Entertainment

Frank Grillo was recently heard voicing his Marvel movies baddie character Brock Rumlow/Crossbones in Marvel Studios’ What If…? on Disney+, but he’s back in theaters again this weekend in the gritty action film COPSHOP.

It’s Grillo’s sixth movie with writer-director Joe Carnahan, and has Grillo playing a man bun-wearing sleazy con man on the run from Gerard Butler‘s hitman, Bob, who was hired by the crooks from which Grillo’s character stole. Grillo’s Teddy is in so much trouble that he gets himself arrested by punching out a small-town rookie cop — stand-out newcomer Alexis Louder — but things take a turn when Butler’s character also gets himself locked up just to get at Teddy.

“It’s me and Butler, in a police station for the first two acts,” Grillo tells ABC Audio. “I mean, a lot goes on, but it’s this weird kind of 70s thriller until the third act is a full-blown action movie.”

Grillo’s work with Carnahan going back to 2011, in the acclaimed Liam Neeson man-vs.-wolves flick The Grey. The pair has since partnered up in their own production company, Warparty, for which they’ve made in rapid-fire a series of “elevated” genre movies starring Grillo, including Wheelman on Netflix, and Boss Level, which was a success for Hulu. 

Lock in some corrupt cops, and a deliciously psychotic competing hitman played by Toby Huss, and COPSHOP is a pulpy, bloody nod to John Carpenter‘s classic Assault on Precinct 13.

Grillo adds with a laugh of his buddy Carnahan, “I mean, the guy’s a mad genius. Crazy as a loon, but a genius.” 

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Shannen Doherty, who has stage 4 breast cancer, isn’t letting the disease control her life.

The actress, who plays a woman battling cancer in the upcoming Lifetime movie List of a Lifetime, told reporters this week she feels a responsibility to “let people know that people with stage 4 [cancer] are very much alive and very active,” according to People.

“My husband [photographer Kurt Iswarienko] says that you would never know that I have cancer,” Doherty said. “I never really complain. I don’t really talk about it. It’s part of life at this point.”

Doherty, 50, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, and after entering remission, she revealed last year that the disease had spread and returned as stage 4.

In an interview with Good Morning America, the Beverly Hills 90210 alumna said the diagnosis was “a bitter pill to swallow in a lot of ways.”

“I definitely have days where I say, ‘Why me?’ And then I go, ‘Well, why not me?’ Who else? Who else besides me deserves this? None of us do,” Doherty said last year. “But I would say that my first reaction is always concern about how — how am I going to tell my mom, my husband.”

At the time, Doherty said that she hadn’t told many people about her condition, as she didn’t want to be treated differently or be forced to focus on cancer. In her latest interview, she added that unlike her character in the Lifetime movie, she hasn’t created a “bucket list,” either.

“There’s no bucket list because I’m going to be the longest-living person with cancer,” she said. “If I had to say one, it would just be living. That’s the only thing on my list at this point.”

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Deepak Chopra has tapped some of his famous friends for his Audible Original podcast series Deepak Chopra’s Mind Body Zone: Living Outside the Box. 

The new series, hosted by Chopra, offers an opportunity for listeners to redefine their lives through harnessing a mind-body connection. To help achieve that important connection, Chopra enlisted 12 influential leaders — from media mogul Oprah Winfrey to musician Jon Batiste — who share their personal journeys and how they used their mind-body connection as a way to promote physical and emotional well-being. 

“That’s been my vision for 40 years,” Chopra tells ABC Audio. “A more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and joyful world. But that begins with personal transformation. And in the absence of personal transformation, there’s no social transformation. And in the absence of social transformation, as I said earlier, we’re screwed.”

While each 30-minute episode offers an intimate conversation tied to a specific theme, including self-acceptance, white privilege, and overcoming trauma and addiction, Chopra promises an opportunity for guided meditation. He believes meditation, as well as moments of silence, are essential for creating a holistic experience.

“So Deepak has read all the wisdom traditions of the East and West, including the spiritual traditions of the world from Africa. From the Middle East, from Asia, and also the West,” he says. “And so my understanding of what I call reality comes from the wisdom traditions. And these days, I go to my inner silence. That’s all. I practice silence every day for a couple of hours, and that’s when I harness my own creativity.” 

“So who do I go to?” Chopra asks. “The realm of silent beings.”

Deepak Chopra’s Mind Body Zone: Living Outside the Box is now available to stream exclusively on Audible.

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In what could be a preview of next Sunday’s Primetime Emmy Awards, Ted Lasso was the big winner at the 2021 Television Critics Association Awards.  The Apple TV+’s comedy, starring Jason Sudeikis, walked off with the coveted Program of the Year trophy, as well as Outstanding Achievement in Comedy and Outstanding New Program. 

HBO’s I May Destroy You creator and star Michaela Coel earned the Individual Achievement in Drama honor, while Hacks‘ Jean Smart won the same honor for comedy and also took home the Career Achievement Award. 

Other notable winners this year include Kate Winslet‘s Mare of Easttown, Framing Britney Spears, The Baby-Sitters Club, The Crown, Couples Therapy and Deaf U.  

The Golden Girls was honored with the Heritage Award. 

The TCA Awards are voted on by members of the Television Critics Association.  The complete winners list can be viewed at the TCA website…

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The new film Blue Bayou, in theaters Friday, takes on an issue many people don’t know is an issue: kids brought to the U.S., adopted from other countries who, as adults, think they’re citizens until they’re told they’re being deported.

Alicia Vikander who stars in the film, tells ABC Audio she had “no clue” this was happening in real life and immediately dove into researching the topic after reading the script. 

“I think the first thing I did was to bring up my phone and start Googling because I literally I couldn’t believe that this was a reality because it doesn’t make any sense,” she says.

While some may think the issue is a political one, for Vikander, it’s about humanity. 

“With these families, they’re kind of met by this issue that I think everyone, like no one agrees — it’s not even like immigration politics because they’ve legally come into the country already,” she expresses. “So it just doesn’t make any sense for anyone, you know?”

For Blue Bayou writer and director Justin Chon, this issue is one that he’s had a close connection to, explaining to ABC Audio that it’s based on stories happening to people he knows and “this film is for them.”

Ultimately, though, Chon, who also stars in the film as one of these adults, named Antonio, says he hopes the film sheds some light on a heartbreaking story.

“One of my biggest goals was to bring empathy to somebody who was going through this process. I didn’t want it to feel like propaganda,” he shares. “Hence Antonio is not a perfect human being. He’s flawed, as we all are. And I just wanted to feel just so relatable, so tangible, so visceral. I wanted it to be hard to look away.”  

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The Premise, a new anthology series from B.J. Novak, debuts today on FX on Hulu. Each episode tackles a different social hot button, and one of the two episodes out now deals with gun violence.

“It’s about a guy who has lost his family in a mass shooting and then applies for a new job at the sort of NRA type facility,” one of the stars, Boyd Holbrook tells ABC Audio. “[He] really falls in love with this job a little too much and starts raising concerns around the office about his true intentions.”

“It’s not really an anti-gun thing or a pro-gun thing,” the 40-year-old actor says of the dark comedy.  “It’s just about the common decency and the actual care of human life and how we’re engaging with that on a responsible level.”

Holbrook says his hope is that the show will start a conversation about a problem that has become all too common in this country.

“I think it’s great to ask, you know, what are we doing here? We have mass shootings, three hundred fifty-five days a year in the United States before the pandemic,” the Narcos alum says. “It’s just kind of almost droning in the media just how often they were happening and almost becoming sort of desensitized to all these horrific events that were happening.” 

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Anthony Mackie will be hanging up his Captain America shield — temporarily — and putting on his producer hat for a series in which he’ll star based on Sony PlayStation’s popular Twisted Metal video games. 

The games center on tricked-out vehicles and burned-out drivers going at each other in a post-apocalyptic world, though the half-hour, live-action series will be more fleshed out than that.

Executive-produced by Deadpool and Zombieland screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, and written by co-executive producer and Cobra Kai writer Michael Jonathan Smith, the series will have Mackie playing John Doe, a motor-mouthed, amnesiac milkman who must travel across the wasteland in his souped up milk truck, to deliver an important package to win a chance at a better life. 

“With the help of a trigger-happy car thief, he’ll face savage marauders driving vehicles of destruction and other dangers of the open road, including a deranged clown who drives an all too familiar ice cream truck,” Sony Television explained in a release obtained by ABC Audio.

That flame-headed clown, gamers know, is the marauder Sweet Tooth.

“We’ve been big fans of Anthony’s phenomenal body of work over the years and knew he was the only actor who could play a character as complex, funny and compelling as John Doe,” said Glenn Adilman, executive vice president of comedy development at Sony Pictures Television. “Fortunately for us, he agreed.”

Twisted Metal is the second high-profile PlayStation game getting the TV series treatment: The Last of Us is currently in production for HBO, from Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin and Game of Thrones executive producer Carolyn Strauss. That series will star two GOT vets: Pedro Pascal, also known from The Mandalorian, and Bella Ramsey.

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The new look at Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story is here!

On Wednesday, Good Morning America exclusively debuted the official trailer of the adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name. The film hits theaters Friday, December 10.

Starring in Spielberg’s movie musical are newcomer Rachel Zegler, Golden Globe nominee Ansel Elgort and the iconic Rita Moreno, among others. Moreno previously starred in, and won an Oscar for, the 1961 version of West Side Story, alongside Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer.

In the trailer, we hear Zegler, who was found via a casting call posted on Twitter and is making her professional film debut, sing for the very first time. She performs “Tonight,” one of the musical’s big numbers, as we’re introduced to the world of West Side Story.  Set in New York City during the ’50s, it tells a tale of two star-crossed lovers — think Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which inspired the musical. Elgort’s Tony is a former member of the Jets, a white gang, who falls in love with Zegler’s Maria, the sister of the leader of the Sharks, a Puerto Rican gang.

The 1961 version, which won 10 Academy Awards, including best picture, celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.

Speaking to Vanity Fair last March, Spielberg said the story “is not only a product of its time, but that time has returned, and it’s returned with a kind of social fury.”

“I really wanted to tell that Puerto Rican, Nuyorican experience of basically the migration to this country and the struggle to make a living, and to have children, and to battle against the obstacles of xenophobia and racial prejudice,” he added.

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Can you imagine The Bodyguard starring anyone but Whitney Houston?  Hollywood can.  A “reimagining” of the 1992 romantic drama co-starring Kevin Costner is currently underway, reports Variety.

Tony nominee Matthew López, who wrote the critically acclaimed play The Inheritance, has been tapped to write the film, which will be “inspired” by the original, which grossed more than $400 worldwide.  Its soundtrack, featuring “I Will Always Love You” and other hits, is among the most successful movie soundtracks of all time.

The new film is being produced by, among others, Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote and produced the original film.  According to Variety, the project has been in the works since 2011, and the actors whose names have been floated to star in it include Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, and Channing Tatum and Cardi B.  So far, nobody has actually been cast in the film.

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(NOTE LANGUAGE) TIME has released its TIME 100 list of influential people, and this year, Oscar-winner Kate Winslet, Ted Lasso Emmy nominee Jason Sudeikis, Black Widow‘s Scarlett Johansson, and Minari and The Walking Dead‘s Steven Yuen all made the list. 

Winslet was profiled by Academy Award-nominated actor and director Kenneth Branagh; Seth Meyers praised Sudeikis; Jamie Lee Curtis profiled Johansson; and Tessa Thompson hailed Yuen.

Branagh recalled casting Winslet when she was just 17; he called her “a master of her art.”

Meyers said his fellow SNL cast member Sudeikis is,”charming, a good listener, and a good hang,” and “the kind of friend who puts together the perfect cocktail of the right people, place and activity. And he has done exactly that with [Ted Lasso].”

Curtis said of the Black Widow star, “Whether as an assassin with a conscience, an actor with an emotional center or, having just given birth to her second child, a fierce mother, the message is clear: Don’t f*** with this mama bear.”

Thompson hailed Minari Oscar nominee Yuen’s activism for his fellow Asians, and called him “a deeply fantastic human and a true leading man,” adding, “It’s been very gratifying to see him become one of the Internet’s boyfriends.”

For the second year in a row, TIME Studios and ABC will bring the TIME 100 list to life with a special television event called TIME 100. Airing on Monday, Sept. 20 at 10:00 p.m. ET on ABC, the program will offer an entertainment-filled inside look at the pioneers, artists, leaders, icons, titans and innovators comprising the 2021 list.

For the full TIME Most Influential list, including featured essays, visit TIME.com.

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