Entertainment

Robert Downey Jr. is the latest star named who will be feted by the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The event, which recently announced it was honoring Ryan Gosling, will be giving Oppenheimer co-star Downey the Maltin Modern Master Award on Friday, February 9th, 2024. The trophy, re-named in honor of festival’s moderator Leonard Maltin, hails, “individuals who have enriched our culture through accomplishments in the motion picture industry.” The 39th annual festival runs from February 7-17…

Praise Petey, the Freeform adult-themed animated show has been canceled by Hulu after just one season. The show’s creator Anna Drezen sarcastically noted the news on social media, explaining, “I have heard that making a non-IP show during covid that premieres during a double strike in the dead of summer was not ideal for viewership.” The show starred the voice of Schitt’s Creek‘s Annie Murphy as a New York City “it girl” who takes over her dad’s small town cult…

Deadline reports Dexter co-star C.S. Lee will appear in the sixth and final season of Cobra Kai. The trade reports he will portray Master Kim Sun-Young, a character who appeared in flashback in the original Karate Kid movie, and was previously played by Don Lee in Cobra Kai…

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Young Sheldon‘s upcoming seventh season will be its last, CBS announced on Tuesday, November 14.

The prequel to The Big Bang Theory — starring Iain Armitage as the titular character, along with Zoe Perry, Lance Barber, Annie Potts, Montana Jordan, Raegan Revord and Jim Parsons as the voice of Sheldon — premiered as the #1 new comedy in the 2018-2019 season and the #1 comedy overall after TBBT ended its run in the 2018-2020 season. it remained as the top comedy for the 2022-2023 season.

“As a prequel to one of the biggest comedies, Young Sheldon proved lightning can strike twice,” Amy Reisenbach, president of CBS Entertainment said in a statement on Tuesday. “It set itself apart with a remarkable cast that felt like a family from the first moment we saw them on screen and brought characters to life with unique heartfelt stories that drew audiences in from the start.”

“Being able to tell the origin of Sheldon Cooper, and expanding the story to include the entire Cooper family has been a wonderful experience,” executive producers Steve Holland, Steven Molaro and Chuck Lorre added in a separate statement. “We are grateful to our fans for embracing this chapter of the Coopers these past six seasons, and on behalf of the entire Young Sheldon family, we’re excited to share this final season with you.”

Young Sheldon returns February 17, with a one-hour series finale set to air on May 16.

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Courteney Cox posted a heartfelt tribute honoring her late Friends co-star Matthew Perry on Tuesday.

The actress shared a clip of them on the iconic sitcom and wrote about what Perry, who died October 28 at the age of 54, meant to her.

“I am so grateful for every moment I had with you Matty and I miss you every day,” Cox began. “When you work with someone as closely as I did with Matthew, there are thousands of moments I wish I could share. For now here’s one of my favorites.”

“To give a little backstory, Chandler and Monica were supposed to have a one night fling in London. But because of the audience’s reaction, it became the beginning of their love story,” she explained of the clip. “In this scene, before we started rolling, he whispered a funny line for me to say. He often did things like that.”

Cox concluded the post, “He was funny and he was kind.”

After Perry’s death, his Friends cast members posted a joint statement mourning his passing. However, on Tuesday, Matt LeBlanc and Cox used their social media to memorialize their friend.

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While The Marvels may have flamed out at the box office, praise has been nearly universal for the second season of Marvel Studios’ Loki, which just wrapped up on Disney+.

Everything Everywhere All at Once Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan joined the cast this season as Ouroboros, or O.B., the quirky tech genius behind the scenes of the Time Variance Authority.

But he tells Variety he saw the character as a callback to one he was known for when he was a child actor.

Quan explains, “In the process of trying to fine tune how I want to play him, something dawned on me. I realized that this character is familiar to me. I think I know who he is. I have to go back 35 years ago, when I [played] Data on The Goonies.”

He adds, “So many fans have come up to me, and the most asked question was, ‘Will there be a Goonies 2? And what is Data doing as an adult?’ This character of Ouroboros is kind of my answer to that. I view him as a variant of Data.”

As the cherry on top, he discovered the TVA set, built in London’s historic Pinewood Studios, was erected on the stage dedicated to Roger Moore. “Now as we all know, Data loves James Bond. The character 007 inspires him tremendously. So I feel like there’s some cosmic connections to this character and Data.”

Data connections aside, there was his technical jargon to get his mouth around. Co-star Tom Hiddleston helped there, Quan says, teaching him his method of familiarizing himself “with every single word” in a mouthful of technospeak. “It’s just that repetition, but start very slow. I [used to] do the opposite,” Quan says.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Matt LeBlanc is remembering his close friend and co-star, Matthew Perry.

The pair starred as roommates and best friends Joey Tribbiani and Chandler Bing on the iconic NBC sitcom Friends for 10 seasons. In the wake of Perry’s death on October 28, LeBlanc has shared a touching tribute to honor his longtime friend.

On Tuesday, November 14, LeBlanc posted a series of stills from Friends on Instagram. The photos span throughout the seasons, and almost all of them take place in the apartment their characters shared.

LeBlanc included poignant moments, such as two photos of their characters embracing as well as sillier memories, like the time Chandler and Joey got a canoe for their living room after they were robbed.

“Matthew … It is with a heavy heart I say goodbye. The times we had together are honestly among the favorite times of my life. It was an honor to share the stage with you and to call you my friend,” LeBlanc wrote in the caption.

The final photo in LeBlanc’s Instagram carousel shows the entire main cast of Friends hugging the day they filmed the series finale.

“I will always smile when I think of you and I’ll never forget you. Never. Spread your wings and fly brother you’re finally free. Much love,” LeBlanc wrote.

In pure Chandler and Joey fashion, LeBlanc ended his tribute post with a joke. “And I guess you’re keeping the 20 bucks you owe me,” he wrote.

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FX’s Welcome to Wrexham, the docuseries detailing Ryan Reynolds‘ and Rob McElhenney‘s unlikely — but ultimately successful — purchase of an underdog Welsh soccer team in 2020, is getting a third season at FX.

The network made the announcement on Tuesday, the same day the show’s second season finale airs at 10 p.m. ET. The final installment, “Up the Town?” sees Wrexham AFC facing either promotion or the dreaded playoff.

The show’s first season is currently nominated for six Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program.

In a statement, Nick Grad, president of FX Entertainment, declared, “The wild global success of Welcome to Wrexham is a testament to the courage and vision of Rob and Ryan, the dogged spirit of the Red Dragons, and the hope and devotion of the people of Wrexham.”

The exec added, “It’s a story that has only begun to be told and one that everyone can continue to follow along with in the third season.”

In the second season trailer, Reynolds called the series and the team and town that shares its name “the most special gift I’ve ever had.”

The series also streams on Hulu.

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Steve Carell has appeared in movies and, of course, as one of the stars of The Office, but now, ABC Audio has confirmed he’ll be making his Broadway debut this spring in an adaptation of the Anton Chekhov play Uncle Vanya.

First published in 1897 and produced in 1899 by the Moscow Art Theatre, the play has been adapted countless times over the years. It centers on an elderly professor who brings his new young wife to an estate where she meets the family.

Vanya, the title character, is the brother of the professor’s late first wife, who finds himself falling for the professor’s new spouse, Yelena, as does the local doctor Astrov.

Alfred Molina is playing the professor in this retelling, with fellow Tony winner Anika Noni Rose as Yelena. The Good Place‘s William Jackson Harper has been tapped to play Astrov, while Alison Pill will play Sonya, the professor’s daughter who manages the estate with Vanya.

The production begins previews April 2 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater before opening April 24; although the famed venue is at Lincoln Center in New York City, it is considered a Broadway theater.

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Emmy-nominated The Crown veteran Emma Corrin now stars as hacker and amateur sleuth Darby Hart in FX’s new series A Murder at the End of the World, which also streams on Hulu

Corrin’s character, dubbed “Gen Z Sherlock Holmes” for her work unraveling cold cases, is invited for a meeting of the minds by a reclusive billionaire played by Clive Owen — but things go sideways when one of the guests turns up dead.

“She grew up on crime scenes,” Corrin explains to ABC Audio. “Her father was the county coroner. And I think she’d seen so many crime scenes by the time she was even 18 that it gave her the sort of very realistic, not jaded view of the world.”

Emma continues, “But she definitely … doesn’t suffer fools and sees the world for what it really is, sees people for who they really are, but still wants to see the best in people and wants to find hope.”

Corrin adds of Darby, “She has this real sort of balance of this darkness and lightness in her, which I think makes her a really intriguing character, certainly to play and hopefully to watch as well.”

Turns out, the actress is also fan of true crime content. “I absolutely adored … a series called London Spy with Ben Whishaw, which came out … quite a while ago. But I’ve I hadn’t heard of it. And … I just binged it in one night. It was so brilliant.”

With the strike over, Corrin is back to work on another high-profile project: playing an as-yet-unknown role opposite Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in Deadpool 3. “Absolutely phenomenal,” the performer gushes. “I’m so excited and I feel very lucky to have something to return to so quickly.”

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Elizabeth Debicki is opening up about the “immense responsibility” she said she feels playing the late Princess Diana on The Crown.

The show’s sixth and final season will depict the icon’s final days before her tragic death in August 1997, as evidenced by the trailer for the season’s first part.

Debicki told Entertainment Tonight that she and everyone involved with the show felt “an immense, immense responsibility” to get things right, adding that “it was something that we thought about, that we carried with us, that woke us up in the night.”

“We tried our very best to do [Diana’s story] properly,” she declared.

Debicki, who earned an Emmy nomination for playing Diana during season five of The Crown, called the opportunity to play the late princess “a very difficult and also very beautiful thing to be asked to do as an actor.”

Debicki also reflected on her own memory of Diana’s shocking death, which occurred when the star was a little girl growing up in Australia.

“I remember my mother’s reaction very, very strongly. I remember sitting on the floor of our living room and my mother was watching the funeral procession, and she was weeping,” she told Deadline. 

Debicki continued, “It’s actually quite a strong core memory in a way … but I suppose knowing that this woman influenced my mother, a woman in Australia in the suburbs, so deeply is something that was already embedded into my understanding of the story.”

The Crown season six, part one debuts Nov. 16 on Netflix, with part two premiering on Dec. 14.

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Brad Pitt is apparently official with Ines de Ramon, whom People reports he’s calling his “girlfriend.”

The 59-year-old Oscar-winning actor and producer has been dating the jewelry designer, 33, for a year now, according to sources quoted by the magazine, and they were recently spotted together being “super loving” at LACMA’s Art+Film Gala in Los Angeles.

“He introduces [Ramon] as his girlfriend,” the source explains.

The pair were first spotted out together at a Bono concert in November of 2022. Ramon reportedly split from her ex-husband, Vampire Diaries star Paul Wesley, in May of that year.

Pitt famously split from wife Angelina Jolie in 2016 after two years of marriage, and messy divorce proceedings followed, though they were reportedly finalized in August of 2023.

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