Entertainment

Starz has given an eight-episode order to a series adaptation of May Cobb‘s novel The Hunting Wives. The drama, per the cabler, “tells the story of Sophie O’Neil and her family’s move from the East Coast to deep red East Texas, where she succumbs to socialite Margo Banks‘ irresistible charms – and finds her life consumed by obsession, seduction, and murder.” The cast has yet to be announced…

Paramount+ has canceled its iCarly reboot after three seasons, according to Entertainment Weekly. The first iteration of iCarly, which aired on Nickelodeon from 2007-2012, starred Miranda Cosgrove, Jennette McCurdy and Nathan Kress as a group of best friends who create a webcast. Jerry Trainer portrayed Carly’s older brother Spencer. All but McCurdy returned for the reboot, which explored the romance between Cosgrove and Kress’ characters Carly and Freddie…

Apple on Thursday revealed the trailer for The Buccaneers, an eight-episode drama based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edith Wharton’s unfinished final novel of the same name. The plot follows a group of “fun-loving young American girls” who arrive in 1870s London with a disregard for centuries of tradition and create a culture clash. The Buccaneers — starring Kristine Froseth, Alisha Boe, Josie Totah, Aubri Ibrag, Imogen Waterhouse and Christina Hendricks — premieres with three episodes on November 8, followed by new episodes weekly, every Wednesday through December 13…

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As previously announced, The Drew Barrymore Show is returning on Monday, October 16 — but without its three WGA writers.

The show’s head writers Chelsea White, Cristina Kinon and Liz Koe — all vocal critics of the show’s attempted return amid the Writers Guild Strike in mid-September — have declined an offer to return with it, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. During the strike, all three could be seen picketing outside of Drew Barrymore’s Manhattan studio on multiple days, with signs that read, “Honk if you [love] union labor” or “Drew’s News: Strikes,” sources tell THR. The production is reportedly interviewing new writers and will comply with the guild.

The show initially announced it would return on September 18, before the strike ended, explaining, “We launched live in a global pandemic. Our show was built for sensitive times and has only functioned through what the real world is going through in real time. I want to be there to provide what writers do so well, which is a way to bring us together or help us make sense of the human experience.”

However, the decision drew flak from striking writers and their supporters, prompting Barrymore to reverse her decision.

“I have listened to everyone, and I am making the decision to pause the show’s premiere until the strike is over,” Barrymore wrote on Instagram at the time, adding, “I have no words to express my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt and, of course, to our incredible team who works on the show and has made it what it is today.”

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While streaming new shows, you might have found yourself craving that “Next Episode” countdown timer, only to be frustrated to learn you’ll have to wait until next week to watch the new chapter.

Well, you’re not alone.

A new study into streaming habits from streaming studiers Samba TV quoted by The Wrap shows 45% of respondents surveyed say they finished shows released in 2023 “in bulk” compared to a 35% completion rate of the series that dropped weekly.

Thirty-nine percent finished the programs if they released blocks of episodes instead of the whole enchilada.

“That’s millions of viewers who are starting but not completing a series,” Samba TV’s vice president of measurement products, Cole Strain, said at The Grill, The Wrap’s annual business conference.

What’s more, approximately 70% of millennial respondents surveyed by Samba TV said they’d be more likely to keep a streaming service that dropped entire shows at a time, like Netflix does, instead of a week-by-week distribution, the way Paramount+ and Disney+ usually release content.

By way of example, the company notes 61% of respondents completed the bulk-dropped Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story on Netflix; 50% say they finished season 3 of The Mandalorian, which dropped episodes weekly on Disney+.

Just 52% got through all of Ted Lasso‘s weekly releases on Apple TV+, and 48% finished another weekly streamer, fellow Emmy winner Succession, over on Max.

For the record, Samba TV says 72% of the U.S. adults it surveyed identified themselves as binge-watchers, and 47% say it took them an average o

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New Girl actress Zooey Deschanel and Property Brothers star Jonathan Scott are opening up for the first time since they got engaged in August.

The couple told People about their love story, their blended family and the home they’ve built together.

“We’ve just been basking in engaged bliss,” Deschanel said.

The couple’s engagement was one out of a fairytale, with Scott asking Deschanel to marry him at Scotland’s Edinburgh Castle.

Scott told the magazine he had been planning the surprise for months. On the day of the proposal, he ensured that he and Deschanel were the last people at the historic site.

The proposal included a bagpipe band and a guitarist who performed Neil Young‘s “Harvest Moon,” their favorite song.

The special moment also included Deschanel’s kids, Elsie, 8, and Charlie, 6, whom she shares with ex-husband Jacob Pechenik. “I was like, ‘I think something’s happening,'” Deschanel recalled about the moment, which involved her kids holding a sign that read, “Zooey, will you marry me?”

“When Elsie turned around and read the sign, she immediately goes, ‘Did you just get married?’ And we’re like, ‘Well, no not yet. But we got engaged!'” Scott said. “The kids didn’t know until the moment it happened.”

Deschanel, who has been open about co-parenting Elsie and Charlie, said, “Our family is very deeply rooted and very blended.”

She also referred to Scott as Charlie and Elsie’s “bonus daddy.”

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Saturday Night Live will return October 14, with one of its most famous alums in recent history, Pete Davidson, as host and Ice Spice as the musical guest.

On Wednesday, the show’s official Instagram announced the Bupkis star and the “Munch (Feelin’ U)” artist will officially kick off SNL‘s 49th season.

With the late night shows back following the resolution of the monthslong WGA strike, some wondered what would become of Saturday Night Live since SAG-AFTRA is still on strike.

The organization issued a memo to its members Wednesday to make clear that as far as it’s concerned, the show can go on.

“SAG-AFTRA members appearing on Saturday Night Live either as hosts, guests, or cast members are working under the Network Code agreement, which is not a contract we are striking,” the union noted.

“They are not in violation of SAG-AFTRA strike rules, and we support them in fulfilling their contractual obligations.”

The group adds, “The program is a SAG-AFTRA non-dramatic production under a separate agreement that is not subject to the union’s strike order.”

Further, the message clarifies, “The majority of our members who are regular cast on Saturday Night Live had contractual obligations to the show prior to the strike. … By not showing up to work, our performers can be held in breach of contract and the Union is prohibited from advising them not to work.”

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Disney has revealed the second-season trailer to Behind The Attraction, its exclusive peek at Walt Disney’s magical theme parks.

Co-produced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Dany Garcia‘s Seven Bucks Productions and Brian Volk-Weiss‘ The Nacelle Company, the show “takes viewers on a ride behind Disney Parks’ most iconic and beloved attractions, featuring the Imagineers that designed them and the Cast Members who operate them.”

While season 1 took a deep dive into Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion, It’s A Small World and Space Mountain, season 2 showcases Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Indiana Jones Adventure, EPCOT, the parks’ fireworks-filled Nighttime Spectaculars and, of course, the food.

After all, don’t you want to know who came up with the idea for those giant turkey legs and 12-inch churros?

The series drops November 1 on Disney+.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Patrick Stewart says it gives him “nothing but pleasure” that Tom Hardy has had such a successful career. However, when Stewart filmed 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis with the actor, he thought it would be the end of the eventual Mad Max: Fury Road star’s career.

According to Insider, in Stewart’s brand-new memoir Making It So, the actor looked back at making the “particularly weak” film opposite then newbie actor Hardy, who played an evil clone of Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard.

Stewart recalls, “the actor who portrayed the movie’s villain, Shinzon, was an odd, solitary young man from London. His name was Tom Hardy.”

“Tom wouldn’t engage with any of us on a social level. Never said, ‘Good morning,’ never said, ‘Goodnight,’ and spent the hours he wasn’t needed on set in his trailer with his girlfriend,” Stewart explains.

The Picard star adds, “He was by no means hostile — it was just challenging to establish any rapport with him.”

When his role wrapped, Hardy left without any niceties, and Stewart recalls telling Trek co-stars Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes, “And there goes someone I think we shall never hear of again.”

Hardy, of course, became a superstar, landing roles in Inception, The Dark Knight Rises and the hit Venom movies. He’ll be seen next onscreen in The Bikeriders.

Stewart says, “It gives me nothing but pleasure that Tom has proven me so wrong.”

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RuPaul, the Emmy-winning host of RuPaul’s Drag Race, announced that his forthcoming memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings, is finally finished. 

In a video on Instagram, a makeup free, hat-and-hoodie-wearing Ru showed a copy of the book, set for release March 5, 2024. He says it took a tough two-and-a-half years to write.

“I’m so excited and so anxious at the same time because I reveal so much of myself,” Ru expressed. “This world today, it feels so hostile, and it’s such a scary place to be vulnerable in.”

“But I did it. So get ready,” he said, capping the video with a defiant laugh. 

In the caption of the post, Ru said the making of the book left him “gooped, gagged and stripped raw.” He added, “I’ve learned that vulnerability is strength, but so far, all I feel is nervous as hell, yet super excited to share it with y’all. When all is said and done, it’s just me, Ru.”

Publisher HarperCollins said the memoir is RuPaul’s “most revealing and personal work to date — a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance, found family, and self-acceptance.”

The publisher also called it “A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity,” and “a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.”

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Following the resolution of the writers strike, The Drew Barrymore Show will return to the air Monday, October 16.

The show’s official Instagram page made the “This just in” announcement with a shot of Drew Barrymore having fun with her studio audience.

As reported, once the strike ended on September 27, Barrymore’s show, like others, got the gears spinning again; producers for the syndicated show eyed an October start.

The popular show recently made headlines for all the wrong reasons when Barrymore stated she intended to ramp production before the strike ended, expressing, “We launched live in a global pandemic. Our show was built for sensitive times and has only functioned through what the real world is going through in real time. I want to be there to provide what writers do so well, which is a way to bring us together or help us make sense of the human experience.”

The decision drew flak from striking writers and their supporters, and Barrymore did an about-face. “I have listened to everyone, and I am making the decision to pause the show’s premiere until the strike is over,” Barrymore wrote on Instagram two weeks ago, adding, “I have no words to express my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt and, of course, to our incredible team who works on the show and has made it what it is today.”

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World FTD Awareness Week ended on October 1, and to mark the occasion, Emma Heming Willis saluted two women who helped her come to grips with her husband Bruce Willis‘ Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) diagnosis.

On her Make Time to Connect podcast, Emma’s final cast of FTD Awareness Week welcomed Maria Kent Beers and Rachael Martinez, who started the Remember Me podcast Heming Willis found while desperate for more information on her Die Hard star husband’s condition.

Rachel lost her father to the disease; Beers, her mother.

“I didn’t know where to go, what to look up, I’m looking things up and it’s freaking me out,” Heming Willis said. “There wasn’t a lot [of information about FTD] but you guys popped up. I started listening and I felt like, ‘Oh my gosh I’m so grateful to hear other people’s stories.'”

Later, she expressed, “There’s nothing that levels the playing field like FTD. And I have made some of the greatest connections with other care partners, people like you who just get it. There doesn’t have to be so much explanation.”

She added, “You guys have been so helpful to me. I want to say thank you. I’m surprised I’m not crying because that’s where I go to when I think of people who have been that lifeline for me.”

Heming Willis and her family revealed in March 2022 that Willis was retiring from acting because he was diagnosed with aphasia, a brain condition that affects memory and speech.

In February of this year, they updated fans that Bruce’s condition worsened to Frontotemporal dementia, a “cruel disease” for which there is no cure.

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