Sylvester Stallone has a lot to be proud of over the course of his career, as well as some major regrets — but ultimately, the actor says he has learned some profound lessons from his children that shaped him as an actor and as a human being.
Over the weekend, Stallone walked the carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of the new documentary, Sly — which details his personal and professional life — and he spoke with ET’s Rachel Smith about the raw and candid examination of his career seen in the film, helmed by documentarian Thom Zimny.
“We spent a couple years together and I just let my guard down,” Stallone said of working with Zimny. “I was speaking, quite frankly, like if you only have a limited amount of time on Earth, and you wanted to say things, and you didn’t really guard yourself, and just let it go.”
The film deals with Stallone’s experiences with an abusive father and his late son Sage and paints a fuller portrait of the man behind the massive Rocky franchises.
“I’ve seen a lot of documentaries and most of them talk about your body of work, and this one here talks about why you are the way you are,” Stallone said. “Like, who molded you, from what environment, and this is what molds everyone.”
“We don’t ever escape our childhood and certain things are profound, they mark you, and they mold you in the way you perceive life,” he said. “And that’s what this is about.”
Stallone is the father of five children, including sons Sage — who died in 2012 at age 47 — and Seargeoh, from his first marriage to Sasha Czack. He also shares three daughters — Sophia, 27, Sistine, 25, and Scarlet, 21 — with wife Jennifer Flavin.
According to Stallone, his children led to him coming to his biggest realization, which is that he wasted too much time on other things before really prioritizing his family.
“Every actor feels the time crushing in on them, and eventually it’ll all go away, it’s gonna dissipate. No one remains on top forever. There’s a valley,” he said. “So you fight so hard to keep your career going and get that finite script that’s gonna define your career — but you do it at a great cost. And usually your family is the one that suffers this kind of forced abandonment.”
“Then, as your career begins to weigh in, you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve lost the real movie!’ Which is the movie of your life, and these are the characters that play the most profound roles in your life,” he added.
The film also raised the question of Stallone’s legacy, and how he serves as a guardian to it as his career goes on. However, Stallone said that his view on his own legacy has changed dramatically over the course of his life.
“It’s really easy to say, ‘Never give up.’ [But] that’s hard to do,” Stallone said, advising other actors to “learn to deal with failure.”
“That’s the thing! Because there’s always the chance, always, for the comeback,” he added. “So my legacy is all about the comeback.”
It also seems to be about building bridges and forging friendships. One element of Sly that plays a big role — and has played a role in Stallone’s career in many ways — was his professional rivalry and occasional animosity with now-friend Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the early days, during the height of their fame, both stars were certified action heroes and would often be in the running for the same roles, which only served to intensify their quasi-feud.
According to Stallone, Schwarzenegger used to be “the most competitive” — but with time, things changed.
“Now I understand the fella,” Stallone said with a laugh.
Stallone and Schwarzenegger have now become close friends, and have walked similar paths when it comes to a career resurgence. Both Stallone and Schwarzenegger are both starring in TV shows — Tulsa King and FUBAR respectively — and both are the subject of retrospective documentaries on N Netflix.
Fans can see more about Stallone’s rivalry — as well as how his family and his past shaped his perspective and his legacy when Sly premieres Nov. 13 on Netflix.
It took guts to re-air any part of Yellowstone on CBS.
Yellowstone Season 1 Episode 1 was not the sanitized Westerns of the 1950s and 1960s. This series tells it like it is, and the coarse language is an important part of the Western’s character. So is the violence.
Nothing in this series is gratuitous, but it is graphic — and originally made for cable, where there are looser standards about what can and cannot be said.
The introduction to the Duttons felt more like a movie than a television series. The cinematography was breathtaking, but I was struck by the symbolism of the opening scene and how well it foreshadowed Lee’s death.
It’s not fair, this life. I wish I could give you better. The best I can offer you is peace.
John Dutton
Our introduction to John Dutton is of a wounded man who must put a horse that’s been faithful to him out of its misery, wishing desperately he could give it something other than the peace associated with death.
In the hands of lesser creators, this might have come off as hokey or overly sentimental, but it worked perfectly here.
This opening also warned viewers of what was in store. This first scene was full of both violence and heartbreak, set against the gorgeous backdrop of rural Montana. It’s almost ironic how often such beautiful land is soaked with blood — of both the Duttons and their enemies.
Although there were some soap opera elements at play, the series didn’t rely on outdated tropes and, in some cases, turned them on their head, creating a modern, compelling story of life in the West.
Notably, the conflict between the Duttons and the people living on the reservation didn’t provide any clear sense of right and wrong.
Thomas Rainwater wanted to stand up for his people, but other members of his tribe didn’t necessarily agree with his methods. The Duttons were as determined to hold onto the land their ancestors had stolen from the Indians as Rainwater was to make a scene, and the conflict led to tragic losses on both sides.
Soft-spoken Kayce’s dilemma was my favorite part of this opening episode. A Dutton by birth, he was married to an Indian woman, and that put him squarely in the middle of this conflict.
Felix made it clear that Kayce would never be one of them even though he accepted his marriage to Monica, and Kayce’s response demonstrated that even though he supported the Indians, he couldn’t understand their painful history.
Kaycee: This is my home. If someone doesn’t want me here, let them make me leave. Felix: That’s a silly thing to say, considering you are standing on a reservation.
And, of course, Kayce ended up killing Monica’s brother after Monica’s brother shot Lee. His refusal to explain what had happened will create a wedge between him and Monica, and the shot of his Yellowstone brand on his chest after she walked away was easily one of the most powerful of this pilot episode.
The pilot did a masterful job of introducing each of the main characters and the roles they play within the story.
Jamie is the lawyer who desperately wants the approval of his father that he’ll never get, Kayce is the prodigal son who left to forge his own path, and Beth is the closest thing John has to a right-hand man. And since Lee was introduced far after the others, it was somewhat unsurprising that he died.
Beth has probably had a lifetime of people underestimating her because she’s female and she doesn’t play around. She’ll use sex appeal and sex itself to control the men around her, and she’ll grind anyone into the ground who dares cross her.
I loved the way she stood up to those men at the business meeting. They weren’t expecting that, which made the way she forced them to sell to her all the sweeter.
The Duttons’ battle to stop developers from building condos on their land and ruining their access to the water is so ironic in the face of the ongoing conflict with the Indians.
The developers are trying to do to them what their ancestors did to Thomas Rainwater’s ancestors. Rainwater’s reaction to this will be interesting once news gets out.
Although there is a lot of action, some of it graphic (did anyone else turn away when Rip branded Jimmy?), the pilot also devoted plenty of time to developing the main characters and their conflicts.
Jamie and John seemed to get along well, but by the end of the episode, it was clear that John was only using his son for his legal expertise, while Jamie was so desperate for approval he’d take whatever crumbs he could get.
It was especially telling that after Lee’s funeral, John asked both Jamie and Beth for their help but only asked Beth to stay and fight.
John seems to treat Jamie like an employee rather than a son, asking him for his next legal steps but never sharing anything personal. John’s snubbing of Jamie spoke volumes as he ignored Jamie’s declaration, telling the developers ‘no’ even though he disagreed with John’s decision.
The scene at the fishing hole between the brothers offered a brief respite from the violence and drama elsewhere but also spoke to John’s controlling nature and the price Kayce paid for marrying an Indian woman and living on the reservation with his family.
His brothers had no qualms about speaking disparagingly about the reservation in front of Tate, who considers himself an Indian. And Kayce had been gone for years, so clearly there’s a backstory there itching to be explored.
The pilot ended on a cliffhanger, though a quiet one. The war between the Duttons and Rainwater’s people has only begun, and it’s anyone’s guess what John will do next.
Your turn, Yellowstone fanatics! Whether this is the first, second, or third time you’ve experienced the pilot, we want to know what you think.
Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know.
Cooper spoke with People and admitted that the firing of network head Jeff Zucker, the dismissal of pundit Chris Cuomo, the resignation of news leader Chris Licht, the shuttering of the short-lived CNN+, and the departure of staffers like host Don Lemon created a situation where “morale was hurt by all the drama, and that’s unfortunate. But I think things feel like they are back on track.”
Cooper has been with the news and opinion network for two decades. He currently hosts “Anderson Cooper 360.”
CNN has now installed Mark Thompson as president beginning Oct. 9, and Cooper is encouraged by the new leadership.
“He sounds great,” said Cooper.
Mostly, he is grateful that things are not focused on the latest upheaval.
“It’s never great to be in a place where you read the paper in the morning and there are stories about where you’re working,” said Cooper.
However, as seen in videos shared to social media by concertgoers in attendance, she appeared to imply that she and longtime boyfriend Rich Paul may have taken things to the next level in secret.
When one fan asked if she could marry Adele, the songstress joked, “You can’t marry me, I’m straight, my love. And my husband’s here tonight. He’s here.”
Paul has frequently attended Adele’s shows while she’s been performing in Sin City — and the songstress memorably serenaded him in the past, to the delight of the audience.
That being said, a random remark about Paul being her husband while rebuffing a random fan’s declaration of love is far from any official confirmation that the pair had secretly gotten married. So, for now at least, it seems fans will just have to continue to speculate.
That being said, Adele has routinely shown how important and serious her relationship with Paul is for her.
“I really want to be a mom again soon, so every time I see a name I like, I write it down in my phone,” Adele revealed to the fan. The singer already shares 10-year-old son Angelo with her ex-husband, Simon Konecki.
The fan notes that she is trying to decide between the names Parker or Spencer for her little girl, and Adele responds, “I can’t say Parker because Rich likes that name,” and instead suggests Spencer — implying that she and Paul have discussed the possibility of having kids together in the future.
Adele is currently performing at her Las Vegas residency show, Weekends With Adele, at Caesar’s Palace.
Back in August 2022, Adele spoke to Elle about the possibility of expanding her family, saying she “definitely” wanted to have more children in the future.
“I’m a homemaker and I’m a matriarch, and a stable life helps me with my music,” Adele said at the time. “But right now, all I got in my brain is Vegas… I wanna f**king nail it.”
A dad and daughter are facing life in prison for murder and incest after the bodies of three newborn babies were found rotting in the basement of their house.
Depraved Piotr Gierasik, 54, and Paulina Gierasik, 20, were arrested after the babies’ remains were discovered in shallow graves and wrapped in plastic bags at the property in the village of Czerniki, in northern Poland.
The first two babies were found on Friday but further investigations revealed a third body in an ‘advanced state of decomposition’ on Saturday.
Mariusz Duszyński from the District Prosecutor’s Office in Gdańsk said: ‘The woman has been charged with two counts of murder and a charge of having an incestuous relationship with her father.
‘The man was charged with three counts of murder, a charge of incest with his 20-year-old daughter, and a charge of having incestuous relations with another daughter.’
Paulina Gierasik, 20 (pictured), was arrested along with her father Piotr after the babies’ remains were discovered in shallow graves and wrapped in plastic bags at the property in the village of Czerniki
The house where the remains of three newborns were found is seen in this general view
Police work at the site where the bodies of three newborns were discovered in the basement of a house in Czerniki, municipality of Stara Kiszewa in Kashubia, northern Poland, 16 September 2023
According to prosecutors, two of the murdered children came from his relationship with the 20-year-old who they say was in a consensual relationship with her father.
The third baby was from a relationship he had with another daughter after forcing her into sex.
The prosecutors added that they suspected him of killing the third baby.
The grim discoveries came after police received a tip-off from social services.
Moving to the village around 15 years ago, Piotr was left to bring up his children after his wife died.
One local told the Super Express newspaper: ‘The father was left alone with the children.
There are a lot of them, ten or twelve, the oldest ones have already left.
‘Piotr made a good impression. The yard is neglected, but he installed new windows in the house.
‘There was no sign of him drinking. He took the kids for walks or to the forest to pick mushrooms.
‘Just ordinary people. Who would have thought that such abominations existed in their home.’
But colleagues at a cake shop where Paulina worked in the neighbouring village of Stara Kiszewa became suspicious that she was pregnant after she started to wear large, loose-fitting clothes.
She then took three weeks off work but returned a week later.
Police are continuing to search the property to see if any more bodies are hidden in the house
Police work at the site where the bodies of three newborns were discovered in the basement of a house in Czerniki, municipality of Stara Kiszewa in Kashubia, northern Poland
One fellow shop worker said: ‘We all guessed she was pregnant, I think she had tied belts around herself like a sort of corset.
‘When she returned early from her holiday the change was visible. She was much thinner, weaker, and constantly tired.
‘When we asked about the child, she feigned surprise and denied it.’
Another local told Fakt newspaper: ‘They lived like a couple. She called him Piotr, by his first name. They walked around hand in hand.
‘A few months ago, he shaved her head so that other boys wouldn’t look at her.
‘She looked up to him as if he were God.’
One of Paulina’s work colleagues is reported to have alerted social services after seeing a ‘disturbing’ text message the 20-year-old had sent to her father.
Prosecutors are now waiting for an autopsy to determine how the babies died.
Meanwhile, police are continuing to search the property to see if any more bodies are hidden in the house.
The casino and hotel chain MGM Resorts International said on Monday that a “cybersecurity issue” was affecting some of its online systems, causing disruptions for customers, particularly in Las Vegas, where cybersecurity experts said the company was likely the victim of a pervasive cyberattack.
MGM Resorts did not share specifics on the disruptions or disclose when the issue began or when it was detected, but said that law enforcement had been notified. In a statement, the company said that it had taken “prompt action to protect our systems and data, including shutting down certain systems.”
“Our investigation is ongoing, and we are working diligently to determine the nature and scope of the matter,” MGM Resorts posted on social media.
There were some signs of disruptions for the company, which did not respond to emails seeking comment. Its website was down Monday evening, and comments posted by Facebook group users stated that slot machines were not working and that there were problems accessing hotel rooms at the company’s resorts.
KTNV 13, a TV station in Las Vegas, reported that multiple gambling machines at hotels had gone offline and that several guests were unable to charge anything to their rooms, make reservations or use their digital room keys.
MGM Resorts said in a statement late Monday night that its resorts “continue to deliver the experiences for which MGM is known,” including its dining, entertainment and gaming options.
“Our guests remain able to access their hotel rooms and our front desk staff is ready to assist our guests as needed,” the company said. “We appreciate your patience.”
It was not clear how many people had been affected by the cybersecurity disruptions. MGM is a prominent casino and hotel company that has thousands of hotel rooms in Las Vegas, with properties that include Mandalay Bay, Aria, the Bellagio and MGM Grand Las Vegas.
Greg Moody, an associate professor of information systems and cybersecurity at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said on Monday that a “cybersecurity issue” typically means that an individual or a group has attacked the company’s network.
In MGM’s case, the attacker or attackers might have “found some gap in their armor” and used it to take down the company’s systems, said Dr. Moody, who has worked with the company and members of its tech team on several projects.
Such attacks are typically launched by hackers seeking a profit, he said. Attackers will usually steal a company’s data and hold it hostage until the company pays a price for its return. Attackers will also sell the stolen data in an underground online marketplace, where buyers seek data containing information that will enable identity theft, like names, numbers or addresses.
MGM is a large company with a vast data set and is therefore a target, Dr. Moody said.
Arthur Salmon, a professor of computing and information technology at the College of Southern Nevada, where he is also the director of its cybersecurity program, said on Monday that large businesses are common victims of cyberattacks.
Three industries, however, are frequent targets of such attacks because of the extra pressure in getting systems back to normal, Dr. Salmon said. They are: utility companies, because complaints from customers often make news; hospitals, because of the risk the disruption presents to patients; and casinos, because of the reputational hit that could come from data breaches of customers’ private information.
“Their security team has to be right 100 percent of the time,” Dr. Salmon said. “And the threats are always growing, always adapting, always getting more complicated. The attacker just has to be right once.”
Yoohwan Kim, a professor of network security at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said that attackers will sometimes steal data from a big and financially secure company, demand a ransom for a key to decrypt their systems, and then wait for the company to pay.
Dr. Salmon said the ransom amounts can vary but are usually in the hundreds of thousands or low millions for larger companies.
Recuperating from a widespread cybersecurity attack can take months or years, experts said.
EXCLUSIVE: African streamer Showmax has lined up a true-crime series about chilling serial killer Stewart ‘Boetie Boer’ Wilken, and you can see the trailer above.
Boetie Boer: Inside the Mind of a Monster will take subs back to 1990s South Africa, where Wilken started his killing spree in Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha), murdering female sex workers and young children.
It debuts in October and is among the first original series orders since it emerged Showmax’s long-serving CEO Yolisa Phahle is exiting, with Marc Jury taking on he role in the interim.
The five-part series is from Stage 5 Films and Jasyn Howes’ Fifth Floor Films. Howes, who won Best South African Short Documentary at the Jozi Film Festival for Dula, is the director.
“Wilken was a highly unusual serial killer,” said Howes. “Unlike most serial killers, he had more than one type of victim: predominantly female sex workers and young boys, usually street children, across multiple races. He also claimed to engage in necrophilia and cannibalism with his victims.”
Showmax’s unsettling trailer shows Wilken openly discussing his crimes with Dr Gérard Labuschagne, the former section head of the Investigative Psychology Section of the South African Police Services.
His version of events is balanced by those who played roles in bringing him to justice. The series also includes interviews with the family of one of Wilken’s victims, Georgina Zweni, and Wilken’s own surviving children, Sonika and Sergius, and recreates certain events using actors, with Raven Swart playing Wilken.
“There is little to no video or radio archive, although there was more newspaper coverage, so we had to lean into recreations to bring the story to life visually,” said Howes. “I’ve been impressed by documentary series like Wormwood that have really tried to move the true-crime genre into a new space, blurring the lines between documentary and narrative filmmaking, so this gave us an opportunity to elevate the genre locally and give the audience a more cinematic viewing experience.”
Stage 5 is behind Unearthed, which won the Green Award at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival and the Audience Award at Encounters, and The Journeymen, which took home Best South African Documentary at Durban. It also made Canneseries selection The Dreamer – Becoming Karen Blixen, Berlin selection Liberty and South African Oscar entry Noem My Skollie.
MultiChoice Studios, part of Showmax owner MultiChoice, is handling international sales and the streamer’s broader true-crime slate, which includes Rosemary’s Hitlist and Devilsdorp.
Boetie Boer premieres on October 18, with new episodes on Wednesdays. “Even if you are over 18 and a fan of true-crime documentaries, we strongly advise viewer discretion,” said Allan Sperling, executive Head of Content at Showmax. “This is not for sensitive viewers, especially hearing the description of the crimes in the killer’s own words.”
American actor Christopher McDonald was in his early 40s when he rose to prominence with his antagonistic movie roles like playing Shooter McGavin — the cocky, talented and arrogant pro golfer — in “Happy Gilmore” starring Adam Sandler … back in the 90s.
McDonald’s other notable characters include ‘Daryl’ — the controlling husband — in “Thelma and Louise”, ‘Ward Cleaver’ — the white-collar workman in New York City — in “Ward Cleaver” and ‘Wilson Croft’ — who steals Flubber from professor Philip Brainard (played by Robin Williams) in “Flubber.”
To this day, Christopher McDonald still hops into his ‘Shooter McGavin’ character when he’s out on the green!
Taylor Swift’s film will be released in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour film has caused several Hollywood projects like The Exorcist: Believer and Meg Ryan’s What Happens Later to reschedule their release dates in order to avoid a clash with the singer’s concert movie.
After winning hearts with her amazing song renditions, Taylor Swift is now gearing up to take the theatres by storm. On August 31, the American singer-songwriter dropped an announcement on Instagram sharing that her successful The Eras Tour concert will be released on the big screens on October 13. The news has taken Swifties (Taylor Swift’s fans) into an unbridled excitement for sure. But a shadow of uncertainty seems to have loomed over certain film production companies. They are scrambling to find suitable release dates for some Hollywood films so that they do not lock horns with Taylor Swift’s much-anticipated concert movie.
Multiple movies were forced to reshuffle their release date to avoid competing with Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour concert film. On September 1, Jason Blum, the CEO of Blumhouse Productions revealed that the upcoming The Exorcist: Believer — a sequel to the cult classic horror franchise The Exorcist will be premiering on the silver screens on October 6 instead of its initial release date which is October 13. Drawing a reference to one of Taylor Swift’s famous songs, Jason Blum dropped a post on X (formerly known as Twitter) which read, “Look what you made me do. The Exorcist: Believer moves to 10/6/23. Taylor Wins.”
Taylor Swift also seems to have overpowered actress Meg Ryan who was supposed to make a comeback with her upcoming romantic comedy What Happens Later. In an X post on September 1, the film’s production team — Bleecker Street Films announced that the Meg Ryan-starrer is now slated to hit the theaters on November 3 and not on October 13. “So we’ll take our time. Are you ready for it? Meg Ryan ends her 14-year rom-com hiatus and the Megaissance begins with What Happens Later, now happening later. Coming only to theaters November 3,” read the announcement.
Another Hollywood project that has been indirectly impacted because of Taylor Swift’s concert film is WWE superstar John Cena’s action comedy — Freelance. To avoid clashing with The Exorcist: Believer which in turn reshuffled its release date due to The Eras Tour Concert film, the John Cena-starrer will now premiere on the big screens on October 27, instead of October 6.
The Eras Tour film will mark its theatrical release in the US, Canada, and Mexico. The film is touted to revolve around recorded footage of Taylor Swift’s first three shows that she performed at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, California.
Shrishti Negi is a journalist with nearly eight years of experience in the media industry. She is currently heading the Entertainment team at News18.c…Read More
Warner Bros.’ “The Nun II” held onto first place this weekend, while Disney and 20th Century Studios’ “A Haunting in Venice” crept into second, signaling the arrival of spooky season at the domestic box office.
“The Nun II” scared up $14.7 million in its sophomore outing for a North American cumulative of $56.5 million, while “A Haunting in Venice” opened to $14.5 million, according to estimates from measurement firm Comscore.
The third installment in actor-director Kenneth Branagh’s series of Agatha Christie adaptations matched early box-office projections that ranged from $13 million to $15 million in the United States and Canada.
“A Haunting in Venice” landed in between its predecessors, “Murder on the Orient Express,” which kick-started the franchise with $28.7 million in November 2017, and “Death on the Nile,” which debuted at $12.9 million in February 2022.
Internationally, the mystery launched at $22.7 million for a worldwide total of $37.2 million, according to studio estimates.
Rounding out the top five at the domestic box office this weekend were Sony Pictures’ “The Equalizer 3,” which nabbed $7.2 million in its third frame for a North American haul of $73.7 million; Focus Features’ “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3,” which grossed $4.7 million in its second run for a North American cumulative of $18.6 million; and Warner Bros.’ “Barbie,” which added $4 million in its ninth outing for a North American total of $626.1 million.
Helmed by Branagh, “A Haunting in Venice” sees the filmmaker reprise his role as mustachioed detective Hercule Poirot, back on the case after a chilling seance turns deadly at a Venetian Palazzo. The ensemble cast also includes Jamie Dornan, Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Tina Fey, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly, Riccardo Scamarcio and Michelle Yeoh.
The PG-13 picture, based on Christie’s 1969 novel “Hallowe’en Party,” received a solid 79% fresh score on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes and a B grade from audiences polled by CinemaScore.
“Branagh’s Poirot … has bared his own physical and psychological scars in this series before,” writes Times film critic Justin Chang.
“For the first time, though, his backstory doesn’t feel concocted for effect. Instead, it subtly resonates with a case whose rich human dimensions — deferred dreams, unshakable traumas, grieving parents and children — sound a grim echo of the world beyond the whodunit. For all the creakily derivative supernatural hokum on display, the ghosts that haunt this movie turn out to be all too persuasively real.”
Opening in wide release next week is Lionsgate’s “Expend4bles,” starring Jason Statham, Megan Fox, 50 Cent and Sylvester Stallone.
Alexandra Daddario’s fan casting as Wonder Woman comes to life in stunning fan art, drawing inspiration from the comics.
The possibility of Gal Gadot’s return as Wonder Woman in the DC Universe remains unlikely despite conflicting reports from Gal Gadot.
The only confirmed Wonder Woman project in the DCU is Paradise Lost, which will likely serve as a prequel to another actor’s portrayal of the Amazon.
A popular DCU fan casting comes to life with Alexandra Daddario embodying Wonder Woman in a stunning piece of DC fan art. As the DC Universe takes shape with official castings such as David Corenswet as Superman and Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner, expectations around new DC actors increase and bold fan castings arise. This is especially true in the case of Wonder Woman given the ambiguous status of Gal Gadot’s portrayal in the transition from DCEU to DCU.
One of the most popular actors to be proposed for the DCU’s Wonder Woman is Alexandra Daddario. Digital artist @jaxsonderr imagines what the Baywatch actor would look like in the role, clearly drawing inspiration from the suit Wonder Woman wears in the comics between the end of the New 52 era and the beginning of DC’s Rebirth relaunch. See the image below:
Is Gal Gadot Returning As Wonder Woman In the DC Universe?
There have been a few contradicting Wonder Woman 3 updates since the new DC Universe was first announced. First, Gal Gadot suggested that the project was in active development, but director Patty Jenkins soon explained that she was no longer working on Wonder Woman 3 despite her intention to complete the trilogy. Shortly after, Gal Gadot revealed that she had met with DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran to discuss Wonder Woman 3, where they allegedly concluded that Gadot would eventually return as Wonder Woman. However, other reports contradicted the star, saying that Wonder Woman 3 isn’t moving forward in any capacity.
The only confirmed DCU project related to Wonder Woman is Paradise Lost, first announced alongside the rest of DCU movies and shows that make up the franchise’s first chapter, “Gods and Monsters”. Paradise Lost will focus on Themyscira and the Amazons, presumably taking place before Diana Prince officially becomes Wonder Woman. Since Superman: Legacy and The Brave and the Bold are set to introduce brand-new versions of Superman and Batman, the DCU will likely cast a new actor as Wonder Woman as well. After all, the DCU seeks to start a new franchise from scratch, and all major connections to the DCEU will likely need to be dropped.
Henry Cavill confirmed his return as Superman after he reprised his role for Black Adam‘s post-credits scene, but Superman: Legacy‘s announcement contradicted the actor’s comments with the confirmation of a full reboot and a new actor. Similarly, Gal Gadot’s comments about an eventual Wonder Woman return may be outdated, and the casting process for a new Wonder Woman actor may remain on hold until Paradise Lost moves forward in development. Only then will new names enter the rumor mill and candidates like Alexandra Daddario will start to be considered.
Humble’s new Iconic Sci-Fi Audiobooks Bundle deal is perfect for anyone craving some science fiction listening material. The bundle includes up to 20 sci-fi audiobooks, including enduring classics and modern best-sellers.
Like other Humble bundles, this audiobook pack is a pay-what-you-want deal. If you drop just $1, you get three audiobooks, including the first book in Larry Niven’s award-winning Ringworld series, which is widely viewed as one of the best series and has proven highly influential to other popular sci-fi properties, including Halo. You also get The Runelords: The Sum of All Men by David Fairland and Hell Divers, the first book in Nicholas Sansbury Smith’s long-running post-apocalyptic saga.
Upping your payment to at least $10 unlocks four more audiobooks for a total of seven titles, including sequels to some of the $1 tier’s titles like Hell Divers 2 Ghosts and The Ringworld Engineers, along with Ice Prophet by William R Forstchen and The Sharing Knife Vol. 1, Beguilement by Lois MacMaster Bujold.
Pay at least $18, and you get the full 20-item bundle, which comes with all the audiobooks in the previous tiers, plus multiple more sequels in the Ringworld, Hell Divers, The Runelords, The Sharing Knife, and Ice Prophet series. You can see the full list outlined below.
Humble’s Iconic Sci-Fi Audiobooks Bundle supports the First Book charity, which provides reading and education services and new books to poor and underprivileged children in the US. So not only are you getting a bunch of excellent listening material, but you’re also helping children learn to read.
Humble’s Iconic Sci-Fi Audiobooks Bundle is available until October 5.
Ringworld
The Ringworld Throne
Ringworld’s Children
The Ringworld Engineers
Hell Divers, Volumes 1 through 5
The Flame Upon the Ice
A Darkness Upon the Ice
Ice Prophet
The Runelords – The Sum of All Men
Fate of Worlds
Brotherhood of the Wolf
Wizardborn
The Lair of Bones
The Sharing Knife, Volumes 1 through 3
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
So you want to be a professional screenwriter, but you’re struggling over which scriptwriting software to use? Unfortunately, no writing software will make your writing better, but some might be more tailored toward your needs on the page.
There are lots of software options in the world of movies and lots of those options are good for various reasons. Script writers have to choose software wisely.
In my decade of writing scripts, I’ve used each of the screenwriting programs imaginable. I’ll take you through the eight best scriptwriting software solutions I’ve found on the market, and we’ll list the pros and cons of each.
Let’s smash cut to the details on which script writing software is the best!
Which scriptwriting software will you choose?
There are a handful of free scriptwriting software options, but which is the best free software? We’ll give you the options with some pros and cons for each, and hopefully, you’ll find the best fit for you and your writing style. Script writing needs to be second nature, so pick a program that makes you feel comfortable.
Free scriptwriting software allows you to test your skills without becoming fiscally invested in the medium. So what are your best screenwriting software free options?
If you’re here to learn how to be a screenwriter, you’ve come to the right place. Unlike other aspects of filmmaking, screenwriting is free. Your original ideas are the ultimate ticket, and all you have to do is get them onto the page and in the proper format to start to show them to people.
But wait a minute, you need software to get a script looking sharp and ready for executives…software that could cost upwards of a few hundred dollars. That’s some bullshit.
This is the screenwriting software used by Craig Mazin, where he put all the Chernobyl characters into the fight of their lives. It’s an efficient software that’s less buggy than the competition and offers professional standards at every turn. It works for Mac, Windows, Linux, among other formats.
What Comes Free?
Right now, the demo version is free to download. If you like it and conquer writing short films within it, you can consider upgrading for the price of $79.95.
Recently updated with offline writing capabilities, this software makes it easy to collaborate with a partner. This is a pared-down version of the software that has fewer frills, more practical applications like revisions and outlining.
What Comes Free?
You get your first three screenplays on here for free. That’s pretty great. After that, you’re paying $11.99 a month or $89 a year to write.
Welcome to the open-source screenwriting software solution. The nice part is that the program can export scripts in the formats PDF, FDX, Fountain and even DOCX, so it works to industry standards for scriptwriting software.
What Comes Free?
Everything. There is no paid version of this software. You can totally donate! But they wanted to have something everyone can use for free and they accomplished it.
Pros: You can map stories, use index cards, lots of available features in the free version.
Cons: This is still very much a beta program, so testing and bugs will be on-going. The payment version is a monthly service, which means that over the course of time you’ll be paying way more than these other “one-time” purchase programs.
The brainchild of John August, this professional screenwriting application is used by lots of A-list writers seeking an alternative to Final Draft. Recently updated with revisions mode, it does everything you want in software with the stroke of one key. Still only available for Macs though.
What Comes Free?
There’s a free demo that lets you produce pages, but the upgrade only costs $49.99. It exports to FDX, PDF, and is incredibly useful. It’s one of my favorite tools because of how easy it makes writing your story within scriptwriting software.
This is a fully free screenwriting software solution. It doesn’t have the frills, but if you just want to sit and write, this might be the application for you.
What Comes Free?
Everything. There’s no paid upgrades here, just tools for writers trying to break into the industry.
Welcome to the beginner screenwriter’s crutch. Pages and Word come with your computer and they’re a great place to play around. If your aspiration is to become a professional screenwriter, then you have to be willing to put in the work. Before you learn script format, it’s best to just hang in there, work out dialogue, work on your voice on the page, and experiment. The screenwriting process can be arduous, dip your toes in the water here.
Pros: It usually comes free with your computer or Google account. There are no limits to what you can write, and you can learn the basics for telling your own story.
Cons: You’re not going to learn anything about format, it’s not for professional screenwriters, and there are limits to the formatting you can achieve on the page.
Okay, you’ve graduated past the options that comes with your computer. Now it’s time to learn to format and see your ideas hit the page. It’s exciting, but it’s probably not time to commit to paying lots of money for a program. Celtx is a great choice. Come here to learn.
Pros: It’s free, and free is fantastic. You can learn to format from the ground up. There are lots of paid upgrades that can help you budget and even shoot your first script.
Cons: It’s less intuitive than other programs. You can save different files, but most people in the industry aren’t looking for Celtx files when they want to budget and breakdown.
Options For Professional Screenwriters
Now that you know about the free options, let’s look at some screenwriting software that cost a little more than free…sometimes hundreds more…but they’re what you need to be a professional screenwriter
The company’s tagline is “the industry standard,” and it’s impossible to ignore Final Draft’s relevance in the marketplace. Final Draft is used by lots of professional screenwriters, but it’s not the be all, end all. Still, it’s a useful tool with lots of templates for different formats, and using it does make you feel “cool.” I know it does. I remember the first time I used it and what I wrote and how “professional screenwriter-y” I felt.
Pros: The “.FDX” format is universally used by lots of professional productions. Revisions Mode makes it easy to track changes.
Cons: At almost $250, it’s easily the most expensive program on this list. Sure, lots of people use it, but it does have problems with crashing. Plus, upgrades sometimes phase out old files.
This is a highly intuitive software that also works in tandem with one of the most popular budgeting software. Movie Magic is also reliable, easy to use, and consistently updates with useful tools. It’s popular in lots of writers’ rooms as well.
Pros: You can change the layout and interface to keep your screen clean and clear. You can collaborate with other writers in real time.
Cons: It’s not quite as popular as Final Draft, but it’s just as expensive.
It always makes sense to listen to the advice of a professional screenwriter. John August created an option that addresses most writers’ wants: something simple that just lets the writing flow. All this for a low price. We covered the new update of Highland 2, it has extensive templates and lots of great tools for screenwriters. There’s a new update out in May of 2019, so we will keep you posted as they add more to their software and it becomes more intuitive.
Pros: You can customize the layout, use different colors, and export in lots of different formats. Plus, John is constantly creating updates that are drawn from what people suggest and need.
Cons: There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles, so if you need an option that also does budgeting and other accouterments, this isn’t the program for you.
There’s a good chance that you’re going to be writing other things besides screenplays. This software has templates for all kinds of writing. It’s specifically designed for authors and stretches toward film and television.
Pros: If you decide to step out into novels and novellas, this is a great choice. It can be used for a wide array of writing. Plus, it has an excellent outline feature.
Cons: Because it’s not strictly made for film and television, there are lots of gaps when it comes to cross-compatibility, general use, and practicality.
What’s Next? Writing Your Script!
As I mentioned in the opener, none of these programs is going to turn you into a professional screenwriter overnight. These can help you format and get your voice on the page, but the secret to success is writing and rewriting.
Next up, we suggest you take our free screenwriting seminar! There are tons of screenwriting programs out there- ones that can help you learn how to become a writer, but ours is free, and you just have to follow along week by week and within 10 weeks you’ll have a rough draft!
The truth is it doesn’t matter what software you use to do your writing; only that your writing is good! Pick which program works best for you, and then use it A LOT. I’m excited to see what you will write next.
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
They were reportedly spotted together by fans that night.
On July 3, celeb gossip account DeuxMoi shared a photo of Umansky and Richards in Aspen. The fan who sent the photo claimed they spotted the pair that night. “Kyle and Mau eating together, right now, in Aspen,” the source said.
They also denied divorce rumors in April.
After being spotted without her wedding ring in February, Richards denied her marriage was in trouble. “(A) I haven’t been wearing my big diamond ring, because there’s a lot of crime these days and I’m like, ‘I’m not comfortable,’” Richards told Page Six in April. “And (b), I had just come from the gym lifting weights, so I was like, ‘That thing sparked that?’”
She continued, “When this stuff would come up before, I would, like, cry and I was devastated. But now I’m more like, ‘Okay, I’ve done this before. Let’s do this. Bring it on. Come on. Let’s see what you got for me here.’” Richards also added, “I am in my unbothered era when it comes to that. That is for sure.”
Umansky also denied divorce rumors in April. “We’re not getting divorced,” he said on Two T’s In a Pod podcast, per Us Weekly. “I mean, it’s so dumb. [There’s] that one stupid story that came out there and then the girls all, you know, decided to talk about it on the Housewives and so now it’s a storyline. So there’s definitely some stories out there and Kyle and I address it and we’ll take it from there. It is what it is.”
Umansky was once accused of having an affair withRHOBHcostar Dorit Kemsley.
Kemsley shut down the rumor in August 2022, when Bravo alum Dana Wilkey posted about the fan theory on Instagram. “Is something wrong with you woman?” Kemsley replied to the post, per Us Weekly. “Or are you just so miserable in your life you have nothing better to do? You’re definitely one of the thirstiest people I’ve ever seen, I guess it’s just as simple as that? ??♀️ Kyle and Mau are our friends and my kids call them uncle and auntie. Do you think this is ok for my kids to see when it’s a disgusting lie? If this is the only way you can make a buck then so be it but at least have some decency and stop trying to peddle false narratives especially when you know there is ZERO truth behind it and your whole motive is to just hurt people for no reason.”
There’s also speculation about the relationship between Richards and country singer Morgan Wade.
In August, both women announced that the reality star will star as Wade’s love interest in the 28-year-old country star’s upcoming music video “Fall in Love with Me.” (More on that below.)
Meghan Markle’s 2023 Invictus Games looks have been a masterclass in chic corporate dressing, and we have officially moved forward in the curriculum to cocktail hour attire.
On September 16, the Duchess of Sussex attended the sporting event’s closing ceremony wearing a $798 Cult Gaia strapless tube dress that plays into some of the season’s sexiest trends while remaining appropriate for fancy client dinners. Though 100% polyester, the Raylene Gown—which is, unfortunately, sold out on the brand’s website—has a leathery appearance with lazercut floral cutouts. While that might sound too risqué for drinks with the boss, the thigh-length underlayer leaves just enough to the imagination.
DUESSELDORF, GERMANY – SEPTEMBER 16: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend the closing ceremony of the Invictus Games Düsseldorf 2023 at Merkur Spiel-Arena on September 16, 2023 in Duesseldorf, Germany. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation)Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Dare I say it, with Meghan Markle’s slick bun, nude pumps, and classic smokey-eye, this ‘fit could also serve as major bridal party inspo…if you’re still doing all of that. Luckily, a shorter version of the dress with 90s-inspired spaghetti straps is still available for $495 in the same color, as well as a more bridal white. Can anyone say reception outfit change?
The Duchess of Sussex during the closing ceremony of the Invictus Games in Dusseldorf, Germany. Picture date: Saturday September 16, 2023. (Photo by Jordan Pettitt/PA Images via Getty Images)Jordan Pettitt – PA Images/Getty Images
BTS’ Suga is set to enlist for mandatory military service this week, reps said Sunday.
“We have further information regarding Suga’s military service,” BIGHIT Music posted on the South Korean app Weverse. “Suga will be beginning his required service on September 22.”
South Korea requires men between the ages of 18 and 35 to enlist for a period of 18 to 21 months if they are physically fit.
Reps first noted last year that BTS would be required to enlist in the coming months and that all seven members of the group wouldn’t be able to perform together again until 2025.
“There will not be any official events taking place on the day he starts his service or on the day he enters the training camp,” BIGHIT continued. “We kindly ask fans to refrain from visiting Suga at his workplace during the period of his service. Please convey your warm regards and encouragement in your hearts only.”
The reps also gave fans a warning about unauthorized tours or products. “Please be mindful to avoid getting adversely affected by unauthorized tours or package products that illegally use the artist’s intellectual property,” BIGHIT added. “Our company will take appropriate measures against attempts at any commercial activity that make unauthorized use of artist IP.”
BIGHIT added: “We ask for your continued love and support for SUGA until he completes his service and returns. Our company will also strive to provide all the support he needs during this time.”
For his part, Suga did a live stream on Weverse that was translated by a follower. He told fans that they shouldn’t be sad about his enlistment and that he’d be done in 2025.
Suga released his solo album, D-DAY, under the name Agust D in April. He recently wrapped his Agust D-DAY tour.
In addition to Suga, BTS members Jin and J-Hope also have enlisted.
Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner has made quite a mess of things. Following Friday’s disastrous New York Times interview, wherein Wenner failed to explain why no Black or female artists appear in his new interview collection, and subsequent removal from the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame board of directors, Wenner has apologized for diminishing “the contributions, genius, and impact of Black and women artists.”
Mo Amer talks “Mo,” selling knockoff watches, and working with Dwayne Johnson
“In my interview with The New York Times I made comments that diminished the contributions, genius, and impact of Black and women artists, and I apologize wholeheartedly for those remarks,” he said. “The Masters is a collection of interviews I’ve done over the years that seemed to me to best represent an idea of rock ’n’ roll’s impact on my world; they were not meant to represent the whole of music and its diverse and important originators but to reflect the high points of my career and interviews I felt illustrated the breadth and experience in that career. They don’t reflect my appreciation and admiration for myriad totemic, world-changing artists whose music and ideas I revere and will celebrate and promote as long as I live. I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words and deeply apologize and accept the consequences.”
The apology comes hours after the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation announced Wenner’s dismissal from the board of directors that he helped found. “Jann Wenner has been removed from the board of directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation,” the statement read.
Wenner said the quiet part loud for anyone who’s ever wondered why Black and female artists were often denied the preferential treatment Wenner’s guys received. While The Masters contains one new interview (with Bruce Springsteen), it’s a collection of Wenner’s older talks with Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Springsteen, Pete Townshend, and Bono. Apparently, in his decades as the architect of the American rock ’n’ roll canon, he didn’t do a single interview with a Black or female artist worthy of inclusion. The reason: He didn’t think they were “articulate enough.”
“It was kind of intuitive over the years; it just fell together that way. The people had to meet a couple criteria, but it was just kind of my personal interest and love of them,” Wenner said. “Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.”
Wenner wasn’t done yet. The response gifted interviewer David Marchese a perfect follow-up: “Oh, stop it. You’re telling me Joni Mitchell is not articulate enough on an intellectual level?” Nevertheless, after being given a chance to rephrase, the former rock ’n’ roll kingmaker decided to take sideswipes at Grace Slick and the late Janis Joplin (“Go have a deep conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. Please, be my guest”) and Joni Mitchell, who he says, “was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll.”
He had a similar answer for Black artists, name-checking Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye as articulate enough to write Songs In The Key Of Life and What’s Going On but not answer Wenner’s questions about those works. “Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right?” he continued. “I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.”
Interestingly, he admits to allowing interview subjects to edit transcripts, including a bombshell 1970 chat with John Lennon, because these weren’t “confrontational” interviews. He spends much of the Times conversation arguing that these are yacht-side chats with his old rock buddies, meaning they aren’t held to the same journalistic standards as others.
Prosecutors on Monday asked a Seoul court to issue an arrest warrant for South Korea’s leading opposition figure, Lee Jae-myung, on corruption charges, 18 days after Mr. Lee began a hunger strike to protest President Yoon Suk Yeol’s foreign and domestic policies.
Mr. Lee, the leader of the Democratic Party, was taken to a hospital hours before prosecutors applied for the warrant, on charges including bribery and breach of trust. Party officials said Mr. Lee had been found nearly unconscious in his office, his blood sugar levels having fallen sharply.
Mr. Lee, 58, lost the 2022 presidential election to Mr. Yoon, a former prosecutor, by a razor-thin margin and has been the subject of a series of criminal investigations since then. He has vehemently denied every charge brought against him, calling Mr. Yoon’s government “a dictatorship by prosecutors” and accusing him of using the criminal justice system to intimidate and discredit his political enemies.
Mr. Lee began his hunger strike — a means of political protest often used during South Korea’s years of military dictatorship — on Aug. 31, first in a tent in front of the National Assembly building and later in his offices. He said Mr. Yoon had presided over a “retreat of democracy” in South Korea.
Some of the latest charges against Mr. Lee stem from his time as mayor of Seongnam, a city south of Seoul. Prosecutors say he gave illegal quid pro quo favors to a private investor in a Seongnam real estate project between 2014 and 2017.
They also say that between 2019 and 2020 — when Mr. Lee was the governor of Gyeonggi Province, which borders North Korea — he asked a local underwear manufacturer, Ssangbangwool, to illegally transfer $8 million to North Korea, purportedly in an attempt to coax the North into entering an economic exchange program with Gyeonggi.
Mr. Lee, a member of the National Assembly, will not be arrested unless his own party lets it happen. By law, South Korean courts cannot hold hearings on arrest warrants for lawmakers unless the legislature votes to let them do so. The Democratic Party controls a majority in the National Assembly, which in February put a stop to prosecutors’ last attempt to arrest Mr. Lee.
In recent months, Mr. Lee has said he would no longer expect his party to shield him from arrest. In recent days, party members have asked him to stop his hunger strike, citing his deteriorating health. Over the weekend, his political opponent Kim Gi-hyeon, who leads Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party, urged Mr. Lee on social media to stop fasting and discuss his grievances in the legislature.
Mr. Lee and his party have blamed Mr. Yoon for rising consumer prices and excoriated him for seeking to improve ties with Japan, South Korea’s former colonial ruler. They recently accused Mr. Yoon of risking public health by not opposing Japan’s release of treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Mr. Yoon’s office had no immediate comment on Mr. Lee’s hunger strike or on prosecutors’ attempt to arrest him. On Monday, Mr. Yoon left Seoul for a five-day visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, where he was expected to raise warnings about signs of growing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia.
Mr. Yoon, 62, a conservative, came to power vowing to reverse his predecessor Moon Jae-in’s policy of emphasizing negotiations and reconciliation with North Korea. But he has since suffered low approval ratings, with a majority of respondents in various surveys disapproving of his performance in office.
In recent weeks, Mr. Yoon has escalated his attacks on progressive political enemies, likening some of them to “anti-state forces” and accusing them of colluding with North Korea. He has also accused opponents of spreading “fake news.” Opposition lawmakers have accused him of worsening the country’s political polarization.
The Jennifer Hudson Show is following The Drew Barrymore Show and The Talk in delaying its upcoming season while the writers remain on strike.
A source close to the production confirms to Deadline that after much discussion, and at Hudson’s urging,The Jennifer Hudson Show is pausing production and its season two premiere, which was slated for Monday, September 18.
Hosted by the Oscar winner, The Jennifer Hudson Show, distributed by Warner Bros., features celebrity interviews, topical stories, community heroes, viral sensations, and music.
Deadline announced on Sept. 4 that The Drew Barrymore Showwould return for a fourth season on Monday, Sept. 18, sparking backlash. Barrymore defended the move in an Instagram post last weekend, saying the decision “is bigger than me.” Over the past week, the controversy continued to grow, with the E.T. star drawing intense criticism from the WGA and her fellow actors.
“Drew Barrymore should not be on the air while her writers are on strike fighting for a fair deal,” a guild spokesperson told Deadline last week after her announcement. “In reality, shows like this cannot operate without writing, and that is struck work.”
On Friday, Barrymore posted an emotional apology video on Instagram, which was met by more criticism. She later took the video down.
A spokesperson for CBS Media Ventures, which is behind the daytime talker, defended the show’s return in a statement Friday to Deadline, saying they “are very mindful and sensitive to the complex circumstances surrounding the show’s return and we will be in full compliance with all our labor agreements and any strike rules.”
WGA picketers had targeted The Talk outside CBS Radford since it was announced that the show planned to return.
The Talk, hosted by Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Natalie Morales, Jerry O’Connell and Sheryl Underwood, went dark in May as a result of the writers strike.
Produced by CBS Studios, The Talk is heading into Season 14.
Destiny 2 developer Bungie has announced plans to temporarily disable players from using crafted weapons in a bid to get on top of an in-game glitch.
After acknowledging that players could give Legendary guns Exotic traits – essentially circumventing the game’s usual balance systems and allowing players to equip what is, in essence, three exotic weapons at once – Bungie confirmed over the weekend that it’s “working on two fixes” that it hopes will address the issue.
The first is a server-side update that will disable all crafted weapons from being equipped, after which the team will address “illegal” weapons by resetting them “to a default state”.
The team also confirmed that it was not going to disable Trials of Osiris because of this issue, and there were “no plans for a rollback”, either.
UPDATE: We’re working on two fixes for this issue. There are no plans for a rollback.For the first fix, deploying within the next 24 hours, we’re building a server-side update that will disable all crafted weapons from being equipped. Players will still be able to craft weapons… https://t.co/cFxZaCQ5j4September 16, 2023
See more
“We’re aware of an issue that allows specific weapon perks to be crafted into other legendary weapons and are investigating a fix, which will result in these weapons being reset in the future,” the studio explained via a statement posted to social media.
The team confirmed that the sever-side update is expected to deploy in the next 24 hours or so, and although players will still be able to craft during this time, they won’t be able to equip any of these newly crafted weapons in-game (sorry, Guardian).
There’s no specific deadline for when crafted weapons will be re-enabled, either, but Bungie says it hopes to do this step of the process “soon after the first”.
Bungie also took the opportunity to remind players that anyone who “discovers an exploit in-game” will not be banned or subject to in-game restrictions, but the “use of external scripting and network manipulation tools are still bannable offenses and subject to security review”.
If it’s been some time since you last jumped into Bungie’s huge (and hugely complex) sci-fi shooter, Destiny 2’s game director Joe Blackburn recently promised a free PvP map next year following the negative response to a recent State of the Game post where Bungie stated that the studio didn’t have the resources to release more than one PvP map per calendar year.
As you can expect, the post didn’t go down all too well with the community – Bungie is owned by megacorp Sony, after all – and Blackburn apologized to Destiny 2 players.
Even the most committed Destiny 2 player should check out our guide for the best Destiny 2 PvE weapons. We’ve also got a guide to the best FPS games if you’re looking for an experience further afield too.
[This story contains spoilers from the finale of Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty season two.]
The name says it all when it comes to the title of episode one of season two of the HBO sports drama Winning Time: “One Ring Don’t Make a Dynasty.”
How the second season started — the Lakers celebrating their win over the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1980 NBA World Championship — isn’t how it ended: In the finale, the Celtics beat out the Lakers in the 1984 NBA Finals. But it’s the moments in between those defining games that give audiences a clearer picture of what the central players in the Lakers franchise were up against on and off the court.
Magic Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) and his relationship with then-on-again-off-again girlfriend Earlitha “Cookie” Kelly (Tamera Tomakili) was a focal point throughout season two, which began with the 6 foot, 9 inch pro baller finding out he’d fathered a child, his first son Andre Johnson, born to Melissa Mitchell in 1981. Over the next seven episodes leading up to Sunday’s finale, audiences saw how Magic and Cookie navigated this and many other hurdles in his early years in the league. And deciding how to portray that journey was an important consideration for finale director Salli Richardson-Whitfield.
“I’m trying to protect that love that I think is true,” says Richardson-Whitfield, who’s also an executive producer of the series. “We’re not going to cover up all the dirty spots, but I feel protective of that storyline,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Though season one of the series created by Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht drew criticism from Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and former Lakers general manager Jerry West for its dramatization of historical events, Richardson-Whitfield stands on the creative team’s diligence in not shying away from hard truths.
“I think people have realized this season that if you just watch the show instead of judging the show without seeing it, it’s a great show,” she says. [Editor’s note: On Sunday night, news broke that HBO had canceled the series after two seasons. Borenstein and Richardson took to social media to express their surprise and disappointment.]
***
You have the bookend episodes of season two, starting with the premiere and then the last two episodes. How much pressure is that as a director?
I love doing this show so much, but let me tell you, I think that those three episodes have 90 percent of the basketball in it for the whole show. So, the process, I always say it was like having a baby. You forget the pain, and that’s why you come back again. But it was hard. It’s a TV show, you get a limited amount of time. I did sports growing up and I’m competitive, and me and Todd Banhazl, the DP, when we came back this season, we were like: We are going to crush basketball this season. We felt like we did that in the finale of last season, but now I really know the show. So, this year, we were thinking of tricks — are we going to shoot in the mirror this time? Are we going to get a drone? We were coming up with all sorts of stuff to shoot.
How did playing basketball in high school inform your choices as a director?
It’s definitely helpful. Can you direct this show if you don’t know basketball? Yes. But doing big sequences and having to corral so many different guys, young guys, on the basketball court, it makes it easier for me because I know the language. I know what it is to maybe not be the coach, but I know how I should be talking to you and what I need to get from you. I know when your defense looks lazy. I know when that pick don’t look right, and I don’t have to rely on other people to do that. Just as a general challenge, you don’t expect to see me, this little brown woman coming in and directing a show like this. So then there’s also that added thing where I’m like: Watch this. I’m about to crush it. Good luck picking this apart.
In contrast to the action-heavy scenes this season, episode six delved more deeply into the romantic lives of many of the characters, particularly Jerry Buss, Magic Johnson and Norm Nixon. What was important to get right as you explored their intimate relationships?
For me, with Magic and Cookie in particular, I always want to make sure that people — no matter what the other drama is in their life that’s portrayed — see that these are two people who absolutely love each other. If you see Magic and Cookie now, everybody would wish for that love story, no matter what the bumps were to get there. They love each other and that’s what I see in the show. That’s what was written and when I’m directing it, I’m trying to protect that love that I think is true. We’re not going to cover up all the dirty spots, but I feel protective of that storyline.
Even with Norm, when he has to leave the Lakers, seeing how much he loves it and that hurt was important. It wasn’t just about money. The Lakers meant a lot to him. Then on a personal note, I’m friends with Miss Debbie Allen so I was not getting in trouble. This is when I had to take the reins from everyone. I was like: I’m picking Debbie Allen out. She’s not gonna come fight me. She’s gotta be a fabulous dancer. She’s gotta be gorgeous. She’s gotta have some of that spunk that Debbie has. And although she’s not in the episode that much, I think you see Debbie Allen when you see who we cast.
Have you talked to Magic or Cookie about the series?
I have not. It’s very hard for me because I know a lot of these people. We’re not best friends, but we’re friends. I obviously came on the show later, and I’m sure they understand it, but when we have seen each other and we’re around each other, it’s this thing that no one speaks of. I always say that I hope they know what I just talked about — that no matter what’s put before me, I’m very protective of making sure things are told in an honest way.
Todd Banhazl talked to THR about episode three, which he directed, and building up to the rivalry between Magic and Larry Bird. By the end of the season, we start to see them maturing a bit and developing a sense of mutual respect. How do you see their relationship being central to the series?
Todd’s episode was so important. A lot of people said it felt like this kind of standalone episode and I said, well, if we don’t feel for Larry, if we just see him as a villain, then we don’t care about their rivalry later. We know that Larry and Magic now have a friendship and they respect each other very much so we had to get to that point that you understand who these people are. You need great athletes who work hard and are dedicated as much as those two. Everybody’s personalities aren’t perfect, but they do have an admiration for each other and I think you definitely see that throughout this whole season.
You and Tanya Hamilton are the only female directors on this series and you’re both Black women. How unique of a professional experience has that been for you, perhaps outside of working on Queen Sugar?
I was just so happy. I was happy to see her last year and I was happy that she was brought back again. Tanya tells a great story. She knows how to really dive inside of these characters and that’s all it’s about— Black woman, white man, you want people who can tell a great story. And it’s wonderful that the show has been able to see us as just directors and storytellers. That no matter if it’s basketball or whatever it is, these two Black women can tell this story.
What was the impetus for you making the switch to directing after working as an actress for so long?
It was Ava DuVernay when I was shooting her first film, I Will Follow. I Probably had too many opinions, but at some point, she said to me, “You know, I think you’re a director and you don’t know it.” Sometimes it takes someone else to see something in you that you don’t even know is there. Literally her just speaking those words into me, all of a sudden, I thought about all the times I’ve been paying attention in a different way. Like how I’m not just hanging out between takes, I’m next to the monitor. I was lucky that those producers gave me an opportunity. Obviously, I went and did my due diligence and talked to other directors and did some shadowing. But when I directed Eureka for the first time, I went, “Uh-oh, I get this.” And as things moved quickly, I realized that all those years of acting were my training ground to be a director.
It does seem your directing career exploded fairly quickly. Do you feel opportunities have come more easily in this space than in acting?
We’ve definitely gotten more opportunity, but there’s still a lot more to be had. People think that all of a sudden, it’s only Black women directing stuff. We’re still a very small minority in particular in feature films. But also, with opportunity, if you don’t get those first opportunities to learn, then you can’t get to big shows like this. I was very lucky that I had people who were willing to believe in me in the beginning to give me the opportunity to get the training I needed to be able to do a show like this. I say that to say that we just need the opportunity as people of color and women. We can do this job, but you can’t do it if you don’t get a shot to practice.
In a profile in the LA Timeslast year, you talked about how at a certain point when you’re on set, people eventually get the message not to mess with you. How do you set that tone and has that been easier to do as a director versus an actress?
Definitely. As an actress, you still have that feeling, especially as a Black actress, that you could be replaced at any point. There’s something about becoming a director in this space. I’ve found my voice. I’ve said this before: I don’t feel replaceable. I feel like what I do and how I do it is special. I’m lucky to be there, but they’re lucky to have me. I’m from the South Side of Chicago. Sometimes they see this little actress who used to be pretty with a little ingenue face and they may take that as weakness. And I think that as soon as I start talking and in certain situations, they go, “Oh wait, hold up.” Rodney Barnes, who is one of the writers of the show, is always like, “Why you gotta be so mean?” I’m like, “I’m not mean, I’m just firm.” And let me tell you, when you have a show like this, with this many moving parts, it’s a big machine. And they have to understand, with kindness, but with strength, that I’m the boss. This is what I need to happen, and let’s get moving. Let’s have a great time, but do what I ask you to do.
Jeff Pearlman, the author of Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, has been encouraging people to watch the show in the hopes of it being renewed for a third season. There are a lot of different factors at play, the double strike being one of them, but have you heard anything about a season three and what it might look like?
Obviously, you see how the season ends. So we would love to have, at the very least, even though we can do this for years, one more season so that we can get the Lakers winning against the Celtics. We don’t want to end with the Celtics winning. That’s awful. I think people have realized this season that if you just watch the show instead of judging the show without seeing it, it’s a great show. It’s a well-written show with unbelievable performances. And you don’t have to be a basketball fan to enjoy it. I think that what Jeff was trying to say is that he just hopes that people find this little gem that’s out there, because it really is a great show and I’m proud to be a part of it.
“Dumb Money,” an energetic, ingratiating dramatization of the GameStop stock craze of 2021, presents an interesting challenge for its screenwriters, who have to juggle two forms of jargon in fast-paced dialogue.
That January, amateur traders, encouraged by online posts and videos, wildly drove up the stock price of the video game retailer GameStop, a company that seasoned investors had written off. Hedge funds that were shorting the stock — in essence, betting that it would fall — wound up facing huge losses, thanks to an army of ostensible novices.
So what’s more difficult to keep comprehensible for an audience: the obfuscatory verbiage of people who speak Wall Street and treat finance as a kind of secret, clubby code, or the mystifying memes of the Reddit and YouTube users, who are shown likening profits to chicken tenders and using the misspelling “HODL” to indicate that they don’t want to sell?
“Dumb Money,” to its credit, keeps nearly everything clear. Based on “The Antisocial Network,” a book that the author Ben Mezrich (“Bringing Down the House”) turned around in less than eight months, the movie contains more than a hint of David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” both in its lighting schemesand its efforts to wring suspense from shots of people looking at devices. (The two films share an editor, Kirk Baxter. Also, somewhat oddly, “Dumb Money” counts among its executive producers the real-life twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, “Social Network” characters and the founders of a cryptocurrency exchange. Teddy Schwarzman, son of the Blackstone chief executive Stephen A. Schwarzman, provided financing for the movie.)
The actual director is Craig Gillespie, who treats the material with the same irreverence he brought to “I, Tonya” (2017), his dementedly funny take on the Tonya Harding scandal. The strain shows more than in that film, partly because “Dumb Money” is fundamentally earnest. The movie tells a story in which an assortment of have-not strangers — led by a former financial educator whose YouTube costume, one character notes, owes something to Luke Wilson’s headwear in “The Royal Tenenbaums” — band together to hold a stock even when cashing out would be unimaginably lucrative for them individually.
Their online forums may be filled with juvenile humor, and their users may not be snappily dressed, but these are people trying to feed their families and pay their debts. There’s nothing jaunty about that, try as the movie might to keep things lively with a Cardi B needle drop, TikTok-filled imagery and congressional grillings cleverly edited to make it look as if the actors were interacting with real-life lawmakers. (Some news clips feature the New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin.) Onscreen, the title is cheekily accompanied by an asterisk, to note that the phrase “dumb money” is used by Wall Street to deride dabbling investors.
The sardonic approach — which already has critics name-checking “The Big Short” — isn’t as fresh as it would have been even a few years ago. The former Wall Street Journal reporters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo’s script surveys a range of people who jumped on the GameStop bandwagon. All of the principal characters, many of them inventions meant to stand in for real-life counterparts, are introduced with text indicating their estimated net worth.
The GameStop cult’s accidental leader is Keith Gill (Paul Dano), who has multiple noms de web and a thing for cat memes. After Gill explains online why he thinks GameStop is undervalued, his bullishness inspires others. His adherents, who never meet, include Jenny (America Ferrera), a nurse and single mother in Pittsburgh; Harmony (Talia Ryder) and Riri (Myha’la Herrold), undergraduates in Austin, Texas; and Marcos (Anthony Ramos), who works at a GameStop in Detroit and has to endure the sneering demands of his boss (Dane DeHaan).
“Dumb Money” isn’t fully content to wonk out. It can’t just be an investment movie; it also has to be a domestic drama. That makes sense to the extent that the story concerns people’s livelihoods (Shailene Woodley plays Gill’s wife, who supports his YouTubing and sweats through the agonizing decisions about whether to walk with millions). The humanizing efforts are less inspired when “Dumb Money” falls back on sibling-rivalry tropes. Pete Davidson gets a few laughs as Gill’s brother, who confuses Warren Buffett with Jimmy Buffett and takes a lax ethic toward his DoorDash gig.
Better, by virtue of being cast against type, are Seth Rogen, mostly in a straight-man role, as the hedge fund chief Gabe Plotkin, whose finances plummet as the GameStoppers’ portfolios explode, and Dano, who never condescends to a character he might easily have played as a joke. It’s hard not to root for Gill, in his dorky headband, to take down people who have staked vast sums against the stock he loves. Who cares if what the movie itself is selling is played out?
Dumb Money Rated R. Risky investments. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters.
Making progress in distribution talks, television giants DirecTV and Nexstar Media Group have agreed to restore Nexstar’s broadcast station signals to DirecTV customer homes — ending a bitter blackout that lasted 76 days.
The nationwide blackout of 159 Nexstar-owned stations — which includes ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and CW network affiliates — hit DirecTV products, including the satellite TV service, U-verse and DirecTV Stream. Nexstar’s KTLA-TV Channel 5 also was swept up in the blackout for DirecTV and U-verse customers that began July 2.
The two companies announced the truce early Sunday as they faced the prospect of fuming football fans anticipating the second weekend of the NFL season.
Thousands of football viewers in Indianapolis were anxious about missing their Colts play the Houston Texans on Fox. In Fresno and Buffalo, N.Y., some viewers would have lacked access to CBS’ coverage of the Buffalo Bills and Las Vegas Raiders game. And some fans in Sacramento, San Diego and Honolulu would have missed seeing the Rams take on the San Francisco 49ers in Los Angeles on Fox affiliates.
“In recognition and appreciation of the continued patience of DirecTV customers and Nexstar viewers, the companies have agreed to temporarily return the signals of the Nexstar-owned television stations and national cable news network NewsNation to DirecTV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse while we both work to complete the terms of an agreement,” the two companies said Sunday in a statement.
The cable news network NewsNation was also part of the outage as well as about 30 television stations that Nexstar manages but are owned by Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting.
In July, DirecTV was forced to remove the Nexstar channels from its satellite TV service as well as DirecTV Stream and U-verse because the El Segundo-based company no longer had legal authorization to rebroadcast Nexstar station signals. DirecTV teams worked Sunday to restore the signals after Nexstar granted its permission.
The move comes less than a week after the Walt Disney Co. and Charter Communications reached a new agreement, ending a high-profile 10-day blackout of Disney channels, including ESPN and KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles, on Charter Spectrum’s television service. That blackout interrupted millions of fans’ viewing of the US Open tennis championships and college football on ESPN.
DirecTV and other pay-TV distributors have lost millions of customers to cable cord-cutting in the last decade and they do not want to encourage additional subscribers to flee.
“The video ecosystem is broken,” Charter Communications Chief Executive Christopher Winfrey told analysts earlier this month.
The truce will allow DirecTV customers in some cities to watch the Los Angeles Rams, including wide receiver Xavier Smith (19), play the San Francisco 49ers on Fox.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Such concerns prompted Charter to initially balk at Disney’s fee increases during their distribution contract negotiations late last month.
That blackout on Spectrum — which affected millions of customers in New York and Los Angeles — was resolved after Disney compromised by allowing Charter to drop eight Disney cable channels, including Freeform, from its lineup.
TV station owners, including Nexstar, have been seeking fee increases as the cost of programming — particularly NFL football and other sports — skyrocket. Programmers also are grappling with declining ratings and a lower penetration of pay-TV homes, which result in less revenue produced by stations. The television advertising market also has shown signs of weakness.
Broadcast TV ratings have declined nearly 50% from a decade ago.
The troubled economics prompted Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger to suggest that Disney might sell its ABC television network and owned stations.
Disney sought to dampen speculation that it was close to a deal.
“While we are open to considering a variety of strategic options for our linear businesses, at this time the Walt Disney Co. has made no decision with respect to the divestiture of ABC or any other property,” Disney said in a statement Thursday.
“Blue Beetle is a surprisingly emotional, yet hilarious and exhilarating superhero blockbuster like no other. It’s filled to the brim with heart and Angel Manuel Soto has created a perfect celebration of Latino culture.”
“Blue Beetle is my favorite post-Nolan DC film. It’s an action packed, highly entertaining superhero story about family…The film is unique in that it lovingly and unabashedly shares the Reyes family’s Mexican culture.”
“Blue Beetle stands out from previous DC entries & its mostly due to the Latin flavor, let’s be real. It’s funny, emotional & the action scenes w BB are amazing! The cast is beautiful, but Maridueña & López SHINE. Can’t wait to see more!”
Is all set for the long-awaited debut of Jaime Reyes’ debut on the big screen. AsBlue Beetle‘s release approaches, the first reactions to the latest DCUadventure are in to celebrate the raise of a new hero.
Starring Cobra Kai’s Xolo Mariduena as the titular character, the movie is directed by Angel Manuel Soto and has an incredible cast that includes Susan Sarandon as the main villain, Victoria Kord; Brazilian actress Bruna Marquezine as Ted Kord’s daughter Jenny; Raoul Trukillo as the powerful Caparax; George Lopez; Harvey Guillen, Damian Alcazar; Belissa Escobedo; Adriana Barraza; Elpidia Carrillo; and Becky G.
Blue Beetle follows the story of Jaime from the moment he returns home after graduating from college, finding out his family is going through a difficult time financially. To help them out, Jaime visits Kord Tower after Jenny asked him to meet her there. What he wasn’t expecting was ending up with an ancient artifact under his guard, which ultimately chooses him to be the next Blue Beetle.
The movie is coming to theaters on August 18, but the first reactions are already here, and it seems like things are looking good for Jaime’s future.
Blue Beetle Is an Emotional Introduction For DC’s Hero
Warner Brothers Pictures
“Blue Beetle is a surprisingly emotional, yet hilarious and exhilarating superhero blockbuster like no other. It’s filled to the brim with heart and Angel Manuel Soto has created a perfect celebration of Latino culture.”
“Blue Beetle is my favorite post-Nolan DC film. It’s an action packed, highly entertaining superhero story about famil & there’s nothing more important than family. The film is unique in that it lovingly & unabashedly shares the Reyes family’s Mexican culture.”
“Blue Beetle stands out from previous DC entries & its mostly due to the Latin flavor, let’s be real. It’s funny, emotional & the action scenes w BB are amazing! The cast is beautiful, but Maridueña & López SHINE. Can’t wait to see more!”
“Blue Beetle is a MASSIVE win for DC & an electric introduction to the first hero of the DCU. Xolo Maridueña’s charismatic star making performance confidently anchors this intimate synthwave journey of family, heritage, & purpose. A fresh and endearing spin on the origin story!”
“Blue Beetle REVIEW: SUPERHERO MAGIC! It’s so creative, hilarious & emotional. A fun, coming of age adventure with cool cameos & insane action that’ll bust your blue balls. Not just another comic book film, it’s one of the BEST DC movies ever! A fitting end setting up what’s next.”
“Blue Beetle entertained me far more than I thought it would. It gives off Iron Man feels and delivers a down to Earth & intimate story about family & moral values. Susan Sarandon is the comic book villain I did not know I needed. George Lopez is hilarious!”
“Blue Beetle is here & Latinos FINALLY have a superhero of their own reflected on the big screen. The film is so incredibly good, so unique & delivers on all fronts giving the superhero genre much needed sazón! The film ‘s Tangerine Dream inspired synthwave score also rocks!
“The Blue Beetle movie is mostly a blast. Some is too silly or childish for me, a lot had me laughing loud (George Lopez!). Practical suit rocks. The Latino representation is awesome. Enjoyed the family-centric stakes, solid action beats. Overall, it’s fun.”
“Blue Beetle is amazing! Had so much fun watching & speechless of how cool the film is. Xolo Mariduena’s energy on screen is contagious. Bruna Marquezine shines as Jenny (how much screen time she has); Xolo & Bruna’s chemistry is unreal/The Reyes family has a spectacular dynamic.”
GTA v the average GTA game that caused industry wide problems as everyone saw that GTA online money.
Seriously as a GTA diehard I really did enjoy it at launch but the story never hit the heights of IV, sa or VC and felt far to disjointed and gave me no reason to care about the protagonists the older I got the more I disliked Trevor and came to the realisation that he’s only there as a token psycho Franklin and Michael never honestly developed either and there was no strong supporting characters like like Jacob, brucey, ceaser, or solid antagonists like big smoke plot twists were highly predictable.
It felt like this was the biggest misfire sure the world featured a lot to do but it didn’t have that same sense of exploration everything’s was open from the jump and the storyline forced you to spend 24 hours driving up and down the same routes whereas previous GTA games wiggle you from island to island always giving you something new until the 3rd island where missions take place acrostic the entire map and often in the sky.
Going back and replaying the original 3d games along with iv recently it’s clear how much stronger the writing was for previous games and plot devices like unlocking the map actually helped the game rather than the made for streaming have everything immediately game that v was.
It wasn’t really until rdr2 where I saw that strong level of writing come back in for Rockstar games I hope 6 takes more notes from earlier entirely but I doubt it they are making another modern game for a “modern audience” judging by the leaks
Co-organized by the Festival and ADICINE, it will exclusively program the most eagerly awaited independent film premieres for exhibitors, television channels and platforms.
From October 25 to 27, Valladolid will host the third edition of the Independent Film Market (MERCI Valladolid), an initiative co-organized by Valladolid International Film Festival (SEMINCI) and the Association of Independent Film Distributors (ADICINE), conformed by 16 of Spain’s leading distribution companies.
MERCI Valladolid, the only initiative of its kind in Spain, aims to promote independent and auteur cinema and comes to Valladolid after the two first editions in Seville. Its purpose is to bring the most outstanding titles of Spanish independent distributors to exhibitors, television channels and platforms to facilitate and boost relations between professionals in the audiovisual industry.
Over three days, MERCI Valladolid, with the help of different distributors that conform ADICINE, will program at Broadway Cinema the premieres of the most awaited independent and auteur films, scheduled to hit theaters at the end of 2023 and over 2024. The screenings will be of exclusive access for Spanish exhibitors, television channels and platforms, in order to get a better exploitation of their release.
MERCI Valladolid is connected to the activity Find distribution in SEMINCI, which has offered accredited professionals the possibility of seeing titles programmed by the contest that had not yet guaranteed their premiere in Spain. As part of this activity, the Conference on Independent Distribution was organized in collaboration with ADICINE, led by the former director of SEMINCI and the ICAA Fernando Lara.
MERCI Valladolid will continue to hold these conferences with a new format that will bring together different meetings, talks and round tables with film industry professionals. Among other objectives, these conferences, coordinated by Olimpia Pont and Fernando Lara, will congregate numerous experts to discuss new tools that distributors and exhibitors can use in the development of promotional strategies for each premiere.
ADICINE: “MERCI Valladolid will be more ambitious and continuing”
MERCI Valladolid consolidates SEMINCI’s commitment as an ally of independent and auteur film distributors and exhibitors, as highlighted by Lara P. Camiña and Enrique Costa, co-presidents of ADICINE. “From the association, we are excited to continue collaborating with José Luis Cienfuegos in his new adventure. The fact that MERCI 3.0 will be held in Seminci is very positive because it will allow for a more ambitious and continuing event, as we will keep to collaborate with the team that launched this project two years ago. Seminci has traditionally hosted the industry meetings Find Distribution in Seminci and this year this activity will be part of MERCI 3.0″.
ADICINE is conformed by distributors A Contracorriente Films, Avalon, Bteam Pictures, Caramel Films, DeAPlaneta, Elastica Films, Festival Films, Filmax, Golem Distribución, Karma Films, La Aventura Audiovisual, Selecta Visión, Syldavia Cinema, Tripictures, Vértigo Films and Wanda Visión.
Comedian Leslie Jones, a close friend of Chris Rock, claims that the impact of the slap heard ’round the world affected not only him, but his family.
Jones told People that beyond the “humiliating” action of Will Smith against Rock, the incident, “really affected him. People need to understand his daughters, his parents, saw that. He had to go to counseling with his daughters.”
She added, “For a long ass time I was just mad. Chris Rock did a fucking joke. I know Will, too… I was like, you couldn’t handle that shit afterwards. This is the Oscars. The whole world is watching. I was like, ‘Chris, when he got up why didn’t you run?’ I would’ve been running around that stage like, ‘Will, calm down. Jada, call your man!’”
Jones was grateful that Rock could talk out his feelings on a larger stage.
“Everybody got pissed off about him doing a special. That’s what comedians do. Instead of us going crazy we fucking go talk about it on the fucking stage. Thank God we’ve got the stage.”
It’s been six years since Foxcanceled Pitch after one season, but Mark Paul Gosselaar can’t forget about how it almost made him want to give up on Hollywood.
During a Saved by the Bell panel at ’90s Con Tampa Sunday, Gosselaar recalled how he felt when Fox axed the Kylie Bunbury starrer that revolved around the first woman to play (and pitch!) for the majors.
“I wanted to quit the industry after that ended,” Gosselaar, who played catcher Mike Lawson in the drama from Dan Fogelman, Rick Singer and Kevin Falls. “That’s one of those, you feel like in your lifetime you’re not going to be handed opportunities like that, so for that to pass in the fashion that it did it was sort of a gut punch. That’s a role though, that I don’t make light of it, but I had to go therapy with my wife.”
Fox
Gosselaar went on to say the drama filmed 30 minutes from his house, so he was able to get home quickly to see his family. He admits, however, that he’d forget to leave catcher role on set.
“I’d come in through that front door and like my wife said in therapy sessions, ‘That’s not the guy I married,’ ” Gosselaar said. “And you’re playing this guy and then the next day, you have to jump right into that. It is actually really difficult to go back and forth, especially when you have kids.”
Pitch earned some of the 2016-17 season’s strongest reviews when it debuted. Sadly, it never drew a large enough viewership — averaging 3 million viewers and a 0.8 in 18-49.
A Sharp Intake Of Breath was a situation comedy television series produced by ITV that premiered in February of 1978.
Created by Ronnie Taylor A Sharp Intake Of Breath followed the story of Peter Barnes (played by David Jason – Only Fools And Horses), an ordinary man who made it his mission in life to fight red tape, bureaucracy and small injustices he encountered in his everyday life. Unfortunately many of his battles resulted in failure, but Peter pressed on regardless.
Well, Jessica Fletcher was a professional writer. Why shouldn’t she have a presence on the WGA’s picket line?
A Murder, She Wrote themed picket is planned for this Thursday, Sept. 21, at the Fox lot. It’s the brainchild of strike captain Tyler Ruggeri, who surveyed his followers on X about the possibility before making it a reality.
He’s also asking members to wear their best J-Fletch outfits to walk the line.
For those unable to remember all that was good on broadcast TV back in the day, Murder, She Wrote starred Angela Lansbury as Jessica (J.B.) Fletcher, a middle-aged, widowed successful murder-mystery writer who solves real murders in her spare time. The CBS series, which was actually from Universal, premiered in 1984 and ran for 12 seasons.
It’s already shaping up to be an provocative week of pickets. A day to celebrate IATSE members is planned for Tuesday at Fox, whilePower creator Courtney Kemp is calling on folks to “come out and really screw up Bill Maher’s Day!” at CBS Television City on the same day.
This post contains spoilers for the Season Two finale of HBO’s Winning Time, now streaming on Max.
Winning Time, the HBO drama about the Los Angeles Lakers’ Showtime dynasty in the Eighties, has been accused by members of those teams of rewriting history. With what unexpectedly turned out to be a series, and not season, finale, the show had to rewrite its own past, as well as its future.
Early in the summer, critics were given screeners of all seven episodes of this abbreviated second season. The version of the finale available at that time ended with Quincy Isaiah’s Magic Johnson sitting on the floor of a Boston Garden locker room shower, getting soaked in his uniform jersey and shorts, dejected over losing the 1984 NBA Finals to Larry Bird’s Celtics. The final version that debuted tonight was roughly the same up until that point, but Magic’s sad shower was followed by both a new scene and a montage.
In the added scene, Lakers owner Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) and his twentysomething daughter Jeannie (Hadley Robinson) walk alone on the Lakers’ home court at the Great Western Forum. Jerry imagines a future where Jeannie will one day run the team and begin winning championships of her own after he has passed away. They lie down on the center court logo, as we’ve seen Jerry do previously, and Jerry leads Jeannie in a chant of, “We fucking own this!”
This leads into a photo montage (scored to Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night”) of everything significant that happened to the people depicted on the show in the years to come: the Lakers winning their next two Finals matchups with Boston, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Solomon Hughes) holding the NBA career scoring record for nearly 40 years, temperamental Jerry West (Jason Clarke) coming into his own as Lakers’ GM and eventually trading for the draft rights to Kobe Bryant, Magic being diagnosed with HIV, Magic and old flame Cookie (Tamera Tomakili) still being married today after 32 years, and, yes, the Jeannie Buss-run Lakers winning another title in 2020.
Editor’s picks
These versions represent two wildly different ways to end the season. The original cut concludes with the lowest moment of the Showtime era, and really only works if it’s meant to be followed by an additional season (if not more) depicting Magic’s revenge against Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small) and all the other triumphs listed in that montage. (Without that, the shower would have been a terrible last scene.) The new version instead makes additional seasons besides the point, and plays as if the show’s creative team was told by HBO at a late hour that there would be no additional renewals, so they had best wrap things up as best they could.
This can’t have been the ending anyone planned. The series began with a flashforward to Magic’s HIV diagnosis in 1991, more or less promising that we would at least return to that moment, if not to Magic’s various comebacks as both Lakers player and coach. Instead, we don’t even get the full dramatization of Magic’s peak years and big moments, like the “junior junior skyhook” he used to defeat Boston in Game 4 of the 1987 Finals. But Winning Time never lived up to the hype of that cast, that subject matter, Adam McKay directing, etc. Season One received only one Emmy nomination, for cinematography. Online chatter about it seemed to subside within weeks of its debut, and the shift from 10 episodes in Season One to only seven this year suggested that HBO was only willing to pay so much to keep this project going.
Trending
HBO has confirmed that this was the Winning Time series finale, and that the show has been canceled. Creator Matt Borenstein wrote on Twitter after it aired, “Not the ending that we had in mind. But nothing but gratitude and love.” Executive producer Kevin Messick told Vulture that the Jerry/Jeannie scene was filmed in January, and that before the writers and then actors went on strike, production delivered HBO two different versions of the finale — one in the event of a renewal, one not. If all this was done that early, then there aren’t issues with scabbing (writing captions for a montage is still writing), but the closing sequence had a slapped-together feel.
Related
Leaving the labor relations question aside, it’s still a mess. “We fucking own this!” is a better tonal and thematic summation of the series — which began with Jerry Buss as its central character — than Magic in the shower. And the photo montage at least provides closure to whatever tiny slice of Winning Time viewership doesn’t know all about the rest of the Showtime dynasty, that Pat Riley (Adrien Brody) went on to win three more titles as Miami Heat coach and/or executive, etc. But it still, like so much of Season Two — which struggled to cover a much longer stretch of history than Season One, but with three fewer episodes — feels incredibly rushed. It’s not at all the triumphant closing night that everyone imagined when HBO was assembling what was assumed to be the pay cable channel’s next water cooler hit and awards juggernaut. Even the Showtime Lakers never moved as quickly as Winning Time had to at the finish.
Indian star Karthik Sivakumar, known by his screen name Karthi, is bullish about upcoming release “Japan,” his 25th film.
The film is due to release in November during the Deepavali holiday frame in Tamil, Telugu and a few other languages. “It’s a crime thriller, it’s got a manhunt to it. But apart from that, the writing and characters in the film are so well-rooted, and at the same time, it’s got a lot of flamboyance – it’s a very unique combination,” Karthi told Variety.
The film, from prolific south Indian studio Dream Warrior Pictures, is directed by Raju Murugan. “Being so grounded and yet having the flamboyance and the cockiness of this character is what got me hooked to the project, and the keenness to work with Raju Murugan – I’ve liked his earlier two films ‘Cuckoo’ and ‘Joker’ and his understanding of local community, the culture here, it’s so beautiful,” Karthi said.
The actor was particularly struck by “Vattiyum Muthalum,” a collection of articles by Murugan where he reflects upon life, romance, friendship and alcoholism and also how his take on life influenced a crime subject like “Japan.” “It [“Japan”] has the potential to be showcased to an international audience, that’s why I wanted Ravi Varman [cinematographer on the “Ponniyin Selvan” films] to be the DoP, his vision would change the project is what I believed. And I think that’s what we have achieved. It’s got a very local flavor, but presented internationally.”
Karthi’s father Sivakumar was a popular leading man in the Tamil-language film industry in the 1970s and 1980s and his brother Suriya is one of the current top stars. Sivakumar used to regale his family with behind-the-scenes stories of the film industry over dinner, which the young Karthi found “magical.”
“But Dad always pushed us away from films, he didn’t want us to do anything with films. He said, ‘get educated, study well, get your degrees, we should always be well-educated,” Karthi said. As a result, Karthi is an engineer by training with degrees from India and the U.S. Suring his time in the U.S., while excelling in graphic design, Karthi figured that he wanted to be in a creative profession and took courses in filmmaking. After returning to India, he assisted leading filmmaker Mani Ratnam.
“I wanted something challenging every time. And films provided the opportunity. And shifting to acting was by chance. Dad convinced me and said, ‘You can become a director even at 60, but for acting there is an age.’ So, I thought it’s an opportunity to learn cinema by being an actor,” Karthi said.
Karthi debuted as a leading man with Ameer Sultan’s “Paruthiveeran” in 2007, which was a critical and commercial success. It played at the Berlinale, where it won a Netpac award, and at home in India, Karthi won the Filmfare best actor award. The film earned a rave review in Variety, with Karthi singled out for praise.
The actor went on to star in hits “Paiyaa” (2010), “Naan Mahaan Alla” (2010), “Siruthai” (2011), “Madras” (2014), “Thozha” (2016), “Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru” (2017) and “Kadaikutty Singam” (2018). One of his landmark films is Lokesh Kanagaraj’s hit “Kaithi” (2019). A sequel is on the cards. “We’ve already planned for it,” Karthi said, adding that a timeline is being worked upon.
Karthi – “Ponniyin Selvan: 1”
Madras Talkies/Lyca Productions
Karthi is also one of the leads in Mani Ratnam’s “Ponniyin Selvan” parts one and two, which were amongst the biggest Indian hits of 2022 and 2023 respectively. The historical epic is based on a popular work of Tamil literature. Karthi essayed the role of chieftain Vallavaraiyan Vandiyadevan. “The most exciting character for many people was Vandiyadevan. When I have to carry it on screen was actually a huge responsibility – beyond the excitement, it was the responsibility and fear of knowing how am I going to justify it,” Karthi said. The actor used the pandemic-induced break in the production to conduct extensive research into the 10th century, where the books and film are set.
“After a point, I think I was taking too much into me and Mani-sir said there is already something natural, in you, just let it go, and it’s coming out well. That gave me a lot of ease out to carry forward the role,” Karthi said. “Ponniyin Selvan: 1” received six nominations, one of the highest ever hauls achieved by a South Asian title, at the Asian Film Awards and the films have been widely watched worldwide on Prime Video.
The actor is now ready to spread his wings. “In India we are very emotional, we react to things that happen in our life, whereas in other cultures, they have their own way of reacting – I would really want to explore that opportunity where you work in another culture, where the understanding of life and relationships are very different and people just cast you for the face, not for the star who you are,” Karthi said. Discussions are on with international agents.
A long-standing desire of fans has been to see Sivakumar, Suriya and Karthi together on screen. “People are excited to bring us all together. Dad now is very clear – he’s not very keen to come in front of the camera. But my brother and myself, we are very keen that we should find a good story and do it,” Karthi said. “Very rarely are brothers in the same industry. And we really want to do one good film together for sure. Earlier, I was scared. Now we both certain, we have to do one.”
Next up for Karthi is an untitled “fantasy action entertainer” from Nalan Kumarasamy (“Soodhu Kavvum”), for which 50% of the shoot is complete; and an untitled “personal, coming of age” film by C. Prem Kumar (“96”), where he stars alongside Arvind Swami.
Christine Brown didn’t hold back about Robyn Brown in the Sept. 17 episode of Sister Wives when the issue of Kody Brown spending more time with Robyn than any of the other wives was brought up again. While Robyn said she always had hope that she and Christine could have been friends, Christine outright declared she would have “rejected” Robyn.
“She knew that Kody was over at her house more than anybody else’s,” Christine, 51, said. “I’m not going to trust someone who says they want family, yet they are fine with Kody only being at their house. That’s not a family. That’s monogamy.”
Robyn Brown gets emotional talking about her relationship with Christine. (TLC)
Kody, 54, claimed that he shared his time “equally” with all his wives. Robyn, 44, told Meri Brown, 52, that she “tried very hard to be kind” to Christine through the years.
“I was constantly holding out an olive branch to Christine, constantly wanting the relationship, constantly trying to ask her what can I do. All she ever told me was, ‘I’m just jealous of you,’” Robyn explained.
Robyn started to break down in tears. She continued. “I feel like we really did have the potential of just having a great relationship. And I just never understood why we couldn’t. I just don’t know how to come to terms with the heartbreak of it.”
Christine brought up a past counseling session where she fully admitted that her main problem was that Kody preferred Robyn and being at Robyn’s house more than anything else. Christine noted that Robyn would deny everything, and Kody would claim that he was over at her house equally.
Christine Brown explains why she could never be friends with Robyn. (TLC)
Christine wished that Robyn would have reached out to her directly about being friends if that’s what she wanted. “But I want you to know, I would have rejected her friendship anyway, to be completely honest with you,” Christine confessed. “If Robyn approached me and wanted to be friends I would have not been friends still because I couldn’t trust her.” New episodes of Sister Wives air Sundays at 10 p.m. on TLC.
“That shit was humiliating,” she toldPeople. “It really affected him. People need to understand his daughters, his parents, saw that. He had to go to counseling with his daughters.” (Rock shares two adult daughters — Lola, 21, and Zahra, 19 — with ex-wife Malaak Compton-Rock.)
Jones, who was watching the show from home that night, said she was “infuriated” upon seeing the incident take place on live television.
“You don’t know that I was going to jump in my car and roll up there,” she said. “I was so fucking mad on so many levels.”
She added that Smith, who won a best actor Oscar for his role in King Richard only moments later, should have tried to make amends with Rock when he accepted his award. While Smith apologized to the Academy and his fellow nominees in his acceptance speech, he stopped short of saying he was sorry directly to Rock.
The shocking moment at the March 2022 Oscars ceremony came after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, before presenting the award for best documentary feature. Rock suggested Pinkett Smith was getting ready to film a sequel to G.I. Jane — which was seemingly a reference to the actress’ shaved head. (Pinkett Smith has been open about her hair loss due to alopecia.)
Smith took the stage and slapped Rock. Returning to his seat, he yelled at Rock: “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!”
“There is no part of me that thinks that was the right way to behave in that moment,” he said.
After the incident, Smith announced he was resigning from the Academy and has been banned from appearing at Academy events for 10 years. He is still, however, eligible for future Oscar nominations and wins, and will retain the Oscar that he won during the 2022 ceremony.
Jones said she believes that Smith could have “fixed” the situation that night when accepting his Oscar. She suggests that he could have said something along the lines of: “I shouldn’t have did that. Bring Chris out. I can not accept the Oscar right now because that was fucking wrong.”
“Will Smith practices selective outrage,” Rock told the audience. “Outrage because everybody knows what the fuck happened. Everybody that really knows, knows that I have nothing to do with that shit. I didn’t have any entanglements.”
He continued, “His wife was fucking her son’s friend. OK, now, I normally would not talk about this shit, but for some reason, these n—-s put that shit on the internet. I have no idea why two talented people would do something that lowdown. What the fuck? And we’ve all been cheated on. Everybody in here has been cheated on. None of us have ever been interviewed by the person that cheated on us on television.
“She hurt him way more than he hurt me. Everybody in the world called him a bitch. I tried to call the motherfucker, I tried to call that man and give him my condolences, he didn’t pick up for me. … Everybody called him a bitch, and who did he hit? Me — a n—a he knows he could beat. That is some bitch-ass shit.”
Rock wrote the forward to Jones’ new memoir, titled Leslie F*cking Jones. The two comedians met in the mid-1990s and have been friends ever since.
“He’s like my brother,” Jones said of Rock, who also convinced her to (successfully) audition for Saturday Night Live. She added: “He’s just always there to give me the perfect advice when I need it.”
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty has come to an end.
After the second season finale Sunday, Creator Max Borenstein confirmed the news on X.
“Not the ending that we had in mind,” he wrote. “But nothing but gratitude and love.”
Director Salli Richardson followed up on Instagram with “When you give it everything you’ve got, you can have no regrets. I hope you enjoy the last episode of @winningtimehbo I am sure I will do many more hours of TV and hopefully many features in my future, but I can say that at this moment in time I am most proud of the work we did on this masterful show.”
The second season of Winning Timereturned to HBO Aug. 6 with 629,000 total viewers across Max and linear telecasts. That was a fall from grace, considering the 901,000 people who tuned in for the Season 1 debut in March 2022. By May of that year, Season 1 managed to amass 1.6M same-day viewers for the finale. (Although, it might be worth nothing that Season 1 also most likely benefitted from the buzz of March Madness, when basketball is already top of mind for audiences.)
The HBO series is based on Jeff Pearlman’s book, Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s. The show’s sophomore run focused on the period just after the 1980 NBA Finals through 1984, culminating in the first professional rematch of the era’s greatest stars: Magic (Quincy Isaiah) and the Boston Celtics’ Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small).
Last month, Pearlman went on X to implore folks to check out the second season. “I’m telling you — the future of “Winning Time” hangs in the balance,” Pearlman tweeted. “We need viewers. The strikes are crippling. Please help spread the word. Season 2 is amazing. But … HBO is big on #s,” he wrote.
Adrien Brody, John C. Reilly, Michael Chiklis), and Jason Segel star in Winning Time, alongside Jason Clarke, Gaby Hoffmann, Hadley Robinson, DeVaughn Nixon, Solomon Hughes, Tamera Tomakili, Brett Cullen, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Spencer Garrett, Molly Gordon, Joey Brooks, Delante Desouza, Jimel Atkins, Austin Aaron, McCabe Slye, Thomas Mann, Gillian Jacobs and Rob Morgan.
The executive producers are writer/co-creators Borenstein and Jim Hecht, Adam McKay, Kevin Messick, Scott Stephens, Rodney Barnes, director Salli Richardson-Whitfield and Jason Shuman.
Billy Miller, a Daytime Emmy Award-winning actor known for his work in “General Hospital” and “The Young and the Restless,” has died. He was 43.
Miller died Friday in Austin, Texas, his manager, Marnie Sparer, confirmed to the Los Angeles Times. He was “struggling with manic depression when he died,” according to a news release provided to The Times. No cause of death was given.
“He … leaves behind a great many friends and colleagues who will miss his warm personality, generous spirit, and genuine kindness,” Sparer, said in the statement.
In 2010, 2013 and 2014, Miller won the Daytime Emmy for lead actor in a drama series for his performance as Billy Abbott in “The Young and the Restless” — a role he played in more than 700 episodes over the course of six years.
Miller received additional Daytime Emmy nominations for his work on “Y&R,” as well as another long-running soap opera, “General Hospital.” He portrayed twin brothers Jason Morgan and Drew Cain in nearly 600 episodes spanning six years of the medical drama.
Miller was born in Tulsa, Okla., and raised in Grand Prairie, Texas. He later moved to Los Angeles after graduating from the University of Texas, where he was one of just 20 students accepted into the film department’s prestigious Production Sequence program.
The TV star launched his entertainment career by working in the mail room of a major production company before deciding to pursue acting because his friends dared him to. He quickly booked parts in several commercials before landing his breakout role as Richie Novak on the ABC soap opera, “All My Children.”
Miller also appeared in a number of other movies and TV series, including “Suits,” “Truth Be Told,” “Ray Donovan,” “Justified,” “Castle” and “American Sniper.” In addition to finding success as an actor, Miller was a restaurateur who owned several bars and restaurants in the Los Angeles area.
The performer is survived by his mother, Patricia, sister Megan, brother-in-law Ronnie, nephew Grayson and niece Charley. His team asks that donations be made in his honor to the Texas Scottish Rite for Children Hospital.
Hulu confirmed that Marvel Studios’ Werewolf By Night is heading to the streamer, marking the first time a Marvel Studios Special Presentation has been available on the platform.
A post on Hulu’s official X (formerly Twitter) account announced the news, urging fans to “kick off the Huluween season” with Michael Giacchino’s spooky superhero romp.
The special can be streamed now, but there is one caveat to all this though, as the Marvel special will only be available on the service until October 31, before it goes back to being exclusive to Disney+.
This is a historic movie for Disney and Hulu, with it being the first Special Presentation to make the jump to the streaming platform. Currently, it remains unclear if Marvel Studios’ other special, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, will get a similar treatment as the studio heads towards the holiday season.
Marvel Studios’ Streaming Experiments
While no official word has come out from Disney or Marvel Studios on this move, it appears that the Hollywood giant is experimenting with its streaming strategy after years of walling things off on Disney+.
The Marvel Studios Special Presentations specifically seem to present an interesting conundrum to Disney.
The specials were something former Disney CEO Bob Chapek liked to use to fill out Marvel’s streaming calendar, but with Bob Iger back in power, it seems that the executive and his team are actively wondering what to do with them.
This historic Werewolf By Night Hulu release (along with the colorized re-release on Disney+) feels like a result of a studio grasping at what to do with these specials that assumedly have been forgotten by those outside hardcore MCU fans.
There have not been any more Special Presentations announced since the release of The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, and it remains unclear if Marvel Studios will ever revisit the format.
Fans got their first look at behind-the-scenes imagery centered on George Clooney’s Batman in DC Studios’ The Flash.
Clooney’s Caped Crusader became the last of several surprise cameos by legacy DC actors in The Flash, with his version of Batman seemingly replacing Ben Affleck’s in Barry Allen’s universe following his trip through the Multiverse.
Muschietti stood tall on set in front of Clooney as the two discussed his cameo appearance at the end of the film.
This photo marks the first behind-the-scenes look at Clooney’s shocking appearance in the film. The first official images of his Flash character were released in mid-July, about a month after The Flash premiered in theaters.
Even with Clooney seemingly enjoying his time on set working with Ezra Miller and the rest of the Flash team, Gunn and his partner Peter Safran will assumedly want to move forward into something fresh for their new version of Batman.
Spider-Man is easily one of the most recognizable fictional characters of the last 50-plus years, appearing in countless iterations across comics, movies, cartoons, video games and other media I am surely forgetting. Fans will argue about the best iteration — but for my money, the Spider-universe Insomniac Games introduced in 2018 on the PS4 with Marvel’s Spider-Man is an all-time great. It spent no time rehashing Peter Parker’s origins, throwing the player into a vibrant and massive rendering of Manhattan. The city felt alive, with tons to do investigate and a horde of Spider-Man’s most famous villains to contend with. It also skillfully introduced a world in which Parker would eventually fight side-by-side with a second Spider-Man, Miles Morales.
But, most importantly, Marvel’s Spider-Man was an absolute delight to play. Insomniac nailed the mechanics of swinging around the city and fighting bad guys to such a degree that I think web-slinging around Manhattan is up there with my all-time favorite game mechanics.
As I’ve contemplated with other single-player, story-drive masterpieces from Sony like The Last of Us,Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War: What the helldo you dofor an encore? I played about two hours of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 at a press event earlier this week, and it seems the answer is “go bigger.” That’s the same tactic used for the sequels to those three games I mentioned earlier, and the results were always impressive, if not a bit overstuffed. Of course, it’s too early to say whether Insomniac got the balance right, because we’ve seen plenty of open-world games that simply try and do too much. But based on Insomniac’s history and the excellent ingredients it has to work with, I have high hopes for the latest spider-adventure.
Insomniac Games
My demo started well into the game’s narrative — which I won’t spend too much time on, as I didn’t get the whole picture of what was going on. I do know that classic villain Kraven is hunting another iconic Spider-Man bad guy, Dr. Curt Conners (better known as the Lizard), and Peter and Miles are both trying to defend the city from Kraven’s hunters while also finding a cure to turn the Lizard back into his mild-mannered human form.
In a demo like this, getting a feel for the gameplay is a lot more important than digging into story beats, and Spider-Man 2 had plenty to show me. Because the world in this game is almost twice as big as the original, with the addition of Brooklyn and Queens, finding new ways for players to get around was a major focus for Insomniac. Enter the web wings, a tool that allows you to glide around the city, catching wind tunnels and updrafts that sling you around at high speed. It’s not meant to replace the core web-slinging mechanic, but augment it. Given how amazing swinging around Manhattan felt in the original games (and still feels here), that’s a tall order. But it didn’t take me long to get the hang of gliding through long stretches of the city, and mixing in web-swings to regain height.
Insomniac Games
The web wings are also particularly useful in places like Central Park or Queens, where there aren’t nearly as many tall buildings to swing from. Getting around Central Park always felt a little awkward in the first game, so this is a welcome addition that makes traversing different terrain much easier. It’s also great for getting across rivers — or doing battle on them. Gameplay footage revealed earlier this year showed both Spider-Men chasing the Lizard down a river while also being chased by Kraven’s hunters (both on the river and in the sky), and the web wings were crucial for catching up and dispatching the massive crew of baddies.
Another side mission saw me controlling Miles as he chased down one of Kraven’s drones — to keep up with it, you had to use the web wings to draft behind it while downloading data from it. Once you got all the data downloaded, you could take it down, but getting all that data takes a while. So you need to stay right on its tail, twisting and turning throughout the city. There’s definitely a learning curve to making tight turns and quick ascensions with the web wings, and I bounced off numerous buildings that slowed me down enough that the drone made its escape.
I got the hang of it after a few tries, but even then I was on the edge of my seat trying to keep pace – it almost had the feeling of a racing game. Challenges like this are a smart way of introducing these new mechanics and schooling players on how to best use them, though.
Unsurprisingly, combat has also gotten a few tweaks, though anyone who played the previous Insomniac games can jump right in here and start beating up the countless goons roaming New York City. Both Parker and Morales have four special moves that correspond to the four face buttons on the controller – holding L1 and pressing one of those buttons activates a special attack. When I was playing as Peter, they all involved the symbiote suit going wild, while Miles had variations on the electrical attacks introduced in his game. They charge up as you fight, and you have to wait for them to replenish; I assume you can also learn and slot new ones as the game progresses.
Insomniac Games
In the first games, mashing the circle button to dodge was a big part of combat, but Insomniac mixed things up here. Now, there are some enemies whose attacks you have to parry by pressing the block button at just the right moment – dodging won’t keep you safe. Other attacks require a dodge, as they can break through any parry or block you try. These different attacks are represented by a color flash above the enemy, indicating when it’s the right time to throw up a block or dodge away. Dealing with these attacks threw a wrench into the familiar gameplay, as it took me a while to remember that my old habits from prior games weren’t going to be enough to keep me alive here.
The gadgets both Spider-Men carry got a big improvement over the older games, too. Before, you could hold down R1 and switch from your standard web-shooters to various other hardware to help you in battle. But now, R1 defaults to web-shooters, always, a change I appreciated. From there, you can hold R1 and select a face button to activate a specific gadget.
This gives you immediate access to as many as four gadgets at once, plus your web shooter. Truth be told, I didn’t dive into the menus to find out much about the tools at my disposal, but they’re things like web bombs that wrap up multiple enemies or shock traps that zap everyone around you. Naturally, all these abilities can be leveled up with skill points you accumulate through the game, and there are the expected skill trees here as well.
It’s going to take more than just a few hours of playing to see just how well these new additions fit into the core game, but one thing was undeniable from the start: Spider-Man 2 is a visual feast. It’s the first game of the series developed exclusively for the PS5, and it shows in everything from the sunsets and water on the river to the details of the different spider-suits I tried on. Character models also look impressive, perhaps none more so than the Lizard himself, with glistening fangs and incredibly textured green skin. The amount of detail in that model was stunning, but Peter’s symbiote suit is a close second. When it gets hurt, it writhes in pain and truly feels like a living creature. Even when it’s just serving as a Spider-Man suit, the variety of textures and details is impressive – it’s a lot more than just a black outfit.
Insomniac Games
Perhaps the most exciting thing about this sequel, though, is the fact that you can control both Peter Parker and Miles Morales. When you’re in the open world and not directly in a main story quest, you can swap between the two Spider-Men at will by going to your communicator and holding down a button, GTA V style. Each character has their own main quests, and the game will move you back and forth between the two depending on what’s next on the docket, but there’s plenty of freedom to pick your character and explore NYC.
There are also parts of the story that’ll bounce you between both characters as things progress. We saw a look at this in the aforementioned gameplay preview a few months ago, but I got to play it out this time. The battle started with me playing as Peter, beating up some thugs in a Queens neighborhood, but then it switches to Miles across the city so you can get the jump on more hunters before they track the Lizard down. Peter eventually joins you, all hell breaks loose, and then you’re flying down the river taking out hunters on jet skis as Miles and bringing down a massive chopper as Peter.
All these changes were fluid and natural (but also very scripted) and the basic experience of controlling both Spiders-Man is similar enough that it didn’t throw me off. I am hoping that there are missions where you can decide which character you want to use, or flip between both depending on what play style you’re feeling at the moment. Regardless, having missions where you play as both significantly expanded the scope of this epic set piece.
Insomniac Games
The preview ended with Peter uncharacteristically going off on his own to track the Lizard down after he escapes into the sewers — he’s clearly showing some symbiote-inspired darkness that Miles says is totally out of character for him. But the demo didn’t stop, and I instead was treated to the only true “boss battle” of the demo, with Peter squaring off against Conners. This was a positively huge, multi-stage showdown that required me to use all the skills I picked up over the prior two hours, including a lot of well-timed dodging and all the special attacks I had at my disposal.
As with the big battles in prior Spider-Man games, there were multiple tricks I needed to figure out to make the Lizard vulnerable – just trying my standard set of attacks wasn’t going to be enough. I died a handful of times trying to get the hang of it, but fortunately these deaths didn’t feel cheap. Usually, it was a case of me not recognizing the need to dodge rather than block, or some other variation on me not executing a skill the game had taught me. Once I got the hang of things, I made semi-quick work of the Lizard. At least, I thought I did, until the demo ended on a big old cliffhanger that made me think Peter might pay a bit of a price for going rogue.
Fortunately, I won’t have to wait long to find out how things turn out – Spider-Man 2 will be out on the PS5 on October 20. We’ll have to wait to do a full review before we can give it a full recommendation, but I think anyone who enjoyed the first games will want to check this one out. And if you haven’t tried them before, you should be able to jump right into this new one without much trouble. While I enjoy the stories Insomniac has crafted for the two Spider-Men, the delight of swinging and fighting around NYC is still one of my favorite gaming experiences out there, and it’s one that doesn’t require an encyclopedic knowledge of Spider-Man’s history.
Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen will be honored with the Zurich Film Festival’s Golden Eye Award for career achievement at the fest’s upcoming 19th edition.
Mikkelsen will receive the award on October 6 before presenting his new film, the Venice competition pic The Promised Land. In the film, directed by Nikolaj Arcel, Mikkelsen plays impoverished Captain Ludvig Kahlen who tries to make the the harsh, uninhabitable Jutland heath fertile and defend it against thieves in the 18th century.
Alongside The Promised Land screening, Mikkelsen will also hold a masterclass at Zurich, during which he will talk about his film and his career.
“Mads Mikkelsen is a very charismatic actor who always completely immerses himself in his characters and captivates the audience with his looks and physical performance,” said Zurich artistic director Christian Jungs.
“He radiates strength and sometimes vulnerability at the same time and, as a leading actor, is able to carry films from A to Z, as he does in his latest work The Promised Land. We are very pleased to welcome Mikkelsen to Zurich for the first time.”
Across his career, Mikkelsen has worked extensively between Europe and North America. He received a BAFTA nomination and a European Film Award with Another Round (2020), which marked Mikkelsen’s return to Danish cinema. The pic was his second feature with filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg, following 2013’s The Hunt, for which he won the prize for Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival.
Most recently, he starred opposite Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Further credits include Arctic, Polar, Doctor Strange, and Casino Royale. In 2011, Mikkelsen received the European Film Award for his contribution to World Cinema and presided on the 2016 Cannes jury.
The Zurich Film Festival runs from September 28 to October 8.
‘Expendables 4’ narrowly took top place at the mainland Chinabox office on a quiet weekend preceding the National Day holiday season at the end of the month. “A Haunting in Venice” opened outside the top five.
Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway shows “Expendables 4” earning $10.9 million (RMB78.6 million) over its debut weekend. The latest instalment in the “Expendables” franchise lacks an above-the title Chinese star, but includes Jason Statham, who is also to be seen in China-U.S. co-production “Meg 2: The Trench.”
The new release title was fractionally ahead of Chinese crime thriller “Dust to Dust,” which picked up $10.6 million (RMB76.2 million) in its second week of release. “Dust” breathed in a 52% week-on-week decline, but advanced its total to $44.2 million after ten days on release.
“Oppenheimer” played on in third place with $4.3 million in its third week in China. After 17 days on release, it has accumulated $54.3 million in the Middle Kingdom.
“No More Bets,” the biggest film of the summer season, faded to $4.0 million and fourth place. It has a cumulative total of $527 million since releasing on Aug. 8.
New release, “Tainted Love,” earned $3.2 million in fifth place over three days. Starring Zhou Dongyu, the film is a thriller about online scammers who target women in particular. Online scamming is also the subject matter of “No More Bets.”
Artisan Gateway does not report a figure for Disney’s Kenneth Branagh-directed Agatha Christie adaptation, “A Haunting in Venice.” Local Chinese data providers report that it earned $2.6 million over its opening three days.
The nationwide box office aggregate for the latest Friday-Sunday weekend was $42.1 million, blow average in this recovery year. But a mid-September lull fits a pattern seen in normal, pre-COVID years and reflects dearth of big releases ahead of the National Day holiday season. A string of larger Chinese titles and local franchise films are targeting release on Sept. 28, ahead of the holidays which officially kick off on Oct. 1.
No one is safe at the Kids’ Choice Awards. Just ask Halle Berry. Slimed at the 2012 ceremony, the Oscar winner still deals with the fallout.
Gold Standard: Oscars edition – Best Actor
After Drake used a photograph of Berry slimed at the Kids Choice Awards for the cover of his latest single, the actor wrote on Instagram that she denied his request to use the photo. Now, Berry’s face dripping with green viscous goo adorns the promotional art for “Slime You Out,” which Drake posted on his Instagram Wednesday, and there’s not much she can do about it except move on. Two days later, Halle Berry announced her intention to do just that, posting an image on Instagram that reads, “Sometimes you have to be the bigger guy […] even if you’re a woman.”
Though Berry had the decency not to name Drake in her initial post, commenters quickly figured it out. “[Drake] didn’t get my permission,” she wrote. “That’s not cool I thought better of him !” At press time, we don’t know why she thought better of a guy who posted a picture of the bras thrown at him at concerts with the caption, “Remember when we both forgot who the fuck I was in unison…that wavelength was def a foolish one.” However, some commenters cracked their knuckles and told Berry that, well, actually, she doesn’t own the photograph, and Drake paid a fee, so it’s all good. Berry informed them that Drake did ask for permission—he just ignored her response. “He asked me and i said NO that’s why,” Berry commented. “Why ask if you intend to do what you want to do ! That was the f*uck you to me. Not cool You get it?”
We get it. Honestly, the only thing we don’t get is why Drake would do that to Halle Berry.
Spoilers below for the second episode of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, so be warned if you haven’t yet watched!
Considering the sheer breadth of The Walking Dead universe at this point, from comics to video games to TV shows, I wasn’t sure if there were any original thoughts left for me to have for the very first time when experiencing this brand. And yet it happened during the cold open for TWD: Daryl Dixon’s second installment, “Alouette,” which offered viewers a look back to what life was like for Clémence Poésy’s not-so-innocent Isabelle right when the world turned upside-down.
The flashback scenes also offered insights into elements introduced in the premiere, showing how Isabelle found her path as a nun, while also laying out the potentially unique origin story for Louis Puech Scigliuzzi’s Laurent. But before all that could happen, the ep inspired me to consider a not-exactly-deep question that I nonetheless hadn’t really thought about before:
Could the zombie apocalypse have been slowed at all if every living person’s first instinct would have been to toss aside empathy and subdue or flat-out kill the undead?
The Walking Dead franchise has only offered up a few different looks at the very early days of the zombie apocalypse, and usually in a limited-in-scope capacity, with Fear the Walking Dead’s first season being the most extended approach to events surrounding Z-day, as it were. And so I admittedly haven’t spent a whole lot of time hypothesizing about how that hectic period could have gone for everyone involved, since we’ve already seen the aftermath.
And yet, perhaps because audience members such as myself have witnessed many years of brutal character decisions in this world, the juxtaposition of Daryl Dixon‘s flashback basically made me think about what might have happened if the survivors had all the knowledge and experience of post-apocalyptic life somehow embedded into their DNA, so that their first reactions to seeing reanimated corpses wouldn’t have been to panic and run away, but to try and immediately eliminate the threat before it could do further damage.
(Image credit: AMC)
After all the drug-fueled dancing and thievery — which featured the über-French moment of Isabelle lighting a cigarette with the Eiffel Tower lit up in the background — the episode honed in on some public panic over a smattering of walkers down the streets and on the subways of Paris. Isabelle was understandably as shocked as everyone else, more inclined to stare in horror over being active, but was snapped out of that whenever her partner in crime drove up and slammed his car into the walker that was following her. And even though it didn’t actually kill the thing, the dude’s more violent instincts were what had me wondering what kind of impact it might have had if everyone was fueled by the same ideas.
Which isn’t a very realistic idea on the surface, since it would require a universal lack of empathy, as well as the wherewithal to confirm the difference between the living and the dead before going ham on some walkers. Which, I suppose, really just circles back to this age-old idea: “Why do characters in zombie fiction so rarely get to apply knowledge from other forms of zombie fiction?” And I know that TWD co-creator Robert Kirkman’s inherent George Romero fandom is tied to the comic book characters being unaware of the subgenre as a whole. So maybe that has something to do with why I haven’t actively thought about how the earliest days could have gone differently in this world.
Really, though, I’m mostly considering an idealized version of that scenario, in which the action-taking survivors used only long-range weaponry that didn’t put others in danger. The reality wouldn’t be nearly as neat, as I’m sure a bunch of people who would confront the walkers would unintentionally get infected and eff up the whole shebang.
Even if this was a thought experiment without any real paramenters or endgame, credit goes to the critically applauded spinoffThe Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon for inspiring some new ideas in my own half-dead noggin. I really dig the new show’s change in locale, and how that helps it stand apart from Dead City and the flagship drama, while also giving Daryl a new set of characters to mix it up with during his mystery-cloaked journey.
Fans don’t need to worry about Norman Reedus’ character being killed off anytime soon, with Season 2 already ordered up, though the same sense of confidence probably shouldn’t be had for all the supporting characters. Here’s hoping Isabelle and others survive long enough to appear in other upcoming Walking Dead shows.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon airs Sunday nights on AMC at 8:00 p.m. ET, and streams on the same day for AMC+ subscribers. Head to our 2023 TV premiere schedule to see what else is hitting the small screen in the near future.
It’s probably unsurprising to hear that winning the Toronto International Film Festival’s prestigious People’s Choice Award is the prime reaction writer-director Cord Jefferson hoped his feature debut would get, but it was far from guaranteed. The film starring Jeffrey Wright is very a much commentary on the types of films that have haphazardly tackled Black issues and gone on to win the same award, like “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” or “Green Book.”
In a conversation with IndieWire shortly after the premiere, Jefferson said watching his film with its first TIFF audience was “one of the most terrifying moments of my entire life.” Hearing of other Black audience members being hyper-aware of all the jokes about stereotypical Black protagonists quarreling with baby mamas and dealing crack cocaine to survive the streets as the film’s protagonist Thelonious “Monk” Ellison writes a mock-novel that ends up being elevated in the most highbrow circles of the literary world made the director recall his own experience seeing “Django Unchained” surrounded by a white audience in LA. “I remember thinking, ‘Huh… Is this funny? Do I feel a certain kind of way about the fact that these people are laughing?’”
Though “American Fiction” does not fall into the “tough to watch” category of films centered on Black Americans, it asks tough questions about why that is the only kind of Black representation that seems to be regarded in the highest esteem. To see his film be such a conversation piece at TIFF does make Jefferson feel like he has properly gotten its intention across to the audience. “The most exciting thing for me to hear has been people saying that when they left the theater, they couldn’t wait to talk about the movie with their friends and colleagues and sort of debate different points and say, ‘How did you feel about this scene? And how did you feel about this conversation?’ That to me, has been the most thrilling response because that’s what I wanted,” said Jefferson.
“My metric for great art is: Am I thinking about it days after I’ve seen it? Months after I’ve seen it? How frequently does this come to my mind after I’ve consumed this thing? And so it would break my heart if people came and saw the film and then left the theater going like, ‘Ok, that was fine. Where should we go to dinner? Let’s debate about that,’” said the first-time director.
Judging by the success of the TIFF People’s Choice Awards that have come before it, this win is just the beginning of what will be a long, fruitful road of filmgoers considering “American Fiction.”
When Lise Davidsen sang the first four notes of Elisabeth’s aria “Dich, teure Halle,” from Wagner’s “Tannhäuser,” at the Metropolitan Opera last night, all I could think to write down in my notebook was “holy” — and remembering to mind my manners — “cow.”
That opening salvo was magnificent — an ideal balance of warmth, penetration and power that didn’t seem to strain her one bit.
It’s rare for the Met to invite an artist for a solo concert in its 3,800-seat auditorium. And it’s rarer still for that singer to be making her New York City recital debut.
But Davidsen is another rare thing: a true dramatic soprano. Originally trained as a mezzo, she possesses a fully resonant lower register that passes through a dark, capacious middle into a blazing, seraphic top. When her voice really starts flowing, its legato is molten, and the sonic boom of her high notes can cause a mild ringing in the ears. Davidsen’s timbre is also lovely in its shapeliness, metal wrapped in layers of velvet.
Her rangy program with the pianist James Baillieu covered improbable distances — Verdi’s delicate Desdemona from “Otello,” Wagner’s ecstatic Elisabeth and Tchaikovsky’s shattered Lisa from “Queen of Spades”; Schubert’s gracious songs and Richard Strauss’s rhapsodic ones; silver-age operetta and golden-age musical theater.
Rather than open the first half with Elisabeth’s rapturous greeting to the Hall of Song — too obvious — Davidsen chose three placid Edvard Grieg songs in her native Norwegian and three more in German. By the fifth song, “Zur Rosenzeit,” she was fully invested, adding a drop of ink to her pooling tone and bringing herself to the verge of tears amid the narrator’s grief-stricken desire. Baillieu also dodged expectations, exploring degrees of quiet from the Met’s vast stage.
Sensitive and theatrically engaged, Davidsen doesn’t merely ply audiences with lots of high-decibel singing. In the long introduction to Lisa’s suicide scene, she swayed back and forth, almost unconsciously, as her character waits impatiently for a lover on a riverbank, unfurling a splendid sound shot through with a chilly gust. No sets, no costumes, no orchestra: But the whole opera was there.
Using a microphone to talk to the audience between numbers, Davidsen, a witty, soft-spoken presence, explained the program’s personal bent. She wanted to bring her “home composer,” Grieg, to the Met stage; she had avoided Schubert for so long because she didn’t think dramatic voices were supposed to sing him; the “Queen of Spades” aria was a memento of her 2019 Met debut, and “Dich, teure Halle,” of her days as a voice student.
She needn’t have worried about Schubert. Her tone in “An die musik” and “Litanei auf das Fest Aller Seelen” was voluminous, clean and gently applied, and she made a compellingly operatic scene out of “Gretchen am Spinnrade.”
Perhaps there are times, though, when a voice is simply too big. The hushed, focused line of Strauss’s “Morgen” eluded her, and her tonal opacity, perfect for Wagner, sometimes obscured the vulnerability of an aria from Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera.” But the arching exclamations of Strauss’s “Zueignung” and Sibelius’s “Den första kyssen” sounded tailor-made for her.
In a winking final set, Davidsen playfully enjoyed her own vocal glamour in an Emmerich Kalman operetta aria and slid languidly into Lerner and Loewe’s “I Could Have Danced All Night” in an apparent nod to the great Birgit Nilsson, who capped her famous recording of it with a missile-like high C.
Davidsen may have been acknowledging that audiences are eager for her to pick up Nilsson’s mantle. But she had also spent an evening inviting them to get to know her own story and artistry first.
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2023 REVIEW! One of the best films I have seen in years is indigenous Australian auteur Ivan Sen’s noir, Limbo. The stunning monochromatic imagery opens on a vast stretch of wasteland pockmarked by holes from mining. A car drives up from an endless highway with a religious sermon playing on the radio. Travis Hurley (Simon Baker) pulls into a gravel lot with a sign for the Limbo Motel. He walks into the side of a mountain and walks down tunnels underground to his room carved into the rock. He unpacks and proceeds to cook some heroin and shoot it into his arm.
“…look into an unsolved disappearance of an indigenous girl named Charlotte 20 years ago.”
The next morning, we find out Travis is a cop. He has been sent to the small outback town of Limbo to look into an unsolved disappearance of an indigenous girl named Charlotte 20 years ago. He talks to Charlotte’s brother, Charlie (Rob Collins), but doesn’t talk to white cops for any reason. Charlotte’s sister, Emma (Natasha Wanganeen), doesn’t want to talk to Travis. He looks for Leon, who was briefly questioned decades ago about it, but only finds a pile of rocks in an old abandoned mine, where the man’s brother, Joseph (Nicholas Hope), buried him a year earlier. With no leads, Travis goes to leave but finds his car has been vandalized and won’t start. So, while Travis is stuck in Limbo, he struggles with his fruitless investigation, retiring each night to a bed in a cave underground to shoot more drugs.
Sometimes, a film is so phenomenal it defies coherent appreciation, leaving one to sputter in awe like Kubrick’s apes to the monolith. Or maybe Danny looking down a corridor of the Overlook. Or Alex looking at the movie screen with his eyes wired open. It’s definitely something Kubrickian, as Limbo is that high up on the shelf. I feel like a hydra, with each mouth-gushing praise for a different aspect of the film simultaneously. The third head can’t stop going on about the unbelievable black and white cinematography shot by Sen. All former boundaries of the aesthetic possibilities of desolation are smashed like a bleak piñata.
Tiffany Rose/Getty Images for Harold & Carole Pump Foundation
Lamar Odom is safe after accidentally crashing into two parked cars in Los Angeles recently.
The retired NBA star, 43, was driving his Merecedes-Benz around 3 a.m. on Monday, September 11, when he hit two parked cars in the Northridge area, TMZ reports. The Los Angeles Police Department asked if he’d been drinking and Odom explained that he has been sober for several years and now owns recovery clinics. No sobriety tests were conducted. Odom and the owners of the cars exchanged insurance information before the police left.
Odom’s rep, Gina Rodriguez, told People on Sunday, September 17, that the retired athlete was reaching for his cell. “His phone fell and it dropped on the floor and when he reached out for it, his arm went with it,” Rodriguez told the outlet.
She added that Odom “was totally fine” despite being “a little shaken up” after his three airbags were released.
Several of Hollywood’s biggest stars have been candid about their sobriety journeys over the years. Kelly Osbourne, who previously talked about being sober for six years, revealed in April 2021 that she had suffered a relapse and was working on next steps. “Not proud of it. But I am back on track,” she wrote via […]
The rep noted that the authorities asked if Odom was sober because they “knew his history” with addiction.
“Drugs — that was my girlfriend. I had a wife and cocaine,” he said. “For part of my marriage, I had to tell [Khloé]. You can’t hide that forever. … She was hurt, but Khloé was a good wife. She wasn’t dismissive or [saying], ‘Get away from me.’ … She was protective and wanted to protect me even more. She [stood by me]. I mean behind the scenes, I put her through some s—t. Like s—t that y’all don’t know. … The stories that y’all don’t know is, like, really crazy.”
Kardashian, now 39, and Odom married in September 2009 after just one month of dating, and they split in 2013. The divorce was paused in 2015 after Odom went to the Bunny Ranch in Nevada and nearly died following an overdose. Kardashian was in charge of his medical care at the time.
Thank You!
You have successfully subscribed.
“I think if I would have passed away that day or those nights, I think [my life] would be considered a tragedy. But the triumphant part is that I pulled through it,” Odom said in the doc. “You know, I’m stronger than ever. I’m more focused than I ever was in my championship years. I’ve kind of got the same focus. I don’t live life like a druggie anymore. … I’m so blessed to be here and it’s a thin line between not being here and being here. … You name me one person who got off drugs and things got worse?”
Odom, whose divorce from Kardashian was finalized in 2016, explained that he now has “control” over both his sex and drug addiction.
