Entertainment

On Thursday, Paramount+ dropped the trailer to Dear Santa, the Christmas family comedy starring Jack Black and brought to you by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, the siblings behind the smash hits Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary. 

As reported, the film centers on a boy named Liam (Robert Timothy Smith) who writes to Santa for proof he exists, but, as the trailer narrates, “Liam is a crappy speller.”

To that end, his letter addressed instead to “Satan” finds its way due south of the North Pole — and the other guy in red shows up, to Liam’s surprise.

“Who did you expect?” Black says as the other guy, complete with horns on his head. “In the movies the reindeer has usually have the antlers, not you,” Liam replies.

Black’s character offers Liam three wishes in exchange for his soul — a bargain he insists genies “stole” from him. “You ain’t never had a friend like me!” Black growls happily, adding, “OK, that I may have stolen from Aladdin: Now we’re even.” 

However, Liam proves “incorruptible,” even when Satan grants him riches and a bro hug from Post Malone, playing himself.

Along the way, Liam tries to get the Devil to break good: “What about doing something out of kindness?” he offers. “I don’t know what you just said — I mean I know all the words, but I just never heard them in that order,” Black retorts. 

Dear Santa hits Paramount+ for free, and digital platforms for rent or purchase, on Nov. 25.

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Joan Vassos‘ suitors reunited on Wednesday night for a heartfelt “Men Tell All” episode of the Golden Bachelorette.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as the men reminisced about their journey on the show in front of an audience and revisited some of the hilarious memories they shared.

“The bromance here was just absolutely unbelievable,” Gary said about the group of men.  Host Jesse Palmer also highlighted how the men supported each other despite the fact they were all vying for the heart of Vassos.

The audience was moved to tears when Jonathan, the 61-year-old shipping consultant from Oakland, Iowa, read a sweet message that Mark left him one morning on a post-it note.

Fan favorite Charles L. also spoke about the friendship he has with all the men and how the The Golden Bachelorette experience has given him the confidence to start dating again.

“I was worried [about] what my daughters would think about me, to date again … and also I was not sure what my relatives would think about me [dating] due to my cultural background,” he said. “But the support I received, the love I received from my daughters and my family and relatives — that worry is gone.”

An audience member then suggested that Charles should be the next “Golden Bachelor.”

After Pascal‘s dramatic exit in last week’s episode, the 69-year-old salon owner from Chicago, Illinois, took the hot seat to discuss his “difficult decision” to say goodbye to her in Tahiti.

“I hope I didn’t hurt her,” Pascal said, adding, “She’s a wonderful woman and now I’m watching and I see her say that she’s not worthy of love — she’s totally wrong. I think she is worthy of love, I just wasn’t able to give her what she was looking for at the time.”

When it finally came time to talk to Vassos, Pascal said he hoped him leaving the show led to Vassos finding the right person. She said she has no hard feelings towards him, and that she wants “nothing but the best” for him.

Vassos also told all the men that she wanted to remain friends with them.

Next week, we’ll see how Vassos’ journey as the Golden Bachelorette ends in part two of the season finale, as she heads to Bora Bora with Chock and Guy.

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Samuel L. Jackson is set to star alongside singer/actress Andra Day and Emilia Perez actor Edgar Ramirez in the action comedy The Honest Liar, according to Deadline. Jackson will play “an award-winning actor tasked with teaching rookie undercover cops how to act like criminals so they can save their own lives when on the job,” per the outlet. Filming is set to start in early 2025 …

Squid Game breakout actress Hoyeon has been tapped to star opposite The Gentlemen‘s Theo James in The Hole, according to Variety. The story follows James as “a successful professor living abroad in South Korea, who is bedridden after a devastating car accident that killed his wife,” played by Hoyeon, per the entertainment publication. His Korean mother-in-law steps in to care for him, but his road to recovery is threatened when she learns the devastating truth behind Owen and his marriage to Sandy …

Get Out‘s Lil Rel Howery is set to direct the comedy-horror film Haunted Heist, in which he’ll star opposite Girls Trip‘s Tiffany Haddish, according to Deadline. The movie follows “four estranged friends” who “reunite at what appears to be a typical house,” though one is really there to steal an antique worth a fortune and needs the others’ help, per the outlet. They have bigger problems, however, as the house ends up being “straight up haunted” …

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Bill Burr will host Saturday Night Live this weekend, and while it is his second time hosting, it’s the first show after the 2024 election. 

To that end, the stand-up superstar and Old Dads actor/director spilled a little political tea with cast member Marcello Hernández — or, at least he tried to — during a new promo video.

The sketch was obviously shot before the election results were in, so to cover for that, every time the pair mentioned who won the election in the past tense, a custodian drowns them out with a vacuum cleaner. 

Further, Burr also let slip, “I was randomly in a steam room with Giuliani,” referring to the former New York City Mayor-turned adviser to former President — and now president-elect Trump. “He told me who actually killed Epstein. He said it was — ” but again, the vacuum drones on. 

For his part, a shocked Hernández offered whom his Pentagon-connected cousin reportedly floated as a suspect. However, once again, the name is protected by the noise.

The pair also started talking about drugs Burr could use to take the edge off his nervousness, but this time Saturday Night Live‘s house band saxophonist Lenny Pickett lets fly, and we can’t hear what they’re saying.

The musical guest this will be Mk.gee, making his first SNL appearance.

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Tom Hanks isn’t Batman — but apparently fans think he is.

The Oscar winner appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, and revealed that despite being one of the most famous actors in Hollywood, fans confuse him for Michael Keaton “all the time.” 

“Yeah, me and him are, you know, some form of odd doppelgänger back from a long time ago,” he explains. “They don’t say ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice‘ to me exactly. But a lot of time, ‘Hey, were you in that?’ You know, I get that.”

The two men do share a similar comedy background, and they came up in the business around the same time. In fact, Keaton revealed back in 2012 that he was up for a starring role in Splash, the 1984 Ron Howard hit that helped catapult Hanks to movie stardom. However, Keaton turned the role down so that he wouldn’t get typecast in comedies after the success of 1983’s Mr. Mom.

Some time ago, there were rumors Hanks was offered the role of the Caped Crusader before Keaton donned the cape and cowl in 1989’s Tim Burton blockbuster Batman, which he recently reprised in The Flash. 

However, Hanks poured cold water on that rumor on the Graham Norton Show, joking the very idea was “comical.” Hanks clarified he was “never” offered the role, adding with a laugh, “Can you imagine me in that suit?”

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Christina Applegate is opening up about the pain she experiences from multiple sclerosis.

The Married… with Children alum, 52, shared her latest health update during the Nov. 5 episode of the MeSsy podcast she co-hosts with fellow actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who also has MS.

“I lay in bed screaming,” she continued, attributing that to “the sharp pains, the ache, the squeezing.”

“I can’t even pick up my phone sometimes, ’cause now it’s traveled into my hands,” she detailed. “So I’ll, like, try to go get my phone or get my remote to turn on the TV or whatever, and I can’t — sometimes I can’t even hold ’em. I can’t open bottles now.”

Applegate said that while her outside may look fine, it’s just because people can’t see what’s going on inside.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune condition in which the body attacks myelin, the tissue that coats nerve fibers within the central nervous system, consisting of the brain and spinal cord, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health.

MS can be unpredictable, causing differing symptoms with variable timing and frequency from fatigue, numbness or tingling, weakness, dizziness and vertigo to rendering a person unable to write, speak or walk in the most severe cases, according to the NIH. Individually, MS symptoms can vary, ranging from mild to extreme pain during a flare-up of the disease.

There is currently no known cure for MS.

Applegate, who was diagnosed with the chronic disease in 2021, told Good Morning America in March 2024 that living with MS was “kind of hell.”

“They call it the invisible disease. It can be very lonely because it’s hard to explain to people,” she said at the time. “I’m in excruciating pain, but I’m just used to it now.”

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Peter and Bobby Farrelly exploded on the comedy scene with 1994’s hit Dumb and Dumber, and also scored with 1996’s Kingpin and 1998’s There’s Something About Mary, but they haven’t made a movie together since the 2014 sequel Dumb and Dumber To. 

In the interim, Peter Farrelly became an Oscar winner thanks to the 2018 drama Green Book, but as the pair tell Entertainment Weekly, they’re back to the funny with the Jack Black Christmas comedy Dear Santa. 

The magazine has a first look at the project, which centers on a kid (Robert Timothy Smith) who desperately wants to prove to his friends that Santa is real, so he writes a letter to the big guy — except he misspells Santa as “Satan.”

Enter Jack Black as the latter, who is so flattered he got a letter that he shows up instead. Bobby Farrelly says reuniting with their Shallow Hal star was a no-brainer. Explaining his Satan is “diabolical, but in a fun way,” Bobby says, “there’s a little bit of mischievous to him at all times, but he’s eminently likable, and that’s just Jack.”

He adds, “We never wanted to make it a horror movie or something like that. We wanted it to be comical. So it was a delicate [balance] of playing this iconic character but doing it in a way that the audience can have some fun with it. And Jack was the perfect guy.”

The Farrelly brothers explained their idea for the film goes back more than 15 years, and they credited Loudermilk writer Ricky Blitt with breathing new life into the project, which Peter co-wrote, and Bobby directed. 

Dear Santa hits Paramount+ and digital platforms on Nov. 25.

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To commemorate November 6 — aka “Stranger Things Day,” aka the day Will Byers was sucked into the Upside Down — Netflix revealed Stranger Things will return in 2025, as well as the titles for all eight remaining episodes of the streaming phenomenon’s fifth and final season.

“In the fall of 1987, one last adventure begins … ” Netflix teased in a series of title cards.

Here are the titles — let your imagination run as to what they could mean: 

Episode 1

“The Crawl”

Episode 2

“The Vanishing of …”

Episode 3

“The Turnbow Trap”

Episode 4

“Sorcerer”

Episode 5

“Shock Jock”

Episode 6

“Escape From Camazotz”

Episode 7

“The Bridge”

Episode 8

“The Rightside Up”

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Pretty Little Liars alum Lucy Hale has been tapped to star in the forthcoming sci-fi thriller White Mars, according to Deadline. The film, set in an isolated research facility in Antarctica, follows microbiologist Sammie — played by Hale — who tries to save her fellow crew members from a malevolent entity bent on killing them all, per the outlet …

Variety reports Daisy Ridley will reunite with her Cleaner director Martin Campbell for the action thriller Dedication. Ridley will play Major Billie Jean Parker, “a decorated Marine Corps commander who is relieved of duty after a high-stakes mission in the Philippines results in civilian casualties, despite capturing anarchist leader Omar Romatas,” according to the outlet. She’s forced back into action by Romatas’ vengeful son, who launches an attack on an event she attends and takes hostages …

Grown-ish alum Yara Shahidi is in talks to star in the coming-of-age comedy Bloom, along with Sex Education‘s Kedar Williams-Stirling, Uglies‘ Keith Powers and Renée Elise Goldsberry, the Tony Award-winning star of Broadway’s Hamilton, according to Deadline. The movie centers on “a young and gifted Black artist,” played by Williams-Stirling, who moves to Italy on a college scholarship and “forges unexpected friendships and ignites a passionate romance, all within the captivating orbit of a defiant and opulent circle of wealthy young Black adults deemed ‘The Casa Rosa Kids,'” per the entertainment website …

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After a slow start, Tyler Perry‘s Netflix drama Beauty in Black has climbed to #1 on the streaming service’s TV chart.

The series debuted in fourth place when it premiered on Oct. 28, but rose to first place for the week of Oct. 28-Nov. 3, hitting 8.7 million views in its first full week of streaming, according to Netflix.

Beauty in Black, starring Taylor Polidore, follows two women — one fighting for survival after being forced out by her mother, the other running a prosperous company.

Elsewhere on the Netflix TV chart, Territory fell to second place, The Diplomat came in third, This Is the Zodiac Speaking took fourth place and The Lincoln Lawyer rounded out the top five.

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