Entertainment

Alan Ladd Jr., the producer who greenlighted George Lucas‘ Star Wars while at 20th Century Fox in 1977, has died. Deadline reports he was 84. 

On social media, Ladd’s daughter Amanda Ladd-Jones wrote, “With the heaviest of hearts, we announce that on March 2, 2022, Alan Ladd, Jr. died peacefully at home surrounded by his family,” adding, “Words cannot express how deeply he will be missed. His impact on films and filmmaking will live on in his absence.”

Ladd not only backed Star Wars when other studios passed on the American Graffiti director’s tale of a “galaxy far, far away,” but he put his job on the line to defend it while it was being made. 

Studio executives were furious at budget overruns on Lucas’ “science movie” as Star Wars‘ production dragged on, amid shooting delays caused by weather and technical problems from the movie’s groundbreaking special effects.

In the documentary Empire of Dreams: The Story of Star Wars Trilogy, Ladd recalled being confronted by one executive, and telling him, “‘It’s the greatest picture ever made.’ That ended the conversation. They were afraid to tell me…’You’re wrong, we want you out of the building by 5 p.m.'” 

He added with a smile, “There were some tense moments.”

A former agent, Ladd went on to have a hugely successful career as a producer that also saw him credited with films including Moonstruck, A Fish Called Wanda and Thelma & Louise, among others. In 1996, he won an Oscar for Mel Gibson‘s epic Braveheart.

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MTV has announced that both its Movie & TV Awards and its reality show event, MTV Movie & TV Awards: UNSCRIPTED, will return live from Los Angeles, respectively, on Sunday, June 5th, and Monday, June 6th on MTV internationally in 180 countries.

Hosts, guests, and nominees will be announced at a later date.

Former SNL star and Coming 2 America co-star Leslie Jones hosted the festivities on the Movies & TV side last year, while comic and actress Nikki Glaser did the honors for the Unscripted show. 

Both events to take place once again at LA’s Barker Hangar, the site of the 2018 and 2019 shows. Last year’s events, the first for Unscripted, were held at the Palladium.

In 2020, the pandemic cancelled the Movie & TV Awards, and instead Vanessa Hudgens hosted the virtual MTV Movie and TV Awards: Greatest of All Time.

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After a salary dispute that reportedly had Hulu searching for a soundalike, a triumphant John DiMaggio tweeted he’ll be returning to voice the hard-drinking, foul-mouthed robot Bender in new Futurama episodes bound for Hulu. 

“I’m back baby!” he tweeted Tuesday evening, quoting his shiny metal alter-ego.

DiMaggio’s message was met with a flood of Bender gifs and other positive thoughts from fans. 

Two weeks ago, the veteran character actor explained why he wasn’t signed onto the project at that point; his Futurama co-stars Katey Segal, Phil LaMarr, Billy West and others had previously committed. 

At the time, DiMaggio, who also voiced Jake the dog on the beloved Emmy-winning animated series Adventure Time, explained the situation.

“Bender is part of my soul & nothing about this is meant to be disrespectful to the fans or my Futurama family,” the actor noted in part, adding, “it’s about self-respect.”

“I don’t think only I deserve to be paid more. I think the entire cast does,” John wrote, explaining he’s “tired of an industry that’s become far too corporate and takes advantage of artists’ time & talent.”

Evidently, show creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen were pulling for DiMaggio to return to the fold.

Hulu announced early in February that 20 new episodes of the Emmy-winning series would be created for the streaming service.

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Lin-Manuel Miranda has a message to Encanto fans who believe “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” deserved an Oscar nod over “Dos Oruguitas” — the latter captures the essence of the film.

“When you’re submitting a song to the Oscars for consideration, your only goal should be what represents the themes of this movie, because you’re asking for a part to stand in for the whole,” he told ABC Audio’s Close Up with Kelley Carter podcast.  He added of the track that plays when Mirabel and Abuela come to a mutual emotional understanding, “‘Dos Oruguitas’ is the kernel.  It’s the trauma, and it’s the wonder of this family and their gifts, all in one…musical moment.”

Miranda added that the success of “Bruno” — now Disney’s longest-running number-one song — is “one of the great surprises and joys of my life.”

Should “Dos Oruguitas” win the Oscar for Best Original Song, Miranda will achieve EGOT status. The Hamilton creator finds the honor both “thrilling and intimidating” because, “Everyone in that club is pretty amazing.” He listed off a few of his “heroes” — EGOT winners John Legend, Rita Moreno and Marvin Hamlisch — and said, “I think that the most important thing for me to do is…stay a student and realize I’m still getting started, I still have so much to learn.”

Miranda said late Rent playwright and composer Jonathan Larson — the subject of his directorial debut tick, tick…BOOM! — is another hero of his.  “He was the gateway between loving musicals and thinking I could write a musical,” the In the Heights creator explained, noting that he saw Rent when he was 17 and witnessed his diverse community reflected on the Broadway stage. “That was when I understood I had a story to tell.”  

New episodes of Close Up with Kelley Carter premiere Wednesdays.

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Almost two years after Naya Rivera‘s tragic death, the Glee alum’s family has settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Ventura County.

Rivera’s estate and Ryan Dorsey — the father of the late actress’ son, Josey — filed the legal paperwork against the county and the United Water Conservation District and Parks and Recreation Management on behalf of the now six-year-old, who was four when Rivera drowned at Lake Piru during their mother-son outing in July 2020.

“Through this settlement, Josey will receive just compensation for having to endure the drowning of his beloved mother at Lake Piru,” the Rivera family’s lawyer, Amjad M. Khan, said in a statement to KABC. “Though the tragic loss of Josey’s mother can never truly be overcome, we are very pleased that the monetary settlement will significantly assist Josey with his life beyond this tragedy.”

Khan added that the settlement is “subject to approval by the Ventura Superior Court on March 16.”

Dorsey filed the suit in 2020, alleging that Rivera’s death was preventable, and that the boat that she and Josey were in at Lake Piru, where she died, “was not equipped with a safely accessible ladder, adequate rope, an anchor, a radio or any security mechanisms to prevent swimmers from being separated from their boats,” according to documents obtained by Entertainment Tonight.

Ryan divorced Naya in 2018 after four years of marriage.

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Lindsay Lohan‘s return to acting will be threefold — and available to stream on Netflix.

On Tuesday, Lohan and the streaming giant announced that they’ve signed a deal for the actress to star in two new films, bringing Lohan’s total films with the streamer to three.

“We’re so happy with our collaboration with Lindsay to date, and we’re thrilled to continue our partnership with her,” said Christina Rogers, Netflix’s director of Independent Film, according to Variety. “We look forward to bringing more of her films to our members around the world.”

The Mean Girls alum expressed her excitement on Instagram, sharing a screenshot of a headline announcing the news along with the caption, “Exciting things to come!”

Netflix did not reveal any information about the new films. However, Lohan is already set to star in Falling for Christmas, a holiday movie due out on Netflix later this year. In the project she works opposite Chord Overstreet as “a newly engaged, spoiled hotel heiress who gets into a skiing accident and suffers from total amnesia. During her recovery, around Christmas time, she finds herself in the care of a handsome, blue-collar lodge owner and his precocious daughter,” as described by Netflix. 

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The Hollywood Critics Association held its fifth annual awards on Monday in Los Angeles, and Siân Heder’s CODA — which won for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture at Sunday’s SAG Awards — took the top award for best picture, with Heder winning for adapted screenplay and Troy Kotsur winning for supporting actor, according to Variety. Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast grabbed the best cast ensemble award. Dune led the evening with four awards, including best score, best cinematography and best visual effects. Dune helmer Denis Villeneuve also tied for best director honors with Power of the Dog‘s Jane Campion. Other notable winners included West Side Story‘s Ariana DeBose, and Kristen Stewart and Andrew Garfield for their performances in Spencer and tick, tick…BOOM!, respectively…

Channing Tatum’s Free Association production company is partnering with Lionsgate on a live dance show inspired by the Step Up film franchise, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The 2006 original film and its four sequels grossed over $650 million at the worldwide box office and launched a streaming series, currently in its third season, on Starz…

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes‘ Jason Clarke has joined the cast of Christopher Nolan’s next film, Oppenheimer, according to Deadline. The star-studded roster already includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Josh Hartnett, Kenneth Branagh and Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy, the latter of whom is set to play the title role as J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the creators of the atomic bomb. Clarke can be seen next playing Los Angeles Lakers Legend Jerry West in HBO’s new series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, premiering on Sunday…

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Horror and comedy collide in the new Starz series Shining Vale, debuting Sunday.

Courteney Cox and Greg Kinnear play Patricia “Pat” Phelps and her husband Terry — a couple stuck in a rut professional and personally, and they move their whole family into an old home that turns out to be haunted. Series co-creator Sharon Horgan describes the premise to ABC Audio as “The Shining reimagined as a comedy.”

Cox’s character is not exactly the perfect wife and mother, according to Horgan’s partner Jeff Astrof, who notes, “She cheated on her husband…is not a very good mother [and] curses a lot.”

It’s not a role most people wanted to play, but Courteney says it was an amazingly complex character she was lucky to play.

“Depression and midlife crisis, all of it. I mean, you know, mental health issues and you know, the fact that she is a writer. If you just took that, and hasn’t written in 17 years and you know, she used to have all this money and contribute to the family, and now she feels hopeless and alone and depressed,” she explains. “That’s an interesting thing to play just in itself, but there’s so many things else that I get to do.”

So does Cox believe in ghosts? The Friends alum admits she didn’t — until a recent trip to England.

“I saw something and I woke up [partner, Johnny McDaid],” she recalls. “I was like, Johnny, and he said, ‘Courteney, you’re asleep.’ I said, ‘I’ve been up, I’m jet lagged, I’m not asleep, I’m not even that tired.’ But I wasn’t petrified. I just was – I was I was wanting it to stop. And I could see things, I’m not kidding.” 

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(NOTE LANGUAGE) In a conversation with Vanity Fair about her new skin-care line, The Outset, mom and Marvel movie star Scarlett Johansson explained what it’s like being a mother in the public eye. 

Johansson, who last August welcomed baby son Cosmo with her husband, Saturday Night Live‘s Colin Jost, also has a six-year-old daughter, Rose, with her ex-spouse, journalist Romain Dauriac. ScarJo admits to Vanity Fair that she was “so protective of both pregnancies, not wanting to feel scrutinized in the public eye.”

Indeed, her baby with Jost took even showbiz reporters by surprise, with Zoom-only promotional appearances for Black Widow making it easier to hide a baby bump than pre-pandemic in-person publicity appearances.

“I wanted to be able to have my own feelings about my changing body without other people also telling me how they saw me, whether it was positive or negative,” Scarlett said. “I realized when I was pregnant with my son, it’s funny how much stuff people put on you when you’re pregnant — their hopes or their judgment or their desire, a lot of that is put on pregnant women.”

Scarlett admits, “[W]hile I was definitely excited to be pregnant in some ways, I also had a lot of not-great feelings about it, and that would be scrutinized by — I’m talking about…women that were close to me.”

She adds, laughing, “[W]hen I told [one friend] that I was pregnant — she knew I was trying — she was just like, ‘Oh s***. Great, but not great.’ And I was like, ‘You’re a true friend.'”

Scarlet says she “feels like a lot of things have moved forward in the past five years in terms of women’s empowerment, but that thing remains sort of in the Dark Ages. So much judgment, it’s crazy.”

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In a real-life moment that seems exactly like a move “TV Larry” pulled in the 1999 mockumentary Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David has instructed HBO to pull a documentary about him hours before it was to premiere. 

Tonight’s The Larry David Story was to take a look at the creative mind behind Curb and Seinfeld, including the 74-year-old reminiscing about his early life and first years in the spotlight. Set to debut tonight at 9 p.m., HBO sent out a surprise tweet today, noting, “Larry has decided he wants to do it in front of an audience. Stay tuned for more info.”

Deadline reports the mercurial David “wasn’t satisfied” with the finished product, in which he spoke, long-form interview style with Larry Charles, a fellow Emmy winner and a key figure behind both hit shows.  

In Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, David was to mount a comeback special on HBO, but then cooks up an excuse to get out of it at the last minute.

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