Entertainment

CBS on Monday announced season 3 of Secret Celebrity Renovation will premiere July 28, followed by the 25th season premiere of Big Brother on August 2, the debut of the musical game show Superfan on August 2 and season 2 of The Challenge: USA on August 10. The network delayed the launch of its summer reality programing as a safety net in the event the Writers Guild of America strike should delay production of its scripted series, according to The Hollywood Reporter…

Variety reports Apple TV+’s The Last Thing He Told Me was the most watched limited series ever since the streaming service’s launch in 2019. Nielsen data obtained by the outlet reveals the series drew 4.5 million unique viewers in its first 31 days of streaming. Additionally, the series premiere reached 3.4 million viewers, and is Apple TV+’s #3 title behind Ted Lasso and Shrinking. The Last Thing He Told Me stars Jennifer Garner as a wife who investigates her husband’s disappearance…

Paramount announced on Monday that its new Paramount+ and Showtime bundle will launch June 27, according to Deadline. The bundle will cost users $11.99 per month, while Paramount+ without Showtime will cost $5.99 — a $2 increase from the current Paramount+ premium plan. “By integrating the Showtime premium and critically acclaimed portfolio with the service’s already broad and popular slate, all at a competitive price, we will solidify Paramount+ as a cornerstone in streaming,” said Tom Ryan, President & CEO Paramount Streaming, in the announcement…

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Alec Baldwin marked the last day of filming on his latest film Rust on Monday with an Instagram post honoring the cast and crew.

Alongside an on-set photo of co-stars Frances Fisher and Patrick Scott McDermott, Baldwin wrote, “Last day of filming RUST in Montana. Sorry that I did not get to work with this living legend, the great @francesfisher. Patrick, I envy you.”

“It’s been a long and difficult road. But we reach the end of the trail today,” the 65-year-old actor continued. “Congratulations to Joel, Bianca, and the entire cast and crew. Nothing less than a miracle.”

The “long and difficult road” was the only oblique reference Baldwin made to the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, while he was practicing using a Colt-style .45 revolver on the New Mexico set in October 2021. Director Joel Souza was also injured when a live round — instead of an inert “dummy” round that had been loaded into Baldwin’s pistol — discharged.

Prosecutors recently dropped involuntary manslaughter charges against the actor in April, after investigators reportedly found the gun that fired to be mechanically improper.

The movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, whose responsibilities on set included handling of the firearms and ammunition, was also charged with involuntary manslaughter, but days ago, her lawyers lobbied for the charges to be dropped. They claim the investigation was “sloppy” and the prosecutors biased.

Prosecutors found a dangerous “mix” of hundreds of dummy rounds, firing blanks, and live ammunition on the movie’s New Mexico set.

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Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne are JUST FRIENDS in the show Platonic, premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+.

They star as a pair of old friends who reconnect, and chaos ensues. But don’t expect it to be a will they/won’t they type of show, watching it and expecting their characters to hook up.

“We work so hard for that not to happen,” Byrne tells ABC Audio. “We wanted the audience to be relaxed, to let go of that expectation, and just enjoy what was going to happen.”

“It’s not a show about that,” she adds. “It’s a show about a friendship.”

Rogen echoes the same sentiment, stating, “These two people were not romantically interested in one another. Even if her husband had a hard time believing it and my friends had a hard time believing it.”

“And that all feels very real, you know? But we also firmly believe that it is possible and real for a man and woman to have a friendship, you know?”

Even though Byrne and Rogen wanted to steer clear of the expectation that their characters hook up, they did have some fun with the notion. 

“It’s a trope that we’re playing with, obviously,” Bryne explains. “So inspired by a lot of, like, the classic When Harry Met Sally, for instance. But this is not that. This is saying that you can do it.”

“And in the end, the show is about these personalities, this friendship that just can’t sustain because it’s too extreme, you know, high highs and lows,” she continues. “And can they ever just have a more of a, you know, happy medium.”

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The official trailer for The Color Purple is here.

The film, which is based on the 1982 novel by Alice Walker and the Tony Award-winning musical of the same name, stars Halle Bailey, Colman Domingo, Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson and more.

In the trailer, Barrino sings the musical’s song “I’m Here” as clips from the movie flash across the screen.

The story, set in rural Georgia in the early 1900s, follows sisters Celie and Nettie, who were separated as girls but correspond in a series of letters spanning 20 years, according to a synopsis of the novel.

Bailey plays the younger Nettie while Ciara plays the older version of Nettie. Barrino stars as an older Celie, and Phylicia Pearl Mpasi plays the younger Celie.

In the 1985 Steven Spielberg film adaptation of the book, Whoopi Goldberg played Celie. The role earned her an Oscar nomination for best actress. Actress Margaret Avery, who played Shug Avery, and Oprah Winfrey, who played Sophia, also earned Oscar nominations for best supporting actress.

Winfrey returned to the 2023 film adaptation as a producer. In 2020, she surprised Orange is the New Black actress Danielle Brooks with a Zoom call to tell her that she had landed the role of Sophia.

“I wanted to be the one to tell you I have such love for her, this character, everything she represents and everything she brought to my life,” Winfrey told Brooks at the time. “And what I’m hoping is that she does the same thing for you.”

The Spielberg film also earned an Academy Award nomination for best picture and was nominated for five Golden Globes, with Goldberg winning for best actress in a drama.

The film is expected to be released on December 25.

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Streaming service Max has parted the curtain on a new “rom-doc,” or romantic-documentary, called Swiping America.

The show will launch on the newly rebranded streaming service on June 15 with the first two of six episodes.

Producers tease the show “follows a group of diverse singles from New York City (Ashleigh, Kesun, Kris, Reagan) on an introspective, eight-city dating app journey, as they explore personal issues around sex, relationships, love and connection.”

Each episode finds the group in a new American city, from Asheville, North Carolina, to Seattle, Washington, “as producers swipe through possible matches and curate blind dates for them.”

Max continues, “While forging a special friendship with each other over the course of the season, their journey culminates in Hawaii, where they hand-pick their best match from the season and ultimately decide whether their relationship can go the distance.”

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In a chat about her career with The Guardian, The Little Mermaid star Melissa McCarthy describes her real-life relationship with her character, the villainous Ursula.

The twice-Oscar-nominated star recalls working as a babysitter in New York City in the ’90s and watching the original animated Disney classic every night with the kids in her care.

“My God, I’d like to have a drink with Ursula,” she recalled thinking.

The actress said she lobbied hard for the plum part. “Having just gone through Covid, I was like, ‘Aha, this is [a] character who has been in isolation for long enough that she is not in the healthiest mental state.’ I started to love her in a whole new way. And she’s also been alone for years with two eels? She’s not solid on her tentacles, so to speak.”

While Melissa is about to launch Little Mermaid Friday, she and her husband and frequent collaborator, Ben Falcone, are still hard at work on their own projects. “It’s a fist fight to try to get comedies made right now. And I don’t know why, because we’ve never needed to laugh more,” she says.

“Comedy allows you to sit next to somebody whose ideas don’t match up. And maybe you come out a little closer,” McCarthy expresses.

She adds, “I can’t do a lot of useful things. I don’t know how to clean up the oceans, or stop our violent tendencies. But I can hopefully give someone who’s had a bad day an hour and a half to go into a different world where bills or illness isn’t the top thing on their brain. That’s the only skill set I really have. So I have to keep trying.”

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Andrew McCarthy is making the rounds, meeting up with his one-time “Brat Pack” as part of a new documentary.

As evidence, the actor-turned-TV director and author posted an Instagram photo of him and his St. Elmo’s Fire co-star Demi Moore, along with an image of them together in the 1985 movie.

Moore was just one stop on his way to try to catch up with the rest of the gang, which famously also included Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, and Molly Ringwald.

According to McCarthy, it had been “years and years” since he’d met up with the “wondrous” Moore; the pair are all smiles in the new photo, which also shows Moore clutching one of her beloved dogs.

McCarthy has recently been on the promotional circuit behind his bestselling book, Walking with Sam, about his 500-mile trek with his then-19-year-old son along Spain’s Camino de Santiago in 2021.

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Ray Stevenson, the Ireland-born English character actor who has been seen in movies like Punisher: Warzone and the Indian smash RRR, and who will be seen in the forthcoming Disney+ show Ahsoka, has died, ABC Audio has confirmed.

A rep for the actor said he died on Sunday, May 21, four days before his 59th birthday. No other details were being made available at this time, the rep added.

According to La Repubblica, however, the actor, who also played the burly Volstagg in the Thor films, was on the Italian island of Ischia shooting a film called Cassino on Ischia when he was hospitalized. The Italian-language newspaper says his condition took a turn for the worse while in the hospital, where he passed away.

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The 10th film in the Fast and Furious saga is currently revving up moviegoers, particularly overseas, but for star and producer Vin Diesel and his co-stars, the movie has something box office tickets can’t buy.

As reported, Meadow Walker, the daughter of the late Fast franchise star Paul Walker, makes a cameo in the movie, and Diesel tells People that meant the world to him. “It did something to my soul, to see her want to honor her father and to contribute in her own way to his life’s work,” the actor explains, adding, “It meant everything.”

Vin and Walker’s co-star Michelle Rodriguez added, “It’s everything to us because [Paul’s] memory is never going to die within the franchise, so as long as we’re doing it, we have to maintain that, [keeping his] energy alive.”

Jordana Brewster, another original F&F vet, said the 24-year-old model and actress is “woven into the fabric forever,” adding, “To have her be on set and work her butt off was really, really inspiring.”

Paul Walker died at 40 as a passenger in a fiery high-speed car accident along with his friend, the vehicle’s driver, Roger Rodas, on November 30, 2013.

Fast X is now the number one movie in America, meaning Diesel now has the #1 and #2 movies in theaters, thanks to his role as Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Incidentally, his Guardians co-star Chris Pratt pulled off the same feat in the previous weeks, when Guardians topped the charts ahead of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, for which he voiced the titular plumber.

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After its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, tickets to the final Indy adventure, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, are now on sale.

To commemorate, Fandango has released an interview with co-stars Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who give a sneak peek.

“He is now being forced to retire … and they’re bringing someone else in to be the head of the archeology department,” Ford says of his whip-cracking alter ego. “He has no real future in mind for himself,” Ford says, explaining, “I thought it would be really interesting to see him at the end of his career. Older, not necessarily wiser, but still capable of one last hurrah.”

As reported, Ford describes how the movie begins with an extended look backward, with the 80-year-old actor digitally de-aged to 35. “It’s not like a Photoshop kind of thing,” Ford says of the digital wizardry that will take fans back in time. “They have used all of the footage that Lucasfilm has acquired … 35 or 40 years of footage … and then transfer his current expressions to his younger face,” the actor explains. “It’s really my face. It’s spooky.”

He calls the opening “action-packed” and a good “transition” to the present day in the film, 1969, and describes playing the hero, “in the twilight of his life,” a “great joy.”

Emmy winner Waller-Bridge calls the script “breathless” and says her character, Helena, Indy’s goddaughter, is “manipulative, and that’s always fun to play.”

The Fleabag actress says Helena is a survivor, but “her luck is running out … to save herself from this terrible situation she’s gotten herself into is to hit up her old godfather.”

The movie opens June 30.

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