On Thursday, Lucasfilm dropped the trailer to Star Wars: Tales of the Empire, a six-chapter collection of animated shorts that will drop on Disney+ on May 4, Star Wars Day.
The flip-side of the streaming service’s Tales of the Jedi, the trailer shows the rise in power of Morgan Elsbeth, played in live-action and voiced here by Diana Lee Inosanto; she played the witchy arms dealing mastermind character in live-action form in both The Mandalorian and Star Wars: Ahsoka.
Also revealed is the fall of one-time Jedi Padawan Barriss Offee: The trailer shows the one-time heroine training to become one of Darth Vader’s feared Jedi-hunting Inquisitors.
In fact, the man in black himself makes another trademark dramatic entrance at the end of the trailer, as his new enforcers, including the former Jedi, kneel before him.
Lucasfilm is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
Greenblatt (center) with America Ferrera and Margot Robbie in ‘Barbie’ – Warner Bros. Pictures
What does it take to be a rising star in Hollywood? Well, appearing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars and the biggest hit of 2023, Barbie, within five years apparently helps.
Sixteen-year-old Ariana Greenblatt — who played young Gamora in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, young Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars: Ahsoka, and snarky teen Sasha opposite Margot Robbie in Barbie — will receive this year’s Rising Star Award at the annual industry confab CinemaCon.
Mitch Neuhauser, managing director of CinemaCon, said, “To say that her star is on the rise is a true understatement.” He added, “Next up is the eagerly anticipated Borderlands that will undoubtedly continue this young star’s trajectory towards stardom. We could not be more thrilled to honor her as our Rising Star of 2024.”
CinemaCon, the official convention of the National Association of Theater Owners, will be held on April 8 to 11 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The honor will be bestowed on the actress at the Big Screen Achievement Awards held on the expo’s final evening.
Greenblatt’s next movie, the video game adaptation Borderlands with Oscar winner Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart, debuts the weekend of the convention on August 9.
On Thursday, Netflix dropped the trailer to Mother of the Bride, the romantic comedy starring Brooke Shields, Miranda Cosgrove and Benjamin Bratt.
Shields plays Lana, whose daughter Emma (Cosgrove) surprises her with her plans to get married and the fact that she’s set a date in Thailand.
The surprises keep coming when Lana finds out that the father of the groom, played by Benjamin Bratt,“is the guy who tore my heart out” in college.
“We were everything to each other,” Lana tells her daughter. “And one day he was just gone.”
There’s a meet-not-so-cute between the former couple when the reveal happens, which Lana tries to play off. To make things even more awkward, she accidentally walks in on Bratt’s character naked, a la Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton in 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give.
Complicating matters is a hunky young doctor with eyes on Lana — and sparks during a wedding dance rehearsal that hints the former college sweethearts could give love a second chance.
Mother of the Bride, directed by Mean Girls and Freaky Friday veteran Mark Waters, debuts May 9 on Netflix.
On her Instagram Thursday, actress, writer and director Maggie Gyllenhaal teased images of two of the stars of her upcoming Frankenstein-based film The Bride, Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley.
“Meet The Bride & Frank,” captioned the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of The Lost Daughter. Buckley, one of the Oscar-nominated stars of that film, plays the titular bride in the star-studded Warner Bros. project.
In the makeup test, Buckley is depicted with curly bleach-blond hair and an inky splotch spreading from the corner of her mouth up the side of her face.
Oscar winner Bale, playing Frankenstein’s monster, is shown holding his hair up with his right hand, revealing his character’s characteristic stapled-up scar across his forehead; his left hand is parting his shirt open to reveal a tattoo reading “Hope” on his chest, as well as an autopsy scar that has also been crudely stapled shut.
The 1930s-set film also stars Oscar winner Penélope Cruz, Nyad Oscar nominee Annette Bening and Emmy nominee Peter Sarsgaard, Maggie’s husband.
According to Variety, in this version of the Frankenstein mythology, Buckley plays a murdered socialite who is reanimated, and comes into her own both romantically and politically. The movie is set for an October 2, 2025, release.
Incidentally, Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro is now shooting his own take on Mary Shelly‘s famed horror classic for Netflix, with Saltburn star Jacob Elordi as the brain-swapped creation. Two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz also stars, along with Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth and Lars Mikkelsen.
In his first appearance on the show since his messy — and litigious — 2010 ouster as host, Conan O’Brien will be returning to The Tonight Show on Tuesday, April 9.
O’Brien was tapped to replace Jay Leno when the latter stepped down in 2009, only to be replaced by Leno after less than a year as host.
O’Brien reportedly settled with the network for $45 million, which included $13 million in severance for the show’s staff of 200 people, according to NBC’s Today.
He went on to host Conan on TBS for 11 seasons until 2021, and built a podcasting empire that birthed a TV spinoff in the form of his new Max series, Conan O’Brien Must Go, which he will be promoting on The Tonight Show.
The visit to 30 Rock will mark another full-circle moment for the former Saturday Night Live and Simpsons writer and producer: His first gig hosting a talk show came in 1993 with NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien, which led to his tumultuous and brief stint as the host of The Tonight Show.
Anna Paquin walked a New York City red carpet with the help of a cane on Wednesday night.
The Piano actress was promoting her new film — her husband and former True Blood co-star Stephen Moyer‘s directorial effort, A Bit of Light— when the 41-year-old revealed to People that she’s had a rough go of it healthwise over the past two years. “It hasn’t been easy,” the New Zealand-born movie star said.
Paquin is reportedly dealing with an undisclosed health issue that has left her with speech and mobility problems, from which a source tells the magazine she’ll “hopefully” fully recover.
That said, she soldiered on to talk up the film, which was based on a play and has Paquin playing Ella, an alcoholic mother who loses custody of her children.
She called Moyer, her husband since 2010, “my favorite person to play with.”
She also added she wouldn’t have worked for the 54-year-old if she didn’t think he had the chops behind the camera just because they’re married. “I’m not sentimental when it comes to work,” Anna reportedly laughed.
The couple share 11-year-old twins — daughter Poppy and son Charlie — and being a mom gave her some perspective on the role.
“Not everyone ends up having the journey with motherhood that they have hoped or had planned,” Paquin tells People. “We’re all flawed and imperfect, and Ella is kind of on some level repeating some sort of familial patterns as far as stuffing feelings down.”
Raven-Symoné is addressing a comment she made in 2014 during an interview with Oprah Winfrey that she said has haunted her ever since.
At the time, Winfrey was asking Raven-Symoné about her journey with sexuality, to which the That’s So Raven alum replied, “I don’t want to be labeled gay.”
“I want to be labeled a human who loves humans,” she said. “I’m tired of being labeled — I’m an American, I’m not an African American. I’m an American.”
In response to her answer, Winfrey said, “Oh, girl, don’t set Twitter on fire.”
In Tuesday’s episode of the Tea Time With Raven and Miranda podcast with her wife, Miranda Maday, Raven-Symoné reflected on the controversial comment.
“When that aired, I felt like the entire internet exploded and threw my name in the garbage,” the former Disney Channel star said. “There was so much backlash from my community and others that misunderstood/ didn’t hear the exact words that I said. And the exact words that I said is that, ‘I’m an American, not an African American.'”
“A lot of people on the internet thought I said that I wasn’t Black, and I never said that. There’s a difference between being Black and African,” she said.
When Maday asked her to clarify, she continued, “When I say that African American does not align with me, that label, it doesn’t mean that I’m negating my Blackness or I’m not Black.”
“It means I am from this country, I was born here, my mom, my dad, my great-great-great-great-great — and that’s what I’m saying. The pure logistics of it,” she explained.
Raven-Symoné also addressed critics who questioned her knowledge of her ancestry.
“I understand my history. I understand where my ancestors come from,” she said. “I also understand how much blood, sweat and tears they soaked into this earth in order to create the America that I live in today — free, happy, tax-paying American citizen.”
She added, “When I am in another country, they don’t say, ‘Hey, look at that African American over there,’ they say, ‘That’s an American,’ plain and simple.”
Deadline reports The Bachelor‘s season 28 finale ended with not only an engagement, but the franchise’s best ratings in two years. The episode, which saw Joey Graziadei propose to Kelsey Anderson, drew 6.31 million total viewers — the highest it’s been since Clayton Echard’s finale episode. That figure represents a 54% increase from the episode’s live and same-day audience of 4.1 million. Additionally, in the three-day window, The Bachelor finale marked a 19% increase in total viewers from the premiere episode’s performance …
Ozark‘s Julia Garner has been tapped to play Shalla-Bal, a version of the iconic Silver Surfer in Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four, set to hit theaters July 25, 2025, sources tell Deadline. As previously announced, Pedro Pascal will play Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby will portray Sue Storm/the Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn will take on the role of Johnny Storm/the Human Torch and Ebon Moss-Bachrach will play Ben Grimm/the Thing …
Jennifer Garner has reportedly signed on to star in the Netflix holiday comedy Mrs. Clause, according to Deadline. Plot details have yet to be revealed. This will be Garner’s latest collaboration with the streamer, following Leave, Yes Day, The Adam Project and most recently, Family Switch …
Not only is MúsicaRudy Mancuso’s directorial debut, it’s also the film where he met his girlfriend, Camila Mendes, who co-stars alongside him and serves as a producer.
Mancuso got his start as a creator on Vine, where he found “reasons to tell little stories in some way,” he told ABC Audio. “I was in love with film and music and film music for as long as I can remember, before I learned the language of the internet or was on the grid at all.”
His experience on Vine, then YouTube, brought him to LA, where he was suddenly surrounded by creatives working in film and TV.
“I didn’t know how I would get there. But I knew that one day I had to get to a place where I could make my film. And it just so happened to work,” Mancuso said of Música, a coming-of-age romance about a Brazilian-American college student.
Another thing that worked was getting his top-choice actress for his character’s love interest in Mendes.
“She’s fantastically talented, beautiful inside and out. What I didn’t expect was how strong of a producer she was too,” Mancuso said. “She’s so lovable and natural and grounded and inviting and warm. And that’s exactly what the character is meant to evoke.”
Ultimately, it was the lack of Brazilian-American and synesthesia representation in mainstream film and TV that drove Mancuso to make Música.
“In this film, I had the opportunity to do both,” Mancuso said. “Brazilian culture is so specific and so nuanced, and the country is massive, and the people are so beautiful and passionate. For some reason it’s not represented in mainstream as frequently as it should … Cami and I got really excited about being able to do that in an authentic way.”
Música is available to stream Thursday on Prime Video.
Take a peek back at the trolls of old with Oscar winner Olivia Colman in the new film Wicked Little Letters.
The period comedy is based on the true story of a town in 1920s England that was rocked by scandal when someone started writing vicious letters to various villagers.
Colman plays Edith Swan, one of the women unnerved by the poison pen missives. She explains to ABC Audio they have an all-too-common modern-day equivalent. “Now it’s trolling. Now you can be vicious anonymously online,” she says.
The legendary English actress’s character seems to be a “pious Christian, Goody Two-shoes,” but “behind closed doors, there’s a whole other thing going on,” Colman explains.
She adds, “I mean, all human beings, you know, have lots of different sides to them, but hers was so extreme I just thought it’d be fun to play.”
The letters were so extreme at the time that a criminal investigation was launched — with Edith’s Irish neighbor a likely, but possibly innocent, suspect.
For her part, Colman explains her character’s use of colorful language in the film and why Edith can’t quite get to cursing correctly.
“You know, a kid going abroad learns all the bad words they can think of in their new language and puts them all in one lump,” she expresses. “And I feel a bit like the swearing in this film is a bit like someone who doesn’t actually do it, is imagining what it would be like to say all those words.”
