Entertainment

On Wednesday, 20th Century Studios released a teaser trailer to Alien: Romulus, the latest incarnation of the sci-fi franchise started by Ridley Scott‘s 1979 classic Alien.

Promising to get the franchise “back to its roots,” the studio teases, “While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”

The sneak peek begins with a creepy tracking shot inside that station along with the screams of its occupants. “Help me! Get it away from me!” a woman shouts. “I don’t know what it is!” a panicked man replies.

The camera stops moving and focuses on one of the franchise’s cryo-sleep tubes, broken and slathered with blood, before a voice says, “Run.”

The teaser then cuts to frenetic clips of the salvagers trying to escape an infestation of facehuggers, the skittering life forms that can fatally impregnate an organism with a baby “chestburster” alien, as well as spooky, siren light-lit shots familiar to fans of Alien and its 1986 sequel Aliens.

Ridley Scott produced the new film, directed by Fede Álvarez, who called the shots on 2016’s micro-budgeted horror blockbuster Don’t Breathe.

The film’s cast includes Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny, Isabela Merced from The Last of Us, Aftersun‘s Spike Fearn, and Shadow and Bone‘s Archie Renaux.

Alien: Romulus invades theaters August 16.

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On Wednesday, Epic Games and Marvel Entertainment released a trailer for a forthcoming World War II-set video game starring Captain America and Black Panther. 

1943: The Rise of Hydra has both super-powered heroes separately hunting for The Eye of Force, a fearsome development made by Hydra, the rogue Nazi deep science division headed by Red Skull in the comics and on the big screen in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger.

However, Cap is also hunting for the “six-foot cat man with claws that can cut through vibranium alloy” — that is, Azzuri, who wore the warrior-king mantel of Black Panther before his grandson, King T’Challa.

The cinematic trailer shows both heroes on the streets and on the rooftops above Nazi-occupied France until they come face to face on a bridge. “Stand aside,” Cap warns the Wakandan hero. “I do not take orders from ANYONE!” Azzuri howls, before they leap at each other.

According to Marvel, the title features “an ensemble of four heroes playable at different points in the game,” including Gabriel Jones, a U.S. soldier and member of Cap’s Howling Commandos, and Nanali, an embedded Wakandan spy.

As their “worlds collide,” the characters “must overcome their differences and form an uneasy alliance to confront their common enemy,” the company teases. 

The title from Epic Games is slated for a 2025 release.

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

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Dan Schneider is responding to the allegations against him in the docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.

The four-part series on Max includes interviews with former child stars from Nickelodeon shows like All That and The Amanda Show and explores claims about Schneider fostering a toxic work environment.

In an interview with former iCarly actor BooG!e, the former television creator said the docuseries made him feel “awful and regretful and sorry.”

“I wish I could go back … and just do a better job and never, ever feel like it was OK to be an a****** ever,” Schneider professes.

Another allegation he addressed was his alleged use of inappropriate jokes on his many shows.

“Every one of those jokes was written for a kid audience because kids thought they were funny,” Schneider insists. “Now, we have some adults looking back at them 20 years later through their lens, and … saying, ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate for a kid show.'”

“The last thing I want to ever do is put any content in a show that’s going to upset my audience and make them want to turn off the TV,” he added.

One of the biggest revelations from the docuseries was that former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell said he was the John Doe minor in the 2003 child sexual abuse case against his former dialogue coach Brian Peck.

Peck was arrested in 2003 and charged with 11 counts, including lewd acts with a child and sexual abuse of a minor. He pleaded guilty to two of the counts, was sentenced to 16 months in prison and was ordered to register as a sex offender.

Schneider said he spoke to Bell and was “devastated by that more than anything that ever happened to me in my career thus far.”

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A day after clarifying he was “not dying” following a cryptic Facebook post that seemed to intimate the opposite, reclusive former fitness guru Richard Simmons took to Facebook again to say he had a cancerous growth removed from his face.

In the lengthy post, Simmons said a “strange looking bump” under his right eye wouldn’t go away, so he sought the advice of a dermatologist.

After taking a biopsy, the doctor “comes back about 20 minutes later and says the C word. You have cancer,” Simmons recalled.

“I asked him what kind of cancer and he said. Basel [sic] Cell Carcinoma. I told him to stop calling me dirty names. He laughed.”

Simmons’ sense of humor continued, with him saying the doctor told him “now that you are here I suggest you put some Botox in your forehead lines and your smile lines and let’s pump up those cheeks of yours,” adding, “I patted him on his hand and said, ‘Not today doctor.'”

Simmons recalled that a skin cancer specialist “explained that he has to burn my skin to remove the cancer cells,” adding, “There was no numbing it just had to be done with a small instrument. As he started burning my skin a tear dropped down my cheek. You can’t cry during this and he wiped my tear.”

After 30 minutes, the doctor told him to return in an hour and a half to make sure it all had been removed, but it hadn’t. “He burned my face again. This time was worse than before…It was deeper. I did not cry this time but I did grit my teeth.”

Simmons was asked to return a second time, concluding his post, “….to be continued…”

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Even a married couple can use some advice in the bedroom — at least when your bedroom is being filmed.

That was apparently the case between Ewan McGregor and wife Mary Elizabeth Winstead for a love scene in their upcoming Paramount+ series Gentleman in Moscow.

According to the Scottish Star Wars veteran, an intimacy coordinator was brought in to advise them, even though the actors apparently get the gist of what to do together: they welcomed a son, Laurie, in 2021.

Intimacy coordinators were spurred out of the #MeToo movement and are on set to make sure the actors are comfortable with sex scenes.

McGregor welcomed the help, he tells the U.K.’s Radio Times. “It’s still necessary, because it’s also about the crew, and it’s odd to be naked in front of people,” the actor says. “It’s odd to be intimate in front of the camera.”

He adds, “If you were doing a dance scene, you’d have a choreographer. It’s an important part of the work now, because it’s somebody that the director and actors meet in the middle.”

He also considers his 22-year-old actress daughter Esther. “If an older, famous director goes to a 22-year-old and says, ‘I want you to be naked in this scene,’ that actress might feel, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve got to do it, my career might depend on it.’ And then five years after that, she could look back and go, ‘I wish I hadn’t.'”

That said, McGregor himself had no problem going the full monty onscreen before intimacy coordinators were a thing. In fact, the U.K. publication Cinemablend once dubbed him “Our Nakedest Actor.”

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Kristen Wiig bulldozes her way into the Palm Beach, Florida, country club scene in the new Apple TV+ series Palm Royale, out on Wednesday. She plays a woman who thinks everything will fall into place in her life if she could just hang with the right crowd — and Wiig tells ABC Audio it’s a feeling that’s very relatable.

“Just that feeling of wanting to belong to a group that you’re not in or to be something you’re not,” she says. “I think everyone has had times in their life where they think, ‘If I had that or if I was there, my life would be better, I would be happier.'”

One society woman Wiig’s character rubs elbows with is played by the legendary Carol Burnett, though when we meet her character, she’s in a coma. Wiig says working with Burnett was a dream come true, and she’s someone who definitely influenced Wiig’s career.

“Having her own show at that time, doing those characters and having fun with all those people and just showing the world, like, just what she does and had such a good time doing it. And oh my gosh, she inspired me so much, yes!” shares the Saturday Night Live vet.

Another club member is Robert, who is intent on keeping Wiig’s character out at all costs. It turns out Robert — played by Ricky Martin — has some secrets of his own, something Martin knows a thing or two about.

“Being a gay man in the ’60s is something that is really intense,” notes Ricky. “But at the same time, it’s so relevant because there are many men, gay men today, that are struggling with their identity. So for me to be able to shed some light into that struggle is very important.”

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CBS has renewed NCIS: Sydney for a second season. The fifth series in the NCIS franchise was the #1 new series of the fall and currently ranks as the #3 new series of the 2023-24 season, behind Tracker and Elsbeth, per the network. NCIS: Sydney, follows “a brilliant and eclectic team of U.S. NCIS agents and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) … grafted into a multi-national taskforce to keep naval crimes in check in the most contested patch of ocean on the planet,” according to CBS. The series stars Olivia Swann, Todd Lasance, Sean Sagar, Tuuli Narkle, Mavournee Hazel and William McInnes …

Well, blow me down! A new big-budget live-action film adaptation of the Popeye comic character is in development from Chernin Entertainment and King Features, according to Variety. So far, screenwriter Michael Caleo is attached to the project. It would mark the first live-action adaptation of the 1920s comic strip since the Robin Williams-led Popeye in 1980. Though panned by critics, that version, directed by Robert Altman and co-starring Shelley Duvall as Popeye’s girlfriend, Olive Oyl, grossed $60 million at the box office and has since gained cult status, per the outlet …

Damsel, starring Stranger Things‘ Millie Bobby Brown, was Netflix’s most-watched film of the week for the week of March 11-17, drawing 50.8 million views in its first week of availability, according to the streaming service. On the TV side, The Gentlemen, starring Theo James, took top honors, capturing 20.1 million views in its first full week of availability after launching with 12.2 million in its first three days of release …

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The anticipated animated series X-Men ’97 debuts Wednesday on Disney+.

The original X-Men: The Animated Series from the 1990s introduced a whole new generation to Wolverine, Magneto, Storm and the rest of Professor Xavier’s friends and enemies, and sustained the property long before there was a Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Indeed, the unexpected success of the animated series spurred the creation of the first X-Men movie in 2000, helping open the door for the big screen superhero genre.

“If you are of a certain generation. You can go and hum the theme song in a public place, and you’ll get heads turning around, right?” X-Men ’97‘s lead director Jake Castorena laughs to ABC Audio.

The new show takes the fan-favorite characters on new adventures but hews closely to the original, from the theme music to character design, because as Castorena says, you don’t mess with a classic.

He adds, “I have the love for the OG show. I mean, that’s part of the whole reason why I started drawing. You know, it was either Batman [The] Animated Series or X-Men: The Animated Series.”

“We are a revival, not a reboot,” Jake explains. “The OG show straight into our show … should all feel like one cohesive thing.”

The veteran animator enthuses, “You know, getting asked to be on any sort of X-Men anything is like, ‘Hell yeah,’ right? But it’s when it’s this X-Men show and it’s ‘Oh, we want to do that X-Men show’… 5, 6-year-old me would be losing his head right now.” 

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Jonathan Majors‘ ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the former Marvel star for alleged assault, battery and defamation from incidents dating between 2021 and 2023.

Majors was found guilty of one count of misdemeanor third-degree assault and one count of second-degree harassment in connection with a March 2023 altercation with his then-girlfriend, Jabbari, in a for-hire SUV in New York City. He was acquitted of two other counts of assault and aggravated harassment.

Marvel Studios severed ties with the Loki actor, who was supposed to play a major role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward.

The new suit, filed in the Southern District of New York, accuses Majors of making “knowingly false statements” about Jabbari during an interview with ABC News in January following his conviction, in which he said he did not hit her in the vehicle or cause any injuries.

“Put bluntly, Majors’s defense to Grace’s descriptions of the numerous acts of violence Majors perpetrated against her was to brazenly defame her and label her a liar on all claims,” the complaint stated, citing what it called “false and defamatory statements” that were “broadcast around the world.”

Jabbari is seeking damages for physical injuries she said she suffered as a result of the incident. She also claimed Majors committed “intentional infliction of emotional distress” against her, according to the civil complaint.

Jabbari’s attorney, Brittany Henderson, said in part, “It takes true bravery to hold someone with this level of power and acclaim accountable. … We strongly believe that through this action, truth and transparency will bring Grace the justice that she deserves.”

For his part, Majors’ attorneys responded to the filing saying, “This is no surprise. Mr. Majors is preparing counterclaims against Ms. Jabbari.”

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Nicole Kidman is opening up about her home life and why now is the perfect time for Big Little Lies season 3.

The Oscar-winning actress discussed all of this — and more — in her cover story for Elle‘s April 2024 Impact Issue.

Kidman gushed about being a mom to two teenage girls, daughters Sunday Rose, 15, and Faith Margaret, 13, whom she shares with husband Keith Urban.

“I love teenage girls. I just find them exquisite,” she told the magazine. “I marvel at that age group and what they’re dealing with, but also their ability to handle so much.”

Kidman also partly credited her eldest daughter for inspiring her and Reese Witherspoon to discuss a third season of their Emmy-winning show Big Little Lies.

“My daughter is the one who watched both of the series and went, ‘OK, there’s just no question, there has to be a third.'”

Kidman and Witherspoon have been teasing a new season of the show in recent months, and the Moulin Rouge actress said now is the right time.

“There’s the richness of the storylines, which we’d always discussed, but it needed time because there’s actual unbelievable depth to the next chapter of these women’s lives and their children’s lives — because children grow up, and that’s kind of fascinating.”

Kidman also teased that she, Witherspoon and their castmates — Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley and Zoë Kravitz — are still “very intertwined.”

HBO has not confirmed or shared any official updates on a potential third season of the show.

The Expats actress also discussed her AMC Theatres ad, saying her dream is to spoof it herself one day, alongside a drag queen.

She also teased she has “more ideas for the next one.”

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