Entertainment

On Thursday, Netflix announced it will produce The Boroughs, an upcoming supernatural mystery series executive produced by Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer.

The show was created by The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance veterans Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, and centers on characters just a bit older than the gang from Hawkins, Indiana.

The streaming service teases, “In a seemingly picturesque retirement community in the New Mexico desert, a group of unlikely heroes must band together to stop an otherworldly threat from stealing the one thing they don’t have…time.”

The Duffer Brothers enthused, “We’ve been fans of Jeff and Will’s writing for a long time, and when they pitched us their idea for The Boroughs, we immediately knew they had something very special on their hands.”

They add, “While the heroes in The Boroughs have a few more years on them than the kids from Stranger Things, they are a similarly lovable bunch of misfits, and we can’t wait for you to join them on an adventure that is at turns scary, funny, and deeply touching.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Jennifer Coolidge will soon have a golden bucket of popcorn to keep her White Lotus Emmy company.

The actress has been named this year’s recipient of the Comedic Genius Award during the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards in May.

The network says Coolidge is the sixth such honoree, heralded for making “incomparable contributions to the world of comedy, providing a major influence through their work and transforming the genre at-large.”

Jack Black was last year’s winner. Borat‘s Sacha Baron Cohen was feted in 2021, Melissa McCarthy in 2016 and Kevin Hart in 2015. The inaugural recipient was Will Ferrell in 2013.

The show will air live on May 7 from Barker Hangar in Los Angeles starting at 8 p.m. ET.

Heading into the event, Top Gun: Maverick tops the competition with six nominations; on the TV side, Stranger Things and The Last of Us tied with six nominations apiece.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

If your Spidey Sense was tingling, it’s because Disney+ just announced that six Spider-Man movies, including the hit Tom Hardy spinoff Venom, are headed to the streaming service.

Spider-Man: No Way Home unites Tom Holland with previous Spider-Man actors Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield on Disney+ starting in April, when their respective Sony-produced films drop.

Tobey Maguire stars as the web-slinging hero aka Peter Parker in 2002’s Spider-Man, 2004’s Spider-Man 2 and 2007’s Spider-Man 3; Garfield’s first turn was in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man — all four movies will land on April 21.

2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, Holland’s first stand-alone adventure as ol’ Web Head, as well as the hit Spidey-free spinoff Venom from 2018, will debut on May 12.

The movies were previously unavailable to the Disney-produced platform because they were produced by Sony Pictures. After 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 fizzled at the box office, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige brokered a deal with Sony to recast the role with Holland, debut him in Marvel Studios 2016 blockbuster Captain America: Civil War and co-produce Homecoming, as well as the subsequent smashes Spider-Man: Far from Home in 2019 and No Way Home in 2021.

The unique deal allowed the studios to “share” the character between their respective movies, with Holland also appearing as Parker/Spidey in 2017’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Endgame.

As of yet, Far from Home and No Way Home aren’t available on Disney+.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

On Thursday, April 20, Paramount+ revealed the cast of the eighth season of the Emmy-winning RuPaul‘s Drag Race All Stars.

As always, returning competitors from RuPaul’s Drag Race will take to the catwalk, vying for a chance to compete for a spot in the Drag Race Hall of Fame, along with a cash prize of $200,000.

The new season begins streaming on Paramount+ on Friday, May 12, with two all-new episodes. Additionally, new episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked will offer behind-the-scenes drama on the streaming service, to (high-heeled) boot.

All Stars season 8’s competitors are: Alexis Michelle (RPDR season 9), Darienne Lake (season 6), Heidi N Closet (season 12), Jaymes Mansfield (season 9), Jessica Wild (season 2), Jimbo (Canada’s Drag Race season 1, UK vs. the World season 1), Kahanna Montrese (RPDR season 11), Kandy Muse (season 13), LaLa Ri (season 13), Monica Beverly Hillz (season 5), Mrs. Kasha Davis (season 7) and Naysha Lopez (season 8).

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

This year’s Tribeca Film Festival will feature documentaries about Alicia Keys, Tierra Whack and the late Biz Markie.

According to the festival website, All Up in the Biz, directed by Sacha Jenkins, highlights the mark Biz Markie made on hip-hop via a combination of rare clips, reenactments, playful animation and interviews with the likes of Nick Cannon, Fat Joe, Big Daddy Kane, Doug E Fresh, Dapper Dan and Darryl “DMC” McDaniel of Run-DMC. Sponsored by Indeed, the documentary, part of Expressions of Black Freedom programming, spans a total of 100 minutes.

The Alicia documentary is directed by filmmaker Beth Aala, but it isn’t necessarily about the singer’s life. Per the site, Uncharted gives viewers a look into the music business, particularly through the lens of young Black and Brown women, through behind-the-scenes clips of Alicia’s She Is The Music songwriting camp.

Finally, Cypher documents the rise of Tierra Whack while capturing “the weird and sinister side of fame.” Chris Moukarbel directed the pseudo documentary, which will supposedly “have viewers questioning everything they see.”

The 2023 Tribeca Film Festival will kick off June 7 in New York City and will end on June 18. The aforementioned films are only three of 109 films premiering at this year’s event. Billboard reportsthere’s a diverse roster featuring “43 first-time directors with 41% of all feature films directed by women and, in a first, more than half of competition films directed by women (68%), as well as 36% of feature films directed by BIPOC filmmakers.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NOTE LANGUAGE) Bruce Campbell is a cult movie icon, having appeared in all of Sam Raimi‘s films, including the classic Evil Dead and Army of Darkness movies, as well as Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, and more recently his Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

2002’s Spider-Man had him playing an underground wrestling promoter who dubs Tobey Maguire‘s Peter Parker “The Amazing Spider-Man” instead of “The Human Spider.” Although Liam Neeson played the hero Darkman in Raimi’s 1990 movie of the same name, it ends with a shot of Campbell, portraying the character in disguise.

In Multiverse of Madness, he was known as Pizza Poppa, a guy who sold ball-shaped pizza in another dimension who tangles unsuccessfully with the Master of the Mystic Arts before capping the film with another cameo. Campbell jokes about the impact he’s had on pop culture. “I named Spider-Man. I put an end to Doctor Strange. I am Darkman, so I don’t know if people quite understand the iconic nature of my career that I really have,” he deadpans.

“Because if I wasn’t in the billion-dollar franchise, it would be called The Human Spider, unless I had renamed it thinking it was a s***** name. So people think, ‘Oh yeah, a little tiny cameo. Funny cameo.’ Pivotal. Pivotal is the word I always come back to.”

Bruce is currently in the midst of his Bruce-O-Rama Tour, in which he interacts with fans, screens some of his movies and hosts “Last Fan Standing,” what he calls “a game show for geeks.” He adds, “There’s no geography, there’s no history. You know, it’s about Boba Fett and crap like that … it’s a lot of fun.” 

The tour runs through April 30.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

After 35 years of marriage, Ray Romano says nobody supports him like his wife Anna Romano.

“Today when I left very early, I went over and kissed my wife. I thought she was asleep and as I’m walking out the door all I hear is, ‘Don’t say anything stupid,'” he joked to Good Morning America.

The couple, who married in 1987, now have four children together — and Ray credits his wife for seeing something in him before he was famous.

“We met as bank tellers here in Queens,” he reminisced. “I was living at home — I lived at home until I was 29. I was not a catch, you know? I give her credit ’cause she married me before any of this happened.”

He recalled, “I would ride my bike to work. I don’t know what she saw in me.”

Ray Romano also told GMA it was his six-foot-five, former high school basketball player son Joseph Romano who inspired him to write, direct and star in his directorial debut Somewhere in Queens — in theaters this Friday.

“I knew I wanted it to be about my hometown of Queens and the people I grew up with,” he said.

“When it was ending, we knew he wasn’t going to continue to play — it got very emotional for me….I’m being honest, I loved being the father of the star basketball player,” Romano recalled.

“The idea was, what if this was about a guy who that’s all he had?” he continued, turning back to the film. “He felt very small and very insignificant and he lived vicariously through his son and it was ending. That was the starting point of this story.”

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

MTV’s new female-led comedy Pretty Stoned has arrived and star Brandee Evans is sharing what its all about. 

“It’s like our female stoner comedy, which I don’t think that you’ve ever seen,” she tells ABC Audio. “You know, we’ve got the boys club doing their thing, but now you finally get to see the way the ladies do it.”

“I always say, imagine like a Friday, How High crazy mix-up and that that’s where you get Pretty Stoned,” she adds.

In the movie, Evans embodies the role of Tick Tock, a tough, intense henchwoman, who she describes as “unhinged.”

“She’s working on herself too though, so I love that part,” the actress shares. “But she’s got some anger management issues that she’s trying to work through, but she’s got the heart of wanting to change.”

Tick Tock is much different from the P-Valley star’s role as Mercedes, which is, in-part, what attracted Evans to it. 

“She was different than the other characters that you’ve seen me play, and she’s just funny,” she explains. “She’s also gets to do a little action stuff … So that’s what I really love.” 

In addition to Evans, Pretty Stoned has a star-studded cast that includes Pretty Vee, Paris Berelc, Kandi Burruss-Tucker, Chris Renfro, Porsha Williams, Skye Townsend, Chase Anthony, Jess Hilarious, Tabatha “DreamDoll” Robinson and D.C. Young Fly and if there were to be a sequel, she has a few ideas on who she would like to join. 

“Lala Milan. I think that she would be hilarious to add to the cast,” she shares. “You know what? I would love to see Issa Rae. I think that she would be hilarious.” 

Catch Pretty Stoned April 20 at 9 p.m. on MTV.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Bling Empire and its spinoff, Bling Empire: New York, won’t be back for a respective fourth and second season at Netflix, according to Deadline. Bling Empire, described as a real-life Crazy Rich Asians, centered on the lives of wealthy, materialistic East and Southeast Asian Americans, socialites based in the Los Angeles area. Bling Empire: New York followed a group of billionaires, CEOs and fashion icons who compete for love, money, and power…

Natasha Rothwell will return to The White Lotus for season 3, sources tell Variety. Rothwell appeared in season 1 as spa manager Belinda Lindsey, whose dreams of opening a wellness center were dashed when a wealthy hotel guest — played by Jennifer Coolidge — reneged on her offer to bankroll the endeavor. Details on her character and plot details are being kept under wraps. The White Lotus season 3 will reportedly be set in Thailand…

A series based on The Twilight saga is in early development at Lionsgate Television, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. Stephenie Meyer, author of best-selling book series is expected to be involved in the TV adaptation, say the insiders, with Sinead Daly — whose credits include Tell Me Lies, Raised by Wolves and The Get Down — attached to write the script. The potential series is still in search of a network/platform. The film franchise, which made stars of Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, collectively grossed more than $3.4 billion worldwide…

Dear Edward has been canceled at Apple TV+, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series, which followed the titular young boy — played by Colin O’Brien — who tried to make sense of his life after he’s the sole survivor of a plane crash, finished its 10-episode first season in March. Connie Britton and Taylor Schilling also starred…

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Jonathan Majors could be facing more abuse allegations ahead of his scheduled May 8 court appearance for domestic violence charges.

Following his arrest for an alleged domestic dispute in New York City on March 25, multiple women have come forward with abuse allegations and are cooperating with the Manhattan District Attorney, sources tell Variety.

Majors, who has denied the allegations, maintained his innocence following Wednesday’s report.

“Jonathan Majors is innocent and has not abused anyone. We have provided irrefutable evidence to the District Attorney that the charges are false. We are confident that he will be fully exonerated,” Majors’ attorney Priya Chaudhry in a statement.

Since his arrest, the Creed III and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania star was dropped by his longtime manager Entertainment 360, as well as his publicist The Lede Company. 

Majors has also been dropped from a number of projects, according to Deadline, including a new campaign promoting the U.S. Army, and a film called The Man in My Basement, which he was also producing and starring opposite Willem Dafoe. He is reportedly “no longer under consideration” for an Otis Redding biopic called Otis and Zelma. Additionally, he’ll no longer be part of an ad campaign for the Texas Rangers.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.