Entertainment

You’ll see some veteran music stars in the ABC drama Queens, premiering tonight. Rapper Eve stars alongside singer Brandy and former 3LW member Naturi Naughton, playing a group of women rappers who were popular 20 years ago, but for whom that success and lifestyle is now a distant memory.

For Brandy, joining the show was a no-brainer, telling ABC Audio, “I just loved the fact that it was a 90s hip hop legendary group of women. I’ve never seen that even in hip hop today.”

“Then, it was never a hip hop girls group, ever. And so I was like, this is different,” she continued. “This is deep. I love it. I want to be a part of it. What do I sign up?”

Additionally, the Queens script was one that Brandy says that she could really relate to.

“The entire struggle of being, at the top of your game and then kind of losing it and getting an opportunity to do it again. Like I could relate to that,” she shares. 

Included in that script is some original music and rhymes, which Eve reveals she didn’t pen herself and jokes, “If I had to it would be “Old McDonald had a farm” over and over again.”

As for Naughton, it wasn’t so much coming up with lyrics that intimidated her as much as having to rap in front of one of the most successful female rappers of all time.

“I was a little bit scared when Eve was next to me,” she says. “Whenever my verse comes after hers I’m like God daggit I really have to kill it! I can’t come after Eve and not kill it!”

Catch Queens Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.

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The cast of Dancing with the Stars celebrated one of America’s most beloved movie musicals — Grease — on Monday and the night included several surprise cameos from the original cast… as well as a shocking goodbye.

Judge Len Goodman was forced to deliver yet another tie-breaking vote at the end of the night after the audience sent Spice Girl‘s Melanie C and influencer Olivia Jade into the bottom two. Len sided with fellow judge Derek Hough to spare Olivia, overruling Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli who opted to save the British singer.

Despite the painful goodbye, the night provided plenty of highlights.

Olivia Newton John, who played Sandy in the 1978 film, opened the show with a special dedication to the cast and crew. 

Frankie Avalon belted out “Beauty School Dropout” in the 1978 feature, performed the standout hit on the ballroom floor as Amanda Kloots danced the Viennese waltz. 

JoJo Siwa earned the season’s first perfect score. The actress nailed her foxtrot to “Look at Me I’m Sandra Dee (Reprise),” which brought Goodman to his feet to compliment the “superb” routine.

The night also saw Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kenya Moore‘s big comeback!  The reality star shook off the sting of almost being sent home for the past two consecutive weeks and earned her first straight set of 9s for her sensual rumba to “There Are Worse Things (I Could Do).”  

Dancing with the Stars returns with a spooky vengeance next Monday at 8 p.m ET on ABC, celebrating all things Halloween! Of course, that also means social media is ablaze over what — and how many — outfits host Tyra Banks will change into over the course of the night.

Here are the current standings:
JoJo Siwa, Nickelodeon star, with Jenna Johnson — 40/40
Amanda Kloots, The Talk co-host, with Alan Bersten — 39/40
Kenya Moore, former Miss USA, with Brandon Armstrong — 36/40
Melora Hardin, The Office actress, with Artem Chivensky — 36/40
Suni Lee, Olympic Gold medalist, with Sasha Farber — 36/40
Olivia Jade, influencer, with Val Chmerkovskiy — 36/40
Jimmie Allen, country music singer, with Emma Slater — 34/40
Michael “The Miz” Gregory, WWE superstar, Witney Carson — 32/40
Cody Rigsby, Peloton instructor, with Cheryl Burke — 32/40
Iman Shumpert, NBA player, with Daniella Karagach — 28/40

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Disney is bumping some of its biggest releases along in its 2022 schedule — and some into 2023.

Marvel Studios, which is also owned by ABC News’ parent company, has shifted Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness from March 25 to May 6 of 2022. In turn, Thor: Love and Thunder, which had been scheduled to open on May 6, now will premiere on July 8. Meanwhile, the opening of Black Panther‘s sequel, Wakanda Forever, has been moved from July 8 to November 11.

The changes have carried into 2023, as well.

The Marvels, a sequel to Captain Marvel, was bumped from November 11, 2022, to early 2023; Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will now open on July 28, 2023; and the fifth Indiana Jones movie, which had been set to open on July 29, 2022, will now debut on June 30, 2023 — nearly in time for Harrison Ford‘s 81st birthday in July of that year.

Then again, as Indy himself has said, “It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.”

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The upcoming Starz limited-series The Continental, about the hitman hotel as seen in the John Wick movies, has booked its first big name. 

Mel Gibson has joined the cast of the series, ABC Audio has confirmed. The show is set decades before Keanu Reeves came out of retirement to avenge the death of his puppy. 

The fourth chapter of the blockbuster Wick franchise is currently in production, as previously reported. 

As the series has progressed, it has expanded on the history of The Continental, where contract killers can grab a drink and rest their bleeding heads — provided they don’t kill on company property.

While Ian McShane plays the New York City location’s classy owner Winston Scott in the films, his character will reportedly be re-cast with a younger actor central to the 70s-set series.

According to Lionsgate TV, the show will follow the origins of the hotel, “through the eyes and actions of a young Winston Scott…dragged into the Hell-scape of a 1975 New York City to face a past he thought he’d left behind.” The studio continues, “Winston charts a deadly course through the New York’s mysterious underworld in a harrowing attempt to seize the iconic hotel, which serves as the meeting point for the world’s most dangerous criminals.”

Oscar-winning Braveheart director Gibson will reportedly play a character named Cormac in the show. It’s his first foray on series TV since the American ex-pat started his acting career in Australia in 1976.

Gibson will next be seen in theaters and on demand November 5 in the thriller Dangerous for Lionsgate, the studio behind the Wick movies and The Continental show.

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Musician and director Rob Zombie has revealed the first cast members of his upcoming The Munsters film.

Sherri Moon Zombie and Jeff Daniel Phillips will be playing Lily and Herman Munster, respectively. Moon, who is Zombie’s wife, has starred in several of the “Dragula” rocker’s films, including the Firefly trilogy, 31 and his Halloween films. Phillips, meanwhile, is also a Zombie regular, but you may know him best as one of the cavemen in those old GEICO commercials.

Additionally, Zombie has announced that Matlock and Lost alum Daniel Roebuck will play Grandpa Munster, aka The Count.

The Munsters, of course, was originally a 1960s TV comedy show depicting a family of lovable monsters. It was briefly rebooted for the 2012 NBC special Mockingbird Lane, but was never picked up for a full series.

 

 

 

 

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Ken Jeong was a doctor before he pursued a lifelong dream of acting “late in the game,” as he put it to ABC Audio, so the movie star and Masked Singer judge says his Hollywood career never gets old. 

“I remember Sandra Bullock, I did a movie with her….it was way before The Hangover,” he recalled about 2009’s All About Steve. “And they asked her, ‘What was it like working with Ken?’…[A]nd…she said, ‘I say this in a good way…Ken can’t honestly believe that he’s here.'” 

Jeong adds, laughing, “And so…if I can kind of retain that innocence, you know, for the rest of my days, that would be a good day!”

After years pulling all-nighters on his doctor rounds, and more recently reading scripts and taking Zoom meetings, the doctor recently saw a doctor himself, for dry-eye disease. You might have seen him in those commercials for the prescription drug Xiidra.

In spite of the, pardon the pun, dry topic, Jeong doesn’t lose his comic personality in the ads.

 “I think at the end of the day, it really is about it’s about connection,” he notes. “[W]hether one’s an educator or one’s a face model…You know, I think it’s all about…connection with people.”

Jeong calls his career a “dream come true,” and part of that was becoming a small part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo often add their former Community stars as Easter eggs in their MCU movies, but Jeong jokingly insists his cameo in Avengers: Endgame saved the world.

“If it wasn’t for unspoken security, man, you know, Thanos would have ruled and we would not be back in to where we were today,” he says, chuckling. 

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(NOTE CONTENT) ABC News has confirmed that Oscar-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr. will stand trial in New York City on February 1 in connection with forcible touching and sexual abuse charges. 

A judge set Gooding’s trial date Monday in connection with charges that the actor groped women in Manhattan bars or nightclubs in 2018 and 2019,

In October 2018, Gooding allegedly pinched the buttocks of a woman in the TAO downtown nightclub on 9th Avenue. When confronted, he claimed he had only touched her back.

In June 2019, Gooding allegedly made a sexually suggestive remark to a woman at the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar inside the Moxy Hotel on 7th Avenue. He then put his hand on the woman’s left breast and squeezed it without her consent, court records show. The alleged victim had sat down at the bar where Gooding was with Claudine De Niro, Robert De Niro‘s ex-daughter-in-law. Prosecutors said the encounter was caught on video.

Gooding was formally charged with misdemeanor forcible touching at the NYPD’s 25th Precinct in Harlem, New York, in 2019, and later indicted. He subsequently pleaded not guilty to one misdemeanor count each of forcible touching and sexual abuse in the third degree.

Attorneys for the Jerry Maguire star had unsuccessfully sought to dismiss the case.

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Jurassic World series star Bryce Dallas Howard became a conductor of sorts this weekend, during the Lumiere Film Festival in Lyon, France.

She and her Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director J.A. Bayona led 5,000 people to sing John Williams‘ classic “Jurassic Park Theme” in unison at Lyon’s biggest venue, the Halle Tony Garnier.

Every year, the festival spotlights a series of films by turning the venue into a giant movie theater, and on Saturday night, the venue hosted “Nuit Jurassic,” or Jurassic Night.

Steven Spielberg‘s 1993 groundbreaker Jurassic Park was screened, as was its follow-up, 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, as well as 2015’s reboot, Jurassic World, and its 2018 sequel, Fallen Kingdom. Bayona was on hand to present the event, as was Howard, who posted their musical magnum opus on social media.

“Merci, @BayonaFilm,” Howard captioned the post, along with “Merci, Lyon!” The multilingual filmmaker also said of the city, en Français, “You are every filmmaker’s dream!”

 

 

 

 

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This weekend’s Saturday Night Live cold open took aim at the scandal surrounding former Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who was forced to resign last week following the discovery of racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments he made in emails while working as an ESPN commentator.

The sketch featured SNL‘s Colin Jost as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who defended the league by declaring, “I know our Black coaches would agree. Both of them.”

He then introduced Gruden — new cast member James Austin Johnson — who begged people not to judge him on “the one email I sent 10 years ago, or the 20 emails I sent last Tuesday.”

Gruden then turned the podium over to Raiders owner Mark Davis — played by Alex Moffat — who addressed his unusual bowl haircut by noting, “I’ve heard all the jokes about my hair and how it looks like Donald Trump’s haircut gave me a haircut.”

The sketch went on to feature a series of people accepting, then quickly resigning, the Raiders head coach job over problematic statements in their past.

Chris Redd played former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was fired for kneeling during the national anthem before the games as a silent protest against systemic racism and police brutality. He followed by noting, “So much stuff coming out about [how] the NFL is maybe racist. Huh, I wonder if anyone tried to warn people about this before.”

Moffat’s Davis then announced a “solution that makes everyone happy. Someone even Twitter can get behind,” and introduced LeVar Burton, played by Kenan Thompson, as the new coach.

The host of the PBS kids’ show Reading Rainbow, seemingly angry over losing the Jeopardy! hosing duties to Mayim Bialik, told the actress to “suck on that” before breaking into a song that reworked the Reading Rainbow theme song.

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Halloween Kills, the 12th and latest installment in the Halloween horror franchise, slashed its way to the top of the box office — opening with an estimated $50.4 million.

The film, also available via VOD on the Peacock+ streaming service, delivered the highest-grossing opening weekend for a simultaneous release in theaters and on streaming, topping Godzilla vs. Kong’s $31.6 million debut back in March.

Overseas, Halloween Kills — starring Jamie Lee Curtis — earned an estimated $5.5 million, bringing its worldwide gross to $55.9 million.

No Time to Die, now in its second week, slipped to second place and grabbed an estimated $24.3 million. That brings its total here in the states to $99.5 million. The latest Bond adventure, which has yet to open in China, is faring much better overseas, where it racked up an estimated $348.3 million so far. Its global tally currently stands at $447.8 million

Landing in third place was Venom: Let There Be Carnage, earning $16.5 million stateside, for a three-week total of $168.1. The film added on another $115.6 million internationally, bringing its global box-office total to $283.7 million.

The Addams Family 2, also available on premium VOD for $19.99, earned an estimated $7.2 million in its third week of release. The animated sequel has collected an estimated $16.2 million overseas, putting its current worldwide haul at $58.5 million.

Rounding out the top five was the long-awaited reunion of Good Will Hunting’s Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, whose historical drama The Last Duel fizzled at the box office, delivering an estimated $4.8 million domestically. The news was just as bad internationally, where the Ridley Scott-directed film, which stars Adam Driver and Jodie Comer, added an estimated $4.2 million. That brings its worldwide total to just $9 million.

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