Entertainment

As The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart continues its rollout with new episodes Fridays on Prime Video, the series’ creatives spoke with ABC Audio about adapting Holly Ringland’s novel and what it’s like to work with Sigourney Weaver.

When showrunner Sarah Lambert picked up The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart for the first time, she had no idea how much the book’s opening line would stick with her.

“Either I respond to something or I don’t,” Lambert said. “In that first page it talks about 9-year-old Alice Hart sitting in a weatherboard cottage, at the end of a lane, dreaming about ways to set her father on fire.”

Ringland’s words evoked something inside of Lambert. “I hadn’t read an opening line or an opening sequence where I fell in love with that character so much,” Lambert said.

Adapting the book for the screen became her passion project. Along the way, Lambert worked with collaborators who shared that same passion. This includes Weaver, who took on the challenging role of June.

“What I love about her is that she’s not afraid to not be likable …. that character goes on a massive journey, and sometimes she does things that you think, ‘Oh God, please don’t do that,’” Lambert said. “She was never afraid about making those choices.”

Glendyn Ivin, who directed all seven episodes of the series, said working with Weaver was intimidating.

“I grew up watching Sigourney. I was 10, I think, when I saw Alien for the first time,” Ivin said. “It changed my life. Sigourney Weaver had been in my mind since I was a kid. So, to finally meet her and work with her and to do something that we’re both really proud of is — it means a lot to me.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

On Friday, August 18, DC Films’ Blue Beetle takes flight in theaters.

Cobra Kai‘s Xolo Maridueña plays Jaime Reyes, an everyday teenager who finds himself the recipient of an alien scarab that gives him super abilities and an Iron Man-like exoskeleton.

DC’s first Latino superhero has seen his origin story buoyed by positive early word of mouth, with praise for director Angel Manuel Soto‘s leaning into the family aspect of his primarily Latino cast.

Adriana Barraza, Elpidia Carrillo, Damián Alcázar and Belissa Escobedo play Jaime’s grandma, mom, dad and wise-cracking younger sister, respectively, while George Lopez scores laughs as his conspiracy theory-loving uncle Rudy.

Latino actors also make up the supporting cast, including Bruna Marquezine, What We Do in the Shadows‘ Harvey Guillen, and Raoul Max Trujillo, who plays Conrad Carapax, aka Carapax the Indestructible Man.

Speaking to ABC Audio before the SAG-AFTRA strike, Lopez noted the significance of the Latino representation.

“I’m humbled by the fact that I would be able to be in this,” he said. “But also I’m honored in the fact that we all got to do it together.”

Lopez also explained how the MCU’s James Rhodes/War Machine welcomed him into the superhero business, sharing, “I was playing golf with Don Cheadle … and he was talking about how they might go to Australia [to shoot future projects]. They might stay in London …”

He continued, “So I’m driving home … and I say to myself, ‘What do you have to do to get a franchise movie?'”

A smiling Lopez recalled, “A month later, the call for … Blue Beetle came in and I was golfing with Don … and I put Don on the phone with Angel … And I said, ‘Well … lemme bring War Machine in here, too!'”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Two of this summer’s big releases, Barbie and Fast X, will be available for streaming in September. Barbie, which recently topped $1.2 billion dollars globally since its July 21 release, will be available on paid video on demand platforms such as Prime Video, Apple TV and Vudu for $24.99 starting September 5. It’s available to pre-order on Amazon for $19.99. Fast X, meanwhile, will begin streaming on Peacock on September 15…

Suits, the former USA Network show, now streaming on Netflix, marked its record-setting fourth week of more than 3 billion minutes of watch time, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which cites Nielsen’s streaming charts. The legal drama racked up 3.88 billion minutes of viewing for the week of July 17-23. That tops the previous week’s 3.67 billion minutes, which in turn surpassed the previous two weeks’ totals for Suits — all of which were, at the time, the biggest single weeks ever for an acquired show since Nielsen began tracking streaming show viewing in 2020, per the outlet…

Chucky will return for its third season on SYFY and USA Network on October 4, streaming the next day on Peacock. The notorious killer doll made the announcement himself in a profanity-laced trailer on Thursday, warning, “D.C. is gonna get chucked up.” In the TV series, a continuation of the original Child’s Play movies, Chucky, “crosses paths with archenemies, old allies, and new prey as he seeks to inspire fear and mayhem wherever he goes,” per the cable channel… 

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The new movie Landscape with Invisible Hand, out in theaters this weekend, is about an alien invasion, but not in any way we’ve seen alien invasions portrayed on screen before.

“This is not your typical big, scary military alien invasion,” director Cory Finley tells ABC Audio. “This is a purely economic alien invasion by means of the free market. So this is aliens who have come down and they just make everything we make better than we make it. They drive all humans out of work and they slowly take over our economy that way.”

Adds Finley, “[It’s] the story of a young artist coming of age, finding his own voice, falling in and out of love, in a world that is subject to an alien invasion.”

“The aliens, who kind of control everything on Earth through economic power, are fascinated by human emotions, something they just don’t understand,” he explains. “They find it very exotic and interesting. And so human love, which is the most exotic of those emotions, has become this kind of valuable commodity.”

The focus is on two teens — played by Asante Blackk and Kylie Rogers — who form an instant bond, which intrigues the aliens, who then watch the couple like a reality show.

“As a form of kind of alien tourism, the main characters start doing what they call courtship broadcasting, and letting aliens watch and pay per minute as they fall in and out of love,” says Finley. “And I thought that was just subversive and strange and kind of [an] over-the-top metaphorical pressure cooker version of something we all know, particularly in this kind of age of social media and, you know, cameras everywhere wielded by our fellow humans.” 

Tiffany Haddish also stars.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

AMC has released new images and a new teaser from its forthcoming spinoff The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.

The new footage from the show, which starts in September, shows Norman Reedus‘ Daryl not getting too warm a welcome from some of the locals after he wakes up in Europe.

“We’re looking for an American,” one of the characters growls.

Evidently, Daryl uses some of his survival experience from the States to rally survivors in France.

Reedus says at one point, “You did it your way, now we’re gonna do it mine.”

“Paris may be dead, but hope lives,” a set of title cards reads, adding, “On September 10, believe in him.”

The “long story” of how Daryl got to find himself in the former City of Lights will unfold on AMC and AMC+.

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Michael Lewis, the author behind the book that became the movie The Blind Side, has sounded off to The Washington Post about the controversy that now surrounds it.

As reported, Michael Oher [OR], the formerly homeless former NFL star whose life story made up the book and the film, filed a petition against Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, claiming they tricked him into a conservatorship and shorted him millions.

The couple, who were respectively played by Tim McGraw and Sandra Bullock in the movie, vehemently denied Oher’s claims.

To the paper, Lewis first denied that anyone involved in the film behind the scenes received “millions” from the hit. “Everybody should be mad at the Hollywood studio system,”the author expressed.

“Michael Ohershould join the writers strike. It’s outrageous how Hollywood accounting works, but the money is not in the Tuohys’ pockets,” he said.

According to Lewis,20th Century Fox paid $250,000 for the rights to his book, The Blind Side, and he split that 50-50 with the Tuohy family. The Tuohys maintained the monies they made were split between all of their family members, including Oher.

Further, the author clarified he took home around $70,000 for optioning the story that became the film — which was eventually distributed by Warner Bros. — and the parents received $350,000 each, splitting up royalties amongst their family members, Oher included.

However, according to Lewis, Oher apparently began declining his royalty checks. When that happened, the author explains, the parents put the money into a trust fund for Oher’s son.

Lewis lamented, “They showered him with resources and love. That he’s suspicious of them is breathtaking. The state of mind one has to be in to do that — I feel sad for him.”

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In an Instagram Live from Havana, Cuba, Big Brother contestant Luke Valentine addressed his dropping of the N-word during a broadcast that got him kicked off the CBS reality show.

Wearing a tropical shirt and puffing on a cigar, Valentine fielded questions from fans before addressing the incident, saying there was “no malice” behind his comment, which CBS says violated his Big Brother code of conduct.

“It’s pretty clear that I had no ill intent,” he said. “It was directed at Cory and it was after about … about a week of malnutrition. A week of sleep deprivation. I was getting probably 2 1/2 hours of sleep on that cheese block. And you don’t really take into account the psychological distress of being under studio lighting 24/7 and not knowing who your friends are, who your enemies are.”

Valentine later added, “I felt bad about what I said. The moment it happened — they booted me off the show and it was the most fun I ever had in my life. No lie.”

He called his ouster “genuinely devastating.”

He said he can’t bring himself to watch the show because he’s “a little sad” he’s no longer on it.

He added of the decision to boot him from the show, “I’m not upset at the production. Their hands were tied. They had to make a sacrifice. I understand why it is upsetting. I think they made the wrong decision. I think a slap on the wrist would have been much better because they’re still getting backlash.”

He also commented, “I’m sure everyone on the show … kinda have to hate me. Them’s the breaks. If they reach out, I’ll definitely talk to them … but if I’m too radioactive for them, I get it.”

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Legendary actor and new dad Robert De Niro turns 80 years old on Thursday, August 17. 

Born in the Greenwich Village neighborhood in New York City in which he still lives, the man considered to be one of the greatest actors of his generation began appearing onscreen in smaller films in the late ’60s, but at 26 starred in a national TV spot promoting the 1970 American Motors Company’s Ambassador sedan. 

Three years later, De Niro starred in frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese‘s gritty drama Mean Streets, following that in 1974 with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Francis Ford Coppola‘s The Godfather Part II.

De Niro teamed up with Scorsese again for 1976’s Taxi Driver, earning him a Best Actor nomination. 

He was nominated again for 1978’s The Deer Hunter, before snagging the Best Actor trophy in 1980 with his portrayal of volatile boxer Jake LaMotta in Scorsese’s Raging Bull. 

De Niro has also taken comedic turns: the buddy comedy Midnight Run in 1988; 1999’s hit Analyze This and its 2002 sequel; the Meet the Parents trilogy, and the recent About My Father.

In 1990 he was Academy nominated again for the 1990 drama Awakenings — the year he starred in Scorsese’s Oscar-winning crime epic Goodfellas. 

De Niro was also nominated for Scorsese’s 1991 Cape Fear remake and for 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook.

After the terror attacks on the U.S. in 2001, De Niro co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival, now known as the Tribeca Festival, to bring economic revitalization to Lower Manhattan.

In 2017 De Niro earned an acting Emmy nomination for portraying scammer Bernie Madoff in HBO’s The Wizard of Lies, and another for playing special prosecutor Robert Mueller on Saturday Night Live.

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On Thursday, August 17, Apple TV+ released the title and first images for its anticipated Godzilla and Titans live action original series: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

Set in the same universe as the 2014 big-screen film Godzilla; 2017’s Kong: Skull Island; 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters; 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong and the upcoming sequel Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the series stars father and son Kurt and Wyatt Russell playing the same character over decades.

The streaming service teases, “Following the thunderous battle between Godzilla and the Titans that leveled San Francisco and the shocking revelation that monsters are real, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters tracks two siblings following in their father’s footsteps to uncover their family’s connection to the secretive organization known as Monarch.”

It adds, “Clues lead them into the world of monsters and ultimately down the rabbit hole to Army officer Lee Shaw (played by Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell), taking place in the 1950s and half a century later where Monarch is threatened by what Shaw knows. The dramatic saga – spanning three generations – reveals buried secrets and the ways that epic, earth-shattering events can reverberate through our lives.”

Its producers call their Monsterverse “an epic entertainment universe of interconnected stories that bring together popular culture’s most titanic forces of nature,” like Godzilla, Kong and all their fellow kaiju.

“Witness humanity’s greatest battle for survival as we fight for our world in the face of a catastrophic new reality—the monsters of our myths and legends are real,” the announcement reads.

Monarch also stars Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Anders Holm, Joe Tippett and Elisa Lasowski.

Release date details were not made available.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

FX has announced its premiere dates for its upcoming programming, including the returns of the award-winning American Horror Story, Fargo and its Hulu exclusive shows. 

American Horror Story: Delicate, the 12th installment of the flagship AHS franchise and the first to star Kim Kardashian, gets underway Wednesday, September 20, at 10 p.m. ET on FX. This installment of AHS will feature five episodes and as reported, is said to center on a famous woman who fears dark forces are surrounding her pregnancy journey. 

On Friday, September 29, at 10 p.m. ET, FX unveils the documentary The New York Times Presents: “How To Fix a Pageant,“ centering on scandals surrounding the Miss USA contest.

Turning to Hulu, as reported, FX will debut the latest installment of the American Horror Stories anthology spinoff on Thursday, October 26, and on November 14, FX’s seven-episode limited series A Murder at the End of the World will debut on the streamer. 

Thursday, November 21, at 10 p.m. ET will see the return of the Emmy-winning drama series Fargo on FX. The fifth installment of the drama will feature ten episodes this time around, as well as Ted Lasso Emmy nominee Juno Temple and Mad Men Emmy winner Jon Hamm.

FX teases, “After an unexpected series of events lands Dorothy ‘Dot’ Lyon (Temple) in hot water with the authorities, this seemingly typical Midwestern housewife is suddenly plunged back into a life she thought she had left behind.” Hamm plays a “rancher, preacher and a constitutional lawman” and North Dakota Sheriff Roy Tillman, who is on Dot’s heels.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.