Entertainment

The Max Original series Harley Quinn, starring Kaley Cuoco, has been renewed for a fifth season.

The show, which also features the voice talents of Lake Bell, Christopher Meloni, JB Smoove, Tony Hale and Ron Funches, among others, centers on the DC Comics character coming into her own after her breakup with the Joker (Alan Tudyk).

In a statement, Suzanna Makkos, Max and Adult Swim’s executive vice president of original comedy, enthused, “The talented Harley Quinn team has once again succeeded in delivering a season that builds on everything that has come before while still feeling fresh and inventive.”

She adds, “They continue to provide hilarious, heartwarming, and deranged stories with our lovable group of DC misfits, and we couldn’t be more excited for the fans to see what they’ve accomplished in season 5.”

Executive producers Justin Halpern, Patrick Schumacker and Dean Lorey joked of the development, “We’re thrilled that the news of Harley and Ivy’s continuing misadventures is finally out and we can stop telling people in secret. We must have handed out at least three thousand NDAs [nondisclosure agreements] by now. It was a big waste of paper.”

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On the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, Tom Hiddleston said farewell — again — to playing Loki, on the heels of the show’s second season finale.

“Again,” of course, because Loki has died more than once in the MCU, and “farewell,” because the series finale shows him literally taking the strands of time in his godly hands, redeeming himself by saving reality, but essentially removing himself from it.

But as Hiddleston acknowledged, with Marvel Studios, there’s always a possibility he could turn up again at some point.

The English actor expressed that “never in a thousand years” could he have predicted he would still be playing the character in 2023. “It has been a journey of a thousand miles,” he said graciously.

“I was cast in 2009 by Kenneth Branagh to play Loki in Thor, and I recognized then that I had been given this extraordinary gift of playing a really interesting, complex tragic poignant character,
and I could never have imagined that this journey would continue into chapter upon chapter upon chapter,” Hiddleston said.

He said “the joy” for him in playing the god of mischief “is that there is in human imagination some need to characterize chaos, and playfulness, right inside of a character” across all cultures.

“Somehow it’s necessary … for someone to embody the disruptor, the trickster, the boundary crosser…somebody dangerous, somebody occasionally necessary,” he said.

And if the second season of the show is indeed the last time he plays the character, Hiddleston said, “I do feel very proud and satisfied with where we landed, because I think as a team we brought it full circle.” He called Loki, the series, “an ultimate story of redemption.”

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Legendary producer and musician Quincy Jones is opening up his “encyclopedic” wine collection to Christie’s auction house, with selections from around the world and some extremely rare — from 1928 and 1934, to be exact — fruit of the grape. 

Christie’s explains, “The sale offers wine and music enthusiasts the opportunity to acquire some of the most sought after and rare wines with unmatched provenance.”

Jones comments, “When I was embarking on my first trip to Europe as a young trumpeter in Lionel Hampton‘s band in 1953, the great saxophone player Ben Webster pulled me aside and gave me some of the best advice a 19-year-old who had never traveled outside of the country could ever receive. He told me that the soul of a country is identified by its music, its food, and its language and that ‘wherever you go, eat the food the real people eat, listen to the music the real people listen to, and learn 30 or 40 words in every language.'”

He reminisces, “I embraced Ben’s advice wholeheartedly, and in so doing, I was also introduced to the pleasure of experiencing the best wines ever produced.”

The 90-year-old icon says the collection features “special selections from some of the finest vineyards in the world … along with very special vintages created by dear, dear friends.”

Jones expresses, “Each bottle in my collection evokes in me memories of unique and extraordinary times spent with unique and extraordinary people and always carries with it the promise of beautiful new experiences being created once opened.”

The online auction will be open for bidding November 30 through December 11.

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On Thursday, Disney+ released the full trailer to its forthcoming series Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the adaptation of author-producer Rick Riordan‘s bestselling books.

The coming attraction opens with The Adam Project‘s Walker Scobell staring at a statue of his Greek namesake Perseus, when his mom (Virginia Kull) explains why she gave him his name. It’s not because he was a hero, she explains, but “because he was brave and kind and against all odds, he managed to find his way to a happy ending.”

Young Percy says in voiceover, “I’m used to the world feeling weird to me, like a puzzle with half the wrong pieces. But lately all feels different now.”

Things are indeed different — as the young man discovers he’s actually the son of the Greek god Poseidon.

“Percy, you are special. When you’re ready to hear what the gods have in store for you, they’ll tell you,” his mom advises him.

Even more mind-blowing, he’s given the quest of finding a stolen lightning bolt that belongs to Zeus (the late Lance Reddick), and if he can’t — with help from his friends Grover (Aryan Simhadri) and Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries) — “there will be war.”

The trailer also shows Percy at a demigod training camp and meeting the trickster messenger god Hermes, played by EGOT-winning Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Additionally, Percy and his friends are shown facing off with all manner of mythical creatures turned real.

The show — which also features Megan Mullally, Jason Mantzoukas, Adam Copeland and WWE Hall of Famer Edge playing Ares, the god of war — kicks off with a two-episode premiere on December 20.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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With Marvel Studios looking to staff up the MCU’s first appearance of “Marvel’s First Family,” the Fantastic Four, Variety says Pedro Pascal is high on the list to play the team’s leader: Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic.

The trade reports the studio is eyeing The Mandalorian star to play the character, canonically among the smartest men in the Marvel Comics universe, who gains the ability to stretch his body at will.

John Krasinski played an alternate version of the character in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a clever nod to online fans casting him — and his wife, Emily Blunt, as Sue Storm, Reed’s wife aka The Invisible Girl.

Created in 1961 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, the superhero team forms after they’re accidentally exposed to gamma rays, giving them different powers: Sue can create force fields and vanish; her daredevil brother Johnny can set himself on fire and fly as the Human Torch, and Reed’s pal Ben Grimm’s body becomes the hulking hero known as Thing.

Marvel Studios acquired the rights to the characters after parent company Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 2019.

Fox released Fantastic Four in 2005 and its 2007 sequel, Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer, which both see Ioan Gruffudd as Richards, Jessica Alba as Sue, Michael Chiklis as Grimm and Chris Evans — who later became Marvel Studios’ Captain America — as Johnny.

A widely-panned 2015 reboot saw Miles Teller as Reed, Kate Mara as Sue, Jamie Bell as Thing and Michael B. Jordan, later the star of the Black Panther films, as Johnny.

Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four, directed by WandaVision director Matt Shakman, is scheduled to open May 2, 2025.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Attention, Frozen fans! A Frozen 4 may be in the works.

In an interview with Good Morning America on Thursday, Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed the “surprise” that “Frozen 3 is in the works and there might be a Frozen 4 in the works, too.”

He added, “Jenn Lee, who created Frozen, the original Frozen and Frozen II, is hard at work with her team at Disney Animation on not one but actually two stories.”

Both Frozen and Frozen II crossed $1 billion at the global box office when they were released in 2013 and 2019, respectively, according to box office tracker The Numbers.

Hong Kong Disneyland is also opening a new “World of Frozen” themed land on Nov. 20, giving parkgoers the chance to visit Arendelle, too.

“For years at our Disney parks, we’ve been creating these large, immersive worlds,” Iger expressed.

“Essentially, they’re the physical embodiment of some of the greatest stories that we’ve told whether it’s Cars Land or Star Wars or Pandora [from Avatar],” he continued.

Iger called Frozen “our most valuable franchise,” adding, “I think it’s just ripe for basically, building the place that Frozen takes place in and it’s just a fantastic land that enables people to get immersed in the story of Frozen and interact with all the great characters for films.”

He says the new land brings Arendelle to life.

“The best thing here is you visit and you actually can meet Olaf and Anna and Elsa and all the gang,” adding, ” … you actually feel like you’re in the place that the movie took place in and it just gives you this powerful sense of story that I think people have grown to love over the last decade.”

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The Paramount+ series SEAL Team will be coming to a close with its seventh season, the streamer has announced. The final season of the David Boreanaz-led military drama is set to premiere sometime in 2024. The first four seasons of the show aired on CBS before moving to Paramount+ with season five…

Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is in need of a new director. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Destin Daniel Cretton has left the project due in part to the shifting release dates from May 2025 to May 2026. Cretton previously directed another Marvel movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Marvel is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News…

The official trailer has been released for Role Play, a new film starring Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo. Cuoco plays a suburban mom leading a secret life as an assassin. Her husband, played by Oyelowo, discovers her secret while trying to spice up their anniversary with some role play. The film hits Prime Video on January 12…

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You may never look at Thanksgiving the same way again. The horror movie Thanksgiving opens this weekend, co-written and directed by Eli Roth.

The film started as a fake trailer for a movie in the 2007 film Grindhouse, and Roth tells ABC Audio for years people would tell him he had to turn that trailer into an actual movie.

“Jeff Rendell, who I wrote it with, we grew up in Massachusetts, where Thanksgiving is a very, very, very big deal. I mean, there’s school plays,” he recalls. “So we would always think like, Oh, what if you roasted someone in a human oven? And what if at the parade … someone chopped off the guy in the turkey costume’s head and he ran around like a turkey with his head chopped off?”

A great starting point, says Roth, but it took him a while to figure out the actual plot.

Once we started seeing these videos of the Black Friday tramplings,” he shares … It’s about the perversion of the holiday. It’s about the greed of how we all pretend to be thankful but we really just want to kill someone for a flat screen television,” he explains.

Roth jokes that he wants to change the way people see the holiday, saying, “I want someone to go, you know, dinner is served and reveal to a human turkey. I just feel like it should be one of those things that people joke about and make reference to and make TikToks about at their own family dinner. I want to ruin the holiday. It’s time.”

Thanksgiving stars Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque, Rick Hoffman, and Gina Gershon.

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Jimmy Kimmel will host the 96th Academy Awards, the academy announced Wednesday.

The 2024 Oscars ceremony will mark the fourth time that Kimmel has hosted the awards show.

“I always dreamed of hosting the Oscars exactly four times,” the Jimmy Kimmel Live! talk show host said in a press release.

Kimmel hosted the 95th Academy Awards earlier this year. He also hosted the 89th Academy Awards in 2017 and the 90th Academy Awards in 2018.

It was also announced Wednesday that screenwriter Molly McNearney, Kimmel’s wife, will return as an executive producer for the show. McNearney previously served as an executive producer for the 95th Academy Awards.

“We are thrilled about Jimmy returning to host and Molly returning as executive producer for the Oscars. They share our love of movies and our commitment to producing a dynamic and entertaining show for our global audience,” Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences President Janet Yang and CEO Bill Kramer said in a statement.

They continued, “We are deeply grateful to Jimmy, Molly and their teams for their incredible creativity and partnership and for going on this ride with us again.”

During the 2023 Oscars ceremony, Kimmel kicked off the show by parachuting onto the Dolby Theatre stage Top Gun style. He also addressed the infamous Will Smith slap from the 2022 Oscars during his opening monologue and cracked jokes at the star-studded audience.

In October, the academy announced that Raj Kapoor would serve as executive producer and showrunner for the 2024 awards show, with Katy Mullan as an executive producer.

The 96th Academy Awards will take place Sunday, March 10, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

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Hours after her former Friends co-stars Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer opened up about the loss of Matthew Perry, the remaining main cast member, Lisa Kudrow, took to Instagram to share her thoughts.

Including a throwback picture of her and Perry, Kudrow began, “Shot the pilot, Friends Like Us, got picked up then immediately, we were at the NBC Upfronts. Then… You suggested we play poker AND made it so much fun while we initially bonded. Thank you for that.”

Kudrow continued, “Thank you for making me laugh so hard at something you said, that my muscles ached, and tears poured down my face EVERY DAY. Thank you for your open heart in a six way relationship that required compromise. And a lot of ‘talking.'”

Hinting at Perry’s yearslong struggle with addiction, she commented, “Thank you for showing up at work when you weren’t well and then, being completely brilliant.”

TV’s Phoebe Buffay added, “Thank you for all I learned about GRACE and LOVE through knowing you. Thank you for the time I got to have with you, Matthew.”

Aniston, Kudrow and Schwimmer’s tributes come a day after Matt LeBlanc and Courteney Cox shared touching and heartfelt posts of their own honoring Perry.

On October 30, the Friends cast issued a joint statement about losing Perry, two days after he was found dead at his Los Angeles home.

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