Entertainment

Following The Best Man in 1999 and its sequel in 2013, the franchise has evolved into a streaming series that will premiere in December on Peacock. A third film, The Best Man Wedding, was planned for 2016, however, Malcolm D. Lee, who directed both movies, created the series after finances prevented the film’s production.

“We couldn’t get a movie together with the budget that we really needed, and it was hard to get everybody’s schedules. And so what the series allows us to do is just to allow them to chew more scenery and tell us some unfinished stories,” Lee tells Vibe. “So those are the main things that I think are really good about making it more than just a two-hour movie.”

Morris Chestnut, Terrence Howard, Taye Diggs, Harold Perrineau, Nia Long, Sanaa Lathan, Regina Hall and Melissa De Sousa from The Best Man and The Best Man Holiday have returned for The Final Chapters. Nicole Ari Parker, from Empire, has also joined the all-star cast.

In the trailer which was released this week, writer Harper Stewart, portrayed by Diggs, learns that his book Unfinished Business is being adapted into a film.

In the first film, when football star Lance Sullivan read in the book that his friend Harper had slept with his fiancée Mia Morgan before they were engaged, Lance became so angry, he attacked the writer and nearly threw him off a hotel balcony.

In The Best Man Holiday, the two men ended their feud, and Harper wrote Lance’s biography, God, Family and Football. However, now in The Final Chapters, Harper is worried about how Lance will react to Unfinished Business becoming a movie.

All eight episodes of The Best Man: The Final Chapters are set to premiere December 22.

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On Thursday, Marvel Studios will launch an official Black Panther podcast ahead of the November 11 debut of the movie’s anticipated sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Author, journalist and Black Panther comics writer Ta-Nehisi Coates will host the program, which promises to explore “the next chapter in the story of Wakanda and honors the remarkable legacy of Chadwick Boseman.”

The podcast is a collab between Marvel Studios and Proximity Media, which was founded by Black Panther franchise director Ryan Coogler, his wife Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian.

The first episode features a conversation between Coates and Coogler, in which the pair “reflect on the cultural impact of Black Panther, the legacy of Chadwick Boseman and his inspiration to the cast and crew.”

A preview of the show is now available across all major podcast platforms. In the sneak peek, Coogler shares with Coates what it was like to make the film without Boseman, who died of cancer in 2020, and without recasting his role of T’Challa. “My truth is Chad was gone,” he says. “…And for somebody else to be him, we wouldn’t have believed it…No matter how good the actor was.”

The filmmaker continues, “Our truth was loss…Heroes, great men die.”

Producers promise weekly episodes starting in January of 2023, with guests including members of the two films’ crew and cast, including Angela Bassett, who plays Queen Ramonda, and Dominique Thorne, who debuts in Wakanda Forever as Riri Williams. Other guests will include soundtrack composer and producer Ludwig Göransson, Coogler’s co-writer Joe Robert Cole; Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige and producer Nate Moore and others.

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

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Fans of Stranger Things know November 6 as Stranger Things Day. Netflix has just announced its plans for this year’s observance.

“November 6, 1983. The day Will Byers went missing, and the day it all began,” the streaming giant begins.
“Stranger Things Day is a celebration with our core fan base, to honor the very beginning of where it all started! This year is our 5th annual holiday and we are bringing all things Stranger to our fans both IRL and digitally online.”

Part of this year’s festivities include theatrical screenings of volume 2 of season 4 in participating theaters across North America.

Movie houses in cities including Atlanta, Austin, Texas, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Seattle, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Florida and Toronto will take part in the fun, with “trivia, giveaways and other surprises for superfans.”

Tickets can be found on StrangerThingsDayScreenings.com.

Further, Netflix has announced an inaugural Immersive Watch Party on Roblox “for the episode that started it all,” the first season’s pilot. The streamer promises special guests, tie-ins with the Stranger Things: the Experience attractions and new merch at the hit series’ official store.

More events will be announced via the show’s social media accounts.

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Parks & Recreation‘s Nick Offerman and Never Rarely Sometimes Always Actress Talia Ryder have joined the cast of Dumb Money, an upcoming film about last year’s GameStop stock market explosion, Deadline reports. They join an all-star cast that includes Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Sebastian Stan, Pete Davidson, Shailene Woodley, Dane DeHaan, Vincent D’Onofrio, Anthony Ramos, America Ferrera and Myah’la Herrold. Per the trade, the movie follows “the story of the fortunes made and lost overnight in the David vs. Goliath GameStop short squeeze that impacted Wall Street”…

Stargirl will conclude with its current third season, according to Deadline. The series follows high school sophomore Courtney Whitmore — played by Brec Bassinger — as she inspires a new generation of superheroes to stop the villains of the past. Luke Wilson and Amy Smart also star. New episodes will continue to air on Wednesdays through December 7…

Cristin Milioti, best known for playing Tracy McConnell in How I Met Your Mother from 2013-14, is joining Colin Farrell in HBO Max’s The Batman spinoff series centered on The Penguin, according to Variety. Farrell will reprise the role of the titular Batman villain, who he played in the film. Milioti will star as Sofia Falcone, the daughter of Gotham mob boss Carmine Falcone. Plot details for the series are under wraps, but it will reportedly delve into The Penguin’s rise to power in the Gotham criminal underworld…

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Seven seems to be the magic number for Alec Baldwin‘s wife Hilaria when it comes to having kids, but that could change somewhere down the road.

“I would have said before [that I’m] definitely done,” the health guru and author told Us Weekly while promoting her new Witches Anonymous podcast. “Seven kids in, I feel like I am, but it’s Alec and me — so, time will tell!”

Hilaria, 38, and Baldwin, 64, welcomed their seventh child, Ilaria, in September, joining Carmen, 9, Rafael, 7, Leonardo, 6, Romeo, 4, Eduardo, 2, and Lucia, 20 months.

Having all those kids running around the house doesn’t seem to be too much for the former yoga instructor who tells the outlet that after three children, she “just embraced the chaos,” adding “We have a wild and super fun house. Always something going on.”

Hilaria does admit that “Being truly present for each one of them is hard, and I obviously don’t get it right all the time.”

“My two oldest have nightly homework that I do with them, and to balance play with the younger ones, breast-feeding the youngest — it can get to be quite a juggle.” she admits.

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Peacock chose Halloween to announce it is crafting one of most famous scary movies of all time into series form. Crystal Lake will be a prequel series set around the titular stalking grounds of that hockey mask-wearing killer, Jason Voorhees.

Bryan Fuller, who produced NBC’s Hannibal prequel series, is calling the shots on the show. In a statement, he enthused, “I discovered Friday the 13th in the pages of Famous Monsters magazine when I was 10 years old and I have been thinking about this story ever since.” He said he’s “thrilled to be exploring the camp grounds of Crystal Lake.”

Susan Rovner, chairman of entertainment content for NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, noted, “Friday the 13th is one of the most iconic horror franchises in movie history and we were dying to revisit this story.”

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While it’s not a Halloween movie per se, 1973’s The Exorcist should top your spooky streaming list on the holiday — according to experts, it is the scariest movie ever made.

The website Study Finds pored through reviews of dozens of scary movies from film experts at 10 publications and websites, from Teen Vogue to Rolling Stone to Rotten Tomatoes, and William Friedkin‘s classic came out on top. The fans apparently think so, too: In 2018, a Vudu survey put the film on top of the viewers’ go-to movies for cinematic scares.

The Study Finds compilation put 1978 classic Halloween in second place, with Time Out saying of the Jamie Lee Curtis-led movie, “almost four decades later, it’s still close to flawless.”

2007’s Paranormal Activity was third on the list. The movie that launched a hit franchise was praised for delivering the scares on a low budget. The film “turns a simple haunted house story into 90 minutes of relentless suspense,” according to Rotten Tomatoes.

Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining ranked fourth, with the 1980 movie praised for both its scary visuals and also its rich symbolism, which is still being analyzed to this day.

Rounding out the top five was the 2014 sequel It Follows. The movie ushered in “the era of what is now called ‘elevated horror,'” according to Vulture, which called the movie “an unforgettable genre flick.”

Survey questions, methodology and results have not been verified or endorsed by ABC News or The Walt Disney Company.

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Tim Roth, who was recently seen in Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, is mourning the loss of his 25-year-old son, Cormack.

Cormack Roth, a musician and composer, had gone public with his battle with stage 3 germ cell cancer nearly a year ago, noting on Instagram that choriocarcinoma “is rare, and it has managed to stay many steps ahead of me no matter what I throw at it.”

He added, “It has taken away half of my hearing, 60 pounds of weight, my confidence, and will continue its murderous path until I can manage to stop it some how, and kill it.” He also noted the disease “hasn’t taken away my will to survive, or my love of making music. It hasn’t taken me down yet.”

In a statement, Tim Roth and his wife, Nikki, and their surviving son, Hunter, described Cormack as “a wild and electric ball of energy” whose “spirit was filled with light and goodness.”

According to Variety, the statement continued, “As wild as he was, Cormac was also the embodiment of kindness. A gentle soul who brought so much happiness and hope to those around him. The grief comes in waves, as do the tears and laughter, when we think of that beautiful boy across the 25 years and 10 months that we knew him. An irrepressible and joyful and wild and wonderful child. Only recently a man. We love him. We will carry him with us wherever we go.”

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Monday is Halloween, which means two things: Mariah Carey is about to hit your radio, and the Hallmark Channel will start its marathon holiday movie lineup. 

This year, however, things will be different because the network has teamed up with Peacock for a dedicated brand within NBC’s streaming service. Dubbed hub, the destination will stream live and on-demand programming from Hallmark Channel and “feature live simulcasts of all three channels with current season programming available live and on-demand next day as well as a robust library of movies within the Hallmark library, including signature holiday favorites.”

hub officially launches Wednesday on Peacock.

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In June, Jennifer Hudson joined Whoopi Goldberg in the exclusive EGOT club of entertainers who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award. On Monday, during her self-titled talk show, Jennifer paid tribute to The View co-host when she unveiled her Halloween costume.

The Respect star appeared as Whoopi’s character Sister Mary Clarence from 1992’s Sister Act. “Do you think I did okay, y’all?” Hudson asked the audience while striking a pose as the singing nun. “What do you think [Goldberg] will say?”

“I wanted to be in the movie after watching the legend Whoopi Goldberg. She is such an icon. The movie just meant so much to me as a little girl,” Hudson added. “When I saw that movie, it gave me so much inspiration. That’s the power of an icon like Whoopi Goldberg. It helped me create my dreams.”

There were two Sister Act films; Jennifer revealed that the sequel, 1993’s Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, is her favorite. Jenifer Lewis starred with Whoopi in both movies, and the sequel featured Sheryl Lee Ralph and Lauryn Hill. A third movie is now in development.

After Hudson talked about how Sister Act inspired her career, she was joined by a choir and performed the Sister Act musical finale, ending like Goldberg did in the first film, attached to wires while being lifted above the stage.

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