Entertainment

(NOTE LANGUAGE) HBO Max’s award-minting machine Succession will come to an end when the upcoming fourth season wraps up.

In an interview with The New Yorker, show creator Jesse Armstrong dropped the bombshell that the scheming Roy family’s adventures will be drawing to a close.

He explained, “I got together with a few of my fellow writers before we started the writing of Season 4 … and I sort of said, ‘Look, I think this maybe should be it. But what do you think?'”

He added they “played out various scenarios,” but ultimately decided against them. “We could do a couple of short seasons, or two more seasons. Or we could go on for ages and turn the show into something rather different, and be a more rangy, freewheeling kind of fun show, where there would be good weeks and bad weeks. Or we could do something a bit more muscular and complete, and go out sort of strong. And that was definitely always my preference.”

Armstrong, an Emmy winner himself for the series, noted of his stars, including fellow Emmy winner Brian Cox and Matthew Macfadyen, “I said to the cast, ‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but I think this is it.’ Because I didn’t want to bulls*** them, either.”

He adds, “Although I wish, in a way, to carry on doing this thing with this group of actors and writers forever, I wouldn’t want to be going down the mine … for more and more vanishingly thin seams of gold.”

The first three seasons of the show earned 48 Emmy nominations and 13 wins, including Outstanding Drama Series. It also earned five Golden Globe Awards and trophies from the Writers, Directors, and Producers Guild Awards.

Succession returns for its fourth — and now officially final — season on March 26.

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Ryan Reynolds is attached to star and produce the feature comedy Boy Band at Paramount, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The project would reunite him with his Free Guy and The Adam Project collaborator Shawn Levy, who is a co-producer. Details, including what role Reynolds would play, are being kept under wraps, but it’s being described as “a boy band reunion movie,” per THR. Reynolds is hoping to start shooting the film either this fall 2023 or early 2024…

Minari and Nope star Steven Yeun has been tapped to join the cast of Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts, according to Deadline. His exact role has not been revealed, but sources tell the outlet that it is “not only significant to this film but could also play a role going forward in future films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Yeun joins a cast that currently includes Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Wyatt Russell, Hannah John-Kamen, Olga Kurylenko and Ayo Edebiri. Thunderbolts is set for a July 26, 2024 release. Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News…

Megan Mullally tells Entertainment Tonight that she and her husband Nick Offerman are close to inking a deal to join the cast of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy for the show’s fourth and final season. The Parks and Recreation alums would play “a mild-mannered married couple named Jean and Gene, who are college professors.” Meanwhile, the couple can both be seen on the new season of Party Down, premiering Friday on Starz. Mullally returns as Lydia Dunfree, a former member of the catering team who reunites with her co-workers. Offerman is set to appear as a guest star later in the season…

Deadline reports Emily in Paris‘ Ashley Park has joined the cast of Hulu’s Only Murders In The Building in the recurring role of Kimber, a Broadway ingénue, for the show’s third season. Park joins series stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez, as well as recently announced season 3 cast Meryl Streep, Paul Rudd and Jesse Williams. Park will next be seen in Adele Lim’s Joy Ride, which follows four Asian American women traveling through Asia in search of one of their birth mothers, hitting theaters June 23…

The SAG Awards on Thursday announced additional presenters for the 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards. They include Jason Bateman, Jeff Bridges, Jenna Ortega, Aubrey Plaza, Adam Scott and Zendaya, along with SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, Matt Bomer, Ariana DeBose, Eugene Levy and Amy Poehler. The SAG Awards will be broadcast live on Netflix’s YouTube channel Sunday, February 26 at 8 p.m. ET from the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles…

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Emmy-winning Hacks star Jean Smart is opening up about her heart health and sharing a plea to her fans.

“February is American Heart Month — a time when the nation spotlights heart health, so it feels important to share with all of you that I am recovering from a recent, successful heart procedure,” Smart, 71, shared in a statement posted to Instagram Thursday.

She continued, “I am fortunate to have excellent professional care and support from family and friends while I continue to recuperate.”

The Designing Women alum didn’t share any further details about her condition, but did urge those reading to take their health seriously.

“Please listen to your body and talk to your doctor — I’m very glad I did,” she concluded.

ABC News has learned that production on Hacks season 3 has paused for some departments.

“We are so happy that our beloved Jean Smart’s heart procedure was successful and she’s on the mend,” read a joint statement issued on behalf of HBO Max and Universal Television, who also sent Smart their “well wishes.”

Smart lost her husband of more than 30 years, Richard Gilliland, in March 2021. The New Yorker noted in a June 2021 profile of Smart that Gilliland had died unexpectedly of a heart condition.

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Let the rampage begin! Cocaine Bear is in theaters this weekend — the darkly comedic, bloody tru-ish tale of a bear who finds a package of cocaine in the woods and goes nuts.

Keri Russell is among the film’s stars, telling ABC Audio when she got the offer, she quickly realized she had no choice but to do it, recalling friends who warned, “If you don’t do that movie, we are not going to be friends with you anymore.'”

Keri adds that after the last few years of the COVID-19 pandemic and everything going on the world, “the idea of really like letting loose and being in a movie theater and hearing people like scream, laughing their head off and, you know, something being so ridiculously not real and gory and just a total romp, sounded attractive.”

And another secret Russell shared: the bear in the film is, in fact, CGI.

“There is, a lot of times, this amazing, you know, actor who’s trained to be like an animal,” she shares. “But often it was us in the woods with [director Elizabeth Banks] screaming on a megaphone going, okay, now he’s eating his face off! There’s blood dripping all down his body! And now he’s climbing up and there’s blood squirting all over!”

Banks says Cocaine Bear is not a “rampaging bear movie” and that “a man’s hubris is the villain…this animal inspires awe and wonder until you realize that it’s an apex predator and you should actually run for your life.”

The scariest part of the movie for Banks was it suffering the same fate as Snakes on a Plane or Sharknado, sharing, “if it didn’t work…it just would have been an embarrassment for all involved, but me most.”

(Trailer contains uncensored profanity.)

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Warner Bros. Discovery is hoping to mine more box office gold from J.R.R. Tolkien‘s Middle Earth. Variety reports that during an earnings call with CEO David Zaslav on Thursday, the executive announced that subsidiary New Line Cinema will be producing multiple Lord of the Rings movies, as it did for Peter Jackson‘s Oscar-winning trilogy.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), its 2002 follow-up The Two Towers, and 2003’s The Return of the King grossed more than $3 billion worldwide, with the last film winning a record-tying 11 trophies at the 96th Annual Academy Awards.

Jackson returned to Middle Earth for a prequel trilogy based on Tolkein’s The Hobbit. While those films weren’t as critically-acclaimed as the other trilogy, 2012’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, 2013’s The Desolation of Smaug, and 2014’s The Battle of the Five Armies grossed nearly $3 billion globally.

Tolkien’s work was recently adapted into Amazon’s expensive, divisive series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

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ABC is mum on the development, but Deadline reports its hit sitcom The Goldbergs will end after the current 10th season.

The ’80s-set sitcom, which stars Wendi McLendon-Covey, Sean Giambrone, Troy Gentile and Hayley Orrantia, soldiered on after the death of the series star George Segal in 2021, and then the loss of series patriarch Jeff Garlin the following year.

Garlin parted ways with the show following accusations of bullying and other conduct on set; his character Murray was killed off offscreen between seasons 9 and 10.

After his Goldbergs exit, Garlin revealed he’d been diagnosed as bipolar. He continued to work as Jeff Green on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and was cast in the fourth and final season of Mindy Kaling‘s Neflix series Never Have I Ever.

The Goldbergs is based on the life of creator Adam F. Goldberg. According to the trade, it’s currently the longest-running live-action network comedy series currently on the air.

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Halle Bailey is reflecting on the past year and a half since filming wrapped on the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid.

In an interview with The Face, the 22-year-old actress and singer, who makes up one-half of the sister duo Chloe x Halle, and who stars as Ariel in the remake of the 1989 Disney animated film, talked about the support she’s received since taking on the movie’s lead role.

“I was crying all night for two days, just staring at them in disbelief,” she said, referring to the videos of young Black girls reacting to the first teaser trailer showing Bailey as Ariel for the first time. “It just makes me feel more grateful for where I am.”

While the responses to the trailer — which dropped in 2022 at the D23 Expo — were overwhelmingly positive, it also became the target of backlash, similar to the criticism that came in 2019, when casting for the film was first announced.

Online, the hashtag #NotMyAriel was used in both instances to respond to the news.

Bailey, who recognizes the weight behind her turn as Ariel, shared how she’s handled the negativity.

“As a Black person, you just expect it and it’s not really a shock anymore,” she said. “When [my sister and I] first signed to Parkwood [Entertainment, Beyoncé‘s record label,] she was always like, ‘I never read my comments. Don’t ever read the comments.’ Honestly, when the tease came out, I was at the D23 Expo and I was so happy. I didn’t see any of the negativity.”

“I know people are like: ‘It’s not about race.’ But now that I’m her…. People don’t understand that when you’re Black, there’s this whole other community,” Bailey added. “It’s so important for us to see ourselves.”

Disney is the parent company of ABC News. 

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Alec Baldwin has pleaded not guilty and waived his first court appearance after being charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting on the set of his film Rust, court officials announced Thursday.

Baldwin and the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, were both charged last month with two counts of involuntary manslaughter over the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021.

First assistant director David Halls has already agreed to plead no contest for the charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon. The plea agreement is pending a judge’s approval, prosecutors have said.

All three were scheduled to make their first court appearances remotely on Friday, though Baldwin and Halls filed a waiver of first appearance this week and no hearing will be held for them. Both pleaded not guilty to their charges in their waivers.

District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer also issued an order setting conditions of Baldwin’s release, including that he must not possess any firearms, not consume alcohol and have no contact with any potential witnesses unless it’s related to filming the movie.

Gutierrez-Reed’s hearing is scheduled for 10:15 a.m. MST Friday.

The charges followed a lengthy investigation into the on-set shooting, which has also spawned multiple lawsuits, including from Hutchins’ family.

In the statement of probable cause, investigator Robert Shilling said that evidence showed that Baldwin had his finger inside the trigger, and that the trigger was pulled — contradicting Baldwin’s statements. 

In Gutierrez-Reed’s charging document, Shilling claimed that the armorer’s “deviation from known standards…directly caused the fatal death of Hutchins,” including not insisting Baldwin have proper firearm training, or correcting him on “dangerous” safety violations such as pointing the weapon at people and having his finger on the trigger.”

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Stephen King‘s It universe is coming back to the small screen in a prequel series for HBO Max. The cable network noted that Andy Muschietti — the director behind a pair of blockbuster recent It movies — will shepherd the show tentatively titled Welcome to Derry along with his sister Barbara, who co-produced the films centering on the terrifying Pennywise the Clown.

As its working title suggests, the show will be set in Derry, the spooky town in which King’s original book and the films were set.

In an announcement, Sarah Aubrey, HBO Max’s head of original content noted, “We are thrilled to continue this iconic franchise,” calling the Muschettis “brilliant.” The show will “expand the It storytelling canvas and bring fans deeper into the terrifying, mesmerizing town of Derry,” she promised.

For their part, the Muschiettis exclaimed, “As teenagers, we took turns reading chapters of Stephen King’s It until the thick paperback fell to pieces. It is an epic story that contains multitudes, far beyond what we could explore in our It movies. We can’t wait to share the depths of Steve’s novel, in all its heart, humor, humanity and horror.”

King noted, “I’m excited that the story of Derry, Maine’s most haunted city, is continuing.”

It was first made into a two-part miniseries for ABC in 1990, with Tim Curry playing the kid-snatching clown.

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Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was handed another legal defeat on Thursday, when he was sentenced to 16 years in prison for a rape in Los Angeles that reportedly took place in 2013.

The sentence will be served consecutively to a 23-year prison sentence he is currently serving in New York for criminal sexual assault and third-degree rape.

The judge denied Weinstein a new trial during Thursday’s hearing, following a motion from his defense that argued his conviction was based on the improper exclusion of evidence and flawed jury instructions.

A Los Angeles jury found Weinstein guilty of three of seven counts, including one count of rape of a woman identified as Jane Doe 1, late last year. Weinstein faces up to 18 years in prison.

Weinstein was accused by four women of assaulting them in hotels between 2004 and 2013 in Los Angeles. He faced two counts of rape and five counts of sexual assault.

The 70-year-old former movie executive pleaded not guilty and has said all the encounters were consensual.

Following his conviction for rape, Jane Doe 1 said in part, “Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night in 2013, and I will never get that back. The criminal trial was brutal and Weinstein’s lawyers put me through hell on the witness stand, but I knew I had to see this through to the end, and I did.”

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