Entertainment

At the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, on Friday, Priyanka Chopra Jonas had a few things to say about equality.

On the positive side, she noted that the series she was promoting, Citadel, from Avengers blockbuster directors Joe and Anthony Russo, represented the “first time” she’d been paid what her male co-star got. 

Sitting with Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke, who called her “an innovator, a trailblazer,” she said, “I might get into trouble for [this], depends on who’s watching. I’ve been working in the entertainment industry for now 22 years, and I have done about, almost 70-plus features and two TV shows. But when I did Citadel, it was the first time in my career that I had pay parity with my male co-actor.”

Richard Madden is Chopra Jonas’ co-lead in the forthcoming spy series.

Referring to Salke, she wondered, “Would that have been a different conversation if a woman didn’t make that decision?” She marveled at “the ease in which Amazon Studios said, ‘That’s what you deserve, you are co-leads, that’s just fair.’ And I was like, ‘You’re right, it is fair,'” she recalled with a laugh.

Chopra Jonas continued, “I’m laughing about this, but it’s kind of nuts: [Formerly,] I put in the same amount of … investment and work, but I get paid much less.”

Chopra Jonas tied that personal anecdote into International Women’s Day and International Women’s History Month, arguing progress is only possible when more women are represented throughout the entertainment industry.

Priyanka also said to other women, “Let’s all succeed for each other. Let’s all be proud for each other, let’s all do business with each other.”  

Citadel debuts on Prime Video April 28.

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Director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie and star and producer Tom Cruise are hard at work on Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One and Two, but they’ve had time to add another big star.

On Friday, McQuarrie posted an Instagram shot of the Emmy winner looking serious, wearing a baseball-style cap and looking into the distance as she stands at what appears to be a military installation.

The filmmaker noted, “And Hannah Waddingham…” adding the hashtags, “#Godspeed” and “#DeadReckoning.”

The “and” might be referring to the sheer size of the cast of the seventh and eighth Mission films, parts of which are being filmed concurrently.

Joining Waddingham of course, will be Tom Cruise as IMF Agent Ethan Hunt.

Cruise is again teaming up with Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, and Rebecca Ferguson; Vanessa Kirby also returns, with 1996’s Mission: Impossible heavy Henry Czerny, along with a slate of series newcomers: Esai Morales, Guardians of the Galaxy vet Pom Klementieff, her Marvel movie colleague Hayley Atwell, and Nick Offerman.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One debuts July 14; Part Two will hit theaters in June of 2024.

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Just when you thought the water was safe from cocaine bears comes news of Cocaine Shark.

A trailer just dropped for that very film, and if one suspected it’s an apparent zero-budget rush job after Elizabeth Banks announced she was making Cocaine Bear, you’d likely be right.

Complete with bargain-basement effects, the trailer tells the story of an experiment gone wrong that released all manner of aquatic “freaks of nature” in the water.

For all the decidedly non-blockbuster-worthy action, and despite its title, what the trailer doesn’t show is any cocaine, either visually or mentioned in the community theater dialogue, leaving a cynic to wonder if the movie could have been retitled to capitalize on the surprise success of Banks’ bear movie.

That said, Bret McCormick, the writer of Repligator, and Amityville in Space director Mark Polonia are evidently back in fine form, with Queen Crab‘s Ken Van Sant and Titus Himmelberger, who you undoubtedly remember from Sharkula, starring.

The movie from Wild Eye Releasing comes to DVD and streaming July 7, just in time for summer movie season.

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(NOTE LANGUAGE) During Chris Rock‘s widely hyped live special, Selective Outrage, he flubbed a joke in the heat of the moment — but Netflix has now apparently edited it out.

The bit came in the closing minutes of the stand-up, which was filmed live from Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre March 4, when Rock was fired up talking about Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and that notorious Oscars slap.

As Rock worked up to a thunderous, literal mic-drop ending, he vented of Jada, “Years ago, his wife said I should quit the Oscars; I shouldn’t host ’cause her man didn’t get nominated for Emancipation.” However, Rock quickly admitted, “No, not Emancipation, I f***ed up the joke.”

He quickly reset, with the joke that now stands on its own in the special, the seamless edit apparently hidden with a cutaway to the crowd. “She said that me, a f***ing grown-a** man, should quit his job because, ‘My husband didn’t get nominated for Concussion,’ and then [Smith] gave me a concussion!”

Emancipation came in later, when Rock said that after the slap he found himself cheering for Smith getting beaten onscreen in the runaway slave drama.

Jada announced in 2016 that she was skipping the ceremony after Will’s Concussion snub. During the Oscars telecast that year, host Rock jabbed, “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna‘s panties. I wasn’t invited.”

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With Amazon-owned MGM’s knockout debut for Creed III, Deadline reports Amazon is eager to work with director and star Michael B. Jordan for small-screen entries in the Creed universe.

The trade reports talks were already underway with the star-turned-filmmaker before his first film as both Adonis Creed and director bested expectations with a more than $100 million global opening last week, but plans have “gotten bolder” since Jordan’s directorial debut scored at the box office.

So far, it’s at the early stages, and officially all parties are mum. However, Deadline says there’s rumor of an anime project set in that world — logical, as Jordan is a huge fan of the genre — and a live-action series.

Since Creed III hinted at the pugilistic potential of Adonis Creed’s daughter Amara, played by new

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Austin Butler put everything into his performance as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Elvis, and now he’s up for Best Actor at this year’s Academy Awards. This is his first awards season, and he tells ABC Audio about what he’s enjoyed the most.

“It’s meant a lot to me that I’ve been getting to spend time around actors and different artists that I’ve admired for a long time,” Butler says.

In particular, he says fellow Best Actor nominee Colin Farrell has been “really kind.”

“We’ve been sending each other emails back and forth. And it’s nice to just have people who’ve been, you know, around, chugging away at this business for a long time, that can sort of give you little tips and ideas and things,” Butler says.

Another person Butler says he’d like to sit down and chat with is Best Actress nominee Cate Blanchett; he’d ask her, among other things, “just about life.”

“How she manages to balance the investment that she puts into every role that she takes on with her family life, and how do you balance your personal life with that amount of investment,” Butler continues. “Her preparation process, you know.”

The road to get to the Oscars wasn’t easy. Butler’s had struggles along the way, but he says there’s one thing he’s had to overcome that stands out from them all.

“When my mother passed away,” Butler says. She died in 2014, when Butler was 23 – the same age Elvis Presley was when his mother died.

“It shifted my perspective on a lot of things, and I thought about stopping being an actor for that time,” Butler said. “It felt like a really seismic shift in myself.”

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Sunday evening is Hollywood’s biggest night, the 95th Annual Academy Awards.

But before Jimmy Kimmel takes the stage as host for the third time, the financial wonks at WalletHub crunched some numbers about this year’s Big Dance.

For example, the total cost of the Oscars ceremony was calculated to be $56.6 million. While that’s nothing to sneeze at, the site notes it costs as much as $10 million to dress an A-list actress for the ceremony — what with their looks, and of course the loaner bling they often showcase on the red carpet.

On that note, Lady Gaga still holds the record for the most expensive look, with the $30 million, 128-carat yellow diamond from Tiffany around her neck back in 2019.

On that topic, the “red carpet” isn’t red this year, for the first time since 1961. Instead, the famous shag was revealed earlier this week as a “champagne” color. That said, the red — er, champagne — carpet costs $24,700, according to WalletHub, and that’s for some 50,000 square feet. It takes 600 hours to install the 30 rolls of carpet, to boot.

Companies looking to advertise during the event will have to shell out nearly $2 million for a 30-second spot: No bargain, but 72% less than it would cost during the always highly-rated Super Bowl.

Further, WalletHub notes, Hollywood studios spend $100 million lobbying to get their movies nominated. After it, a pair of tickets for that famous Vanity Fair after-party costs 80 grand.

The 95th Annual Academy Awards airs live Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern time on ABC.

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Shrinking has been renewed for a second season at Apple TV+. The dramedy, from Jason Segel, Ted Lasso showrunner Bill Lawrence and Emmy-winner Brett Goldstein, stars Segel as a grieving therapist who decides to start being brutally honest with his clients. Harrison Ford also stars as Dr. Paul Rhoades, one of Jimmy’s colleagues at the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center, who has Parkinson’s disease. Jessica Williams, Christa Miller, Lukita Maxwell, Michael Urie, and Luke Tennie round out the season 1 cast…

Showtime dropped a new trailer for season 2 of Yellowjackets, which is set to Florence + the Machine’s haunting cover of No Doubt’s 1995 hit “Just a Girl.” The series follows a high school soccer team after a plane crash, then decades later as the survivors are adults. Yellowjackets stars Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, and Tawny Cypress among the adult cast, with Lauren Ambrose and Simone Kessell joining as series regulars in season 2. Elijah Wood also boards the cast for a season-long guest arc. The younger cast includes Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty, Courtney Eaton and Liv Hewson. Season 2 of Yellowjackets premieres March 24…(Trailer contains uncensored profanity.)

Halle Berry, Paul Dano, Cara Delevingne, Harrison Ford, Kate Hudson, Mindy Kaling, Eva Longoria, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Andie MacDowell, Elizabeth Olsen, Pedro Pascal and John Travolta round out the list of presenters at this year’s Oscars ceremony air live the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood Sunday, March 12 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC…

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Hollywood’s biggest night is Sunday — Is Jimmy Kimmel ready?

Jimmy’s hosting the Oscars again this year, his third time as MC, and he has a philosophy about hosting the event that he shared with ABC Audio.

“Number one is you want to make the audience laugh,” he notes. “Number two is you have to remember that this is a celebratory night for these people. It’s not a roast. Doesn’t mean there won’t be a little roasting, but you’ve got to make sure that you don’t humiliate anybody and that everybody comes away happy. And you got to be conscious of time, and make sure that if you’re going to spend time on something, it’s worth it.”

As to whether or not he’s learned anything from last year’s slap heard around the world, Kimmel’s answer is, “No, not really.”

“I think maybe if there is any lesson, it’s don’t make fun of Jada Pinkett Smith,” he jokes.

Sunday’s Oscars telecast will be the first show since last year’s slap fiasco. Kimmel didn’t host last year, but he was the host for the chaotic La La Land/Moonlight mixup — so as this year’s host, does he root for chaos?

“Well, I’m not rooting for getting slapped, but it is fun when something weird happens,” he offers. “You know what kind of stuff I like? Streaking. I like when naked people run on the stage. I would like to see more of that.”

One of Jimmy’s favorite things about this year’s show is that there are so many first-time nominees — including 16 of 20 in the acting category — which he thinks “makes for a much more open field and for some exciting moments.”

“I mean, it’s more exciting to see somebody win their first Oscar than their sixth,” he adds.

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Robert Blake, who is known for his roles in Baretta and In Cold Blood, “passed away peacefully surrounded by family by his side in Los Angeles,” his rep said in a statement obtained by ABC News on Thursday. He was 89.

The cause of death was heart disease, according to Blake’s niece, Noreen Austin.

The actor, who has starred in many television and film roles, is also known for being acquitted for the 2001 shooting death of his second wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, after forensic evidence showed he didn’t fire the murder weapon. At the time, two main witnesses against Blake were also lacking in credibility.

Blake got his start in acting at the age of 5, first appearing in the 1939 film Bridal Suite, then in the short film series Our Gang, which led to more than 200 film roles.

He went on to star in the syndicated Western The Cisco Kid, and continued to appear in several TV shows across CBS, NBC and ABC.

In 1967, Blake’s portrayal as murderer Perry Smith in the Truman Capote film adaptation of In Cold Blood was dubbed as a breakout role.

Blake starred in a few more film roles including the 1972 film Corky and the TV movie adaptation of Of Mice and Men in 1981.

He’s best known, however, for his role as police detective Tony Baretta in the TV series Baretta, which aired from 1975-78 and earned him an Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama series.

Blake’s family said that a private memorial service will be held to honor his life.

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