mandy Patinkin, who played Inigo Montoya, actually bruised a rib trying to stifle his own chuckles.)

You could land a bird on that thing (which the director, Fred Schepisi, did). Steve Martin’s five-inch appendage for the 1987 film took 90 minutes to apply every day and two minutes to remove. “God how I hated that thing,” he told The Washington Post.

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In August, the first trailer for “Maestro,”

MCU

Jonathan Majors, Marvel Studios’ Kang the Conqueror star, has been found guilty of assault. 

Following a two-week-long criminal trial, a New York jury reached a verdict on charges brought against Jonathan Majors following his arrest back in March. 

In addition to starring in Creed 3, Marvel Studios had been setting up the actor as the MCU’s next big bad, having already appeared in Loki Season 1 and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania at the time of his arrest. 

Kang Actor Jonathan Majors Found Guilty

Marvel

After three days of deliberation, a Manhattan jury found Jonathan Majors guilty of harassment and assault in the third degree, per The Hollywood Reporter. 

The MCU star was also found not guilty of one of the counts of assault and not guilty of aggravated harassment in the second degree. 

Majors faces up to a year in jail with a sentencing date set for February 6, 2024. 

Jonathan Majors was first arrested on March 25 for allegedly assaulting his then-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, after police found injuries on Jabbari which included bruises, a fractured finger, and a laceration behind her ear. 

Majors pled not guilty to four charges of assault, aggravated harassment, and harassment.

The first three charges were misdemeanor offenses stemming from an altercation between Majors and Jabbari in a private vehicle. 

The fourth charge of harassment has to do with the claim that Majors threw Jabbari back into the car vehicle as she attempted to exit which was captured by surveillance footage.

It’s important to note that this was a criminal trial requiring a higher burden of proof from the jury and that the charges brought against Majors were not brought by Jabbari but rather by the state of New York.  

Will Marvel Recast Kang the Conqueror?

Now that Jonathan Majors has been found guilty, Marvel Studios had no choice but to either recast the role of Kang or completely change course, and it’s likely that the studio already has a plan in place. 

Coming shortly after the verdict, Marvel Studios revealed it was officially cutting ties with the actor. This comes as evidence continued to mount suggesting the studio had been considering all scenarios while also creating options. 

For instance, Loki Season 2 ended in such a way that Kang’s story could be considered done or to be continued, depending on what Marvel chooses. 

Also, there have been various claims of Marvel Studios “moving away” from a Kang-centric Avengers 5 and considering Doctor Doom as the MCU’s new lead villain. 

It’s also worth noting that Disney completely removed Majors’ Magazine Dreams, an anticipated awards darling, from its upcoming slate. 

Now listed as “unset,” it remains to be seen if and when it will be released at all. 

While fans don’t know which direction Marvel Studios will pursue following the actor’s dismissal, and likely won’t for some time, the best and safest bet is likely Doctor Doom (or a new villain altogether) instead of a Kang recast. 

Apart from Majors’ legal issues, the Multiverse Saga and the MCU’s handling of the villain had failed to succeed with fans and critics alike. 

Embracing a new big bad would allow Marvel Studios to leave those issues in the past, along with any unavoidable comparisons between a new Kang and Majors’ portrayal. 

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The original Japanese masterpiece Godzilla hit theaters in 1954. The moody black-and-white production introduced the world to kaiju cinema and launched a beloved franchise. Almost 70 years later, with 32 Japanese sequels under his gargantuan belt, the massive lizard returned for Godzilla Minus One. This movie sets its action slightly before the original movie, firmly in Postwar Japan. The country is at its lowest point, defeated and desolated. When Godzilla comes a trampling, the people will have to band together to save themselves. It’s one of the best movies of the year, and now you can see it in throwback monochrome.

Toho Studio

This news, which we first saw via CBR, is very exciting for Godzilla fans. Godzilla Minus One is perhaps the closest in tone and focus to the original movie, and while its colors are great, the chance to see it in theaters in black-and-white feels like a particular treat.

We should add, so far Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color only has a Japanese release date. That is January 12, 2024. However, given the massive North American take for the film, it’s only a matter of time. The movie made $11 million on its opening weekend, making it the biggest opening for a live-action Japanese movie, and the biggest opening for a foreign language movie in 2023. That is, if you pardon the pun, huge. Given next year is the 70th anniversary of the original, we could easily see a Godzilla double feature with the OG and the new one in the near future.

At least we have this super rad poster for the Japanese release of Godzilla Minus One in black and white to tide us over until we get to see it over here.

The Japanese poster for Godzilla Minus One Minus Color.
Toho Studio

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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The original Japanese masterpiece Godzilla hit theaters

Festivals

While we almost tend to ignore it at times, it’s easy to forget that the biggest revolution in the world of video and content creation isn’t AI or streaming channel wars, it’s actually the slow and steady rise of YouTube.

There is no app or platform more powerful in the world these days than YouTube. Its market share is unmatched and its growth potential (either for a solo creator or a brand) is unparalleled. And if there’s one person who’s figured this out more than anyone else, it’s one Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast.

And despite all the cringey antics that you might expect to find with a YouTube personality, Donaldson has proven to be about as savvy as they come when it comes to the art of YouTube—and, more specifically, how to grow and monetize a channel.

That’s why it makes sense, in a certain way, that MrBeast would be the perfect co-founder for a new YouTube analytics platform. So, let’s check out this new ViewStats platform and explore why you need to check out how it could help you grow your YouTube channel as well.

ViewStats YouTube Analytics Platform

Co-founded by Donaldson alongside Chucky Appleby, a fellow content creator and entrepreneur who works with MrBeast at his headquarters in North Carolina, ViewStats aims to give content creators a much more thorough, and growth-driven, review of their YouTube analytics.

YouTube itself, of course, offers its own analytics, but ViewStats aims to give users more advanced metrics that they call “channelytics” that are more focused on estimated revenue and projected growth, as well as clearer insights into how users can improve their channels for better retention and monetization.

The platform also aims for a clean design and easier-to-understand format that YouTube’s built-in analytics to help content creators of any skill level sift through their numbers to glean insights into what videos they should potentially work on next.

A/B Testing and Other Features

If you aren’t super familiar with Donaldson and his MrBeast channel, all you really need to know is that Donaldson is regarded by many to be a genius and has become one of the most influential forces in the world of content creation. This is in part due to his success, of course, but as of late, Donaldson has also become the face of the business side of YouTube content as he shares quite a bit about his strategy and techniques.

One of the best features of this ViewStats platform is a MrBeast staple as it allows users to track the results of A/B tests involving your videos’ thumbnails and how this one—seemingly tiny element—can have a major impact on your video’s performance.

You can also test other various elements like views compared to different title changes, the rankings of your channel’s best-performing videos, as well as breakdowns into your long-form and short-form videos.

MrBeast’s page on ViewStats

ViewStats

Price and Availability

Regardless of your familiarity with Donaldson, as well as your opinion on him, his influence over the YouTube content creation world is vast. And if Donaldson is indeed throwing his weight behind this new platform, it will undoubtedly take off.

But, even if you’re not a fan, it does certainly look like it could be a helpful tool not just for aspiring YouTube personality-types, but also for all types of brands, marketing agencies, or companies looking to improve their channels and grow their audiences.

At launch, ViewStats is available as a Chrome extension and is both subscription-free and ad-free. (However, it does sound like it might include a paid tier in the future.)

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While we almost tend to ignore it

Film

With Disney already in the midst of its “one-app” streamlining of Hulu and Disney+ in the U.S., it is also making a similar move in Latin America with Star+.

The company will shift programming on Star+ to Disney+ in the second quarter of 2024 and Star+ will wind down as a stand-alone service in the region.

The move was announced last week by the media company’s Latin America division but the news has received scant U.S. media attention. The unified Disney-Hulu experience entered beta earlier this month and is scheduled to fully launch in March. Disney recently bought out Comcast’s one-third stake in Hulu.

A source indicated to Deadline that the shift in Latin America was timed to the likely launch of the Disney+ ad-supported tier in the region next year. The new ad offering, which went live in the U.S. about a year ago, just reached European territories and Canada on November 1. Asked about any correlation between the Star+ shuffle and the forthcoming arrival of the Disney+ ad tier, a company rep told Deadline that launch plans in additional territories have not yet been finalized.

“This integration will allow the unparalleled strength of our content to be available in a single app, providing an enhanced and superior experience, and simplified access for subscribers, who are always our main focus,” said Diego Lerner, President, The Walt Disney Company Latin America.

CEO Bob Iger has frequently espoused the importance of creating a more “unified” experience for viewers, which the company believes will enhance engagement.

The Star networks and Hotstar streaming service went to Disney as part of the $71.3 billion acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox, which closed in 2019. As Disney scaled up in streaming, it preserved the Star brand in much of the world, made Disney+ a low-price add-on to Hotstar and went on to launch Star+ in Latin America in 2021. Along with the general entertainment fare available everywhere, the outlet has originals created entirely in Latin America. In streaming, Star has been a tile on Disney+ in many territories outside the U.S., as Hulu is in the current one-app beta rollout in the U.S.

Additional details, including pricing for the newly integrated offering in Latin America, will be announced at a later date, Disney said.

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TV

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the season 10 finale of “The Masked Singer”

Walking into the competition of “The Masked Singer,” Cow knew he wasn’t going to be able to disguise his singing voice. That’s part of why, when he was offered the choice by producers, the singer opted for a female-presenting costume — to throw people off just a little bit.

Cow was crowned season 10’s champion on Wednesday night, revealed to be Ne-Yo, which surprised very few fans. And really, he knew that would be the case. It was his biggest concern heading into the season.

“I can disguise my speaking voice to the point where you would not know that it’s me. But my singing voice, not so much,” Ne-Yo told TheWrap. “So, even going in, I was like, I’m probably not gonna last real long, because, first song, they’re probably gonna catch me. But I was 100% excited about doing it and ready to go.”

The singer concedes that it “feels amazing” to have such a recognizable singing voice, considering all his musical heroes are people who, “from the first note, you know who’s singing.” But, for “The Masked Singer,” that proves to be “problematic.”


So, he tried to throw people off at least a little with his costume.

“When they came to me, they knew for a fact they wanted me to be a cow, but they gave me the option to be a male cow or a female cow,” Ne-Yo explained. “I went with the female cow just because I figured, OK, me as a male cow, with my voice, they’re probably gonna catch me really quickly. But me as a female cow, you know, if I changed my mannerisms a little bit, maybe it’ll throw them off my scent just that much more.”

Of course, choosing a female cow did make for some unique challenges in terms of performing in the costume.

“So I’m a cow, and a female cow — so they had to make her curvy,” he explained with a laugh. “So I have on this huge bra full of padding, and these padded hips, and the whole nine, which made it very, very difficult to move the way I would normally move.”

He continued, “But [it] also helped out because I couldn’t move like Ne-Yo, because that would have gave me away. So yeah, I really had to step out of my comfort zone, and step out of, you know, my wheelhouse of movement and whatnot, and become somebody else. I had to become this female cow. It was not easy!”


Rita Ora

All that said, Ne-Yo admitted that performing and competing on “The Masked Singer” really “revitalized” his love for what he does.

“The music industry will kill some of the joy of music for you, if you let it,” he said. “Because it’s just so competitive, and, you know, they take something that’s artistic and they make it about commerce, which kind of makes it hollow and shallow. And that was happening to me a little bit.”

He continued, “And I gotta say, doing this show, and just stepping outside of myself for a minute, and becoming something else, it kind of reminded me of why I became a songwriter in the first place. Because there’s a joy and excitement for me being able to step outside of myself, step outside of what I would normally do, what I would normally say, how I would normally sing, and just be something else for a minute. So this show kind of kind of revitalized that joy for me a little bit, so I gotta I gotta give much props to ‘The Masked Singer.’”

“The Masked Singer” returns for season 11 on Fox on March 6, 2024.


the-masked-singer-winners

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WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the season 10

What to Watch

Disney is buying up Comcast’s stake in Hulu. The entertainment giant announced Wednesday that it “expects it will pay” $8.61 billion to acquire Comcast’s 33 percent stake, giving Disney full ownership of Hulu.

But Disney might end up paying more than that. Both Disney and Comcast agreed to an appraisal process that will evaluate Hulu’s equity fair value as of September 30th. If Comcast’s stake is determined “to be greater than the guaranteed floor value,” Disney will have to pay Comcast the difference.

Disney says the timing of the appraisal process is “uncertain,” but it expects it to be completed sometime next year. This all stems from the deal Disney made with Comcast to buy its one-third stake in Hulu in 2019. The deal was initially set to take place in 2024, but Comcast and Disney agreed to move the date to September 30th.

At the time, the two companies agreed upon a minimum valuation of $27.5 billion for Hulu. “That was just a hypothetical that we picked five years ago,” said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts during an investors conference in September. “The company is way more valuable today than it was then.”

With Hulu barely seeing a shift in subscribers last quarter, Disney announced a price hike across all of its streaming services and hinted at a password-sharing crackdown. In October, Hulu’s ad-free service went from $14.99 / month to $17.99 / month, while Hulu with Live TV will jump from $68.99 / month to $75.99 / month. We’ll likely hear more about Disney’s plans for Hulu during the company’s earnings call next week.

Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCU division is a minority investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.

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Disney is buying up Comcast’s stake in

Awards

When you live by an elevated train track, near an airport, or across from a highway, then you live with a lot of noise; but even if sound is constantly hitting your ears, your brain tends not to notice it. Our capacity for filtering information is vast, and that filtering is often the mark of great sound design, too. In his work on “Nope,” sound designer Johnnie Burn needed to deliberately erase a lot of the environmental, rustling, incidental sounds that would be present in a California canyon to focus the audience on the slightly-off, uncanny sounds Burn leaves in, the ones that signal the appearance of that film’s antagonist. 

But in “The Zone of Interest,” Burn, director Jonathan Glazer, and editor Paul Watts have an entirely different, almost opposite challenge. The film lives in the dissonance between the daily lives of the Höss family and the thing they are continuously choosing not to hear: mass murder conducted meters from their home, in Auschwitz, where Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) is commandant. We watch them continuously and determinedly numb themselves to the horrors being perpetrated that make their lives possible. They have blocked out the sounds — but the audience has not. 

“I think even the crew in Poland occasionally would ask Jonathan, ‘When are you going to film the bad stuff?’ And he was like, ‘Don’t worry, Johnnie Burn is going to put some sound on that will make that work,’” Burn told IndieWire. 

But “putting sound” over the distanced, surveillance-like vignettes of the Höss family going about their days is much, much easier said than done. Burn compiled a 600-page research document on everything from the types of trucks, trains, and planes that would’ve been moving through the industrial murder hub of Auschwitz, to witness testimony of what happened, day in and day out, at the camp. 

No more than 80 yards from the garden that Hedwig Höss (Sandra Hüller) cultivates so meticulously was Block 11, the building where prisoners were taken to be “tried” for criminal offenses and executed. According to director Jonathan Glazer, there would be an average of 60 to 80 gunshots from the firing squad coming out of that block every day. Crafting sounds that create a sense of violence at scale without getting the audience to eventually tune them out was the constant tightrope that Burn had to walk. 

And initially, Burn was sparring with the sounds coming from Auschwitz. But after a test screening, production designer Chris Oddy pulled Burn aside to tell him that the place was a lot busier than it was sounding. “It was an enormous amount of people and stuff coming and going every day, and I think Jon and I knew that and we’d done our research, but somehow, I don’t know, maybe it [felt] disrespectful, but we were too gingerly applying the sound and so we went away and we put a lot more in,” Burn said. “We settled on this idea of there being a constant sound of machinery and of course the crematorium; the next screening, it was just extraordinary because the script always had this juxtaposition in it, but to actually experience it was something quite different.” 

In addition to a perpetual hum of machinery, there is constant sonic evidence of human suffering, the kind that Burn felt wouldn’t ever truly come across by bringing performers into a studio to loop background audio. Burns and his sound team spent months traveling all over Europe to find moments of extreme sound that would be closer to the mark. 

THE ZONE OF INTEREST, Christian Friedel (center), 2023. © A24 / Courtesy Everett Collection
“The Zone of Interest“Courtesy Everett Collection

“No matter how good an actor is, faking the pain of a severe injury, of fatality, is a very hard thing. And the film itself has such a documentary, natural, realistic vibe that anything remotely wooden is not going to work,” Burn said. “So [we tried] to hang around in places where we would hear things that were cries of pain or shouts of alarm. For example, [we went to] the Parisian riots that were happening a year and a half ago. It was just being in places where you hear those kinds of things that have the right sort of acoustic.” 

Burn and his team created some sounds themselves, taking actors to a gravel quarry to capture the movement of large groups and the constant shuffle of guards and prisoners. Some shouts were from scenarios the sound team cooked up, based on the research. But Burn tried to ensure that most of the sound library created for the camp had that right sort of acoustic, and then placed the camp’s sounds so they would grab the audience. 

“We decided that pretty much all of the film sound should live on the front wall of the theater, behind the screen,” Burn said. That directionality is constantly pulling our attention beyond the world that Rudolf and Hedwig want to focus on and making the audience occupy a horrifying nether space. It’s one where we are confronted with the power of human callousness; not that these characters are particularly awful people, but the juxtaposition of sound and image creates an intense, experiential sense of the “banality of evil” that can so often degrade into cliche when dramatized. 

“There were two films here,” Jonathan Glazer told IndieWire. “There was the one you see and the one you hear. And if you close your eyes, you’ll see the one you hear.”  

“The Zone of Interest”Courtesy A24

Creating the horror of Auschwitz in our minds with Burn’s sound design is indeed a whole other movie unto itself. But Glazer’s and Burn’s layering of that horror onto the film we see and forcing us to confront both simultaneously is what makes “The Zone of Interest” so powerful. “It was important that the sounds of the camp shouldn’t influence the actors at all, nor should they influence even the editing of that film. So Paul Watts’ picture edit was reasonably complete before we started adding any camp sounds,” Burn said. “Film two should not inform film one.”  

That the two films don’t inform each other is gutting, and a way of leaning on film form to dramatize the sterile, routine, bureaucratic monstrosity of the Holocaust. Viewers intuitively sense the loss of hearing something we can’t see — and the effort of characters not reacting to something we feel. And yet we do see what the Hösses see, too; so we see how naturally and thoughtlessly we could become them. All it takes is to do what humans do: filter out the sounds around us. 

“It’s a pretty grotesque reflection of us actually, that we’re able to see ourselves in them. They are seemingly and kind of frighteningly ordinary,” Glazer said. “It’s in that ordinariness that we see ourselves. And I wanted to serve that ordinariness somehow in the way that I put the film together. ”   

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When you live by an elevated train

Music

Buju Banton and Shabba Ranks also feature in the music video for the film’s track

Jeymes Samuel unveiled the music video for “Hallelujah Heaven” on Wednesday, the first single from the soundtrack for his upcoming film, The Book of Clarence.

The director and musician appears alongside Lil Wayne, Buju Banton, and Shabba Ranks, plus cameos from the movie’s stars, LaKeith Stanfield & RJ Cyler. Directed by Child, and filmed in Jamaica and Los Angeles, the video follows the trailer release for The Book of Clarence, which is scheduled to hit theaters on Jan. 12, 2024.

“The Book of Clarence is a film that I wanted to make for many years. While I was working on The Harder They Fall and all my other projects, the story and the music for The Book of Clarence was always there percolating in my mind,” said Samuel in a press release. “There was never a question as to whether I would compose the score and write and perform on the soundtrack, as well as write and direct the movie — it was all one amazing journey where one depended on the other. But I also worked with the most awesome artists on our track ‘Hallelujah Heaven.’ Collaborating with Lil’ Wayne, Buju Banton and Shabba Ranks was so dope, I loved getting them all on the same track.”

Trending

The film is billed as a story following “streetwise but struggling” Clarence (played by Stanfield) as he crosses paths with Jesus Christ and seeks to become a messiah himself.

Jay-Z  (who also serves as a producer on the movie), Jorge Ben Jor, Kid Cudi, Adekunle Gold, Jorja Smith, and Yemi Alade are also set to feature in the soundtrack.

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Buju Banton and Shabba Ranks also feature

Docs

The holiday season is a time for giving and sharing, and what better gift to give the passionate filmmaker in your life than something that will help them grow their craft and create even more amazing films. There are so many great options available, so we’ve put together a list of 10 gift ideas that filmmakers of all levels will love. From essential filmmaking gear to inspiring workshops to a pass to our festival, here’s our guide to the perfect gifts for filmmakers this holiday season.

Professional Storyboard for filmmakers and creative artists. 3x Panels with 16:9 Thumbnails per Page.

Film fans and filmmakers alike will love clapping this in people’s faces.

Whether you’re working on a film or would like one for decoration, a high quality clapper board would be a good choice.

It is an important tool for synchronizing sound and video material for editing.

Relive your Raindance Film Festival memories all year round with a 100% cotton t-shirt, available in four sizes (small, medium, large and x-large).

camera mugcamera mug

This camera lens mug is not only a 1:1 replica of a lens body, but also use a transparent light blue color to simulate the coating of the first glass of a real lens, and carefully copied the rear lens cap as the base of the mug.

lenslens

Take your mobile phone filmmaking to the next level with this kit of lenses.

Not sure how to shoot a film on your phone? Take our Smartphone Filmmaking Workshop.

This microphone can plug in directly to you phone, perfect for on the go interviews. If you’re an iPhone user there’s a handy adaptor you can buy to go with it.

Raindance Gift Membership is the perfect surprise for the filmmaker or film lovers in your life. Give them Raindance perks and benefits for a whole year and for a limited time it comes with a Raindance T-Shirt!

Raindance Gift Cards are perfect for film-crazy family and friends. They can be redeemed for any Raindance London course or class, Raindance Membership, or Raindance Film Festival pass. Members get 30% off.

If you’re planning on attending Raindance this year, the best way to enjoy our programme and special events is with the Raindance Festival Pass giving you exclusive access to film screenings with personal assistance from our Concierge team and our Indie Film Forum at House of Raindance hosted by Wonderville on Haymarket, perfectly placed in the West End next to Piccadilly Circus.

 

Get your early bird festival pass now. It’s the perfect way to Raindance!

These powerful adjustable lights are affordable and the exact model we use here at Raindance!
You can even adjust the LED settings on the go with the mobile app. That’s a really useful feature.

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The holiday season is a time for

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After seeing her DC-inspired debut feature The People’s Joker pulled from TIFF 2022 over what the fest described as “right’s issues,” Vera Drew has secured a North American release for the film via L.A.-based indie distributor Altered Innocence.

A mixed-media dark comedy drawing inspiration from Drew’s personal life, the film is set to open at IFC Center in New York City on April 5th, 2024, with additional markets and engagements to be announced at a later date.

Co-written by Drew and Bri LeRose, the film reimagining the origin story of iconic Batman villain The Joker sees Drew’s painfully unfunny aspiring clown grapple with her gender identity while unsuccessfully attempting to join the ranks of Gotham City’s sole comedy program, in a world where comedy has been outlawed. Uniting with a ragtag team of rejects and misfits, Joker the Harlequin forms an illegal anti-comedy troupe that puts her on a collision course with the devious caped crusader controlling the city.

Featuring cameos by such notables as Tim Heidecker, Bob Odenkirk, Maria Bamford and Scott Aukerman, the film’s principal cast also includes Lynn Downey, Nathan Faustyn and Kane Distler, among others. Joey Lyons produced alongside EPs Richie Doyle, Conor Hannon and Riccardo Maddalosso.

While the attention-grabbing title was pulled from TIFF immediately following its premiere screening in the Midnight Madness section, it went on to make its U.S. premiere at this year’s Outfest LA Film Festival, where it was awarded a Special Mention in North American Narrative Feature competition.

In a statement on the People’s Joker acquisition, Altered Innocence founder Frank Jaffe observed that “Vera Drew has taken her own life experiences and traumas to craft an entirely new genre of cinema” with the film “that blurs the lines between documentary, coming-of-age film, and parody.” Continued Jaffe, “We couldn’t be more thrilled to champion this bold, intelligent, and hilarious piece of queer cinema that audiences around the globe have fallen in love with.”

Drew stated, for her part, that she’s “absolutely thrilled” to be bringing The People’s Joker to theaters next spring, courtesy of Altered Innocence. “This movie started as a DIY community project for queer artists and I made it with my friends to process what it was like coming out as a trans woman working in the film and TV industry,” she said. “It has been a long road freeing The People’s Joker and finding a release plan that rings true to the queer, anarchist spirit we had while making it. What better home than among Altered Innocence’s catalog of gorgeously gay and deliciously edgy films.”

While it’s not clear exactly what work was done to free the film from the rights issues that plagued it at TIFF, the team behind the project has made sure to underscore that it is “in no way created by, endorsed by, or affiliated with DC Comics or any of its related companies.”

Jaffe negotiated the deal for Altered Innocence, with UTA and Rise Management on behalf of the filmmakers.

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After seeing her DC-inspired debut feature The

Tech

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the season 10 finale of “The Masked Singer”

For many “Masked Singer” contestants, joining the show has been compared to joining the CIA or becoming a spy. And that was true for 3rd place finisher Gazelle too — in fact, the actress behind the mask admits that keeping her identity a secret was significantly harder than her years protecting spoilers on “Pretty Little Liars.”

For those unaware, Gazelle was revealed on Wednesday night to be none other than Janel Parrish, who starred on the Freeform mystery show for seven years and nearly 150 episodes, as well as Freeform’s spinoff “Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists.” So, obviously, the actress has some experience with keeping secrets.

But, if you ask her which one was harder not to spoil, there’s no contest.

“Oh 100% keeping the secret for ‘Masked Singer,’” Parrish confidently told TheWrap. “Because I was so excited, and so thrilled with how my journey went, that I just wanted to shout from the mountaintops like, ‘I am Gazelle! I am so happy that I’ve made it to the finale! I got to sing and I felt so good!’ And then you just have to keep that secret for so long.”

Parrish added that making it so far in the competition added an extra layer of complication for her, as loved ones quickly began recognizing her voice.


“Family members start calling, and friends start calling, and that is when you really discover what a bad actress you can be,” she admitted with a laugh. “They ask you to your face like ‘Oh my god, are you Gazelle?’ And you’re like, ‘What? No, what do you — huh?’”

She continued, “And so, you know, some family members are like ‘You’re lying, but OK,’ and you’re like, ‘No, no, I’m a good actress, I swear. I’m not her. So that became difficult.”

But, Parrish added that the secret-keeping really is “part of the fun of the show.”

In the end, she wasn’t at all disappointed that she didn’t take home the win, though she is a competitive person. In fact, Parrish actually expected to come in third, since she’s got a history with the number.

“Three is my lucky number, baby. I’ve got it tattooed on my arm, I came in third on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’” she explained. “Something in me knew when I got to finale, I was like, I bet it’s three, because three always come to me. And I’m thrilled with coming in third!”


Rita Ora

And, when she discovered who beat her out, Parrish was even more excited.

“When I found out who was behind the other masks that I was onstage with, can I just tell you that I pinched myself?” she gushed. “I can’t even believe that I was on the same stage as these people, like, what is life? So, gratitude. That’s the word. I’m just so grateful no matter what.”

“The Masked Singer” will return for season 11 on Fox on March 6, 2024.

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WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the season 10

Video

Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman founded T-Street Productions in 2019 to home-grow their own projects; now, they run the “Knives Out” universe at Netflix with a third film on the way after the streaming success of “Glass Onion” last year.

While visiting this week’s “Screen Talk” podcast, Johnson — who is writing and directing the next installment in the mystery anthology series, to be produced by Bergman — kept any details on the new film under wraps. He did, however, confirm he’s well into the writing process. Meantime, Johnson and Bergman dished on what makes their particular chemistry as a director/producer duo click. The pair have worked together all the way back to 2005’s “Brick,” Johnson’s Sundance breakout debut. This year, they’re behind two hot fall titles, Cord Jefferson’s Best Picture contender “American Fiction” and Chloe Domont’s Netflix hit “Fair Play.” That film sold for $20 million at Sundance back in January after a sensational premiere, the kind of overnight Park City deal that’s so rare these days.

Speaking of, we also review the upcoming Sundance lineup, sharing titles we’re most excited about, including Rose Glass’ “Love Lies Bleeding” with Kristen Stewart, and “Handling the Undead,” a horror entry that marks a “Worst Person in the World” reunion with Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie, and much more. Also, we catch up on the awards season week that was, from the Spirit Award nominations to AFI’s list of the year’s 10 best films.

Watch the full episode above or listen to it below.

Screen Talk is produced by Azwan Badruzaman and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify, and hosted by Megaphone. Browse previous episodes here, subscribe here, and be sure to let us know if you’d like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk. 

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Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman founded T-Street

Entertaintment

Olivia Dunne, the LSU gymnast and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model who is one of the most popular influncers on social media, has allegedly run into a TikTok problem.

Dunn noticed that her engagement from her 7.8 million followers was way down, and asked on a video, “Why am I shadow banned?”

The shadowbanning practice allows content to be posted, but severely limits the audience that can see it. Dunne’s last four videos fell below a million views, a benchmark that previously was the lowest a post would draw.

The influencer is reportedly making $1 million per year, making her one of the leading social media stars.

Dunne, 21, has already had some issues with the TikTok platform. Earlier this year, her account disappeared for a brief period.

“It’s a glitch,” Dunne tweeted in response to one person who asked about the disappearance. “Idk what’s wrong with my account right now.” The account was restored shortly thereafter.

Dunne will be returning for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit 2024 issue after debuting in it last year.

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Olivia Dunne, the LSU gymnast and Sports

Movies

53 Movies That Came Out In 2004

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53 Movies That Came Out In 2004

Latest News

Taraji P. Henson has a lot of thoughts about the pay disparity in Hollywood.

The 53-year-old actor expressed her frustrations through tears while doing press for her upcoming film “The Color Purple.”

“I’m just tired of working so hard, being gracious at what I do, getting paid a fraction of the cost,” Henson told Gayle King on SiriusXM. “I’m tired of hearing my sisters say the same thing over and over. You get tired. I hear people go, ‘You work a lot.’ Well, I have to. The math ain’t mathing.”

She said entertainers often have a team behind them that shares in any paycheck — and that’s not to mention the chunk claimed by Uncle Sam.

“When you start working a lot, you know, you have a team,” the “Empire” star continued. “Big bills come with what we do. We don’t do this alone. There’s a whole entire team behind us. They have to get paid.”

Henson said her previous accomplishments — which include several Emmy nominations and an Academy Award nomination — don’t carry weight when it comes time to negotiate a salary, a problem affecting many Black female actors.

“Every time I do something and I break another glass ceiling, when it’s time to renegotiate, I’m at the bottom again, like I never did what I just did and I’m just tired,” she explained. “It wears on you — ’cause what does that mean? What is that telling me? And if I can’t fight for [the Black female actors] coming up behind me, then what the f— am I doing?”

Henson said her struggle for equal pay is part of the reason she branched out, adding business ventures. A growing number of actors are finding alternative forms of revenue.

And Henson is among Black women in Hollywood who have launched hair-care products in recent years. Others include Tracee Ellis Ross with Pattern, Issa Rae and Hannah Diop with Sienna Naturals, Gabrielle Union with Flawless and Tia Mowry with 4U. It’s part of a boom in the beauty industry, which has benefited from Black buying power but seen only a small number of Black business owners prosper.

“That’s why I have other things. I have my TPH brand and I have my mental wellness brand,” Henson said. “I have other things because this industry, if you let it, it’ll steal your soul. But I refuse to let that happen.”

Fellow Black women in the entertainment industry voiced support on social media for Henson’s comments.

“Not a damn lie told. Not. A. Damn. Lie. We go TO BAT for the next generation and hell even our own generation and above,” Gabrielle Union wrote in an X post. “We don’t hesitate to be the change that we all need to see AND it takes a toll on your mind, health, soul, and career if we’re keepn it [100].”

Comedian and former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Leslie Jones wrote,” I felt this s— to my core!! It don’t matter how much you work, how great you are at your job. They still don’t see you or think you are a relevant source. And I do feel scared for the Leslie joneses that will come after me! I felt this s— @tarajiphenson. I’ve loved you since when I met you on my first real audition in this industry!! I know how long you been at it!!

“We feel you, @tarajiphenson and we love you,” tweeted “Community” actor Yvette Nicole Brown. “It’s a fight we ALL are waging. For ourselves and for the ones coming up after us. This mess sucks!”

“A Black Lady Sketch Show” creator and actor Robin Thede chimed in on the conversation in an X post, writing, “WATCH THIS. Taraji is telling the absolute TRUTH. 70-80% of GROSS income is gone off top for taxes & commissions (agents, managers, lawyers). And for those who pay other employees as well? Babyyyy! The math ain’t mathing!”

Times staff writer Marissa Evans contributed to this report.

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Taraji P. Henson has a lot

MCU


Spider-Man 2 Game

As part of the larger Insomniac Games leaks, which saw 1.7 TB of data released online, fans got a glimpse into the future of Marvel gaming.

As part of the leaks, fans were excited to hear that Marvel and Insomniac have plans for a Venom standalone game, a Wolverine game that is allegedly similar to the Spider-Man games, and a future X-Men trilogy of games.

Spider-ManSpider-Man

Photo: Marvel

Each Title Needs To Sell 6 Million Copies

Perhaps more interesting, however, was the revelation that Sony must sell at least 6 million copies of Marvel titles, or either party can terminate the deal.

If Playstation terminated the contract, Marvel would be able to ask for a $9 million penalty. On the flip side, however, if Marvel terminated the agreement, the fee would be waived.

Spider-manSpider-man

Photo: Marvel

If the second hypothetical were to occur, Insomniac would not develop any more Marvel games, but they would be allowed to continue selling previously created games.

Spider-Man 2Spider-Man 2

Photo: Marvel

The parameters of the agreement could explain why Sony often bundles Marvel’s Spider-Man game with councils.

Sony Will Invest $621 Million in Marvel Titles.

Per the Insomniac leaks, Sony will invest approximately $621 million in the marketing and development of upcoming Marvel titles.

In return, Marvel will release the games exclusively on PlayStation. The leaked games must be released by 2034, with the sales completed by 2038. If the games prove successful, Mavel could extend their contract with Playstion.

Spider-Man 2Spider-Man 2

Photo: Marvel

Interestingly, the X-Men licensing terms also leaked, revealing that Disney would receive 9-18% of digital sales, 19-26% of physical sales, 19-26% of DLC sales, and 35-50% of bundle sales.

Spider-Man 2 GameSpider-Man 2 Game

Photo: Sony

For the foreseeable future, Disney will continue to rely on licensing to prop up its gaming business. By the sound of things, however, Diseny’s partnership with Sony is here to stay.

Thanks for visiting MickeyBlog.com! Want to go to Disney? For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below and one of the agents from MickeyTravels, a Diamond level Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, will be in touch soon! Also, thanks for reading!

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DCU

Summary

  • James Gunn and Peter Safran are revamping the DC Universe with a new live-action franchise, introducing several new characters.
  • Characters like Vigilante, Amanda Waller, Booster Gold, and Bride of Frankenstein will be part of the new DC Universe.
  • Superman: Legacy will start a new canon for DC Studios, and over 30 characters have been confirmed to be part of the new universe.


The new DC Universe hasn’t truly started yet, but several characters have been confirmed to be appearing in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new franchise. After several projects in Warner Bros.’ DC Extended Universe were met with poor responses and disappointing box office totals, director James Gunn and producer Peter Safran were hired in October 2022 as co-CEOs of the new DC Studios. Together, Gunn and Safran devised a plan for a reboot of DC’s live-action franchise, announcing their plans on January 31, 2023. With ten new projects announced, several new characters from DC Comics will be introduced into the DC Universe, and many from Warner Bros.’ previous franchise will be recast.

While Gunn and Safran’s plans for DC’s live-action future were originally expected to consist of a soft-reboot of the DCEU – allowing some to continue in the future – it has been confirmed that 2025’s Superman: Legacy will start a new canon for DC Studios. Some actors are reprising their DCEU roles, but they’ll be playing different versions of their characters, as 2023’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom marks the end of the road for the DCEU. James Gunn revealed the future of the DC Universe in January 2023, and since then, over 30 characters have been confirmed canon so far.

Related

10 Ways Superman Legacy Can Define The DC Universe For The Rest Of Its Run

As the first true installment of the DC Universe, Superman: Legacy can define the future of the franchise in a handful of interesting ways.


33 Adrian Chase, A.K.A. Vigilante, Will Return Following Peacemaker

Vigilante Will Be Played By Freddie Stroma

Vigilante talking with Peacemaker in his trailer in Peacemaker (2022)

Freddie Stroma debuted as Adrian Chase, a.k.a. Vigilante, in Peacemaker season 1, a TV spinoff from James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. Vigilante was featured as an associate of Cena’s Chris Smith in Peacemaker, and Gunn confirmed on Threads (via Reddit) that Vigilante would be returning “probably before Peacemaker season 2.” In DC Comics, Vigilante is the former District Attorney of New York City who became an antihero after his wife and children were killed by Scarapelli mobsters. This backstory was changed significantly for Peacemaker, which made Chase a restaurant busboy, but his return to the DCU’s future will develop his story even further.

32 Amanda Waller Will Remain A Powerful Figure In The Shadows

Amanda Waller Will Be Played By Viola Davis

Viola Davis appeared several times in the DCEU after debuting as Amanda Waller, the Director of ARGUS, in 2016’s Suicide Squad. Davis also showed up in The Suicide Squad, Black Adam, and Peacemaker season 1. The DCU is set to feature her more prominently, however, as Viola Davis will return in Waller, a Max TV series that will act as an aperitif to Superman: Legacy. This confirmation came during Gunn’s January announcement, and since Waller has ties to teams such as the Suicide Squad, the Justice Society of America, and Task Force X in DC Comics, she could have a part to play in several upcoming DC Studios projects.

31 Booster Gold Will Make His DCU Debut On The Small Screen

Booster Gold Is Not Currently Cast

A close-up of Booster Gold smirking in a DC Comic

Booster Gold was confirmed to be joining the live-action DC Universe during Gunn’s January 2023 announcement after previously not being featured in the DCEU. Born Michael Jon Carter in 25th Century Gotham City, Carter traveled to the 20th Century using advanced technology from a museum and became the superhero known as Booster Gold. Booster Gold will premiere on Max and is set to be an “outright comedy” set in the DC Universe. It’s unclear who will portray the futuristic hero in live-action or when Booster Gold might release, but since the character has ties to ARGUS and the Justice League, he is an exciting addition to the DC Universe.

30 Bride Of Frankenstein Will Be Part Of The Creature Commandos

Bride Of Frankenstein Will Be Voiced By Indira Varma

Bride of Frankenstein standing next to DC's other Creature Commandos

DC Comics’ Bride of Frankenstein will debut in 2024’s animated series Creature Commandos, which will see Amanda Waller (voiced by Viola Davis) assemble a black ops team of monsters akin to the Suicide Squad. Game of Thrones and Torchwood’s Indira Varma will voice the Bride of Frankenstein, one of the leads of the series opposite Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. In DC Comics, the Bride works for SHADE, a counter-terrorism organization that deals with otherworldly threats and monsters, and the Creature Commandos consisting of its best agents. However, with Waller’s involvement, it seems the Creature Commandos could be brought together by ARGUS in the DCU.

29 Bruce Wayne, A.K.A. Batman, Will Debut With A Family

Batman Is Not Currently Cast

Batman is one of the most coveted superhero roles, and though it’s unknown who will assume the role of the Caped Crusader in the DC Universe, The Brave and the Bold will introduce a new actor as Batman. Ben Affleck portrayed Bruce Wayne in the DCEU, a billionaire who became the vigilante Batman to protect Gotham City. Robert Pattinson also portrays Batman in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, which will continue to develop as a DC Elseworlds project. The Flash director Andy Muschietti has been confirmed to direct The Brave and the Bold, which Gunn mentioned would be a “strange father and son story,” introducing the Bat-Family to the DCU.

28 Christopher Smith, A.K.A. Peacemaker, Will Return Following His Solo Series

Peacemaker Will Be Played By John Cena

After debuting in The Suicide Squad and headlining his own series with Peacemaker, John Cena is set to return as Christopher “Chris” Smith in Peacemaker season 2. James Gunn confirmed on Twitter that Cena would be reprising the role in season 2, though it’s unclear when season 2 will release as Gunn has dedicated his time to working on Superman: Legacy. Christopher Smith aims to bring peace to the world and is willing to use extreme violence to complete this mission. With DCU canon resetting with Superman” Legacy, it’s unclear exactly what Peacemaker will be up to when he’s reintroduced.

27 Clark Kent, A.K.A. Superman Will Kick Off The DCU

Superman Will Be Played By David Corenswet

Perhaps the most highly-anticipated addition to the new DC Universe is Clark Kent, a.k.a. Superman. Henry Cavill portrayed the Man of Steel in the DCEU but was controversially dropped from the role in December 2022. Gunn announced that he would write and direct Superman: Legacy, the first film in the DCU, and that the film would revitalize the iconic hero. Born on Krypton, Superman’s powers are gifted to him from Earth’s sun, making him a superior hero in every way. In June 2023, it was announced that David Corenswet had been cast as Superman, a younger, more vibrant, and more optimistic version of the character than Cavill’s portrayal.

26 Damian Wayne, A.K.A. Robin, Will Put A Unique Twist On The Batman Formula

Damian Wayne Is Not Currently Cast

Damian Wayne's Robin swinging a sword in a DC Comic

Damian Wayne will be introduced to live-action for the first time in Andy Muschietti’s The Brave and the Bold. The son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul in DC Comics, Damian was raised by his mother and the League of Assassins and was introduced to his father after being trained as a cold-blooded killer. Although Damian became the Robin to his father’s Batman, the pair constantly had trouble connecting with each other. It’s unclear what storyline will unfold in The Brave and the Bold, but this will be the first time that the father and son dynamic has been seen on the big screen in live action.

25 Doctor Phosphorus Seems To Be A Bold New Take On A DC Villain

Doctor Phosphorus Will Be Voiced By Alan Tudyk

A close-up of Doctor Phosphorus from Creature Commandos promotional art

Doctor Phosphorus will be featured as a member of the eponymous team in the DCU’s Creature Commandos and is set to be voiced by Alan Tudyk. In DC Comics, Phosphorus is a villain to Batman with no connection to the Creature Commandos apart from in 2011’s Flashpoint event. He gained his powers after a nuclear plant that he insisted be built melted down, shifting his body’s chemical components from silicon to phosphorus. It’s unclear how he’ll join the DCU’s Creature Commandos, but he also has ties to the Secret Society of Super Villains in DC Comics, which could be set up as foes to the DCU’s Justice League.

24 Eric Frankenstein Brings A Literary Icon To Life

Eric Frankenstein Will Be Voiced By David Harbour

A close-up of Eric Frankenstein from promotional art for DC's Creature Commandos

Known only as Frankenstein in DC Comics, Eric Frankenstein is set to debut in the animated Creature Commandos, voiced by Stranger Things and Black Widow’s David Harbour. Based on Mary Shelley’s literary Frankenstein’s monster, Frankenstein was a member of the Creature Commandos in 2011’s Flashpoint event but also worked with organizations including SHADE, the Justice League, and Justice League Dark in the main DC continuity. This could set up an exciting future for Eric Frankenstein in the DC Universe, particularly since he will have a connection to the DCU’s Amanda Waller following her appearance as the team’s benefactor in Creature Commandos.

23 GI Robot May Adapt Several Different DC Characters

GI Robot Will Be Voiced By Sean Gunn

A close-up of GI Robot from promotional art for DC's Creature Commandos

Another obscure DC Comics character that will be featured in the line-up of Creature Commandos is GI Robot, adapted from any of six robot characters who were featured in DC Comics. The robot soldier has been depicted as a member of the Suicide Squad, Checkmate, and the Creature Commandos, with the latter featuring the JAKE 1 and JAKE 2 versions of GI Robot. In the DC Universe, Sean Gunn, James Gunn’s brother who portrayed Kraglin in the MCU’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise and appeared as Weasel and Calendar Man in The Suicide Squad, will voice GI Robot in a double-role for the series, as he will also voice Weasel.

22 Guy Gardner, A.K.A. Green Lantern, Will Be The DCU’s First On-Screen Member Of The Corps.

Guy Gardner Will Be Played By Nathan Fillion

Set to appear in Superman: Legacy, Nathan Fillion has been cast as Guy Gardner, a member of the Green Lantern Corps. This was an unexpected addition to the DCU’s premiere film but could help set up the DCU’s detective story Lanterns. In DC Comics, while Hal Jordan was perhaps the most prominent human member of the Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic law enforcement organization, Gardner was chosen as Jordan’s backup should anything happen to the latter. Fillion previously portrayed Cory Pitzner, a.k.a. The Detachable Kid, in The Suicide Squad.

21 Hal Jordan, A.K.A. Green Lantern, Will Headline A Streaming Series

Hal Jordan Is Not Currently Cast

Hal Jordan in his Green Lantern suit flying in space surrounded by green energy in a DC Comic

Although Guy Gardner will debut before Hal Jordan, the more recognizable Green Lantern has been confirmed to appear in the DC Universe. Ryan Reynolds portrayed Jordan in 2011’s Green Lantern, which was expected to kick-start the DCEU, though these plans were scrapped after the film’s abysmal performance. The character will be revitalized with an as-yet-unknown actor in Lanterns, taking inspiration from True Detective for a grounded, Earth-based detective story featuring Hal Jordan and John Stewart as two Green Lanterns, aided by their mystical power rings. In DC Comics, Jordan was a founding member of the Justice League, so this could be a fun avenue to follow in the DCU.

20 Hawkgirl Is Set To Appear Early In The DCU

Hawkgirl Will Be Played By Isabela Merced

Announced alongside Fillion’s Guy Gardner, Isabela Merced has been cast as Hawkgirl for the DC Universe, set to make her first appearance in Superman: Legacy. In DC Comics, Hawkgirl is a complex character who uses antiquated weapons and artificial wings to fly, often seen working alongside her partner and love interest Hawkman. Aldis Hodge portrayed Hawkman in 2022’s Black Adam, though it’s unclear if he’ll return. Merced is best known for roles in Sicario: Day of the Soldado and Dora and the Lost City of Gold, though it’s unclear which version of Hawkgirl she’ll portray, as there have been three versions in DC Comics’ history.

19 Lex Luthor Will Once Again Face Off Against Superman

Lex Luthor Will Be Played By Nicholas Hoult

A split image of Lex Luthor staring menacingly in a DC Comic and Nicholas Hoult looking confused in Renfield

Lex Luthor is Superman’s most iconic villain, so it makes sense that he’s set to appear in Superman: Legacy. Actor Nicholas Hoult has reportedly been on the short-list for several superhero movie roles over the years (in addition to landing the part of Beast in the X-Men prequel series), and he’s finally landed a big one. It’s yet to be revealed in what capacity Lex will appear in Superman: Legacy and whether he’ll be a central threat or someone first sticking to the sideline.

18 Jaime Reyes, A.K.A. Blue Beetle, Will Continue On From The DCEU

Blue Beetle Will Be Played By Xolo Maridueña

James Gunn has revealed that Jaime Reyes’ Blue Beetle is the first official DCU character, despite Blue Beetle being released long before 2025’s Superman: Legacy. Xolo Maridueña debuted as Reyes in Blue Beetle, released on August 18, 2023. Blue Beetle is a standalone film with little connection to the wider DC Universe, as Reyes acquires an alien scarab that grants him a superpowered exoskeleton. Reyes has a great friendship with Booster Gold in DC Comics, so this may be a brilliant relationship to explore in the DCU’s future.

17 Jimmy Olsen Is Superman’s Long-Time Best Friend

Jimmy Olsen Will Be Played By Skyler Gisondo

In April 2023, James Gunn confirmed on Twitter that Jimmy Olsen would make an appearance in Superman: Legacy, and it was more recently revealed that Skyler Gisondo has been cast for the part. Olsen is a young photojournalist at the Daily Planet, the news publication that also employs Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and since Superman: Legacy will explore Superman’s work at the Daily Planet, Olsen is a perfect fit. Michael Cassidy portrayed Jimmy Olsen in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, though this version was outed as a CIA Agent and killed by terrorists.

16 John Economos Will Likely Continue To Work With ARGUS

John Economos Will Be Played By Steve Agee

John Economos on his computer in Peacemaker

Steve Agee is set to return as John Economos from The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and much like Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller, is expected to have a larger role in the DCU’s future. Gunn confirmed on Bluesky (via Reddit) in April 2023 that Agee would be reprising the role of Economos in Waller, and he is expected to have a role in Creature Commandos. Economos is a member of ARGUS and Waller’s aide, though he found himself at odds with her after The Suicide Squad. Last seen recruiting Billy Batson to the Justice Society, it’s unclear what the future holds for John Economos.

15 John Stewart, A.K.A. Green Lantern, Will Debut With Hal Jordan

John Stewart Is Not Currently Cast

John Stewart Green Lantern backed by an army made of hard light in DC Comics

As well as Guy Gardner and Hal Jordan being featured as Green Lanterns in the DCU, John Stewart is also set to debut in Lanterns, proving that Gunn and Safran are putting more emphasis on the intergalactic force than Warner Bros. did during the DCEU. In DC Comics, Stewart was chosen as Jordan’s backup after Gardner was seriously injured while trying to save a civilian, so this dynamic could play into the storyline of Lanterns. It’s not yet known who will portray John Stewart in the DCU, though with connections to the Justice League, Darkstars, and the Guardians of the Universe, he could be pivotal to the DCU’s future.

14 Kara Zor-El, A.K.A. Supergirl, Will Get Her Own Solo Project

Supergirl Is Not Currently Cast

Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow DC Comics Cover

Billed as a “big, science-fiction epic,” Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow will introduce Kara Zor-El, a.k.a. the eponymous Supergirl, into the DC Universe. Although Sasha Calle appeared as Supergirl in 2023’s The Flash, it seems as though the role will be recast, though nothing has been confirmed either way. Woman of Tomorrow is expected to balance Kara Zor-El’s upbringing on a chunk of the destroyed Krypton with the Earthly upbringing of her cousin, Superman. It’s unclear who will be cast in the role of Supergirl in the DC Universe.

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Summary James Gunn and Peter

Comics

As was originally reported close to two years ago, Activision Blizzard CEO and founder Bobby Kotick is officially leaving the company following Microsoft’s buyout of the Call of Duty giant. When Microsoft closed the deal in October, it was reported that Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer asked Kotick to stay on for the time being, and now he’s officially leaving as many expected he would.

“Phil shares our values and recognizes our talents. He is passionate about our games and the people who make them. He has bold ambition,” Kotick said in a memo to staff.

Kotick is reportedly leaving Activision Blizzard with a gigantic pay package in the area of $400 million.

According to The Verge, Kotick is officially stepping down on December 29. He may not be replaced directly, but Microsoft is putting Blizzard president Mike Ybaara, Activision Publishing president Rob Kostich, and Activision Blizzard vice chair Thomas Tippl in a new organization chart that reports to Xbox executive Matt Booty.

Activision Blizzard communications boss Lulu Meservey is leaving on January 31, while Blizzard and King vice chairman Humam Sakhnini is leaving at the end of December. The Verge reported that “a number of other” Activision Blizzard executives are leaving in March, but none were named.

Kotick became Activision’s CEO in 1991 and has been the company’s top executive ever since. He has been involved in multiple controversies. Recently, Activision Blizzard announced a settlement with the state of California and will pay $54 million to the state along with an additional $47 million to female employees who worked at the company from 2015 to 2020.

The 2021 lawsuit accused Activision Blizzard of fostering a “frat boy” workplace culture rife with sexual harassment. Activision Blizzard and the California Civil Rights Department say in the settlement agreement that investigations into the company’s culture did not turn up evidence of “systemic or widespread sexual harassment.”

An investigation into Activision’s board, including Kotick, found no evidence of wrongdoing, according to the settlement agreement. In the wake of the lawsuit’s allegations, Activision Blizzard announced steps it had taken to create “a more accountable workplace.”

The lawsuit, in part, led to Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard. The publisher behind Call of Duty and World of Warcraft saw its stock price significantly fall in the wake of the lawsuit’s accusations, leading to Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition.

Activision Blizzard has settled multiple other cases in recent years. In March 2022, Activision Blizzard settled a separate sexual harassment lawsuit with the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to the tune of $18 million, and in February 2023 paid $35 million in a settlement to the SEC over accusations that the publisher failed to properly disclose information to investors.

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Festivals

Herman Rush, a veteran television producer best known for licensing Till Death Us Do Part, the UK sitcom that Norman Lear turned into All in the Family, died Dec. 12 at 94 of natural causes in Los Angeles, according to several news reports.

Rush began his career in 1951, working in sales for Official Film. He later purchased Flamingo Films, a television syndication firm, growing it into a major independent syndication company.

Up into the 1970s, Rush was with Creative Management Associates as the president of the television division, playing a role in the agency’s entry into television packaging. Some of the shows he was placed on networks included The Perry Como Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Kraft Music Hall and The Hollywood Palace.

H also represented producer Irwin Allen for TV hits Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost In Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants.

In the late ’60s, Rush acquired properties from Britisher Lord Lew Grade. One of them was the popular sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, which was later shopped to Norman Lear, who turned it into All in the Family.

In 1980, he was named president of Columbia Pictures Television Group, putting more than a dozen series on air, including Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Mike Hammer and Designing Women.

He also created Katz/Rush Entertainment with Raymond Katz, which produced The New Original Amateur Hour, The Susan Powter Show, Miss America: Behind The Crown and Nite Cap.

Rush is survived by children Mandie and Jim.

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Herman Rush, a veteran television producer best

Film

Meghan Markle
Photo: Kayla Oaddams (Getty Images)

After leaving the equally high-stakes worlds of British Royalty and American podcasting, Meghan Markle is taking a logical next step in her career. No, she hasn’t been announced as a guest on the next season of Dancing With The Stars (yet!), but if that’s where your head went, you’re not too far off. It’s the other one: Instagram ads.

Tyler Perry is the godfather to a sort-of princess, apparently

Fresh off of Suits’ head-scratching leap in popularity but very not fresh off of its actual last episode, which aired in 2018, Meghan Markle is making her grand return to acting… in a minute or so-long social media ad for a pre-packaged latte brand.

In the ad, Markle appears behind co-founder Hanna Mendoza a number of times as a staffer packing products and listening to Britney Spears, a member of the “slightly nerdy” digital team, and a giggling assistant with a clipboard and a fist bump at the ready.

The ad itself is for a women-led wellness company called Clevr—the kind of place that uses the word “adaptogens” a lot—that Markle has invested in since at least 2020 (via People). “This investment is in support of a passionate female entrepreneur who prioritizes building community alongside her business,” Markle said in a press release at the time. “I believe in her and I believe in her company.” Other celebrities like Oprah and Kim Kardashian have also promoted Clevr’s superfood-filled SuperLatte’s on their own platforms.

While this was just a short stint that looked pretty easy to film, who knows—maybe it will inspire the Duchess of Sussex to make a real return to the silver screen. It would certainly be helpful for her multi-million dollar Netflix deal, which is reportedly hanging by a thread—that thread being “actually producing content.” We’ll see!

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Meghan MarklePhoto: Kayla Oaddams (Getty Images)After leaving

TV

Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global are in talks for a potential merger, IndieWire has confirmed. It’s the very early days — especially considering WBD is in an M&A timeout until April.

As Axios first reported, Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav journeyed to the Paramount offices in Times Square for an hours-long meeting on Tuesday with Paramount CEO Bob Bakish. Rumor has it they were not there to reminisce about the “TRL” days.

He and Bakish discussed potential synergies between their two companies, including how Max — itself the combination of Discovery+ and HBO Max — could complement Paramount+ (now with Showtime!). There are also possibilities within each company’s news, sports, and kids programming — plus, HBO and Showtime could stop competing with each other and join forces. (Not that it’s been much of a competition lately.)

Zaslav has also spoken with Paramount Global’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone about a potential deal.

Reps for Warner Bros. Discovery declined comment to IndieWire; a spokesperson for Paramount Global did not immediately respond.

“The strategy being considered mirrors Zaslav’s blueprint for prior mergers,” Axios wrote. Before the 2022 Discovery, Inc. and WarnerMedia combination, Zaslav brought Scripps networks, like HGTV and Food Network, under his Discovery umbrella.

The two options on the table: WBD 1) buying Redstone’s National Amusements, Inc. (NAI), which holds 77 percent of Paramount Global’s voting shares, or 2) just buying the much larger (compared with NAI) Paramount Global outright. (The Redstone trust only owns a 10 percent equity stake in Paramount Global.) Warner Bros. Discovery has already hired bankers to explore a potential deal.

Zaslav is not the only potential Shari suitor: David Ellison and Skydance have also recently held their own exploratory talks about acquiring NAI. The Redstone family has famously been against selling actual Paramount (fka ViacomCBS) since patriarch Sumner Redstone’s days; clearly, that stance has softened.

WBD ended the September quarter with about 95 million overall streaming subscribers, mostly — but not entirely — from Max. Paramount+ had about 63 million subs. Another key difference: Max turned a profit this year, Paramount+ (fka CBS All Access) has yet to make money.

Paramount needs a life raft, and a Warner Bros. Discovery takeover is more likely to receive regulatory approval from an M&A-averse government than another option, like Comcast. Paramount Global owns CBS, and Comcast owns NBC; the FCC has a two-network rule that would disallow two broadcast channels under the same roof.

NBCUniversal’s own streaming service, Peacock, currently has 30 million paid subscribers. It could use a hand there, and Comcast has the cash — a merger scenario there would likely require the spinning off and sale of CBS. Comcast is multiples larger than Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount — and it still would be even if the two chatterboxes combined.

Most other buyers would primarily, if not exclusively, be interested in Paramount Global for its Paramount Pictures studio. (Many would immediately shutter Paramount+ to stop the bleeding.) A combination of the Warner Bros. and Paramount libraries would immediately be the gold standard; owning two old Hollywood lots would be pretty cool, too.

HOLLYWOOD, CA - JULY 14: General view of the Paramount Pictures film studio lot amid the historic joint WGA & SAG-AFTRA writers and actors strike on July 14, 2023 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
View of the Paramount Pictures film studio lotGC Images

Paramount has not-so-quietly been preparing for this moment. For years, Bakish has practically waved a “For Sale” sign, and last month, Paramount Global updated its senior leadership’s golden parachutes in the case of acquisition. If Paramount gets bought out and Bakish is ousted within the first two years, he now stands to receive $50 million — plus benefits.

Zaslav may be the man who makes Bakish rich(er); he’s also the guy who has regularly been rubbing creatives the wrong way. Killing off “Batgirl” last year for tax purposes was a particularly unpopular move that placed Zas directly in the crosshairs of picketing writers and actors. The blowback didn’t leave a lasting impression — Warner Bros. pulled pretty much the same thing this year with “Coyote vs. Acme.”

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Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger said on Wednesday that he would “definitely” step down in 2026 when his current contract runs out.

The executive made the comments at the New York Times Dealbook Conference, which was covered by Reuters, CNBC, and other media outlets.

Iger said that the succession process is “robust,” according to CNBC reporter Alex Sherman.

Iger rejoined Disney a little more than a year ago after the media giant ousted his hand-picked successor, Bob Chapek. Iger was brought in to right the ship, but the company’s problems have compounded in the last few months. The company has dealt with several box office disappointments, including this past weekend’s deflated debut of animated film Wish, which comes on top of poor response to The Marvels. He’s also under pressure by activist investor Nelson Peltz, who has called for more drastic improvement.

Iger himself created a whirlwind of speculation by noting in a July interview with CNBC that he didn’t think some of the networks were core to Disney, included ESPN. The comment kicked off chatter about potential deals, with Allen Media Group, which owns Local Now, several local broadcasters, and The Weather Channel, making an unsolicited bid for the ABC Network and its cable channels.  He told employees on Tuesday during a virtual town hall meeting that ABC and ESPN aren’t for sale, and reiterated the sentiment on Wednesday at the Dealbook conference.

Iger said that the legacy assets weren’t for sale, but that “we’re constantly evaluating” their fit, Sherman tweeted.

One deal Disney is pursuing is the acquisition of Comcast’s one-third stake in Hulu, which is expected to close shortly. Iger said he set up a “rigorous” process to determine if he should buy the rest of Hulu or sell it back, but opted to take full control. The company plans to offer an app that combines Disney+ and Hulu as early as next month.

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Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger said on

Awards

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the season 10 finale of “The Masked Singer”

More often than not, “The Masked Singer” brings contestants a lot of joy and a lot of fun. That’s true for Donut, who came in second place on Wednesday night — but the show also brought him a lot of “healing,” and some proof that “God is paying attention.”

Finishing only behind Ne-Yo, who was crowned season 10’s champion on Wednesday night, Donut was revealed to be “Dukes of Hazzard” star and country singer John Schneider. And, looking at those results, he feels pretty confident that second place “is the very best that John Schneider could have done.” The more important result was that it allowed him to grieve his wife, Alicia Allain, who passed away earlier this year after a battle with returning cancer.

“[She] would’ve loved to have been here watching me on ‘The Masked Singer’” he told TheWrap. “This was a great healing opportunity for me to be able to not have the wheels come off. You know, I could do it publicly, and that helped hold me together. It was very important.”

He added, “It was a great way to pay tribute to my beautiful bride, and to let other people out there who are grieving know that it’s OK. In fact, I think it’s better to grieve publicly. Don’t try to hide that. Don’t try to hide it. Let it out. And you’ll feel better for having done it. I’m delighted that I did that.”


Schneider added that he truly loved his costume, and that seeing it was a reassuring moment for him, along with a blast from the past.

“I used to take my kids to a thing we called Daddy Donut Day. So, when the opportunity came up for me to be the Donut, it was like, oh my gosh, this is — God is paying attention,” he gushed. “This is perfect. I couldn’t possibly have a more perfect costume.”

And now, with all said and done, Schneider is proud of himself. If given the opportunity to go back, “I would do it exactly the same way.”

“The Masked Singer” returns for season 11 on Fox on March 6, 2024.

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WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the season 10

Music

This week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, features a conversation with the comedian and podcast star the Kid Mero, dissecting the viral stars of the year, including:

Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.

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Docs

Directed and co-written by Gev Miron, Jacob The Baker is based on co-writer/star Noah Benshea’s bestselling book. Miron, Benshea, and co-writer Wendy Kout begin this fable with a woman fast asleep. The lady (Dara Emery) is woken up by a phone call from her producer. It turns out this reporter of “fluff pieces” is meant to interview Noah Benshea (Benshea) about Jacob the Baker before he puts on a sold-out performance.

The reporter apologizes for being late, but the tardiness does not faze the beloved author. As the interview gets underway, Noah recounts stories of how his fictional character has helped real people. The film cuts away to countries worldwide to follow these people as they search for the connections and meaning they long for. How do these anecdotes relate to the reporter’s hectic life? Is Noah Benshea as calm and wise as he first appears?

Jacob The Baker is basically just one conversation for 76 minutes. It is not exactly the most cinematic of endeavors, so Miron uses the people Jacob has helped to show off his understanding of camera movements, lighting, and when to use wide angles versus close-ups. Not only does the globe-hopping give the story an epic scope, but it also allows for beautiful vistas. In Denmark (I think), the shot of the town square in front of a church is awe-inspiring.

“…Noah recounts stories of how his fictional character has helped real people.”

The script is also quite good, though a few moments are too goofy for their own good. Lines about a mother not being a good parent because she’s going after her dreams, not letting her child dream ring true. But exchanges about whether Jacob and by extension Noah, is religious are too overwrought to work. It is lovely that so many faiths impart the importance of kindness, but throughout the film, Noah/Jacob is only ever heard praying/talking to the monotheistic God of the Bible/Torah. Shiva, Mireuk, Quetzalcoatl, Thoth, Odin, and many others are not mentioned, discussed, or otherwise reflected. This directly contradicts what is said about Noah’s beliefs and how he views humans’ faith.

Still, Jacob The Baker works because of the cast. Benshea exudes warmth and kindness, so audiences never question his authenticity. Emery plays off of her co-star well, balancing his optimism with real-world pragmatism that is cleverly broken down as the plot progresses. These two are excellent together and craft a natural bond.

Jacob The Baker is an inspiring story about how having faith in people and just listening to their needs is enough to make a positive change. Emery and Benshea are brilliant, quickly revealing everything viewers need to know about their respective roles. The story structure and direction are spot-on as well. It’s too bad that the script isn’t as of the world as it thinks it is. But that’s a minor quibble overall.

For more information, visit the official Jacob The Baker site.

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Directed and co-written by Gev Miron, Jacob

Global


On this episode of What happened to…?, Erica Vella revisits the 2011 Vancouver riots that erupted downtown following the Canucks’ loss in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.

On June 15, 2011, riots broke out in Vancouver following Game 7 of the NHL Stanley Cup final downtown.

The Canucks were defeated by the Boston Bruins in a stunning 4-0 win over the Canadian team.

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Ted Field, assignment editor with Global B.C., was working as a reporter at the time and was stationed in Surrey, B.C., but when things began to unravel downtown, he was quickly reassigned and sent downtown to cover the developments.


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“You can see smoke rising, cars being set on fire. There was a parkade near the Hudson’s Bay building where multiple cars were set on fire and you just sort of go, ‘Oh, Lord, what are we going into?’” Field said.

“There’s a large crowd and there was a vehicle that had been damaged.”

The streets were packed with rioters that inflicted damage on several buildings in the downtown core.

A report found that total damage caused by the riot was just over $3.7 million. There were 112 businesses and 122 vehicles damaged, and 52 assaults were reported against civilians, police and emergency personnel.

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The damage was extensive and Field and his colleague were among the people assaulted that day, but he said in the days that followed the riots, people came together.

“The day after the riot, with so much broken glass down there, the story of people grabbing their dust pans and brooms and garbage bags and going down and trying to clean up what happened to the Hudson’s Bay store,” he said.

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“I get a bit of goosebumps thinking about it at the time where they came down and started decorating in and colouring and making it beautiful … and helping.”

On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella speaks with Field about his experience covering the events that night in June 2011 and learns more about the push for change and accountability following the riots.

— with files from Yuliya Talmazan.

&copy 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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Image Credit: CBS

Survivor is looking to complete a hat trick of great seasons next year, following the successes of Survivor 44 and Survivor 45. The combination of intriguing cast members and innovative twists has helped Survivor remain one of the best reality shows on television over 20 years after it premiered. There’s a lot of hype for the next season, which arrives on television in early 2024. After the season 45 finale on December 20, CBS released the trailer for Survivor 46 — and it’s epic!

Here is everything you need to know about Survivor 46.

 When Does Survivor Season 46 Premiere?

Survivor 46 will premiere Wednesday, February 28 on CBS and Paramount+. CBS confirmed this on social media in November 2023, much to the excitement of fans. The season is expected to wrap up in May 2024.

Who Is in the Cast for Survivor Season 46?

The cast for Survivor season 46 has yet to be announced. CBS typically reveals who will be on the new season roughly three weeks before the premiere. Survivor 46 is expected to feature 18 new contestants.

Of course, Jeff Probst will return to host the show. Jeff praised the season 46 cast in an interview with EW after the season 45 finale aired.

“The cast of season 46 is a really unusual collection of smart, funny, eclectic humans,” the Emmy Award-winning host said. “You’re going to love so many of them. You’ll feel it in the opening moments of day one when we first meet everyone. There is a sense of humor and sense of fun that is going to make this group really entertaining to watch.”

How Long Are the Episodes for Survivor Season 46?

Good news, Survivor fans: we’re getting longer episodes again for season 46! For the first time in the franchise’s history, the episodes for Survivor 45 were extended to 90 minutes because of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. The decision paid off as season 46 enjoyed high ratings.

The first two episodes of Survivor 46 will both be two hours long (8-10 pm ET). Then, the rest of the episodes until the finale will be 90 minutes long. Survivor finale episodes are typically three hours long.

Who Won Survivor Season 45?

Dee Valladares was revealed as the winner of Survivor 45 during the finale episode on December 20. She beat Austin Li Coon and Jake O’Kane in a 5-3-0 jury vote. Katurah Topps and Julie Alley were the other players who made it to the finale.

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Tech

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, The Hollywood Reporter may receive an affiliate commission.

Creme de La Mer is one of the most popular brands in the luxury beauty space and for good reason: it actually works. Their signature Crème de la Mer moisturizing cream has long been a favorite of celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Blake Lively, thanks to its ultra-rich formula derived from a mineral-rich kelp and seaweed extract. The actual process involves fermenting the Pacific Ocean-sourced kelp for several months to bring out its efficacy, drawing on the natural properties of the seaweed to lock in moisture, reduce redness and calm stressed-out skin.

But La Mer doesn’t come cheap: it starts at $100 for a half-ounce jar at Nordstrom (where it’s on sale for 15 percent off for a limited time), Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Sephora, and third-party Amazon sellers typically sell it for about $250 and up on the e-commerce giant’s Premium Beauty site.

Fortunately, skincare junkies have found an affordable La Mer dupe with Mario Badescu’s Seaweed Night Cream, which is now on sale for 30 percent off during the holidays, bringing the price down to just $15. The one-ounce jar is already more than 75 percent cheaper than the luxury French beauty brand’s smallest moisturizer size, so you’re getting an even better deal during the sale. The one ounce jar makes a great stocking stuffer too!

Amazon

Badescu is best known for his namesake line of skincare products, which he first developed in Vienna before opening a lab in New York in 1966. After launching in the U.S., Badescu famously offered facials out of his Manhattan apartment, and customized products for his clients.

Now, Badescu’s expertise is available in an entire line of products that includes everything from toners and exfoliants and serums and lip care, and stars including Naomi Campbell, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kylie Jenner, Bella Hadid, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and others have sworn by his bestselling products.

Related: The Best Winter Moisturizers for Every Skin Type and Budget

The Mario Badescu Seaweed Night Cream is also one of the best-reviewed La Mer alternatives online, with a 4.5-star rating (out of five) on Amazon (one of its official selling partners). Reviewers praise the cream for being “extra moisturizing,” while another says the seaweed-infused cream was “almost miraculous in helping my skin recover” from the dry winter air.

Using a similar seaweed ingredient as the pricey La Mer moisturizer, Badescu’s Seaweed Cream delivers many of the same results for just $22, but the Amazon Black Friday sale knocks about $7 off that already affordable price. In addition to being a great moisturizer, the cream helps to calm redness, leaving skin feeling soft and supple. The oil-free formula also helps to plump and firm the skin with the addition of ingredients like hyaluronic acid and collagen.

Though it’s designed as a night cream, we’ve used Mario Badescu’s Seaweed Cream as a daily — or looked — better. While La Mer can be quite heavy and greasy sometimes, this affordable “dupe” glides on super easily and absorbs quickly into the skin. At just $15 right now and available with free Prime shipping, it’s easy to pick up to add to your skincare routine.

Find it here on Amazon.com.

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Video

The next time you sit down to watch YouTube on your TV, you might notice fewer ads breaking up the video you’re watching. That’s because YouTube is making ads on TVs appear less frequently, but in exchange, you’ll have to sit through longer commercials.

YouTube started testing longer but less frequent ad breaks in September, and now they’re launching across all TVs. The change means you’ll see an updated countdown timer in the bottom-right corner of your screen that will now show how long you have left until the entire ad break ends or when you can skip.

YouTube previously displayed how many ads were included in the break in the top-left corner of your screen, along with a countdown timer for each individual ad. Along with the new ad frequency, YouTube is expanding ads on Shorts to TVs. Just like on mobile and the web, you’ll now see ads in between Shorts that you can skip through using your remote.

While I can’t say I’m too happy that I’ll get ads in between Shorts on TVs, I am kind of glad about the change to ad breaks on regular videos, as I hopefully won’t get as many small interruptions while I’m watching two-hourlong deep dives. YouTube has had a major focus on ads and getting people to watch them this year. The company added unskippable 30-second ads to its TV app and has even gone so far as to put restrictions on ad blockers.

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Entertaintment

Kim Kardashian, though often in the limelight and quite extravagant, showcases an entirely different side – that of a wonderful and caring mother. Whenever glimpsed with her children or sharing their moments on social media, her profound love for her kids is crystal clear. Perhaps stemming from her close-knit family background and her mother, Kris Jenner’s dedication to her five daughters. Despite juggling the challenges of single parenting and enduring constant criticisms, the reality star did not let up on her role as a supermom.

She has been through it all, from making tough business decisions to handling sibling jealousy between North West and Saint West, and even arranging extravagant outings to fulfill their desires. But with the presence of Bianca Censori in the mix and the kids getting chummy with her, it begs the question. Should the SKIMS owner be concerned? Where do Kanye West‘s kids really belong?

Blended families with Censori taking charge

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When the news hit the scene about Ye’s hush-hush nuptials to Censori, it felt like a sudden twist in the plot. Things took a turn for the right when Ye orchestrated a meet-up between Censori and North West during a casual Malibu rendezvous. Since then, life’s been a whirlwind for Ye and his new wife, globetrotting, stirring up controversies, but never leaving his kids in the rearview mirror. Censori effortlessly embraced the role, treating Ye’s little ones as her own. From cradling Chicago in her arms to bonding with North at Disneyland, Censori seemed to seamlessly weave herself into their family tapestry.

The Miami ‘Vultures’ rave added fuel to the fire of speculations surrounding the SKIMS owner’s involvement, with whispers of her landing in her private jet with the kids. Yet, it was the Yeezy architect herself who took the reins, guiding the kids to North’s debut with her father. These shared moments were snapshots that painted a vibrant picture of how remarkably Ye’s children bonded with Censori, creating an unexpected yet heartwarming chapter in their evolving family narrative.

North West’s heartstrings: In the shadow of Ye’s love

At an age when most kids are taking baby steps, North is already taking a giant leap into the limelight, flaunting her debut, striking poses in photoshoots, and even dishing out her first solo interview. She is like a chip off the old block, aiming to follow in her parents’ entrepreneurial footsteps. Despite the guiding hand of Kardashian, North seems to have a soft spot for her father. During her interview with i-D magazine, she made it clear that while her talents are her own, she draws inspiration from her dad, Ye.

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Her recent stint on ‘Vultures’ only amplified this sentiment. Kardashian even mentioned in The Kardashians episode that North prefers residing with her father. Perhaps, because he embodies a sense of normalcy without all the security, of living in a simple apartment. The SKNN owner attempted to bond by indulging in everyday activities to bridge this gap. Moreover, she took strolls and cooking sessions with North. However, North’s fondness for her father paints a different tale.

Bianca Censori and her bond with Ye’s kids

During her seemingly subdued phase on Censori, Kardashian appeared to be reserved in her actions. But, Bianca Censori was the one taking the spotlight. Through her frequent, affectionate outings with Ye’s children and attentive care for them, discussions erupted online about Censori’s nurturing role with the kids. From ensuring their safety in bustling crowds to strolling hand in hand to various destinations, her actions exhibited ‘motherly care.’ Despite the wild antics of the Ye and Censori duo, it was evident that Censori handled the kids with adeptness.

At one point, Censori even raised concerns about Kardashian’s parenting decisions. When the reality star candidly mentioned that Ye’s apartment lacked security, it raised worries about the children’s safety. This gesture highlighted Censori’s vigilant and caring maternal instincts toward the kids. The owner of SKNN faced constant scrutiny for her actions, like creating TikTok videos with North. Amidst all of this, the aura of Censori swooped in, showcasing love in her honor through her charming gestures.

Should Kim Kardashian be concerned?

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The dynamics surrounding Ye’s children and their belongingness amid Censori’s presence seem to provoke curiosity and contemplation. The blurred lines between familial belongingness and the nurturing role of Censori stir a perplexing question: where do the kids truly find their place? Kardashian, the super mom, has been a stalwart figure in their lives. But, the seamless integration and affectionate bond between Censori and the children spark discussions about a potential shift in parental influence.

via Imago

The affectionate moments shared between Censori and Ye’s kids, especially the daughters, have instigated pondering about their rightful place. However, it is essential to acknowledge that Kardashian consistently embodies the role of a devoted mother to her children. Whether it’s bringing North along wherever she goes or actively participating as a ‘basketball mom’ for Saint, her commitment to her kids is undeniable. The fact that the children ultimately reside with the reality star further emphasizes the positive influence she exerts on them.

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What are your thoughts on this? Do you think Kim Kardashian needs to be concerned about this? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Movies

Neha Sharma’s latest photos.

Neha Sharma set temperatures rising with her latest photo dump. Watch it here.

Actress Neha Sharma is known for often raising the temperature on Instagram with her gorgeous photos. The actress doesn’t shy away from flaunting her curves in videos and photos on social media. In a new photo dump, she took things a notch higher with her sultry selfies in a golden halter top.

She took to Instagram and wrote, “Weekend gone by… .” The actress looked beautiful in a shimmery golden halter top as she smiled at the camera. Her wavy hair framed her face perfectly and she opted for a glossy lip look.

Neha turned 36 on November 21. She rang in her birthday with her sister, actress Aisha Sharma in Dubai. Aisha penned an emotional note for her sister. “Birthday posts are the kind of posts people read on social and try to decipher a bond. A bond between partners, sisters, friends whatever it might be. But an Instagram post can never truly help anyone understand what the bond really is, at least not when it comes to my sister and I. It should be done nonetheless, so here it is,” Aisha began her post.

“You cannot really know Neha, unless you really know Neha. She is as nurturing, empathetic, sensitive as it gets and someone who knows how to really love and in my opinion the quality of how one loves is the greatest quality one can have. Neha loves and nurtures like no one else. A person with a great indomitable spirit and will. Happy Birthday Neha,” she added.

Neha Sharma has appeared in films such as Crook, Tum Bin, Yamla Pagla Deewana 2, Youngistaan, Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum, and Tanhaji among others. She was last seen in Jogira Sara Ra Ra alongside Nawazuddin Siddiqui. The film also featured Sanjay Mishra and Mahaakshay Chakraborty in key roles. Neha’s younger sister Aisha Sharma is also an actress.

Kashvi Raj Singh

Kashvi Raj Singh is a News Trainee at News18. She extensively covers Bollywood, Hollywood and television. She not only keeps an eye out for interestin…Read More

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Neha Sharma's latest photos.Neha Sharma set temperatures

MCU

Disney officially made its decision to fire the leading actor in Marvel Studios’ Avengers 5.

Although Jonathan Majors made headlines for the MCU by portraying Kang the Conqueror and his Variants in both seasons of Loki and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, he spent most of 2023 entangled in legal trouble.

In March 2023, Majors was arrested in New York City after being accused of domestic abuse against his then-girlfriend after police found her with bruises, a fractured finger, and a laceration behind her ear.

Since then, fans have been anxiously waiting for the results of his trial while Majors himself vehemently denied the allegations, leaving his future in the MCU and the entire movie industry in serious jeopardy.

Disney Fires Avengers 5 Star

Marvel

Deadline reported Disney officially fired Jonathan Majors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe ahead of his appearance in 2026’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.

Avengers 5 is rumored to feature Kang the Conqueror as the leading character, although Majors will no longer be the actor to portray the supervillain.

This comes on the heels of his trial for domestic abuse, in which he was found guilty of reckless assault and harassment by a six-person jury in New York City on December 18.

No decision has been made yet on whether his role as Kang the Conqueror will be recast or whether the Marvel Studios team will go back to the drawing board to work out a new story without Kang as the Multiverse Saga’s leading villain.

Where Do Disney & Marvel Go From Here?

With Jonathan Majors now officially out of the MCU, Marvel Studios has a couple of huge questions to ask regarding where to go next, especially considering that Kang was set to play a massive role across the entire Multiverse Saga.

The simplest choice would be to recast the role with a new actor, which has happened to various other characters across the MCU. The most notable cases include Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk and Terrence leaving his role as War Machine in favor of Don Cheadle.

Particularly since Kang is a character who has countless Variants across space and time, it wouldn’t be difficult to comprehend from a story perspective if the character had a different face moving forward.

The more difficult move would be to write Kang out of the MCU altogether and pivot to an entirely new villain for the Multiverse Saga, which would be quite a challenge after Kang played such huge roles in multiple recent projects.

Reports noted that Marvel previously changed its plans for the Multiverse Saga to make it more Kang-centric after being wowed by Majors, although it’s unclear whether the new plan is too far in motion to change now.

While this is an admittedly difficult situation for Marvel Studios and Disney, the recent delays to the MCU’s entire slate should at least help give the team some time to ideate where the story should now go without Majors.

Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is currently set to debut in theaters on May 1, 2026.

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DCU

Summary

  • Alan Ritchson, known for his portrayal of Jack Reacher, expressed his interest in playing Batman and believes he has what it takes to don the cape and cowl.
  • Ritchson has a background in DC Comics adaptations, having played Aquaman and Hawk in previous series.
  • While the main DC Universe has not yet revealed who will play the new Batman, many believe Ritchson has the size and charisma to make a compelling Dark Knight.


Reacher star Alan Ritchson wants to be Batman. During a recent interview with Fortress of Solitude, the actor, who has received praise for his portrayal of the behemoth avenger Jack Reacher in the Prime Video series, responded to rumors that he is being eyed as the latest iteration of The Dark Knight for James Gunn’s DCU. And it sounds like Ritchson is very much on board with donning the cape and cowl…

“With all the rumors flying that I’m supposed to be playing Batman, how can I knock Batman? I would love to play Batman.”

Ritchson has an extensive background in the world of DC Comics adaptations. The actor played Arthur Curry, aka Aquaman in several episodes of The WB and The CW series, Smallville, alongside Tom Welling’s Clark Kent, as well as playing Hank Hall, aka Hawk in the HBO Max series Titans. So, taking on the role of Batman would no doubt come naturally.

The DCU will bring a new Batman to screens alongside Robert Pattinson’s version in The Batman franchise. While the latter movie is part of the DC “Elseworlds” series, a new Batman will lead The Brave and the Bold as part of the DCU headed by James Gunn and Peter Safran.

At present, it has not been revealed who will play this latest version of The Caped Crusader in the main DCU, but no doubt many will agree that Ritchson has both the sheer size and the charisma to make a compelling Dark Knight.

The DCU is set to begin with Superman: Legacy on July 11, 2025, with whoever is chosen to play Batman likely to someday share the screen with David Corenswet’s Man of Steel. The Brave and the Bold is set to be directed by The Flash and It filmmaker Andy Muschietti.

RELATED: James Gunn’s The Brave and the Bold Batman Casting Update Reveals Current Script Status


Reacher Season 2 Has Been Praised by Critics

For now, Ritchson is plenty busy cleaning up crime as Jack Reacher in the second season of the Prime Video series, Reacher. Season two picks up with the titular character who, after members of his old military unit start turning up dead, has just one thing on his mind: revenge.

The reviews for Reacher season two have also now emerged, with many heaping praise on Ritchson’s continued success in the lead role. According to Diego Peralta of Discussing Film, Reacher once again boasts a “charismatic” lead in Ritchson.

“With a charismatic performance from Alan Ritchson and a story that slowly unfolds itself while knowing how to retain the audience’s attention, Reacher Season 2 continues to prove why Lee Child’s work translates so well into television. The Jack Reacher book series is still in good hands at Amazon Prime Video, with an admirable collection of guest stars and engaging action sequences to boast about in these latest episodes. Jack Reacher is back, and nothing will stop him from getting what he wants.”

Empire’s Amon Warmann, meanwhile, awards Reacher season two a 4/5 and already can’t wait for season three, which has already been greenlit.

“A brawnier, funnier, and more potently entertaining season than its inaugural outing. No wonder Season 3 has already been greenlit.”

Lastly, Collider’s Nate Richard declares Reacher to be far more than just “guilty pleasure” television.

“It’s not even a guilty pleasure; it’s just good television. Who cares if it doesn’t win any Emmys? Not many other shows on streaming feature Alan Ritchson punching a guy through a car window while barely breaking a sweat. For the many who have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of Reacher Season 2, fear not, because the series’ return more than delivers.”

The first three episodes of Reacher season two are now available to stream on Prime Video.

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Comics

Over the weekend, Black Desert Online developer Pearl Abyss announced a spectrum of things to be happy about this holiday season. From a brand-new class, “Scholar”, to the expansion of their sequel, Land of the Morning Light: Seoul, to a host of improvements that the community has been looking for.

Brand New Class: The Scholar

The Scholar is an alchemist and physicist who controls gravity and wields twin hammers. The Scholar has set out into the sprawling continent of Black Desert to find a cure for the plague that’s ravaging the land. In that search, she’s learned to manipulate gravity, using it to protect herself and unleash a destructive force on any who might stand in her way.

Unlike most Black Desert classes, Scholar gains access to a second set of skills through “ascension” rather than awakening. Once unlocked, she can wield the Sledgehammer, a two-handed weapon combining two hammers. Using this weapon, the Scholar can manipulate gravity to wield weapons far beyond her normal ability and alter enemy gravity, tilting fights to her advantage. Perhaps even literally.

But there’s more to life than battles and powers that break the laws of physics. There’s also cosmetics. The Magnum Opus will be the exclusive costume for the Scholar, inspired by the costumes of Renaissance scholars. The eye and light symbols that embellish this outfit represent the brilliance of a human being who has stepped into the realm of the divine. 

The Scholar will make her grand debut on December 19.

New Expansion Land of the Morning Light: Seoul Coming in 2024

The Land of the Morning Light made its debut last year, to community acclaim. And now, the Land of Morning Light will be expanding to include a sequel set in medieval Seoul, where one can explore culturally iconic real-life places originating from the Joseon Dynasty, such as Gyeongbokgung Palace, Hanyang Yukjo Street, and Gyeonghoeru Pavilion.

There will be a grand total of eight new bosses in Land of the Morning Light: Seoul, which are inspired by Korean folklore and myth. Unlike the original Black Shrine content focused on a single player fighting a single boss, these new bosses will let players group up for the fight.

But beyond a new story, a new area to explore, and brand-new bosses, we’ll also be getting a new swordsman class with the expansion unique to the territory.

This new class is a descendant of Unsa and will wield a sword and a “Gombangdae”, a traditional Korean smoking pipe. We’ve been promised an action-rich, immersive, and poignant storyline that goes along with this class, but the firm details have yet to be revealed.

Roadmap for 2024

Community feedback has been key for Pearl Abyss. In 2024, we can expect to see a series of adjustments and improvements meant to improve existing gameplay and quality of life experiences for both the hardened veterans and new players.

To simplify traveling, the Magnus system will be improved to avoid multiple loading screens, and instant teleportation to Black Shrine and Atoraxxion content will be supported. To help navigate Black Desert’s terrain more efficiently, ping checks will be introduced in the desert and ocean with a compass, as well as a Dream horse for all new Adventurers.

Existing tiers and item types, such as Black Stones, products from farming, seeds, crystals, mount equipment, and Reform Stones, will be consolidated and/or removed to reduce their complexity. Finally, players will be free from the clutter.

About the Author

Daphne Fama

A Staff Writer at Prima Games since 2022, Daphne Fama spends an inordinate amount playing games of all stripes but has a soft spot for horror, FPS, and RPGs. When she’s not gaming, she’s an author and member of the Horror Writers Association with a debut novel coming out in 2025. In a previous life, she was an attorney but found she preferred fiction to contracts and forms

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Over the weekend, Black Desert Online developer

Festivals

All interpersonal relationships are complicated. But there’s just something classically (even banally) fraught in the complex negotiation of emotion between Male and Female, a knotty 50-foot Route 66 twine ball full of interwoven power dynamics, sexual dysfunction and societal expectation. The heat fractals thrown off by this ceaseless XX/XY friction have propelled 10,000 of human civilization and countless works of art and storytelling—from Bible stories to sexy Netflix originals like Fair Play and May December. Or, for that matter, the three projects in this month’s Fiscal Spotlight.

Each of these three short narrative films center female protagonists, unmoored in the midst of an existential crisis brought on by a male counterpart. In two of the films, the male in question is a romantic foil—or at least perceived to be. The third explores the dynamic between student and educator, placing its dynamic in the context of artistic potential and the pursuit of superhuman perfection. A greater perspective on each of our protagonists’ situations is eventually presented, in a graveyard, at a party, and on stage.

As always, these films are being supported by Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program, enabling filmmakers to solicit tax-deductible donations and organizational grants in partnership with Film Independent. Learn how below:

December’s featured projects are The Other Side, little white lies and For Mr. Johnson. Read on to learn more about each film and how to support them…

 

THE OTHER SIDE

Project type: Fiction Short

Project status: Production

Writer/Actress: Megan Penn

Director/Writer: Paige Stark

Producer: Kira Vykhodtseva

About the project: A chance meeting with an older woman in a cemetery changes the trajectory of a young woman’s life, leading her on a humorous and poignant journey of self-discovery. The Other Side follows Scarlett, a young woman adrift in modern-day Los Angeles. Her mornings begin with a repetitive routine of visiting Hollywood Forever Cemetery, capturing moments through her camera lens. At the cemetery, Scarlett crosses paths with Clementine, an elderly woman devoted to a routine visit to her husband’s grave, igniting an unexpected bond. Their conversations prompt Scarlett to reevaluate her struggles with love, pain and the uncertainties of life. Their discussions prompt Scarlett to confront her past, reassess her feelings and realize her struggle isn’t unique to her generation—or even herself. The narrative captures Scarlett’s gradual transformation from emotional fragility to a newfound sense of self-assuredness. She learns that life’s uncertainties don’t define her; her vulnerability doesn’t equate to weakness. The Other Side delves into the complexities of relationships, nostalgia for a bygone era and the quest for personal growth. Through the unlikely friendship between Scarlett and Clementine, the film paints a compelling picture of resilience and the timeless pursuit of inner strength.

Meet the filmmaker: To learn more about The Other Side including how to support the project, click here. Writer Megan Penn is a New York born and bred actress, Method trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in a Conservatory program, at the Actors Studio and with Larry Moss. Her screen work has won several awards and accolades, including best acting awards at both the Seattle Film Festival and Nót Film Fest. Director Paige Stark is a filmmaker and musician born and raised in Southern California. Her work has appeared in Spin Magazine, Nylon, Flaunt, Fader, Interview Magazine and Nowness, among other publications.

 

LITTLE WHITE LIES

Project type: Fiction Short

Project status: Production

Co-Writer/Director: Erin Brown Thomas

Co-Writer/Lead: Ciara Krohne

Producers: Olivia Haller, Elle Shaw, Beth Napoli

About the project: little white lies takes you into the world of young 20-somethings of varying levels of workplace woes, many of them working in the entertainment industry. The movie focuses on a musician named Sophia. And though she’s moved to the city with creative aspirations, at this particular party what she is really intent on is asking her crush Jacob to be her plus one at her sister’s wedding. Jacob seems to like her, but he’s a little hot and cold. And over the course of the party, Sophia processes this with anyone who will listen. Of course, they’re all caught up in their own dilemmas, which only makes Sophia seem more desperate. Eventually, after some flashy dialogue and a literal flash mob, there’s a flashback and the big twist is revealed. A month ago, Jacob took advantage of Sophia. This revelation paints all their interaction in a brand new light and reveals the lie Sophia’s been telling herself: “If I can just make him my boyfriend, then it wasn’t really rape. And I won’t be a victim.” By positioning Sophia’s sexual assault against the backdrop of a party full of exploited dreamers, little white lies offers this commentary: Just because we get the job, the exposure, or the promotion—it doesn’t undo the abuse. The title little white lies refers to the question that every character answers: “What is the lie that you believe that allows you to continue being exploited?”

Meet the filmmaker: To learn more about little white lies including how to support the project, click here. Erin Brown Thomas’s films have taken home trophies from Academy Award-Qualifying events such as Hollyshorts and Cinequest. Other notable selections include AMPAV’s Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at Cannes Film Festival, Palm Springs ShortFest, Austin Film Festival and SCAD. Erin was a finalist for Shondaland’s directing mentorship. She is an Academy Nichol Semifinalist for her ensemble traumady The Body of Chris. Co-writer and lead actor Ciarra Khrone has been acting in film and theatre for over 10 years. In film she can be seen in the Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem for Nickelodeon, A24’s Waves and Netflix’s Labyu with an Accent.

 

FOR MR. JOHNSON

Project type: Fiction Short

Project status: Development

Writer/Director: Khana Tillman

Producers: Coleman Weimer, Harlow Brooks, Tola Omilana

About the project: In pursuit of a perfect showcase monologue, an insecure 17-year-old risks her mental and emotional wellbeing to win the approval of her demanding, but respected, drama teacher. Marie, a sheltered but ambitious 17-year-old girl goes to a performing arts school where everyone has big dreams and big personalities. The hallways hum with monologues, sonatas and gossip. In Marie’s acting class, it feels like your world can change with one perfect monologue. And it can with showcase auditions fast approaching. Her best friend Joanna is already the prized pig of the grade and Marie wants to finally wow the masses. In the classroom, esteemed drama teacher Mr. Johnson is God to his dutiful disciples. Seeking a new protege to mold, Mr. Johnson agrees to help perfect Marie’s showcase audition. Marie resolves to do everything Mr. Johnson asks of her, though his “exercises” push her to her psychological limit. Outside of these classroom walls, will she lose herself in pursuit of success?

Meet the filmmaker: To learn more about For Mr. Johnson including how to support the project, click here. A Southern California native, filmmaker Khana Tillman is an MFA candidate at USC for Film Production. She is focused on telling female-centric, coming of age stories which range in genre and time period. In 2018 she graduated with a BA in Theater and a minor in History from UCLA. Since then, she’s worked as a director and producers’ assistant for the upcoming A24/Film 4 Love Lies Bleeding, a production assistant for Showtime’s L-Word: Generation Q, and as an intern at the Oscar award-winning documentary company Tremolo Productions.

 

Learn more about Fiscal Sponsorship, including its benefits and eligibility requirements, by visiting our website. Check out our Sponsored Projects page to see the projects that are currently being supported.

Celebrating 30 years, Film Independent Artist Development promotes unique independent voices by helping filmmakers create and advance new work. Become a Member of Film Independent today. Support us with a donation here.

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(Header: crowdfunding video for little white lies)

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