Entertainment

Netflix has debuted the trailer for the upcoming release of the sequel Enola Holmes 2.

Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill return as Enola and her brother Sherlock, and the preview, set to Jet‘s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl,” teases their upcoming adventure.

The streaming service states, “Now a detective-for-hire like her infamous brother, Enola Holmes takes on her first official case to find a missing girl, as the sparks of a dangerous conspiracy ignite a mystery that requires the help of friends — and Sherlock himself — to unravel.”

In between foot chases, and dodging blades and bullets, Enola gets some advice from her mother, Eudoria, played by Helena Bonham Carter. “Find your allies, work with them and you will find yourself becoming more of who you are,” she says. “You could be magnificent.”

She apparently takes the advice and at one point dispatches a group of men with her friend, Susan Wokoma‘s Edith, at her side.

“She likes causing trouble, doesn’t she?” Edith understates at another point.

Enola Holmes 2 debuts November 4 on Netflix.

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Recently, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav made it known the studio was looking for an executive to head up a unit that could turn its DC Comics properties into a blockbuster-minting machine the way Kevin Feige has done for Marvel Studios.

But could that person also be a DC superhero?

The question was put to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson at Wednesday night’s New York City premiere of his upcoming Warner Bros. film, Black Adam. So will The Rock trade his superhero tights for a business suit?

Not exactly.

After pondering the question from Variety over a long pull from a bottle of water, Johnson said diplomatically, “The best position that I could be for DC is one as an adviser, where I can help. I love DC. It’s in my blood. In the spirit of growing up with the DC Universe, I’m here to help in any way I can, including looking for and finding that right leader or leaders.”

Johnson also weighed in on another long-shot prospect: Could movie fans one day see Disney-owned Marvel heroes alongside those from Warner Bros.’ DC Universe?

It has happened in the pages of comic books several times over the years, beginning with Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man in the 1970s, and more recently when the heroes from DC’s Justice League faced off with Marvel’s Avengers. Movies, however, are far more complicated, with ownership rights and profit sharing just some of the tangles that would need to be smoothed out.

Johnson, however, took a “never say never” approach when asked. “Well, I’m always optimistic. I’d like to think that we would see that. My philosophy is anything can get done…”

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Netflix dropped the trailer to its upcoming Matilda the Musical, and Emma Thompson is turning heads as the production’s icy school headmistress, Miss Agatha Trunchbull.

It is hard to even recognize the Oscar winner, thanks to fearsome prosthetic makeup and a boxy, nearly Nazi-like uniform. “I like troublemakers,” she hisses at one point, as she’s seen swinging a student by her braids. “They make such a lovely sound when they snap.”

Following the plot of the Tony and Olivier award-winning stage production, Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical “tells the story of an extraordinary girl, with a vivid imagination, who dares to take a stand to change her story with miraculous results.”

A relative newcomer, Irish actress Alisha Weir plays Matilda in the streaming giant’s take on the classic, with Lashana Lynch, of No Time To Die and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, playing Miss Honey, the kindly teacher who takes a liking to the gifted little girl.

Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical debuts in select theaters and on Netflix December 25.

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Cuba Gooding Jr. pleaded guilty in a Manhattan courtroom Thursday to a count of second-degree harassment. 

After reaching a prearranged deal with prosecutors, Thursday’s plea replaces Gooding’s original plea in April, when the actor pleaded guilty to forcible touching.

Gooding has been sentenced to time served. He declined to address the court. 

The charges stem from Gooding’s sexual assault case in which prosecutors accused the actor of groping three women. Prior to April’s plea, Gooding had denied all charges. 

Gooding, 54, was arrested in June 2019 after a 29-year-old woman said he squeezed her breast at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge in Times Square.

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Apple icon Steve Jobs never appeared on Joe Rogan‘s podcast, but thanks to a Dubai-based tech company, you might be convinced he did.

The company, Play.ht, used its audio AI wizardry to create a fake podcast interview between the pair as a way to flaunt its voice synthesis technology.

Play.ht cloned the men’s voices to make it sound as if they once had a friendly, more than 19-minute chat that ranged from technology to Eastern mysticism. Evidently, it’s the first in what will be a series of such synthetic sit-downs, called Podcast.ai.

The company says its tech can “instantly convert text into natural-sounding speech,” and the results are pretty convincing, some technical limitations aside. “Joe Rogan” pronounces Patrick Swayze‘s name as Patrick “SWAYS” at one point, and much of “Steve Jobs'” dialogue centers on Apple and the tech market — evidence the company’s artificial intelligence was fed a diet comprised mostly of speeches the tech wizard gave in order to create his side of the conversation.

Similar audio AI technology made headlines recently when it was revealed James Earl Jones had given permission for his voice to be synthesized from now on by a Ukrainian tech company that recreated his Darth Vader voice, as heard in the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi. The audio wonks at Lucasfilm also used so-called machine learning to de-age Mark Hamill‘s voice as heard in other Star Wars shows.

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Kevin Hart is mourning the loss of his father, Henry Robert Witherspoon. The comedian shared news of Witherspoon’s death with a series of tribute posts on Instagram Thursday.

“RIP to one of the realest & rawest to ever do it…Love you dad. Gone but never forgotten….Give mom a hug for me….y’all did good man,” he wrote, sharing a slideshow of images of his father with his family over the years.

“Thank you for everything,” he added. “I’m a better father because of you 😢💪🏾🙏🏾 We will all make you proud….”

Hart’s tribute continued in a follow-up post in which he shared another image of him and his dad. “RIP spoon …..😢🙏🏾,” he captioned the special memory.

The 43-year-old comedian lost his mother, Nancy Hart, to cancer in 2007. In an interview for Oprah’s Masterclass at the time, he opened up about the tough loss and how he planned to keep her energy alive by way of his father and older brother, Robert. 

“All that energy went to my dad and to my brother. This is our little family,” Hart said. “If we don’t try to make this last name mean something, then we have nothing that’s going to live on. My last name means something now, but it’s because we made it mean something.”

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In the span of 24 hours, there was something of a he said-he said look at controversial former Glee star Lea Michele.

On Tuesday’s episode of The Michelle Collins Show, her former co-star on the one-time Fox musical phenomenon, Chris Colfer, was asked if he’d join the host in seeing Lea in her Broadway play Funny Girl.

Safe to say, he’s passing.

“Oh, no, are you seeing Funny Girl?” Colfer replied, with a huge laugh, adding, “Oh. My day suddenly just got so full.”

When Collins asked if he’d see the show at all, Colfer replied, sarcastically, “No, I can be triggered at home.”

Michele, of course, weathered accusations in 2020 from her former Glee co-stars Samantha Ware, Amber Riley and Alex Newell, that she was a bullying diva on the set of the hit show.

On the other hand, on Wednesday, Variety ran a glowing profile of Lea from her bestie, Frozen‘s Jonathan Groff, who called her “a force.”

Groff proclaimed in part, “When her undeniable star power lit up the stage in Funny Girl last month, the musical became the fifth-highest-grossing show on Broadway. By bringing big business back to Broadway, Lea isn’t just making audiences happy, she’s helping support the restaurants and hotels that thrive when Broadway draws a huge crowd.”

Michele apologized for the bullying accusations after they surfaced two years ago, and recently admitted to The New York Times that she can rub people the wrong way.

“I have an edge to me,” said Lea. “I work really hard. I leave no room for mistakes. That level of perfectionism, or that pressure of perfectionism, left me with a lot of blind spots.”

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Deadline reports Discovery+ has ordered a three-part docuseries that will explore the real story behind Fox’s hit series, Glee. The series will “lift the curtain to reveal the highs and lows of the production and the on-set community and will also feature testimonials of close family and friends with never-heard-before stories” from “key cast and crew members, who will share first-hand stories of their time on the comedy drama series.” The yet-to-be-titled project will address the controversies surrounding Glee, including Mark Salling‘s suicide while awaiting sentencing for possessing images of child sex abuse, Cory Monteith‘s death from an accidental heroin overdose, and Monteith’s girlfriend, Lea Michele, who was accused of on-set bullying. Glee ran for over 100 episodes between 2009 and 2015…

Zooey Deschanel will be joining the cast of Apple TV+’s dark comedy Physical for season three, according to Variety. The series, set in the 1980s, follows Sheila Rubin — played by Rose Byrne — through her journey of self-discovery via teaching aerobics. Physical also stars Dierdre Friel, Della Saba, Lou Taylor Pucci, Paul Sparks, Ashley Liao and Geoffrey Arend. Deschanel will play Kelly, described as “a former sitcom star who jumps into the burgeoning fitness industry,” per the streamer…

Comedy Central announced on Wednesday that Trevor Noah will host his final episode of The Daily Show on December 8th. Leading up to his last day, the Emmy-winning show will honor Noah’s seven-year run with a look back at his greatest moments. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and his comedic news team — including Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta, Desi Lydic, Dulcé Sloan, Roy Wood Jr., Lewis Black and Jordan Klepper — airs weeknights at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT on Comedy Central and is available the following morning on Paramount+…

Novelist Amy Tan and Oscar-winning Rain Man screenwriter Ron Bass are teaming up for a sequel to The Joy Luck Club, according to Variety. The new film, Joy Luck Club 2, will see “the mothers become grandmothers and the daughters become mothers in their own right,” while “introducing a new generation exploring their own relationships with culture, heritage, love, womanhood and identity,” per the outlet. The original leading cast is in talks to reprise their roles, as mothers and grandmothers of their families. The original movie, which broke new ground for Asian American representation, opened in limited release in 1993 and grossed $28 million in North America…

Brian Tee, who plays Ethan Choi on Chicago Med, is leaving the NBC drama after eight seasons, according to Deadline. He’ll make his last appearance in episode nine, titled “Could Be the Start of Something New,” airing December 7. However, Tee will return for episode 16 of the show off-screen to make his directorial debut. Chicago Med airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC…

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India is a central character in the new Apple TV+ series Shantaram, starring Charlie Hunnam and Shubham Saraf, which debuts Friday.

Hunnam tells ABC Audio they actually filmed in Bangkok, Thailand due to COVID-19 and they went to great lengths to make it feel like India, but it wasn’t easy.

“That really was one of the central challenges for us, was to, how are we going to shape the most important character in this show when we don’t have access to that character directly,” he says. 

Thankfully, they were able to draw from the team’s experiences with the country.

“Chris Kennedy, my production designer, spent a lot of time there in the 80s and he knew it very well,” said show executive producer Steve Lightfoot. “He had the photographs he’d taken back then that he still had. And, you know, and then a lot of research. Two of my writers were from Mumbai. One of them grew up in Colaba in the eighties.”

And, all of that hard work paid off because Saraf says he “truly was transported” and “kind of forgot where [he] was” when he arrived.

As far as what the series is about, Shantaram is based on a popular book, and Lightfoot shares that for him, the story is mostly about redemption.

“I think all of us, at the end of the day want to, you know, look in the mirror and like the person we see,” he explains. “I think Lin, the lead character, is on a very heightened version of that… he’s done some pretty bad stuff that he’s trying to atone for and try and somehow come to terms with for himself.”

“I feel like that’s something we can all identify with on our own smaller scale,” he adds.

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TJ Miller, who played Weasel in the first two Deadpool movies, admits he found himself “in hot water” after recent comments he made about co-star Ryan Reynolds “were misconstrued.”

Miller appeared on SiriusXM’s Jim Norton & Sam Roberts show on Wednesday to clarify comments he’d previously made on the Adam Carolla Show podcast — and to say Reynolds reached out to him to smooth things over.

On the latter program, Miller was quoted as calling Reynolds an “insecure dude” and talked about a “horrifically mean” comment Reynolds’ Deadpool had made about Miller’s character in the film.

He also said Reynolds “hates me” and vowed he wouldn’t work with him again.

However, a “disappointed” Miller on Wednesday struck a different tone, explaining to Norton and Roberts that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.

“In India they were talking about it!” Miller said of the Carolla Show comments. “I wasn’t saying anything negative. He is so funny, which I always maintained, and he’s so amazing in those movies … I said all those complementary things, and none of that shows up.”

He called the negative headlines “clickbait.”

“I feel bad that it was picked up and it was misconstrued,” Miller said. “I just have a thing … where I say something, and not thinking about what the repercussions of saying this or that would be.”

Miller said after the headlines came out, “It was really cool. [Ryan] emailed me the next day … and I emailed him back, and we’re fine,” Miller said. “He’s a good dude,” he clarified.

Miller is no stranger to controversy: He denied accusations of sexual assault in 2017 and in 2018 allegedly called in a bomb threat on a woman who reportedly rebuffed him on an Amtrak train. He later blamed the incident on a manic episode.

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