Entertainment

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania held on to the number one spot over the weekend, bringing in an additional $32.2 million in its sophomore week at the domestic box office.

The Marvel Studios film — starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jonathan Majors, and Kathryn Newton — now stands with an estimated $167.3 million domestically and over $363.6 million worldwide.

Debuting in second at the box office was the Elizabeth Banks-directed film Cocaine Bear. The movie racked up an estimated $28.3 million worldwide, with $23 million of that domestically.

In third place, the religious drama Jesus Revolution made its debut, pulling in $15.5 million in its domestic-only release. Meanwhile, Avatar: The Way of Water remained in the top five, landing in fourth place and adding $4.7 million domestically in its eleventh week of release for an estimated total of $665.3 million. Overseas, the movie has generated over $1.6 billion, bringing its global tally to $2.267 billion.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish rounded out the top five, earning $4.1 million in its tenth week of release. That brings the animated adventure-comedy’s estimated worldwide earnings to $442.5 million.

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We’re just under two weeks out from the Oscars – Hollywood’s biggest night airs live on March 12 on ABC, and the movie Elvis is expected to pick up some hardware.

The film goes into Oscars night with 8 nominations, including a nod for Best Picture, and a nod for Best Actor for star Austin Butler. Baz Luhrmann directed the film, and he tells ABC Audio he loves awards season because it often puts him in rooms with people he knows well and people he’s never met.

“You may not have noticed, but we’re not spring chickens. Like we’ve been around,” he says before naming Cate Blanchett and Steven Spielberg as some of the community he knows well.

“What’s exciting, though, is you get the young Daniels [directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert] who are making the film Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Luhrmann continues. “You get to see this new energy and we’re very focused on helping the new generation and being part of that. So it’s exciting to see people who’ve never done it before.”

For Luhrmann’s wife and business partner Catherine Martin, who produced Elvis alongside him, shares that all of the nominations mean a lot to her, but possibly even more to others.

“I just feel really happy and proud that all the people who aren’t even nominated but worked so hard on the movie get to put on their CVs Oscar-nominated movie,” she says. “You know, people that don’t naturally get thanked.” 

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The 29th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards honored outstanding performances in film and television Sunday at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The event was streamed live on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other media partners including Netflix. 

Here is the complete list of winners:

The Motion Picture winners are:
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
Brendan Fraser – The Whale

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
Michelle Yeoh – Everything Everywhere All at Once

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere All at Once

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
Jamie Lee Curtis – Everything Everywhere All at Once

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
Everything Everywhere All at Once

The Television Program winners are:
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series
Sam Elliot – 1883

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series
Jessica Chastain – George & Tammy

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series
Jason Bateman – Ozark

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series
 Jennifer Coolidge – The White Lotus

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series
Jeremy Allen White – The Bear 

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series
 Jean Smart – Hacks

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series
The White Lotus

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series
Abbott Elementary 

The Stunt Ensemble winners are:
Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture
Top Gun: Maverick

Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series
Stranger Things

The 58th SAG Life Achievement Award
Sally Field

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The second season of Tim Allen‘s hit Disney+ series The Santa Clauses has just hired a bad Santa.

According to the streaming service, Emmy-winning former Modern Family star Eric Stonestreet will play Magnus Antas aka the Mad Santa, “who reigned during the 14thcentury and is now returning to try and take down Scott Calvin and reclaim the North Pole.”

According to Disney+, “In the second season, the Calvin family is back in the North Pole as Scott Calvin continues his role as Santa Claus after retirement plans were thwarted when failing to find a worthy successor in season one. Now that Scott and his family have successfully saved Christmas, Scott turns his focus towards training his son Calvin to eventually take over the ‘family business’ as Santa Claus.”

Undoubtedly, the Mad Santa will have something to say about that.

Incidentally, Stonestreet previously worked with award-winning Clauses producer Jack Burditt on Modern Family.

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While promoting his new action comedy Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, director Guy Ritchie gave an update on his hit Sherlock Holmes series: In short, just like in the movies, only Holmes knows.

Ritchie called the shots on both 2009’s hit Sherlock Holmes and its 2011 sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, with Robert Downey Jr. playing Holmes to Jude Law‘s Dr. Watson. Both films made over 1 billion bucks at the box office worldwide, so a third installment was technically a no-brainer for Warner Bros.

However, in reality it’s not so elementary, dear Watson.

While it was announced Ritchie was stepping back as director for a third film, with his Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels star-turned-Bohemian Rhapsody director Dexter Fletcher taking over, the latter noted to Collider last year that the COVID-19 pandemic “derailed” progress on the threequel.

For his part, Ritchie just told the same website it’s up to Downey to make a third film a reality. “Well, honestly, I left this up to Robert. So, Robert wanted to be in charge of it, so it’s — the ball’s in his court. He’s in charge of the script, he’s in charge of that whole thing, so I’ve moonwalked out of that until there’s a time for me to get involved.”

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Tom Cruise famously flies airplanes, climbs impossibly tall buildings and jumps off of mountains with a motorcycle, but James Corden put him up to a high-profile stunt of a different kind Thursday night.

According to The Late Late Show‘s Instagram, Corden and Cruise suited up in costume as the meerkat Timon and the warthog Pumbaa, respectively, at a performance of Disney’s The Lion King at the Pantages Theatre.

Appearing in theater productions is old hat for Corden, having won a Tony for One Man, Two Guvnors back in 2012, so perhaps the gag was payback for Tom scaring the heck out of him in the cockpit of a fighter jet in a segment of The Late Late Show.

The Lion King bit was part of outgoing host Corden’s upcoming The Last Last Late Late Show Primetime Special, which will air on April 27 on CBS and will also stream on Paramount+.

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In September, fans will be able to get their hands on a meta piece of memorabilia from Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: the actual memoir from which Paul Rudd reads as his alter ego at an autograph signing in the beginning of the film.

At a recent press event, Rudd explains of his character, Scott Lang, “When we start this movie … the events of [Avengers] Endgame, everything has already transpired. So Scott has, I wouldn’t say he’s taking a victory lap — but others might say that. And he’s written … a bit of a memoir, Look Out for The Little Guy! And he’s explained everything that’s been going on in life and his experiences with The Avengers.”

The book is a real thing, with a cover that looks just as it does in the movie. “I think you just have to, you know, run out to your nearest Barnes & Noble or wherever you get your books and/or download,” Rudd teases. “It will be a very fun and informative read. I don’t want to give anything away.”

At that, Evangeline Lilly, who plays Hope van Dyne/The Wasp, piped in. “Who wrote it?” she asked.

“Scott Lang wrote it,” Rudd explains. “Really?!” she replied.

“Yeah. Yeah,” Rudd insisted.

Look Out for The Little Guy! comes out on hardcover on September 22 — and it’s already an Amazon #1 bestseller. The publisher calls it a “bracingly honest account of his struggles and triumphs, from serving time to being a divorced dad to becoming Ant-Man and joining The Avengers” and promises “stories of epic battles won and lost, as this everyman turned Super Hero finally tells all.”

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

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The Disney+ Marvel Studios show Hawkeye contained a recurring inside joke: Steve Rogers aka Captain America’s life and the Battle of New York as seen in The Avengers had been immortalized in a lavish Broadway musical. But now that Easter egg is becoming a reality.

In a video tweet from Disney’s California Adventures theme park, a woman who fans would immediately recognize as Rogers’ love Peggy Carter is shown strolling down a city street before she stops in front of a theater. She then glances to a Playbill, on which is written the name of that very play from the TV show: Rogers: The Musical.

The tweet teases the production will be a “short, one-act play” debuting this summer, calling it, as critics’ blurbs read in Hawkeye, “A timeless story of a timeless hero!”

Incidentally, Rogers: The Musical has some real-life Broadway bona fides: Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, veterans of hits like Hairspray and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, were tapped by Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige to craft the Rogers musical song “Save The City.”

The showstopper, which originally featured Broadway stars like Adam Pascal, Ty Taylor and Rory Donovan, was also performed live at the Disney expo D23 in 2022.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Paramount Network’s hit reality show Bar Rescue returns Sunday night at 10 p.m. Eastern, and its star Jon Taffer tells ABC Audio, “this season may be the most intense of all.”

The no-nonsense Taffer, who uses his more than 30 years of experience in the bar and restaurant industries to turn around failing establishments, admits he’s shocked the show is still going strong after eight seasons. “I thought I’d do a pilot and go home. I never expected season two, three, four or five, so it feels like I’m hugged by America every week. It’s a pretty amazing feeling.”

Bar Rescue recently helped owners weather one of the most challenging periods in the hospitality industry, the pandemic. “It was very tough times, you know. It was the only time during Bar Rescue when their excuses were real, you know: Government shutdowns, people not coming out, The impacts of COVID, that’s real. It’s hard to scream and yell at them when COVID has taken them down.”

However, Taffer adds, “This is different now. People are out in bigger numbers than ever before. The opportunity is greater than ever before….So if ever an operator has no excuses and should up his game, it’s now.”

Taffer expresses, “This season, you’re going to see a wife look at her husband and say, I’m pretty much done over this. You’re going to see a family who’s a who blew their parents’ retirement money…college funds for kids gone, kids walking out on fathers, fathers letting their children down. It’s deep.”

He adds, “That’s why I fight so hard. People think I’m a raving maniac over a bar. It’s not over a bar. It’s over a family. It’s over their future. It’s over their security. There’s a lot at stake here!”

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(NOTE LANGUAGE) HBO Max’s award-minting machine Succession will come to an end when the upcoming fourth season wraps up.

In an interview with The New Yorker, show creator Jesse Armstrong dropped the bombshell that the scheming Roy family’s adventures will be drawing to a close.

He explained, “I got together with a few of my fellow writers before we started the writing of Season 4 … and I sort of said, ‘Look, I think this maybe should be it. But what do you think?'”

He added they “played out various scenarios,” but ultimately decided against them. “We could do a couple of short seasons, or two more seasons. Or we could go on for ages and turn the show into something rather different, and be a more rangy, freewheeling kind of fun show, where there would be good weeks and bad weeks. Or we could do something a bit more muscular and complete, and go out sort of strong. And that was definitely always my preference.”

Armstrong, an Emmy winner himself for the series, noted of his stars, including fellow Emmy winner Brian Cox and Matthew Macfadyen, “I said to the cast, ‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but I think this is it.’ Because I didn’t want to bulls*** them, either.”

He adds, “Although I wish, in a way, to carry on doing this thing with this group of actors and writers forever, I wouldn’t want to be going down the mine … for more and more vanishingly thin seams of gold.”

The first three seasons of the show earned 48 Emmy nominations and 13 wins, including Outstanding Drama Series. It also earned five Golden Globe Awards and trophies from the Writers, Directors, and Producers Guild Awards.

Succession returns for its fourth — and now officially final — season on March 26.

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