Entertainment

As the dual Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes against the studios continue, grinding Hollywood production to a halt in the process, those picketers can take comfort in a new Gallup poll.

According to the company’s annual “Work and Education” poll, which was conducted between August 1 and August 23, 72% of respondents say they back the striking writers in their ongoing dispute with The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade association representing the studios.

Just 19% backed the latter, according to the survey.

Similarly, 67% of Americans back the striking SAG-AFTRA performers, with 24% siding with the studios.

In fact, 34% of those polled say unions in general will only get stronger as a result of the high-profile entertainment industry strike, as well as recent threatened work stoppages in other industries — that number was just 19% five years ago.

While the strikes continue, both sides have publicly insisted their desire to resolve the disputes.

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Jamie Christopher, an assistant director who worked with the likes of David Fincher and Rian Johnson and on Marvel films like the Guardians of the Galaxy, died on Tuesday, August 29, at 52.

His Hollywood colleagues are mourning the loss, caused by what Variety called heart complications.

Johnson, who worked with Christopher on The Last Jedi and Knives Out, posted on social media, “If you’ve ever been lucky enough to see a great AD at work, you know it’s a hard job that can only be done well by loving, protecting and respecting your cast and crew. Jamie was one of the all time greats. Will miss him dearly.”

“The film industry has lost one of our great talents and friends,” James Gunn posted, remembering Christopher as “a true filmmaker – a craftsman – who was able to add to a film creatively and just as importantly, figure out incredibly inventive ways of making it happen.”

Gunn called his friend a “warm man who earned the respect of the directors, producers, actors, and, most importantly, the crew who worked for him.”

He concluded with, “They all loved him and so do I and boy will I miss him. Rest in Peace, old pal. The world won’t be as sweet without you.”

Mark Hamill noted, “Aside from being one of the best ADs I’ve ever worked with, I’ll always remember how his deadpan humor kept us all amused & motivated to give our absolute best,” adding #GoneTooSoon.

Christopher’s numerous other credits included Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Murder Mystery with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, and the Harry Potter films.

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This year’s Venice Film Festival kicked off August 30, but most Lady Gaga fans remember the entrance she made there 2018: She arrived by boat in full old Hollywood-style glam, wearing platinum blonde pin curls and a black cocktail dress.  But inside, she was full of self doubt, remembers the festival’s director.

Alberto Barbera tells the Hollywood Reporter that one of the greatest moments of his 15-year career as Venice Film Festival director came that year, after Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper did the red carpet at the premiere of A Star Is Born in the rain. He says Gaga came into his office to dry off and re-do her makeup before she went into the theater.

“It had never happened before that the actors went into the auditorium. She, used to performing in front of thousands of people, hesitated and was afraid,” Barbera recalls. In fact, he claims Gaga actually said to him, “It’s my first film. Maybe I’m a really bad actor?’”

But it turns out she had nothing to worry about.

“You should have heard the roar in the theater … it was incredible,” Barbera recalls, adding, “I put my arm around her shoulders. She spoke a few words of Italian. I gave her courage. Me. To Lady Gaga.”

Barbera tells a similar story to the U.K. paper The Guardian.

“She was shaking,” he says of Gaga, adding, “I put my arm around her shoulders and took her into the theater. At the end of the film, she was crying.”

Gaga went on to be Oscar-nominated for A Star Is Born, and win the Best Original Song Oscar for “Shallow,” the song she co-wrote for the soundtrack.

Her next major acting credit is playing Harley Quinn opposite Joaquin Phoenix reprising his Oscar winning title role in Joker: Folie à Deux, due out in 2024.

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Selena Gomez‘s currently focusing on her music career, having just released the new track “Single Soon.” But she’s also an actor and actors are currently on strike — which is why some people were taken aback at one of her social media posts.

The Instagram Reel — captured by a Reddit user — was a black-and-white video of Selena, captioned “Missing and wanting.” She tagged the official Instagram account for her Hulu show Only Murders In the Building in the post.

So what’s the big deal? The rules of the SAG-AFTRA strike say that members can’t promote their work, which means that not only can they not do interviews, they aren’t supposed to post about their projects on social media either.

Many of Selena’s followers wondered why she was breaking the rules; a commenter on Reddit called her a “scab,” with another saying, “It ain’t a good look.” However, another Reddit user pointed out that Selena isn’t just the star of Only Murders: she’s also a producer. And because producers aren’t on strike, they’re free to talk about their work.

According to Variety, Selena’s post received more than 1 million likes before it was taken down, 15 hours after it went up. A rep for SAG-AFTRA declined to comment to Variety on the matter.

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ABC revealed the 22 women who will vie for Gerry Turner‘s heart on The Golden Bachelor, and one of them should be familiar to Bachelor Nation — it’s Bachelor alum Matt James‘ mother Patty James.

Matt showed his support for Patty by posting her headshot on his Instagram Story with the caption, “i ccc uuu mama,” followed by a flaming heart emoji.

Earlier, Patty responded to the announcement on her Instagram, describing her upcoming journey to love, “sooo exciting.”

Matt who starred in season 25 of The Bachelor, replied in the comments with three flaming heart emojis, while his girlfriend Rachael Kirkconnell, who he met on the show, added, “She’s ready to find love.”

Patty, a 70-year-old real estate agent, has been single for almost 30 years. She was previously married to Manny James, Matt and his brother, John’s, dad. She and Manny split when their sons were little, and Patty continued as a single mom. She’s “hoping to meet a kind, funny, smart and confident man for herself,” according to her Bachelorette bio.

“I want to meet someone who loves and cherishes me that I can live out my golden years with,” she says.

The Golden Bachelor premieres Thursday, Sept. 28, at 8/7 p.m. central on ABC.

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Joseph McGinty Nichol, known professionally as McG, and who directed the 2000 film adaptation of Charlie’s Angels, starring Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, and Cameron Diaz, and its 2003 sequel Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, hasn’t given up hope on helming a potential Charlie’s Angel 3, according to Deadline. “It would take a long discussion with those three wonderful performers, who I adore,” he says. “I love the three of them so much. They put me on the map. They looked out for me when I was a first-time filmmaker. I was very nearly fired off that film on many, many occasions, and Drew stood up for me and I’m forever indebted to her. And obviously, those are three performers where God broke the mold. They don’t make ’em like that. I mean, those are three special ones.” Meanwhile, McG’s latest project, the upcoming Netflix Jennifer Garner body-swap comedy Family Switch, debuts November 30…

(NOTE LANGUAGE) Deadline reports the Rebel Wilson feature Bride Hard, which just wrapped up production in Savannah, Georgia, has been cleared for a SAG interim agreement. The indie film stars Wilson as “a bada** secret agent who is a force to be reckoned with as a mercenary group takes hostage her best friend’s lavish wedding,” according to the outlet. Anna Camp, Justin Hartley, Anna Chlumsky, Stephen Dorff, Gigi Zumbado and Da’Vine Joy Randolph also star…

Netflix announced on Wednesday, August 30, that it has renewed The Lincoln Lawyer, the drama from David E. Kelley, for a third season, according to Variety. The 10-episode third season will be based on the fifth book in Michael Connelly‘s The Lincoln Lawyer series, “The Gods of Guilt.” Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Becki Newton, Jazz Raycole, Angus Sampson and Yaya DaCosta will reprise their roles in the series that follows Garcia-Rulfo’s Mick Haller, a defense attorney who conducts his business out of the back seat of his chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car…

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The new movie Bottoms is here to make you laugh, and also slightly alter the paradigm of teen sex comedies.

“Bottoms is about Josie and PJ, two horny, unpopular girls in high school who start a fight club so they can try to impress and hook up with their … cheerleader crushes,” director and co-writer Emma Seligman tells ABC Audio.

“I think that I wanted to put something in the world … that I wish I could have seen in high school,” says Seligman, who co-wrote the raunchy coming-of-age comedy with Rachel Sennott, who stars alongside The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri. “I think Rachel and I … just wanted to write a comedy and make people laugh and do something fun and stupid.”

Because of its queer representation, Seligman says the film has an element that was missing from similar movies she watched as a kid, though they were all strong influences.

“I loved all these teen rom coms growing up like Ten Things I Hate About You or She’s All That or, you know, on the campier side like Not Another Teen Movie and you know, Sugar and Spice and Bring It On … Superbad, American Pie and whatnot,” she explains. “It’s like a love letter to these movies for sure.”

“It was important … to show queer horny girls,” says Seligman, noting, “What is so refreshing about watching teen sex comedies is that these characters are flawed and relatable and human and selfish and hormonal, and they’re able to get away with doing things that, you know, adults really can’t.”

“They’re making mistakes left, right and center,” she continues. “And I think that it was just important to like, see a version of that for girls and for queer teens.” 

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Hulu has pulled the plug on the anachronistic period drama The Great after three seasons, ABC Audio has confirmed.

The show, which starred Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult, had the former playing Catherine the Great the Empress of All Russia. Its third season kicked off on May 12.

Hoult played Emperor Peter III in the project, which was described by the streamer as an anti-historical look back at the royals, based on the 2008 play from Australian playwright Tony McNamara.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Selena Gomez‘s currently focusing on her music career, having just released the new track “Single Soon.” But she’s also an actor and actors are currently on strike — which is why some people were taken aback at one of her social media posts.

The Instagram Reel — captured by a Reddit user — was a black-and-white video of Selena, captioned “Missing and wanting.” She tagged the official Instagram account for her Hulu show Only Murders In the Building in the post.

So what’s the big deal? The rules of the SAG-AFTRA strike say that members can’t promote their work, which means that not only can they not do interviews, they aren’t supposed to post about their projects on social media either. 

Many of Selena’s followers wondered why she was breaking the rules; a commenter on Reddit called her a “scab,” with another saying, “It ain’t a good look.” However, another Reddit user pointed out that Selena isn’t just the star of Only Murders: she’s also a producer. And because producers aren’t on strike, they’re free to talk about their work.

According to Variety, Selena’s post received more than 1 million likes before it was taken down, 15 hours after it went up. A rep for SAG-AFTRA declined to comment to Variety on the matter.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

In the first installment of Spotify’s Strike Force Five podcast, Jimmy Kimmel told his fellow late-night hosts he was “very ready” to retire before the Writers Guild of America strike forced their shows to go dark.

As reported, Strike Force Five united Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver and Seth Meyers to chat about the strikes, in a program that’s been created to benefit their out-of-work writers and show staff.

“I was very intent on retiring right around the time where the strike started,” Kimmel said on the premiere episode. “And now I realize, ‘Oh yeah, it’s kind of nice to work.'”

Meyers quickly chimed in, “Kimmel, c’mon, you are the Tom Brady of late night … you have feigned retirement.” Kimmel insisted he was “serious … very, very serious” about hanging it up.

Early in the conversation, the moderator, Kimmel, asked his colleagues if people on the street have asked them about the strike, to which Colbert said they usually asked “how the vacation’s going?”

Colbert quipped, “I usually say, ‘This is like a vacation in the same way a colonoscopy is like a nap.'”

Later in the podcast, Kimmel revealed Ben Affleck “and the despicable Matt Damon” offered to pay his Jimmy Kimmel Live staff “out of their own pockets” for two weeks, but he refused, saying he felt it “was not their responsibility” to do so.

Jimmy also said co-sponsor Ryan Reynolds offered free Mint Mobile service for a year for the out-of-work show staff.

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