Entertainment

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was laid to rest at a private funeral in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Friday. The service was attended by crew members of the film Rust, on which she was accidentally and fatally shot by star Alec Baldwin.

Investigators say a live round had been chambered in the weapon, and went unnoticed by the crew.

The U.K. Mirror reports Baldwin himself was in attendance at the service, as was Halyna’s family, including husband Matthew, and their nine-year-old son Andros.

There was also a candlelight vigil for Hutchins in Albuquerque over the weekend, attended by friends and fellow members of her showbiz union.

On Sunday, paparazzi caught up with Baldwin in Vermont, where he, along with his wife Hilaria, stopped to address them. To their surprise, Baldwin made his first on-air comments about the incident, which left Hutchins dead and wounded director Joel Souza. 

“She was my friend!” Baldwin pleaded with the reporters, recording their interaction with a cellphone, as was his wife.

About the incident, Baldwin insisted, “I’ve been ordered by the sheriff’s department in Santa Fe. I can’t answer any questions about the investigation. I can’t.”

Calling the incident “a one in a trillion episode,” Baldwin insisted that contrary to reports, the Rust crew was “a very well-oiled machine.” 

The incident prompted a push for non-lethal weapons to be used as props on film sets.

“I’m not an expert in this field,” the actor admitted, “So whatever other people decide is the best way to go, in terms of protecting people’s safety on film sets, I’m all in favor of and I will cooperate with that in any way that I can.”

When asked if he thought Rust would move forward, Baldwin said, “I doubt it.”

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Dune hung on to the top spot at the box office for the second straight week, delivering an estimated $15.5 million over the Halloween weekend.

The futuristic adventure, also available to stream on HBO Max, has so far collected $69.4 million in the U.S. after two weeks, along with $227 million overseas. That brings Dune‘s current worldwide tally to $296.4 million.

Coming in second was Halloween Kills, earning an estimated $7.8 million in its third week of release. The latest installment in the horror franchise, also available on the Peacock streaming platform, has pulled in $85 million here in the states and just $29 million internationally, for a global total of $115.1 million.

No Time to Die landed in third place with an estimated $7.8 million. The four-week totals for the latest Bond film — and last with Daniel Craig as the British secret agent — now stand at $133.3 million stateside and $472.4 overseas, for a worldwide total just shy of $605.8 million.

Fourth place, surprisingly, went to My Hero Academia: World Heroes’ Mission, the latest chapter in the My Hero Academia franchise. The animated sequel opened with an estimated $6.4 million.

Rounding out the top five was Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, grabbing an estimated $5.8 million. Its five-week domestic tally now stands at $190.4 million, to go along with $205.4 million overseas. Its global total now stands at $395.8 million.

Meanwhile, two scary Halloween weekend releases, Edgar Wright‘s Last Night in Soho and Antlers — starring Keri Russell and Jesse Plemons — failed to scare up any big box office numbers, tying for sixth place with an estimated $4.16 million debut.

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Three weeks after hosting Saturday Night Live, Kim Kardashian and the show’s Pete Davidson spent Friday together at Los Angeles’ Knott’s Scary Farm, the seasonal Halloween-themed Knott’s Berry Farm.

At one point, Kim and Pete, who were joined on the outing by her sister Kourtney Kardashian, Kourtney’s boyfriend Travis Barker, and other friends, were photographed “holding hands and closing their eyes while riding one of the roller coasters.”

However, a source tells E! Online that Davidson, 27, and Kardashian, 41, are just friends.

Additionally, an insider tells People, which published the photos of Pete and Kim, the pair, “hang in the same circles so they will be together from time to time. It’s just friends hanging out.”

In 2019, Kim shared photos of her then-husband Kanye West, Pete and Timothée Chalamet having fun together at Kid Cudi‘s birthday celebration, on her Twitter page.

 

 

 

 

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Through her legal representation, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armorer on the set of Rust, on which Alec Baldwin accidentally fatally shot camerawoman Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza, is now speaking out. 

Authorities say the pistol that Baldwin aimed at the camerawoman contained a live round; the actor told investigators he was assured the firearm was “cold,” or empty. 

The statement from Reed’s lawyer, Jason Bowles, that was sent to Variety, begins with Reed sending her “deepest and most sincere condolences” to Hutchins’ family, and wishing Souza a “speedy recovery.”

It also states that Hannah is “devastated” by the incident.

The statement then addresses “some untruths that have been told to the media, which have falsely portrayed [Reed] and slandered her.”

The statement continues, “Safety is Hannah’s number one priority on set. Ultimately this set would never have been compromised if live ammo were not introduced. Hannah has no idea where the live rounds came from.”

Investigators say they recovered around 500 rounds of ammunition from the set after the incident, including “a mix” of blanks, dummy rounds and live ammunition.

The statement also addresses allegations made by crew members that some of them were shooting cans during downtime on the New Mexico set. 

“Hannah…never witnessed anyone shoot live rounds with these guns and nor would she permit that,” the statement claims. “They were locked up every night.”

However, the lawyer also states, “Hannah was hired on two positions on this film, which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armorer.”

Shifting the responsibility from the 24-year-old, who was only working as an armorer on her second film, the statement contends that Reed “fought for training…and proper time to prepare for gunfire but ultimately was overruled by production and her department.”

The attorneys then alleges, “The whole production set became unsafe,” adding, “This was not the fault of Hannah.”

Investigators say it’s too early to tell if anyone will be charged in the case.

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Will Smith dropped the trailer for his Best Shape of My Life docuseries Friday, and in the clip, he reveals that he had thoughts of taking his own life.

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air star is publishing his autobiography, simply titled Will, on November 9. In discussing revelations in the book with family members in the clip, including son Jaden and daughter Willow, he shocks them when he says, “That was the only time in my life that I considered suicide.”

The 53-year-old entertainer also admits that he’s not the hero he portrays in films such as Men in Black.

“This began as a journey to get into the best shape of my life,” he says to start the trailer. His goal was to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks; however, he says he discovered he was not mentally ready.

At one point Will declares,”I don’t want to do any of this. I’m finished with ​the Best Shape of My Life.”

The trailer also shows him reading a confessional statement, admitting, “What you’ve come to understand as Will Smith, the alien-annihilating MC, the bigger-than-life movie star, is largely a construction, a carefully crafted and honed character designed to protect myself, to hide myself from the world, to hide the coward.”

The six-part unscripted docuseries Best Shape of My Life debuts Monday, November 8, on Will’s YouTube channel.

Smith also stars as Richard Williams, the father of Serena and Venus Williams, in the film King Richard, premiering November 19.

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black-ish was renewed for its eighth and final season back in May, and Tracee Ellis Ross, who plays the Johnson family matriarch Dr. Rainbow “Bow” Johnson, says the final show will be a bittersweet moment for her.

“I’m ready for it to be the end, and also it’s going to be really hard. I mean, eight years we’ve watched the TV kids grow up. We’ve watched [Anthony Anderson’s] beard do tons of different things,” she tells Harper’s Bazaar.

“But also, I found my voice. It came before, but I really started using it during black-ish,” adds the 49-year-old actress.

Ross says the show has offered her “a different and larger platform” to speak out on issues of representation in media and political representation for women. That included hosting the second night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention and highlighting Kamala Harris‘ historic nomination for vice president.

black-ish premiered in 2014 and has earned three Emmy Awards. Ross won a Golden Globe in 2017 for her work on the show and, in doing so, became the first Black actress to win best actress in a TV comedy Golden Globe since Debbie Allen in 1983.

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With the Marvel Cinematic Universe expanding further into television, fans are hopeful that the MCU is brewing up a WandaVision spinoff series about Agatha Harkness, who was played by standout star Kathryn Hahn.

Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, the Emmy-nominated actress was asked if everyone’s favorite nosy neighbor will be getting her last laugh on the Disney+ streaming service. But all Hahn was willing to part with was, “Anything can happen.”

“Listen, I don’t even know if there is such a thing as a WandaVision spinoff,” she continued, referencing reports from earlier this month that one was underway. “All I can say is, I love Agatha and, as we know, anything can happen in Marvel. So who knows.”

Reports of a potential spinoff sparked in early October when Deadline seemingly confirmed a show about Agatha Harkness was in the works.

Fans remain hopeful the rumors are true, citing the character’s rich comic history.  Agatha made her debut 51 years ago in the 1970 comic book Fantastic Four #94 — giving showrunners plenty of material to translate onto the small screen, and maybe even the big screen.

It is rumored that Agatha will make her movie debut soon, with fans speculating about a possible Agatha cameo in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness because it features Scarlet Witch, played by WandaVision star Elizabeth Olsen, as a main character. 

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A cryptocurrency based on — but not licensed by — the smash Netflix show Squid Game is smashing expectations. 

The digital currency SQUID began trading Tuesday at just $0.01235. As of around 12:30 p.m. Friday, it was worth $10.41 — a gain of more than 82,000%. 

That’s a market cap potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But there’s a catch.

For those traders with visions of the show’s giant piggy bank, take note: the crypto trading site CoinMarketCap warned potential investors, “We have received multiple reports that the users are not able to sell this token in [the online crypto exchange] Pancakeswap. Please exercise caution while trading!”

The New York Post notes the issue might be a mechanism within the currency’s creators that doesn’t allow so-called “pump and dump” activity for it. 

So why was SQUID created? Evidently for a crypto-based online tournament called the Squid Game Project, which launches in November and promises to replicate the games on the popular show, with its crypto both required to play and at stake as prizes.

Unlike the show, however, SQUID’s organizers note, “we do not provide deadly consequences” for losing, declaring, “Your experience will only reflect on the joy of winning rewards and sorrow of losing money when the game [is] failed.”

Also unlike the show Squid Game, the jackpot isn’t limited to the $38.5 million. “The more people join, the larger [the] reward pool will be,” organizers promise.

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Yeardley Smith has not only been the iconic voice of Lisa Simpson since The Simpsons began more than 32 seasons ago, but she’s also the producer and co-host of her hit podcast, Small Town Dicks. 

The true-crime series is co-hosted by two anonymous identical twin detectives Dave and Dan — the latter of whom is married to Smith — and investigates big crimes that happen in small towns. Smith tells ABC Audio the series is a fun transition from Simpsons.

“I mean, it’s it sort of couldn’t be more opposite,” she says, before switching to Lisa’s voice, “‘Lisa Simpson is, even when she’s having a bad day, she finds the silver lining in the dark cloud.'” Whereas “Small Town Dicks is murder and mayhem, and what’s the worst possible thing a person could do to another person?”

Smith adds, “People ask me, ‘why do you think people are obsessed with true crime, and particularly women?’ I think it’s multifold, obviously, but I do think that people like the good guys to win,” she says.

“And even as we have this really relevant conversation about policing in America, at the end of the day, if somebody is breaking into your house who you’re going to call right, you’re going to call 9-1-1.”

The Simpsons just ran its annual pre-Halloween “Treehouse of Horror” episode, which Smith says the cast likes as much as the fans do. “[Y]ou get to go even further, and you get to parody some of your favorite stories, favorite shows, genres, whatever it is for us as the actors, it’s so fun,” she explains.

Smith even spilled some tea. “We actually just recorded the next ‘Treehouse of Horror’ already because they’re so labor-intensive for the writers and the animators. There is a…a fantastic parody of Westworld where Lisa becomes Bart and basically like takes on his bratty, bratty, and Bart becomes the goody two shoes and the world is falling apart. So, yeah, it’s pretty good.” 

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Gemma Chan is no stranger to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although she’s set to star in the upcoming Eternals movie, she first joined the MCU almost three years ago as the blue-skinned villain Minn-Erva in Captain Marvel.

Minn-Erva met her demise toward the end of the 2019 film, thus allowing Chan to take on the mantle of Sersi in Eternals, a hero who is almost the complete opposite of Minn-Erva.

“To be honest, I was as surprised as anyone else. I was not expected to be back,” the 38-year-old told ScreenRant about returning to the MCU.  “I obviously jumped at the chance…And you know what? This time I don’t have to be painted blue, so I didn’t have to do the 2:30am or 3am call times to be four hours sprayed with body paint. So, that was good.”

Eternals, directed by Chloé Zhao and also starring Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden and Kit Harrington, arrives in theaters on November 5.

Marvel is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

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