David Ellison's Skydance has closed a $110bn merger of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery, leaving staff bracing for restructuring as it aims to cut $80bn+ in debt and find $6bn in savings within three years. Questions remain over declining cable channels, CNN and CBS editorial independence, and the film output pledge.
— via The Guardian: Culture, Mark Sweney
A review of BBC Two's A Course Called Ireland, in which author Tom Coyne and Bill Murray play Irish golf courses. The critic argues the show works best as a portrait of fame, with a reluctant Murray resisting the production's scripting, and finds it funny, peculiar and melancholy.
— via The Guardian: Culture, Rhik Samadder
Director Lee Chang-dong discusses Possible Love, a Venice grand jury prize winner and South Korea's Oscar submission. The film draws on the 2009 Ssangyong Motors strike and follows a laid-off worker's couple meeting a wealthy film-maker and her financier husband, probing class, capital and the ethics of looking.
— via The Guardian: Culture, Rebecca Liu
Reports suggest the next James Bond could be revealed after final screen tests this weekend, with Callum Turner, Josh O'Connor and Jack Lowden said to be the likely three finalists. The piece weighs each actor's chances, notes the tests cover stunts, camera presence and dialogue, and considers the demands of an Amazon-backed film directed by Denis Villeneuve.
— via The Guardian: Culture, Stuart Heritage
Erin Foster, creator of Netflix's Nobody Wants This, said she disagrees with star Adam Brody's call for a free Palestine but that differing opinions are acceptable. She said the show remains a love letter to Judaism and that her set resembles dinner tables where people debate.
— via The Guardian: Culture, Owen Myers
A24's three-hour Elizabeth Holmes documentary opened to $15m on just 855 screens, the best documentary debut since Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004. The buzz has also sent viewership of Hulu's The Dropout up 186% in September and put Bad Blood back on the bestseller list.
— via The Guardian: Culture, Adrian Horton
The first trailer for The Hunting Wives season two opens with Sophie in couples therapy, insisting she can change, while her feelings for Margo look anything but gone. Netflix's eight-episode season adds John Stamos, a body in the woods and a shooting range, and premieres November 26.
— via The A.V. Club, Olivia Singh
American Horror Story might not make sense to its actors, but its creator is moving forward with season 14.
— via The A.V. Club, Matt Schimkowitz
The Michael Jackson biopic left out the abuse allegations after a legal clause barred depicting one accuser, and the Jackson family paid $50m for reshoots. Now that it has become the highest-grossing biopic ever, star Jaafar Jackson says the inevitable sequel will address them from Michael's point of view.
— via The Guardian: Culture, Catherine Shoard
Mayor of Kingstown returns for its fifth and final season on January 15, 2027, with FBI agent Russell Hardy (David Morse) arriving to hunt the "fugitive" Merle Callahan, whom Mike and Kyle McLusky had pulled from prison for a killing. The logline says Hardy threatens to unearth all of Mike's sins and secrets.
— via The A.V. Club, Jarrod Jones
VisionQuest showrunner Terry Matalas isn't worried that a bearded, fedora-wearing James Spader will undercut Ultron as a threat when fans rewatch Age Of Ultron. Spader himself pitched the scruffy human look, borrowing the drama of Greek gods like Poseidon and Zeus.
— via The A.V. Club, Matt Webb Mitovich
Roseanne Barr tells The Hollywood Reporter she was already being pushed out of her revived sitcom before the 2018 tweet that got her fired. By her account, writers had been back in the room for a month without telling her, and she blames producer Tom Werner. Her recollection comes with a big grain of salt.
— via The A.V. Club, Matt Schimkowitz
Larry David turned down $200,000 from producer David Susskind for his unproduced screenplay Prognosis Negative because he demanded to stay its only writer and let no one change a word. Rob Reiner loved the script and Richard Dreyfuss wanted to remake it as a coming-of-age drama, but the demands sank every deal.
— via The A.V. Club, Matt Schimkowitz
Judi Dench still hasn't seen the final cut of Cats, so in her new memoir she says she can't judge it, though she admits she felt "ill at ease from the beginning" as Old Deuteronomy. She says there were "no villains" in the making of the film, and recalls that Jason Derulo gave her 50 gold-sprayed everlasting roses on the last day of shooting.
— via The Guardian: Culture, Catherine Shoard
Digger, the Tom Cruise climate satire, took $8m in its opening US weekend, fell 60% in its second and was pulled from more than 2,500 theatres before week three, facing a predicted $245m loss. The reviewer argues it is still the near-perfect film for our era because it blames audiences as well as oil barons.
— via The Guardian: Culture, Oliver Milman
Netflix gave Gwyneth Paltrow's first TV lead, the thriller The Apology, a straight-to-series order for two seasons, even as it lays off staff and struggles to keep viewers past a show's first season. Paltrow plays a mother who, with her husband, takes justice into her own hands when their son's confessed killer may get a reduced sentence.
— via The A.V. Club, Olivia Singh
Jon Stewart has re-signed with Comedy Central for two more years, keeping him at The Daily Show desk through Indecision 2028. The deal comes as Skydance is in its first round of layoffs and has had its own trouble with Stephen Colbert.
— via The A.V. Club, Matt Schimkowitz
Michael Douglas says he wanted Hank Pym killed off after the second Ant-Man movie, but Marvel wouldn't let him go. He took a green-screen role out of curiosity after beating cancer, then found he couldn't get out of it.
— via The A.V. Club, Olivia Singh
Selena Gomez says nicotine vaping changed her voice, answering online theories that she was cloned and replaced. In an Instagram Story, she says she vaped "a lot," calls it "so stupid," and tells followers it isn't worth starting.
— via The A.V. Club, Matt Schimkowitz
Jesse Eisenberg says nobody knew if Kieran Culkin would show up in Poland to shoot A Real Pain, and producer Emma Stone had to send a video of him going through customs. He still arrived late, and Eisenberg ended up changing how he directed to give Culkin room to improvise.
— via The A.V. Club, Olivia Singh
