Entertainment

To promote Gen V, its upcoming spinoff of its Emmy-nominated show The Boys, Prime Video has launched a new interactive website for super-powered prospective college students.

On the surface, the new Godolkin University website looks like any other college site, complete with beauty shots of the campus, impressive looking facilities and bright faces of students eager to learn.

“We’ve trained the best and brightest superheroes since 1965,” a legend reads. “But more than that, we’re a family. A community of supportive faculty and peers who will accept you as the unique, culturally rich change agent that you are.”

The show takes place at the university, the first institution dedicated to cultivating the superpowers granted by the chemical cocktail known as Compound V.

Elsewhere, the site touts the school’s “challenging and meaningful curriculum to help train the best and brightest heroes of tomorrow,” including, “core coursework like Hero Ethics, to upper division classes like The History of Acting: Stanislavski to Bourke, you’ll become the best crimefighter or performer you can be.”

There’s even a welcome video from new students Andre Anderson — actually Gen V actor Chance Perdomo — and Jordan (London Thor, Derek Luh), who detail the $77,000 a year tuition, with Jordan inviting potential freshmen to “find out what makes you super.”

Users can generate their own Godolkin student ID, filling out required information, including what powers they have.

There’s also a countdown clock to the “next semester,” actually the debut of the Prime Video series, on September 29.

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HGTV has bid farewell to the iconic Brady Bunch house, selling it at $3.2 million, a price that falls below both its initial asking price of $5.5 million, per the Wall Street Journal.

This Los Angeles residence, famous for serving as the exterior shot of the beloved 1970s sitcom, underwent extensive interior renovations by HGTV to recreate the sets of the classic show. HGTV acquired the property and documented the renovation journey through specials like A Very Brady Renovation and A Very Brady Renovation: Holiday Edition.

HGTV had invested $1.9 million in expanding the property, adding 2,000 square feet, including a second story. The completed home retains iconic features such as the floating staircase, retro kitchen, the kids’ Jack-n-Jill bathroom, and a backyard reminiscent of the series.

HGTV intends to use a portion of the proceeds to provide up to 250,000 meals for Turn Up! Fight Hunger, an initiative aiding hungry children in the United States through No Kid Hungry.

Tina Trahan, an ardent fan of the show and its 1995 parody film, is the new owner and plans to utilize the Studio City house for charitable events.

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Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg and his wife Kate Capshaw just made another substantial contribution to actors and writers who are struggling financially in the wake of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. ABC Audio confirmed on Monday, September 11, that the couple has donated $1.5 million so far, with the money split between the Entertainment Community Fund and the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. As of September 8, the former organization has doled out more than $6.5 million to more than 3,100 film and TV workers; The SAG-AFTRA Foundation has distributed more than $2.5 million…

CBS is adding Byron Allen‘s long-running syndicated comedy talk show Comics Unleashed to its late-night lineup for a limited run with back-to-back episodes airing from 12:37-1:37 a.m. ET following repeats of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on the CBS network and streaming on Paramount+. The round-table style comedy show, hosted by Allen, features a rotating slate of comedians, including Sebastian Maniscalco, Tiffany Haddish, Kevin Hart and Chelsea Handler…

A movie adaptation of the crime drama series Murder, She Wrote is in development at Universal Pictures, according to Variety. The original Murder She Wrote starred Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher, who solved murders in the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine. The series ran on CBS for 12 seasons from 1984-1996…

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CBS’ The Talk and two syndicated chat shows, The Jennifer Hudson Show and Sherri, hosted by Sherri Shepherd, are returning to the studio for season premieres in the coming weeks amid labor actions by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The Talk, a signatory to the Writers Guild’s minimum basic agreement, went dark when the writers strike began in May and is reportedly eyeing a September 18 premiere.

Hudson’s show uses WGA writers and, per the guild’s website, is also a signatory to the union’s minimum basic agreement. It is promoting its second season, also kicking off September 18, but has done so using clips from season 1.

Shepherd’s program doesn’t use WGA writers, though it has employed some guild writers in the past. Like ABC’s The View, Sherri has been running throughout the strike. WGA members have picketed the show.

The news comes a day after Drew Barrymore announced the return of her daytime talk show. Writers picketed the show in New York on Monday, and two audience members told THR they were asked to leave the taping after they wore pins supporting the strike.

That leaves The Kelly Clarkson Show as the only daytime talker yet to announce a return. Clarkson’s show is moving from Los Angeles to New York and is currently in preproduction.

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The live-action retelling of the animated Disney classic The Little Mermaid has broken a record for Disney+.

According to the streamer, the movie has become one of the most viewed premieres in Disney+’s history since it became available to subscribers on September 6.

The musical film, starring Halle Bailey as Ariel, Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric, Melissa McCarthy as Ursula and Javier Bardem as King Triton, racked up 16 million views in just its first five days on the platform.

The Little Mermaid, which made nearly $570 million worldwide before coming to digital, was the most-watched Disney movie premiere on Disney+ since 2022’s Hocus Pocus 2.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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On Monday, September 11, Fox dropped an extended preview of the 35th season premiere of The Simpsons, which debuts October 1 at 8 p.m.

The episode, titled “Homer’s Crossing,” has Homer becoming a school crossing guard and taking things a little too far.

In addition, this season Marge experiences a series of nightmares about young Bart’s childhood coming to an end, producers tease, while an episode set 60 years in the future has Lisa recounting how Homer was scapegoated for a power outage “that plunged Springfield into darkness days before Thanksgiving.”

Of course, this season will also bring back an annual classic, the 34th edition of the spooky “Treehouse of Horror” episode.

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With his co-host Mayim Bialik still sitting out her hosting duties because of the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, Ken Jennings will be behind the Jeopardy! podium once again for the season 40 debut Monday, September 11.

The show will return with the Jeopardy! Second Chance competition, in which 27 former contestants will get another opportunity to follow in Jennings’ footsteps as a Jeopardy! champion.

The winner of each week’s shows will take home $35,000 and get a ticket to the Jeopardy! Champions Wildcard competition, the quiz show’s producers explain.

The Wildcard is a new format making its debut this season, according to the announcement. “For the first time ever, players who won one, two, or three games in Seasons 37 and 38 but did not qualify for the Tournament of Champions in those seasons will be invited back to compete for a berth” in the next Tournament of Champions, which begin airing Monday, October 2.

According to the show’s producers, season 40 will also see a bump in the prize money awarded to second- and third-place finishers: Second place will now go home with $3,000, while third place will leave with $2,000.

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Academy Award nominee Rachel McAdams will make her Broadway debut in Mary Jane, a play from Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Herzog.

The Doctor Strange and The Notebook alumna will take the stage at New York City’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre when previews start on April 2, 2024.

McAdams will play the title role, a single mom “in an impossible family situation,” according to a description from producers Manhattan Theatre Club.

Producers tease, “Faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, Mary Jane relies on unflagging optimism and humor, along with the wisdom of the women around her who have become a makeshift family, to take on each new day. But will inner strength and newfound friendships be enough to see her through?”

Director Anne Kauffman will be calling the shots behind the scenes.

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Millions of cable viewers will apparently be able to watch Monday Night Football this evening, after Charter Communications and ABC News’ parent company Disney settled a nasty contract dispute.

The disagreement left some 15 million or so Spectrum subscribers cut off from Disney-owned cable stations, including ABC and ESPN, which airs MNF.

Disney called the deal, which was announced just hours before tonight’s matchup between the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets, a “transformative, multiyear distribution agreement” that “maximizes value for consumers and supports the linear TV experience as the industry continues to evolve.”

As a result, Disney said Spectrum’s customers would have their services restored “immediately.”

In a joint statement, Robert A. Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, and Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey noted, “Our collective goal has always been to build an innovative model for the future. This deal recognizes both the continued value of linear television and the growing popularity of streaming services while addressing the evolving needs of our consumers.”

They also thanked “our mutual customers for their patience” during the impasse.

Things were less over Labor Day weekend when both companies took pot shots at each other in public.

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Netflix’s manga adaptation One Piece has scored some streaming treasure. The live-action version of Eiichiro Oda‘s pirate saga — Japan’s highest-selling manga series in history — dropped on August 31 at #1 on the streaming service’s English language TV chart.

In just four days, One Piece racked up 140.1 million hours of viewing time, Netflix tells ABC Audio, and has hit its Top 10 in 93 countries — and #1 on that chart in 46.

The series stars Iñaki Godoy as straw hat-wearing swashbuckler Monkey D. Luffy, who sets off with his crew ZZ— Mackenyu as Roronoa Zoro, Emily Rudd as Nami, Jacob Romero as Usopp and Taz Skylar as Sanji — to find the fabled article of treasure that shares the series’ title.

This ranks One Piece right up there with massive hits like Stranger Things season 4 and Wednesday.

Updated numbers are due out Tuesday afternoon, September 12, the streaming service explained.

What’s more, the series is enjoying a 96% audience score on the ratings aggregator Rotten Tomatoes — meaning the series has done what other Netflix anime/manga adaptations like Cowboy Bepop has done: satisfied fans of the source material, which has sold more than 500 million copies worldwide.

In fact, fans were apparently happy to sound off; there were more than 10,000 reviews submitted for the series in just a matter of days.

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