Entertainment

Sebastian Stan won’t stand for any Marvel hate.

The actor, who made his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as Bucky Barnes in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, teased his next movie in the long-running film series and shut down those who want to “pick on” the franchise in a new interview with Variety, published Thursday.

“It’s become really convenient to pick on [Marvel films],” he told the outlet. “And that’s fine. Everyone’s got an opinion.”

“But they’re a big part of what contributes to this business and allows us to have smaller movies as well,” he continued. “This is an artery traveling through the system of this entire machinery that’s Hollywood. It feeds in so many more ways than people acknowledge.”

Stan said he gets “protective” of the franchise “because the intention is really f****** good.”

He added, “It’s just f****** hard to make a good movie over and over again.”

Stan will star in Thunderbolts* next summer, in which he leads a ragtag group of heroes — many of them reformed villains — including Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell and Hannah John-Kamen. 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus also reprises in the film.

Stan says the movie is “kind of like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” describing both of them as being about “a guy coming into this group that was chaotic and degenerate, and somehow finding a way to unite them.”

With Stan playing Barnes aka The Winter Soldier across numerous movies and even a TV series, the actor is “constantly … challenging” himself.

As proof, he’s in two of the year’s buzziest films heading into awards season: A Different Man, out Sept. 20, and The Apprentice, out Oct. 11.

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

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Amazon’s Prime Video platform has signed Jamie Lee Curtis and Nicole Kidman to two seasons of an adaptation of bestselling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell‘s beloved Kay Scarpetta book series.

Ariana DeBose has also been added to the cast, along with The Irishman‘s Bobby Cannavale and Simon Baker.

As reported back in February, Curtis and her Comet Pictures company had been itching to adapt Cornwell’s work and teamed up with another fan — Kidman — and her Blossom Films company to have her co-produce and star as Cornwell’s famed forensic pathologist.

Curtis will play another main character in the two-dozen-strong book series, Kay’s sister Dorothy, while DeBose will appear as Lucy Farinelli-Watson, Dorothy’s daughter.

In the announcement, Curtis said in part, “I have wanted to bring Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta to a screen … for a while,” noting, “I’m particularly excited that Nicole Kidman will finally bring her to life.” 

She added, “I know the ardent fans of the books will be very happy, and the new audience will be compelled by the characters, crimes, and mysteries that are the trifecta of Patricia’s masterful storytelling.” Curtis ended with a warning: “There WILL be BLOOD.”

Kidman said her desire to adapt Cornwell’s “epic and thrilling books” goes back “nearly 20 years,” expressing her excitement to “unite with the formidable Jamie Lee Curtis.”

Kidman added the project “feels like it was meant to be.”

“I cannot wait to inhabit Kay Scarpetta and am so thankful to Patricia Cornwell for entrusting me with her,” Kidman said.

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As part of its Geeked Week festivities, Netflix has teased the star-studded seventh installment of its out-there sci-fi anthology Black Mirror. 

Paul Giamatti and Jesse Plemons will be featured, as will Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae and Emma Corrin, the latter of whom played the heavy in the blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine.

Also appearing will be Peter Capaldi, Awkwafina, Milanka Brooks, Patsy Ferran, Cristin Milioti and
Chris O’Dowd, among others. 

The streaming service teases that one of the six new episodes will revisit the Star Trek-like season 4 opener “USS Callister.”

This time around, Plemons plays Robert Daly, “a brilliant but troubled” video game programmer who is so “unhappy with a perceived lack of recognition at his gaming company [he] creates a simulated reality within the game.” 

Netflix says Daly gives himself “the role of a Captain Kirk–like figure aboard a starship … leading an adoring crew — based on his real-life co-workers — on zany sci-fi adventures.” 

“Of course, because this is Black Mirror, things take an unexpected and sinister turn,” Netflix continues. 

Other episodes for the 2025 season are still under wraps.

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Francis Ford Coppola‘s star-studded, mostly self-funded, pet project Megalopolis can’t seem to avoid controversy regarding its reviews.

While he has said he didn’t know how possibly AI-generated fake reviews ended up on a now-deleted trailer for his movie, this latest hiccup literally has his name on it. 

Megalopolis now appears on the film enthusiast social media platform Letterboxd, and its user reviews are as mixed as pro critics’ critiques have been — however, among those cineastes who gave the movie a five-star review is apparently one Francis Ford Coppola. 

The filmmaker didn’t elaborate on the project, for which he’s spent decades and a fortune of his own money to get to theaters. 

One user of the platform wasn’t nearly as kind, snarking Megalopolis “is to Coppola what This Is Me Now…is to J.Lo.”

Ouch.

Incidentally, also among Coppola’s few Letterboxd recommendations are The Last Showgirl — the Pamela Anderson film that happens to be directed by his granddaughter Gia, and which has been getting legitimately glowing reviews; 2023’s The Good Half, directed by Robert Schwartzman, who is Coppola’s nephew; and Between The Temples, a 2024 film starring his other nephew — and Schwartzman’s brother — Jason.

Megalopolis hits theaters Sept. 27.

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Florence Pugh needed a summer vacation. 

In an interview with British Vogue, Pugh — who in recent years starred in Marvel’s Black Widow and Hawkeye; Oppenheimer; Dune: Part Two; Marvel’s Thunderbolts; and the forthcoming drama We Live in Time with Andrew Garfield — confessed she needed a break.

“It was the first time ever in my career when I’ve actually asked for a summer break,” she tells the magazine. “I’m an absolute work maniac, [but] I [could] see I’m exhausted.”

She adds, “I suddenly woke up last year and I was like, ‘I hate how much of my life I’ve missed.’ Yes, I want to have a career forever, but that’s not going to happen if I work myself into the ground.”

She’s back at work now, promoting We Live in Time, an out-of-order romance drama with Garfield, who calls his love interest an “incredibly accessible actor” who boasts that “extra mysterious factor that can’t be named.”

Pugh says apart from her career aspirations, family is “always” on her mind. “I’ve always been thinking about starting a family. I’ve wanted to have kids since I was a child myself. I love the idea of a big family.”

She adds, “I love kids. I love hanging out with kids. If ever there’s a dinner party, I go straight to the kids to chat to them. So much easier. I love the honesty. I love how bored they can get. I’ve never stopped knowing that I want to have kids. It’s just figuring out when.”

We Live in Time, from Oscar-winning indie studio A24, opens Sept. 7.

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Emily Blunt is looking back on some of the biggest roles of her career.

The actress, who was nominated earlier this year for her first Academy Award for her performance in the 2023 blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer, sat down with Good Morning America to chat about the beloved The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and the scary A Quiet Place (2018).

Reflecting on her first day of shooting The Devil Wears Prada, Blunt called it a “nerve-racking” experience because “it was my first big movie and I didn’t know what to expect.”

“I remember how kind Annie Hathaway was to me,” she recalled of her co-star, Anne Hathaway.

“And David Frankel, the director, created such a fun environment,” she added. “You could improv, you could chuck in a thing you wanted in there, and there were no mistakes.”

One thing she said stuck out to her about her first day on set was how she “fell practically on Meryl Streep” during a scene that required her to run down a corridor in high heels, which she admitted she is “not very good at walking in.”

“I just fell over, clipboard and all, just clattering to the floor,” she said, recalling how her co-star didn’t break character.

Fast-forward 12 years later and Blunt found herself diving into a new genre — horror — by starring alongside husband John Krasinski in A Quiet Place, which Krasinski also directed.

She quickly learned “how tiring it is to be constantly hyperventilating and terrified.” But Blunt said watching Krasinski direct his first film showed her a new side of him.

“You kind of see that your partner kind of has a superpower you didn’t know they had,” she gushed. “It was really extraordinary to build that together.”

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Saoirse Ronan stars in the trailer for Steve McQueen‘s upcoming historical drama, Blitz.

Set in England during World War II, the trailer follows 9-year-old George, played by Elliott Heffernan, who embarks on a journey to return home to his mother, Rita, played by Ronan. Rita searches tirelessly for her missing son, who finds himself in great danger as he makes his way back to East London.

“You’re responsible for his safety,” Ronan’s Rita says in the trailer. “Why can’t you tell me, where’s my boy?”

Later on in the trailer, while standing in front of a crowd, Rita says, “This is for all the parents whose children have been evacuated, and for my boy, George.”

The Oscar-winning McQueen wrote and directed the Apple Original Film, which also stars Paul Weller as George’s grandfather Gerald, as well as Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine and Kathy Burke.

Blitz arrives in theaters on Nov. 1, before it streams on Apple TV+ on Nov. 22.

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It’s time to delve deeper into the psyche of The Batman villain The Penguin. The new series The Penguin debuts Thursday on HBO.

It takes place in the universe of Robert Pattinson‘s The Batman, and show creator Lauren LeFranc tells ABC Audio that its themes go way beyond the criminal in the comic books.

She says, “There’s a lot of themes about, you know, family and trauma and masculinity, and really a deeper examination overall as to what makes a monster and why do we engage with people who might be charming, but also really problematic and have darker sides to themselves.”

LeFranc says the series picks up a week after the events of The Batman, with a damaged Gotham City flooded as a result of The Riddler blowing up the seawall.

“Carmine Falcone, you know, very large, larger-than-life crime boss in The Batman, is dead,” she continues. “And that has sort of created a power vacuum. And Oz Cobb, played by Colin Farrell, seeks to fill it.”

What you won’t see in The Penguin is Pattinson’s Batman, which LeFranc hopes won’t be that big of a deal.

“I totally understand why people would want to see Batman or think that they would want to see Batman. You know, to me, I hope by the end of our show people don’t feel that way. They feel like we’ve serviced really interesting, engaging characters and that this show can stand on its own in that regard,” she shares.

Adds LeFranc, “I mean, of course we’re taking place in the same universe where Batman exists. The thing Matt (Reeves) and I would always say is that Batman is just a man, you know, and he can’t be everywhere. He doesn’t have Spidey sense, you know?”

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So what’s Ellen DeGeneres been up to lately? “I decided to take up gardening. I got chickens. Oh yeah, I got kicked out of show business,” the comedian jokes in the new trailer for what’s being billed as her final stand-up special, Ellen DeGeneres: For You Approval, coming to Netflix Sept. 24. “The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind, that was the headline,” she added. Here’s the problem: I am comedian who got a talk show and I ended the show every day by saying, ‘Be kind to one another.’ Had I ended my show by saying ‘go f*** yourselves,’ people would’ve been pleasantly surprised to find out I’m kind.” After a bombshell 2020 expose of a “toxic” work environment behind the scenes at her eponymous talk show, where “be kind” was the mantra” …

Saturday Night Live vets Aidy Bryant, Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett have landed recurring roles in season 2 of the Apple TV+ comedy series Platonic, according to Deadline. Platonic stars Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne as “a platonic pair of former best friends approaching midlife who reconnect after a long rift,” per the streaming service. “The duo’s friendship becomes all consuming — and destabilizes their lives in a hilarious way.” A premiere date for season 2 has yet to be announced …

The trailer for Small Things Like These, Cillian Murphy‘s first film since winning an Oscar for Oppenheimer, has just been released. The movie, based on Claire Keegan‘s bestselling novel, stars Cillian as a devoted father who, while working as a coal merchant to support his family, “discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent — and uncovers truths of his own — forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church,” according to the film’s official synopsis. Cillian also serves as a producer, along with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck …

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Joan Vassos‘ season of The Golden Bachelorette kicked off on Wednesday night in a special way.

The 61-year-old school administrator, mother and grandmother, who is the first ever Golden Bachelorette, met her suitors vying for her heart and bonded with them over shared interests, experiences and a love for pickleball.

Prior to meeting the men, Vassos opened up about her first love, her late husband John Vassos, who died from pancreatic cancer. Vassos said she first met him in 1983 when she was 20 and called him a “special guy” who “made me feel special and safe every single day of my life.”

“No one’s gonna replace John,” she said. “He lives in a place in my heart and in my mind that is just his. But I have a big heart and there is room for somebody else.”

“I don’t know if you could have two great loves in one lifetime, but I’m hoping,” Vassos added.

At the mansion, Vassos was introduced to the men as they each stepped out of the limos. The first gentleman she was introduced to was Pascal, 69, a salon owner from Chicago, Illinois, whose French accent she found charming.

Others who impressed Vassos during their first meeting included Chock, 60, an insurance executive from Wichita, Kansas, who arrived with a mason jar of his chicken noodle soup, Jack, 68, a caterer from Chicago, Illinois, who sang Frank Sinatra‘s “My Way” for Vassos, and David, 68, a rancher from Austin, Texas, who arrived like prince charming on a horse.

After getting to know the men more inside of the mansion during sweet one-on-one moments and a chaotic impromptu pickleball tournament with some of the men, Vassos found a connection with Keith, 62, a girl dad from San Jose, California, who arrived at the mansion in a station wagon. She gave him the first impression rose.

During the rose ceremony, Vassos stepped away when she felt overwhelmed and told host Jesse Palmer that it’s “not easy” sending some of the men home. But at the end of the night, Vassos said goodbye to five men.

See whose journey on the show continues below:

Dan, 64, a private investor from Naples, Florida
Jonathan, 61, a shipping consultant from Oakland, Iowa
Mark, 67, an army veteran from Leesville, Louisiana
Guy, 66, an ER doctor from Reno, Nevada
Charles K., 62, a portfolio manager from Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Gil, 60, an educator from Mission Viejo, California
Gary, 65, a retired finance executive from Palm Desert, California
Pascal, 69, a salon owner from Chicago, Illinois
Chock, 60, an insurance executive from Wichita, Kansas
Kim, 69, a retired navy captain from Seattle, Washington
Christopher, 64, a contractor from West Babylon, New York
Gregg, 64, a retired university VP from Longboat Key, Florida
Charles L., 66, a retired financial analyst from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Jordan, 61, a sales manager from Chicago, Illinois
Bob, 66, a chiropractor from Marina Del Rey, California
Michael, 65, a retired banking CEO from Denver, North Carolina
Jack, 68, a caterer from Chicago, Illinois

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