Entertainment

Ray Donovan star Liev Schreiber is in talks to star in the action-thriller The Guns of Christmas Past, according to Deadline. In the film, described as “A Christmas Carol meets John Wick,” Schrieber would play Ebb, a former mob hitman who’s coaxed out of hiding by the murder of his best friend and partner. Ebb’s plan to exact revenge is thwarted by the arrival of ghosts of past, present and future…

Citadel, the new spy series from Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo, starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, is heading for one of Amazon Prime’s highest debuts for a series, according to the streamer. “Citadel, the #1 title on Prime! In its series debut, this show attracted one of the largest global audiences in the history of Prime Video – such an incredible performance for new and original IP!” Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke wrote on Instagram.” While she didn’t cite actual numbers, according to Citadel’s show Twitter account, the drama is Prime Video’s number one title in nearly 200 countries and territories…

Emmy winner Elisabeth Moss is re-teaming with her The Handmaid’s Tale co-star star Max Minghella, who’ll direct the psychological thriller Shell, according to Deadline. The film is “set in a near future when humanity’s cultural obsession with youth and beauty has been taken to new extremes,” per the outlet, also stars Glass Onion‘s Kate Hudson and Babylon actress Kaia Gerber…

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Writer-director James Gunn‘s final Guardians of the Galaxy movie hits theaters today.

The original Guardians came out in 2014, and managed to turn obscure Marvel Comics characters like Rocket Raccoon and Groot into household names.

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige commented on the original, “It was really our attempt of saying, ‘We don’t want to just do superhero movies. We don’t want to only just do Iron Man movies or Avengers movies.’ And it worked in a crazy way. It worked entirely because of James Gunn.”

He adds, “So it does feel like this trilogy and James writing and directing all three of them, it represents something unique within the pantheon of the MCU that I’m very proud of.”

Gunn expressed, “I’m going to miss the characters. That’s the saddest part. And I love all of them. I think there are certain ones that I have a special fondness for, especially Rocket. And yet the saddest part of all of this is…I’m not going to be writing the characters again, at least not in the near future.”

Guardians of the Galaxy turned Chris Pratt from that chubby Andy guy from Parks and Rec into a superhero. He teases that this time around, his Peter Quill/Star-Lord isn’t the plucky guy he seemed to be. “He’s lost,” the actor says, adding, “He’s a guy who’s constantly been searching for who he is.”

“He had found himself with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and then he thought he could find himself with who his father was [in Vol. 2]. And then he found it again in his relationship with [Zoe Saldaña‘s] Gamora,” but that too is “stripped away,” Pratt says.

Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Padma Lakshmi is serving up another season of her Hulu series Taste the Nation, premiering Friday. It looks at food and immigration issues in various communities all around the United States, but she tells ABC Audio, “We don’t just go into an immigrant community or an indigenous community, find out about them and then rinse and repeat.”

“We’re looking at the whole big issue of immigration in this country, which is so central to the foundation of our republic and so integral to the continued evolution of America,” Lakshmi explains. “We would not be a superpower if it wasn’t for all of the generations of Americans who have come here and given us the best of their cultures and stayed and helped to build this country.”

That diversity, says Lakshmi, is also one of the reasons the food is so great in the U.S.

“American high-end chefs, you know, Michelin star chefs and the like, have been influenced by all the different brown and Black folk that work in their kitchen,” she shares. “You open the door to any five-star restaurant in New York and you look at who is in the kitchen staff, it’s all immigrants.”

So what’s on tap for season 2?

“In Puerto Rico, we’re looking at sovereignty and food sovereignty specifically, but also just whether they should be a state, whether they should continue as a territory. With the Cambodian episode in Lowell, Massachusetts, Cambodians came there as refugees with nothing but the shirts on their backs. And within a generation they have revitalized Lowell so much so that they one in four Lowellians is Cambodian,” she says. “In the Nigerian episode in Houston, we talk to Nigerian Americans, but we also tackle a very sensitive topic about Blackness in America.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

As with nearly every movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2008’s Iron Man, audiences champing at the bit to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 might be curious as to whether the new movie has after-credits scenes — and possibly budgeting their beverage intake accordingly.

That’s due in no small part to writer-director James Gunn stuffing an MCU-best 5 such sequences at the close of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

The short answer is yes.

There are three reasons to stay in your seat after the final Guardians film ends — if you count a key bit of text on the screen concerning whether or not you may see one particular character elsewhere in the MCU in the future.

Other than that text tease, without giving away any spoilers, there is both a mid-credits scene and an after-credits scene.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 hits theaters Friday from Marvel Studios, which is owned by ABC News’ parent company, Disney.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Star Wars legend Carrie Fisher was posthumously honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4, which has come to be known as Star Wars Day.

Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, attended the event to accept the honor on behalf of her mother, who died at the age of 60 on December 27, 2016.

“My mom used to say you weren’t actually famous until you became a PEZ dispenser. Well, people eat candy out of her neck every day,” Lourd said in her speech. “I say, you aren’t actually famous until you get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”

“My mom is a double whammy — a PEZ dispenser and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame now,” she continued. “Mama, you’ve made it.”

Lourd said Fisher tried to show her Star Wars when she was little, but it wasn’t until she was in middle school — when she said the boys started telling her “they fantasize about my mom” — that she decided to give it a serious watch.

“Like any kid, I didn’t want my mom to be hot or cool — she was my mom,” the Scream Queens star said. “But that day, staring at the screen, I realized no one is or will ever be as hot or as cool as Princess Leia.”

Lourd recalled attending ComicCon with her mom and quickly realizing “how widespread and deep people’s love” for Fisher was.

“It was surreal. People of all ages from all over the world were dressed up like my mom, the lady who sang me to sleep at night and helped me when I was scared,” she recalled. “Watching the amount of joy it brought to people when she hugged them or threw glitter at them … was incredible to witness.”

She added, “It was the side of my mom I had never seen before, and it was magical.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

While Elon Musk‘s SpaceX gets closer to actually bringing humans to the red planet, Fox is setting its new celebrity reality show there.

Well, not really.

Stars on Mars will transplant Lance Armstrong, Natasha Leggero, Christopher “McLovin” Mintz-Plasse, Marshawn Lynch, Tallulah Willis, Ariel Winter, Adam Rippon, Ronda Rousey, Tom Schwartz, Richard Sherman, Tinashe and Porsha Williams Guobadia to a simulated version of Earth’s neighbor, where they’ll vie for the title of “the brightest star in the galaxy.”

Oh, and both real-and-simulated space traveler William Shatner is aboard, too — as a mission control commander for the show, which blasts off Monday, June 5.

Fox teases, “The stars will live, eat, sleep, strategize and bond with each other in the same space station. During their stay, they will be faced with authentic conditions that simulate life on Mars, and they must use their brains and brawn – or maybe just their stellar social skills – to outlast the competition and claim the [top] title.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger action comedy series FUBAR comes to Netflix in a few weeks, and in a new clip he just shared from the show, emotions are felt.

Literally.

Arnold’s overprotective father, Luke, is trying to work out his issues with his daughter Emma at a therapist’s office, thanks to “Sesame Street quality Muppets” representing each of them. The pair have issues, as neither knew the other was a CIA agent, and their history comes out with each star puppeting the other’s fuzzy avatar.

“My daddy is a fossil. He knows nothing about anything, because he was born before 1992,” Arnold says, imitating a woman’s voice. “So he should shut up and let me ruin my life.”

Monica Barbaro‘s Emma is shocked and grabs the bearded Arnold puppet, before affecting his famous accent. “I’m Luke Brunner. I ruined my own marriage, but I’m the expert on everyone else’s,” she says.

“I have muscles, so that means I know everything,” she continues, making the puppet flex. “And I’m from Austria, where life was hard and everything cost a nickel. The only thing I can’t lift is my own ego!”

The series, which also stars Fortune Feimster and Gabriel Luna, debuts on May 25.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

With just days to go until Sunday’s MTV Movie & TV Awards, ABC Audio has confirmed host Drew Barrymore has pulled out in “solidarity” with the writers strike that started earlier this week.

Additionally, it has been confirmed she will be back to host next year.

In a statement from her reps shared with ABC Audio, the actress and talk show host commented, “I have listened to the writers, and in order to truly respect them, I will pivot from hosting the MTV Movie & TV Awards live in solidarity with the strike.”

She continued, “Everything we celebrate and honor about movies and television is born out of their creation. And until a solution is reached, I am choosing to wait, but I’ll be watching from home and hope you will join me. I thank MTV, who has truly been some of the best partners I have ever worked with.”

Barrymore concluded, “I can’t wait to be a part of this next year, when I can truly celebrate everything that MTV has created, which is a show that allows fans to choose who the awards go to and is truly inclusive.​”

The show will now go host-free, Bruce Gillmer, an executive producer of the telecast, explains to the Variety. “She is not surprisingly, standing in solidarity with the writers, which we have full respect for. She has our full support.”

There are apparently no hard feelings, with Gillmer adding, “The silver lining in all of this is that we really formed a partnership [with] almost a family-like atmosphere,” and she’s “accepted” an invite to return next year.

There’s also a question about who else will bow out considering the situation: Variety reports MTV has canceled the planned red carpet before the show.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Thursday is Star Wars Day, and the geeky worlds of both that galaxy far, far away and gastronomy have combined for a cargo hold’s worth of Star Wars-inspired recipes online.

The official Star Wars website has a dizzying number of options for basically every meal.

Since “every Mandalorian worth his armor was raised on pog soup,” according to The Mandalorian, there’s a new recipe for that. Not to be confused with porgs, the little puppy-faced chickens seen in the sequel films, it’s not entirely clear what’s in pog soup on the Disney+ show. But this recipe is vegan, so no porgs — or pogs, whatever those are — have been harmed for this dish. Just don’t forget to sip it with your helmet on.

There are also recipes for Ewok sushi, and for dessert, Blue Milk Pudding, among other offerings.

The website Diznify has reverse-engineered the foods and beverages you can get at the Disney Parks’ Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge and Galactic Cruiser attractions, and to that end, home chefs — or their 434-FPC Personal Chef Droids — can try their hands at replicating the park’s Chocolate Hazelnut Yoda Cupcakes.

There are also alcoholic drink recipes, like the Jedi Mind Trick, and nonalcoholic ones, like the Carbon Freeze, both of which are straight from the park attractions’ menus.

The website Yummly is also serving up tons of Star Wars-themed recipes, including Death Star Whoopie Pies and Baby Yoda Deviled Eggs, which use a cut-out hard-boiled egg to perfectly simulate Grogu’s little floating pram.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

In the 1987 blockbuster Fatal Attraction, Glenn Close was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Alex Forrest, the jilted, bunny-boiling “other woman” in an affair with a married man, played by Michael Douglas.

However, the actress has publicly rebuked how her character was portrayed solely as one of cinema’s great villains. The new Paramount+ series adaptation, starring Lizzy Caplan in Close’s role, takes a different view of the character, executive producer Alexandra Cunningham tells ABC Audio.

And that’s due to Close, she explains. “Actually reading the interviews with her about all of the work she put in to flesh out the character for herself from a performance perspective was kind of where a lot of the ideas about the mental health of the character came from, and wanting to explore that.”

She continues, “Because she had spoken to psychiatrists at the time in the mid-to-late ’80s, and none of them brought up diagnoses or terminologies or anything because we didn’t talk that way in the ’80s.” 

Cunningham adds, “Now, thank God, we’re much more open to conversations about mental health, and the stigma is slowly moving away. And so that actually was inspired by the way Glenn Close talked about the way she felt about the character that she created.”  

Fatal Attraction also stars Joshua Jackson, Toby Huss and Amanda Peet. The first three episodes are now streaming on Paramount+, with a fourth episode dropping Sunday.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.