Entertainment

For even the biggest movie lovers, there’s usually a major downside to going to the theater: suffering that concessions line, a mysterious zone where time seems to stand still, even as your showtime ticks ever closer.

But on Thursday, May 9, Fandango announced it is making buying your popcorn and soda — or whatever you prefer — as easy as it is to snag your tickets in advance.

Starting first with AMC Theatres before rolling out to other movie chains, the online ticketing service is offering users the ability to preorder concessions with their tickets on the Fandango app, allowing you to avoid having to queue up behind that indecisive family of five that can’t seem to settle on gummy bears or Sno-Caps.

Instead, you’ll just go to a designated area and scoop up your snacks.

For AMC Dine-In locations, which offer actual meals and cocktails, a patron’s preordered selections will be delivered right to their seats.

“With either method, moviegoers can rest assured that they’ll never miss a moment of the coming attractions and main features,” the company touts.

Meanwhile, members of the theater chain’s AMC Stubs club will also be able to earn and redeem benefits for concessions ordered through Fandango.

According to the company’s 2024 Moviegoing Trends and Insights Study of more than 6,000 moviegoers, 1 in 4 general ticket buyers say they have tried preordering concessions in the past — and 97% were satisfied with their experience.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

On Thursday, Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema announced that Oscar winner Peter Jackson and his Lord of the Rings collaborators Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and actor-director Andy Serkis are headed back to Middle-earth with two new films.

The tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum will be the first of two new movies based off of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s classic characters, with Serkis not only reprising as the One Ring-obsessed title character, but also directing the film.

Walsh and Boyens, who co-wrote and produced the original films in the $6 billion franchise, are writing the new installment, along with Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou, who penned the upcoming anime prequel epic Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.

Jackson, Walsh and Boyens said in a statement, “It is an honour and a privilege to travel back to Middle-earth with our good friend and collaborator, Andy Serkis, who has unfinished business with that Stinker – Gollum!”

The trio added, “As life long fans of Professor Tolkien’s vast mythology, we are proud to be working with [New Line Cinema heads] Mike De Luca, Pam Abdy and the entire team at Warner Bros. on another epic adventure!”

For his part, Serkis added — in character, no less — “Yesssss, Precious. The time has come once more to venture into the unknown with my dear friends, the extraordinary and incomparable guardians of Middle-Earth Peter, Fran and Philippa,” calling the new collaboration “just all too delicious.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Deadline reports Twilight‘s Taylor Lautner, Modern Family‘s Sarah Hyland, Four Weddings and a Funeral‘s Andie MacDowell and Australian actor Brenton Thwaites have joined the cast of the rom-com The Token Groomsman. The movie, per the outlet, follows Lautner as a down-on-his-luck businessman who sees a golden opportunity to make some business connections when he’s invited to be a groomsman at ritzy wedding of a friend he doesn’t remember. That’s until he falls in love with the groom’s sister, played by Hyland, and has to choose between money or love …

A new trailer for the highly anticipated Twisters film is here. Daisy Edgar-Jones is featured in the clip, which dropped Wednesday, as former storm chaser Kate Cooper, who crosses paths with Tyler Owens, played by Glen Powell, a reckless social media superstar who thrives on storm-chasing. The film is a sequel to Jan de Bont‘s 1996 classic Twister, starring Helen Hunt and the late Bill Paxton as estranged spouses Jo and Bill, storm chasers on the verge of divorce who join forces to chase tornadoes in Oklahoma in order to test the research device they created to study storms. Twisters opens in theaters July 19 …

Anyone but You and Immaculate star Sydney Sweeney has been tapped to play legendary boxer Christy Martin in a yet-to-be titled biopic, according to Deadline. The film tells the true story of the 1990s female boxer, whom producers call the “female Rocky.” Filming is set to begin this fall …

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

There’s a new Doctor in the house! A new season of Doctor Who debuts Friday on Disney+, the first time the show has ever been on the streaming service and the first time new episodes of Doctor Who will air on the same day around the world. Russell T. Davies returns as showrunner after a 14-year absence, and he tells ABC Audio the Doctor and his companion Ruby wind up in “a new place, a new time, a new energy.”

“Sometimes they land in a new genre. It could be comedy, it could be a thriller. It could be a haunted house film. It could be a scary movie,” he reveals.

Davies says he wanted the new season to be “mad” and “bonkers.” “I look at the other science fiction shows, which are marvelous. I’m a huge fan of those Marvel shows, the Star Wars shows … but there’s a certain amount of testosterone in the shows. They carry guns. You’re basically dealing with a military or some form of military or even fighting the dictatorship, and Doctor Who is free of all that.”

Sex Education star Ncuti Gatwa (SHOE-tee GOT-wah), who plays the new Doctor, invites newcomers to the long-running series to “come with us.”

“We’re going to take you on loads of adventures. We’re going to take you through time and space, and you’re going to meet things that you’ve never met before. And I’m going to face monsters that I’ve never faced before, and I have more power than I’ve ever seen before.”

Gatwa is the first Black man to play the Doctor and says he’s gotten a lovely welcoming from fans so far, adding, “The Whovians have welcomed me in with open arms.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Succession star Jeremy Strong may have found his next role. Variety reports that the Emmy winner is in talks to join the cast of the Bruce Springsteen movie Deliver Me From Nowhere, where he’ll play The Boss’ manager, Jon Landau.

Deliver Me From Nowhere follows Springsteen’s efforts to make the 1982 solo album Nebraska. It is based on Warren Zanes‘ book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.

In early April, it was confirmed that The Bear star Jeremy Allen White was in talks to play Springsteen in the picture, which will be written and directed by Scott Cooper, with Springsteen and Landau both involved in the project. The film is being produced by 20th Century Studios and Disney.

Nebraska, released on September 30, 1982, featured 10 acoustic songs that Springsteen originally recorded as demos on a four-track recorder. Springsteen had planned to rerecord the songs with the E Street Band but instead opted to release it as a solo acoustic record. It featured such songs as “Atlantic City,” “Johnny 99” and “State Trooper.” 

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

NBC’s sister streamer announced Wednesday that the as-yet-untitled but eagerly anticipated follow-up comedy from The Office adapter Greg Daniels will be a Peacock series.

We also officially know now it’s not a reboot of the beloved U.K. import.

Daniels, also of King of the Hill fame, collaborated with Nathan for You co-creator Michael Koman for the project, described as “a new mockumentary series set in the same universe as NBC’s Emmy Award-winning hit series The Office.”

The network teases, “The documentary crew that immortalized Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch is in search of a new subject when they discover a dying historic Midwestern newspaper and the publisher trying to revive it with volunteer reporters.”

As previously reported, Star Wars sequel star Domhnall Gleeson and The White Lotus alumna Sabrina Impacciatore will lead an ensemble of as-yet-unnamed co-stars.

The series, produced by Universal Television, gets underway in July.

“It’s been more than ten years since the final episode of The Office aired on NBC, and the acclaimed comedy series continues to gain popularity and build new generations of fans on Peacock,” touted Lisa Katz, president of NBCUniversal Entertainment.

She adds in part, “This new series … introduces a new cast of characters in a fresh setting ripe for comedic storytelling.”

Daniels and Koman co-produce along with the creators and stars of the original The Office, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Hulu announced on Wednesday, May 8, that the second season of the Kerry Washington/Delroy Lindo family dramedy, UnPrisoned, will return on July 17. 

In the series produced by and starring the Emmy-winning former Scandal star, Kerry plays a busy single mom and relationship therapist whose life is turned upside down when her formerly incarcerated dad (Lindo) moves in with her and her teen son.

In a “first look” teased by the streamer, Kerry’s Paige, Lindo’s Edwin and Paige’s son Finn (Faly Rakotohavana) are shown seated together in a family therapy session.

Hulu’s season synopsis states in part, “The Alexander family is still a mess,” so they “turn to a ‘family radical healing coach,’ who throws out all the rules to free them of the issues, old wounds and family secrets holding them back.”

The show’s first season scored a stellar 93% and 94% respectively with critics and audience members, according to the aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and its premiere in March of 2023 scored the best-ever numbers for Hulu’s Onyx Collective brand.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Emma Heming Willis is opening up about how sharing her husband Bruce Willis‘ Frontotemporal dementia or FTD diagnosis in 2023 impacted her.

“I could breathe, you know, I could really exhale and sort of just feel this weight sort of lift from my shoulders but everything changed for the better once we were able to disclose his diagnosis,” Heming Willis said in a video shared Tuesday by The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration at their 2024 Education Conference.

“I was able to see the support that I so desperately needed for my husband, for our whole family,” the 45-year-old added.

Willis was diagnosed first with aphasia in 2022 and then about six months later, he received an additional diagnosis of FTD, according to his family.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FTD is a common type of dementia marked by personality and behavior changes as well as problems with language skills, such as speaking or understanding words. 

Heming Willis, who shares two daughters with Willis and is a stepmother to Willis’ three older children with actress Demi Moore, has been vocal on social media since then about sharing their family’s experience and her own experience as a caregiver.

“There were so many reasons to go public but first and foremost, it had been so isolating and you know, I was trying to keep it quiet and really, it was about our daughters and … I never wanted them to think that this was some kind of family secret that we had to keep,” Heming Willis told the audience at the conference. “I felt like it was very important for us to come out and say what it was.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

In a new interview in Empire magazine’s Deadpool & Wolverine feature issue, it looks like director Shawn Levy is putting some distance between his upcoming movie and recent failures in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

Marvel Studios’ last theatrical outing was 2023’s The Marvels, its lowest-grossing movie to date; that year also saw the release of the drubbed Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. 

On the small screen, Loki‘s second season was heralded by critics, but Secret Invasion was decidedly not. 

Louis D’Esposito, co-president of Marvel Studios, says in the issue, “We learned our lesson.”

“You’d have to live under a rock not to know that the last few Marvel movies have failed to ignite the world in the way that so many did,” Levy says.

He says of his film’s July 26 release date, “We do come along at an interesting time.”

Indeed, the trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine has Ryan Reynolds‘ red-suited hero tasked with doing nothing less than saving the Marvel Cinematic Universe, boasting, “I am Marvel Jesus.”

Levy insists the movie is “decidedly something different” from the studio, snarking, “Whether it is of Messianic proportions, time will tell.”

Some fans have griped about recent MCU outings feeling like there is required reading to fully enjoy them, but Levy recently told The Associated Press Deadpool & Wolverine will not. 

“I was a good student in school. … But I am definitely not looking to do homework when I go to the movies,” he said, adding that while he respects the MCU lore that came before, “This movie is built for entertainment, with no obligation to come prepared with prior research.”

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

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Bette Midler‘s 2000 CBS sitcom Bette didn’t live long on the air — though it lives forever in infamy, thanks to a loungey a cappella version of Kid Rock‘s “Bawitdaba” she performed on it. 

In short, the show was “a flop,” one of the worst of her career, she told David Duchovny‘s Fail Better podcast. 

The Tony, Emmy and Grammy winner unpacked the “extremely chaotic” situation, and while she admitted she “didn’t know what it meant to make [a sitcom],” she also threw some shade at her onscreen daughter Lindsay Lohan. 

“After the pilot, Lindsay Lohan decided she didn’t want to do it. Or she had other fish to fry,” Midler revealed.

“So, Lindsay Lohan left the building. And I said, ‘Well, now what do you do?'”

Duchovny noted Lohan’s contract should have prevented that exit, but Midler was afraid of standing up for herself as a producer for fear of being “labeled a grandstander.”

“If I had been in my right mind, or if I had known that part of my duties were to stand up to say, ‘This absolutely will not do, I’m gonna sue,’ then I would have done that,” Midler said.

The performer also revealed she was “glad” she was fired the day after she did an interview about the sitcom on The Late Show with David Letterman. When Dave asked her about the show, Midler said, “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done in my entire life,” adding, “It’s like being a dung beetle, rolling a pile of s*** up a hill.” 

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.