Entertainment

The all-star cast of Rian Johnson‘s upcoming Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man, is growing daily. Deadline reports Mayor of Kingstown and Avengers star Jeremy Renner has joined the cast, marking his first feature film project since his near-fatal snow plow accident in 2023. Renner joins recently announced cast members Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Josh O’Connor, Cailee Spaeny and Andrew Scott. Daniel Craig is set to reprise his role as Benoit Blanc. The second Knives Out movie, Glass Onion, was released in 2022, following Netflix’s record-setting $450 million deal for two sequels to the original Knives Out. Wake Up Dead Man is set premiere in 2025 …

Netflix has ordered a new animated adult series from the team behind Rick and Morty and Krapopolis, Matt Roller, Dan Harmon and Steve Levy, according to Variety. The show’s synopsis, per Netflix, reads, “A single mother of two struggles to run a haunted hotel with the help of her estranged brother, who is now one of the ghosts and thinks the other ghosts have some pretty good ideas” …

Deadline reports Insecure‘s Jay Ellis has been tapped for a “major recurring role” alongside Kate Hudson in Mindy Kaling‘s new Netflix series, Running Point. The comedy follows Hudson’s Isla Gordon, who takes over as president of a professional basketball team, replacing her brother after a scandal forces his resignation, and must convince her skeptical brothers, the board and the larger sports community that she’s up to the job. Ellis will play the team’s head coach. Brenda Song, Drew Tarver, Scott MacArthur, Fabrizio Guido, Toby Sandeman, Chet Hanks, Max Greenfield, Keyla Monterroso Mejia, Roberto Sanchez, Uche Agada and Dane DiLiegro also star …

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Ron Howard wants to take you inside the mind of Jim Henson with the new documentary Jim Henson Idea Man. It’s out Friday on Disney+ and looks at the life of the Muppets creator, from his early days making experimental films to the origins of the Muppets, Sesame Street and more.

Howard tells ABC Audio that although there’s a lot about Muppets, “Underneath it was a family story and a journey. A life’s journey … that was tremendously influenced by his wife, Jane.”

“You know, the Muppets wouldn’t have happened without her,” he continues.

The doc also aims to show that Henson was a workaholic, but work was always fun for him.

“It’s not only fun, but you’re also making something that might really mean something to people,” Howard says. “When you look at Jim’s work, even some of the things that were initially viewed as disappointments or underachieving, you know, have got real lasting value.”

Howard says one of the things he admired about Henson was that he took every opportunity that came his way, noting that Jim “didn’t want to be a puppeteer, but he wanted to be on TV. And when he saw that there was an opening, if he could learn how to make a puppet and be funny on TV, that he could maybe get a job on local television. And he did it.”

Howard credits Henson’s “sense of anarchy, his wit, his creative sensibilities” for elevating something like Sesame Street from a kid’s show to something parents also enjoyed.

“I think [it] attracted adults to sit down and participate with their kids and actually enjoy those Sesame Street [episodes]. It was kind of like, I was surprised to sort of say, ‘Oh, Sesame Street‘s on. I’ll watch.'”

Disney+ is the parent company of ABC News.

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Max’s comedy series Hacks will take another bow for its fourth season.

The series, starring Emmy-winning leading lady Jean Smart as stand-up comedian Deborah Vance, had its third season premiere on May 2, and its finale is Thursday.

The seventh and the penultimate episodes of the nine-episode season scored new daily highs for the streaming service, Max revealed in the announcement.

Sarah Aubrey, head of Max original programming, said in a statement, “We congratulate Hacks‘ brilliant cast and crew,” calling the series that also stars Hannah Einbinder as Ava “a masterfully crafted comedy delivering laughs and sharp insights about the vulnerability and joy of sharing a dream. The creative team behind this singular show is not only brilliant but also a joy to work with.”

Aubrey added, “We couldn’t be happier to give viewers another season with Deborah, Ava, and the rest of the Hacks family.”

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Before its entire 10-episode third season drops on Hulu on June 27, the Emmy-winning The Bear is making its cable debut via a marathon on FX.

The show’s eight-chapter first season, previously only available on Hulu, will come to the cable network as part of a four-night event beginning Sunday. 

Two shows a night will air each day, starting with episodes one (“System”) and two (“Hands”). Two episodes will air on each successive night through June 5, wrapping up with the seventh and eighth episodes, “Review” and “Braciole.”

The first and second seasons of the award-winning FX drama are available for streaming on Hulu.

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Riding the acclaim from a blistering set at Netflix’s recent roast of Tom Brady, Nikki Glaser‘s latest HBO comedy special, Someday You’ll Die, is set to break a record for Max.

Nikki Glaser: Someday You’ll Die has tallied 2 million viewers on both the streamer and its mothership network since its premiere on May 11, putting it on track to be the largest streaming audience for a comedy special in HBO Max/Max history, the streamer confirmed to ABC Audio.

Nikki’s special, which was taped in December 2023 in front of a sold-out audience at the Moore Theater in Seattle and sees her tackling aging, her fantasies, her plans for her own death and more, had the best premiere night for an HBO comedy special in more than two years, HBO added.

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While director Guy Ritchie piloted two hit Sherlock Holmes films starring Robert Downey Jr. as the legendary sleuth and Jude Law as his counterpart Dr. Watson, the filmmaker is now taking the famed detective back in time on the small screen.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare director has tapped one of that movie’s stars, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, to headline the eight-episode origin story called Young Sherlock.

Prime Video teases, “At age 19, Sherlock Holmes is disgraced, raw, unfiltered, and unformed, when he finds himself caught up in a murder mystery at Oxford University which threatens his freedom. Diving into his first-ever case with a wild lack of discipline, Sherlock manages to unravel a globe-trotting conspiracy that will change his life forever.”

“With all the wit and charm of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes features, Young Sherlock will be an irreverent, action-packed origin story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s beloved detective in an explosive re-imagining of this iconic character,” the streamer promises.

For his part, Ritchie enthused, “In Young Sherlock we’re going to see an exhilarating new version of the detective everyone thinks they know in a way they’ve never imagined before. We’re going to crack open this enigmatic character, find out what makes him tick, and learn how he becomes the genius we all love.”

Incidentally, before Downey’s winning Oppenheimer run, Ritchie had hoped to get a long-delayed third Sherlock movie off the ground to follow 2009’s Sherlock Holmes and 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. The filmmaker told Collider in 2023 “the ball’s in his court.”

Ritchie added, “[H]e’s in charge of the script, he’s in charge of the whole thing. I’ve moonwalked out of that until there’s a time for me to get involved.”

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If you’ve ever wished you could star in one of Netflix’s hit reality shows, now’s your chance — without the risk of becoming a meme for saying people thought you looked like Megan Fox.

The streaming service announced it is expanding its branded lineup of interactive content with four new games based on its unscripted shows: Netflix Stories: Perfect Match, Too Hot to Handle 3, The Ultimatum: Choices and Netflix Stories: Selling Sunset. The “interactive fiction games” immerse viewers-turned-players into the worlds of their favorite guilty pleasure shows. 

Netflix promises of the forthcoming titles, which will launch with new seasons of each respective show, “You can … expect appearances from familiar faces from the Netflix Reality Universe like Nick Lachey, who hosts both the Perfect Match series and game, and Chloe Vietch, OG winner of Too Hot to Handle, who hosts The Ultimatum: Choices and appears as a workshop guru in Too Hot to Handle 3.”

The streaming service already features the games Too Hot to Handle: Love is a Game; its sequel Too Hot to Handle 2; and Netflix Stories: Love is Blind.

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Netflix has premiered the trailer for the fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy.

Based on the comic book series created by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way, The Umbrella Academy follows a dysfunctional family of superheroes. Due to various time travel and apocalypse reasons, the fourth season begins with our heroes adrift without their powers, though the trailer teases their eventual reunion.

You can watch the trailer, which is set to Europe‘s “The Final Countdown,” streaming on YouTube. Season 4 of The Umbrella Academy premieres August 8.

The returning cast includes Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher and Justin H. Min. New additions for season 4 include Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally and David Cross.

(Video contains uncensored profanity.)

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Late night host Jimmy Kimmel shared an update in his opening monologue Wednesday about his 7-year-old son Billy‘s third successful open heart surgery — and video footage of a wild homecoming from the hospital.

As reported, Jimmy first shared the latest news of Billy’s medical procedure via Instagram, before opening up further on his show.

“We’re back to work after an extra, extra long holiday weekend we spent most of it at Children’s Hospital [Los Angeles], our son Billy had an open-heart surgery. He’s doing very well,” Kimmel began to a crowd of applause.

“We went in the hospital on Thursday morning and we got home Monday, and not an hour after we walk in … from the hospital with our son, this happens,” he said, rolling a video clip his wife, Molly McNearney, recorded in their kitchen.

Jimmy was seen holding a broom and attempting to encourage a hawk that had flown inside to fly back out.

Kimmel attempted to usher the fumbling bird toward a window, before it flew across the kitchen and smacked into a wall. The bird eventually got itself reoriented and flew out the sliding glass door, to applause from the studio audience.

Kimmel also recalled that on the day of Billy’s surgery, his wife “saw a mourning dove — and is apparently an omen of death and she was very freaked out by it,” he said. “We get home from the hospital and the hawk flies in and kills the mourning dove, kills the omen of death.”

Back in 2017, Jimmy tearfully shared with his audience that Billy had undergone his first open-heart surgery at just 3 days old. He had another when he was 7 months old.

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Glenn Close and Scandal alum Kerry Washington are set to join the star-studded cast of Netflix’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, along with recently announced cast members Andrew Scott, Challengers‘ Josh O’Connor and Priscilla‘s Cailee Spaeny, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Daniel Craig will reprise his role as Benoit Blanc. Rian Johnson is also returning to write, produce and direct the film, the third Knives Out whodunnit, following 2022’s Glass Onion. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is slated for a 2025 release. Plot details are being kept under wraps …

The Peripheral‘s Jack Reynor has been added to the season 2 cast of Prime Video’s spy thriller Citadel, joining returning cast members Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Stanley Tucci, according to Variety. Details on Reynor’s role have not been revealed. The series from Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo follows Citadel agents Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh — played by Madden and Chopra Jonas, respectively — whose memories were wiped clean after the fall of the global spy agency, and must recollect their past and fight back against the new powerful syndicate, Manticore …

Elizabeth MacRae, best known for playing the girlfriend of Jim Nabors‘ Gomer Pyle on the 1960s TV series Gomer Pyle, USMC and Meredith, the woman who seduces and steals an audiotape from Gene Hackman in 1974’s The Conversation, died Monday, her family announced in CityView. She was 88. MacRae also played the love interest of Ken Curtis‘ character, deputy marshal Festus, on Gunsmoke, and the voice of Ladyfish, Don Knotts‘ animated love interest, in the 1964 film The Incredible Mr. Limpet. She also appeared in the 1963 film For Love or Money alongside Kirk Douglas and worked on the daytime soap operas General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, Search for Tomorrow, All My Children, Guiding Light and Another World …

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