Entertainment

Miki Sudo is the #1-ranked female competitive eater in the world, and she proved it again on July 4 by returning from maternity leave to capture her eighth Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Championship belt. 

Downing 40 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes wasn’t her personal best, but she told ABC Audio she was just happy to be back in the action on July 4. “I wanted to do better, but I mean, it’s just good to just go out there and be back, and to be at Surf and Stillwell [in Coney Island].”

“You know, during [the] pandemic we didn’t have a crowd,” Miki said. “It was still televised, but yeah, it’s just, it’s so different not having that crowd screaming for you.”

Not only did she compete this year, but her husband, fellow eater Nick Wehry, was there; he placed third, matching her 40 dogs — and they brought along their baby, Max.

“It was an awesome experience, to be there with family and everything,” she adds.

This year’s contest was momentarily interrupted when an anti-meat protester wearing a Darth Vader mask jumped in front of eventual repeat champ Joey Chestnut. Barely breaking his winning pace, Joey put the guy in a headlock and the intruder was tackled by security. 

“I was probably no more than 4 feet away from them and Nick was right next to Joey,” Miki recalls. 

“So I’m cheering for Nick, but at that moment, I wanted to join the Chestnut camp for a brief second. I mean, obviously Joey had to do what he had to do because you don’t know what level of crazy you’re dealing with.” 

She adds, “When somebody physically touches you and is acting erratic in Darth Vader mask. I mean, you don’t know if he has a weapon. I don’t fault Joey for a second.” (AUDIO IS ABC 1-ON-1)

At a slim 5 feet, 4 inches tall, one wonders where she stores it all — among her other records, she’s also the world record ice cream eating champ, having scarfed down 16 1/2 pints in six minutes back in 2017.

Apart from the gluttonous nature of her sport, she says she stays in top shape. “I feel [I] fluctuate like everybody else. Like if you’re going to do like 12, 15 competitions a year you really need the other 350 days a year to be pretty disciplined … you know, eating well, exercising a lot. There’s no secret to it.”

As for her baby, he was born on the small side, she says, but “he caught up pretty quick.” Considering the 1-year-old’s genes, that’s not a surprise. “He’s got a good appetite,” she laughs.

Despite little Max’s lineage, however, Miki says, “I hope he doesn’t … try his hand at competitive eating. No bodybuilding. No competitive eating, you know, I’ve seen both … up way too [close]. You know, the good, the bad and the ugly.”

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On Wednesday, Kevin Smith dropped the trailer to his third Clerks movie, and as he’d promised, it reflects the filmmaker’s real life in more ways than one.

The writer-director and podcaster maxed out his credit cards and shot the original 1994 indie film himself. Set primarily at the New Jersey convenience store where he worked, the movie launched his career.

The new threequel has Jeff Anderson‘s Randall back behind the counter with his buddy Dante, played again by Brian O’Halloran, but a brush with death — in the form of a massive heart attack — leads movie fan Randall to make the most out of life by shooting his own film…set in the convenience store where he works.

In 2018, Smith himself suffered a near-fatal heart attack, and the subsequent soul-searching led him back to where it all began.

Oh, and admitted post-coronary guilt trip calls to his now-famous old friends, like Ben Affleck, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Rosario Dawson, ensured they would play roles.

The meta script has Smith reprising his role as Silent Bob, the R2-D2 to the C-3PO of Jason Mewes‘ fellow stoner Jay. Randall decides the pair have to be in his movie, too.

Comparing the pair to the Star Wars characters, Randall says, “They’ve been here since the first movie, which was the last time they were cool, but they’ve been with the franchise so long they still…put them on the lunchboxes.”

The trailer is replete with references to the first comedy, including a wisely deleted scene in which Dante’s character was shot by a robber. “What if there’s a sequel?!” he protests. “A sequel? What am I, a hack?” Randall replies.

Clerks III hits theaters this fall.

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Oscar and Emmy winner Viola Davis plays General Nanisca in the fact-based epic The Woman King, and the new trailer shows she’s not taking any prisoners.

According to Sony Pictures, “The Woman King is the remarkable story of the Agojie, the all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s with skills and a fierceness unlike anything the world has ever seen.”

John Boyega plays a king forced to deploy his trusted general “as she trains the next generation of recruits and readies them for battle against an enemy determined to destroy their way of life.”

She pleads with the ruler, “The Europeans wish to conquer us…We must fight back for our people.”

His character replies, “You are asking me to take them to war!”

“Some things are worth fighting for,” Davis’ character insists.

Among the new recruits is No Time to Die and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness‘ Lashana Lynch.

“We fear no one,” Davis’ character tells her charges. “I offer you a choice: We fight or we die.”

The movie hits theaters September 16.

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Thor: Love and Thunder hits theaters this weekend, and for Christian Bale, the film gave him a chance to pivot from playing a beloved hero, Batman, in Chris Nolan‘s Dark Knight trilogy, to this film’s heavy: Gorr the God Butcher.

The character begins as a devout man, whose god failed him and his people — particularly his daughter — and he gets the chance to get even. Soon, he begins a galaxy-wide vendetta against all gods, including, of course, Chris Hemsworth‘s titular god of Thunder.

“It’s a lot easier to play a villain than it is to play a hero,” Bale enthused at a recent press event. “Everyone is fascinated with bad guys immediately, and then the beauty of it is that Taika can make it bloody hilarious and really moving as well,” referring to writer-director Taika Waititi.

Bale adds, “I don’t know if it’s pushing it too much to say ‘sympathy’, but certainly you sort of understand maybe why this guy is making awful decisions, you know — and he is a monster and he is a butcher — but yeah, there’s possibly a little understanding of why he came to be that way.”

Thor: Love and Thunder also stars Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Russell Crowe, and Chris Pratt and his Guardians of the Galaxy pals. It opens nationwide July 8.

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

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After four years away from the Hollywood spotlight , actress Hayden Panettiere is opening up for the first time about the challenges she’s faced that nearly destroyed her career.

In a People and Good Morning America exclusive interview, the 32-year-old said that she’d been “struggling for a long time.”

“I didn’t know where the alcoholism was ending and the postpartum was beginning. And I ran myself pretty ragged,” she said.

Since her hit show Nashville ended in 2018, Panettiere said the years that followed have “been difficult.”

“I just needed a break,” she said.

Shortly after the birth of her daughter in 2014, Panettiere was overcome with postpartum depression. She told ABC News’ Kaylee Hartung she turned to “the bottom of a bottle” for support.

“I didn’t have any negative feelings towards my child,” she said. “I just knew I was deeply depressed,” like she “was in…this haze that just wasn’t me.”

“People around me were more concerned about my usage of alcohol than they ever were about the postpartum depression,” the actress admitted.

They thought she was “being a crazy woman” or “an overly emotional female,” but Panetierre said, “it was so out of my control.”

“I felt like I was walking blind,” Hayden expressed. “And I don’t like to ask for help either. I wanna be that strong, stoic woman. But, I mean, when you see a happy-go-lucky girl for years suddenly on the floor in a puddle of mess and alcohol, you gotta know something is wrong.”

Eventually, Panettiere sought out the treatment she needed, which included making friends who could understand her struggles.

Panettiere says she is now sober and is taking things one day at a time.

“It’s an everyday battle,” she said, adding, I’m grateful to say that I’m sober today.”

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Chris Evans has joined Emily Blunt in the cast of Netflix’s Pain Hustlers, according to Variety. Blunt plays a high school dropout “dreaming of a better life for her and her young daughter” who “lands a job with a failing pharmaceutical start-up in a yellowing strip mall in Central Florida,” per the streaming service. Her “charm, guts and drive catapult the company and her into the high life, where she soon finds herself at the center of a criminal conspiracy with deadly consequences.” Evans’ role has not been revealed. The Captain America star will next be seen in Netflix’s The Gray Man, alongside Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas…

The CW has announced the fall premiere dates for its primetime lineup on Monday. Stargirl provides a teaser of sorts, with an August 31 launch. Then the 2022-23 season opens in earnest on October 2 with the premieres of Family Law and Coroner. Kung Fu kicks off its new season October 5, followed by Walker and Walker: Independence on October 6. All American and All American: Homecoming debut October 10, then it’s The Winchesters and Professionals on October 11. October 14 kicks off the new seasons of Penn & Teller: Fool Us and Whose Line Is It Anyway. Finally it’s, Criss Angel’s Magic with the Stars and World’s Funniest Animals on October 22…

HBO Max on Tuesday released the official trailer its upcoming Issa Rae-directed comedy series, Rap S***. The show centers on two Miami-based rappers — Shawna, played by Aida Osman, and Mia, played by KaMillion — who try to find success in the music industry. The series will debut on July 21, with the first two episodes premiering as a special event. The eight-episode season will then air one episode per week, wrapping up on September 1… (Trailer contains uncensored profanity.)

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The Bachelorette alum Michelle Young is finally shedding some light on her breakup with season 18 winner Nayte Olukoya, a turn of events that left her blindsided.

“I will say this is not something that I foresaw and I’ll leave it there,” Michelle said during an appearance on Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti‘s Almost Famous podcast on Tuesday, adding that she has “good days” and “bad days” and is “leaning on…friends [and] family for support” as she navigates the breakup.

“Breakups suck. Breakups are awful,” she explaining that “what’s so difficult is that it sometimes feels like it’s not in your control. You wake up and you some days you just feel like, ‘OK, I just have to…give it time.”

“But it is this situation where I’m like, ‘This is not how the story ends for me.’ Where I’m at right now emotionally, mentally, like, how my heart feels — this is not how the story ends and I deserve to really make it to that point where I get those things.”

Nayte, meanwhile, has denied allegations that he was cheating on her, writing on his Instagram stories, “Not every breakup needs to have someone to blame. Yes, many of you seem to paint me as a red flag/ f*** boy … But I’m actually a decent guy, and I only want to continue getting better. As we should all want for ourselves,” according to Us Weekly.

Young and Olukoya, who got engaged during the December 2021 finale of The Bachelorette, announced their decision to end their relationship in respective statements on June 17.

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To celebrate the milestone anniversary of the Oscar-winning animated film, ABC and Disney are teaming up for a “one-night only” event called Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration.

Airing on December 15 at 8 p.m. ET, the two-hour animated and live-action “reimagination” will pay tribute to the original 1991 film and its legacy “by showcasing the fan-favorite movie, along with new memorable musical performances, taking viewers on a magical adventure through the eyes of Belle,” according to a press release.

The live-action performers will be announced at a later date, but John M. Chu, the director of the hit Crazy Rich Asians and the musical movie In The Heights, is producing. British director Hamish Hamilton, a veteran of the Super Bowl halftime show who has worked with the likes of Eminem and Madonna, will be calling the shots.

The original Beauty and the Beast was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Picture category and took home a Best Music trophy for composer Alan Menken.

The movie was remade into a hit live-action adaptation starring Emma Watson as Belle and Dan Stevens as Adam/The Beast. It also featured performances from Josh Gad as LeFou, Luke Evans as Gaston, and featured the voices of Ewan McGregor as Lumière and Emma Thompson as Mrs. Potts.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Stranger Things brought the fireworks for Netflix over the weekend.

For the first time since the global phenomenon Squid Game, viewership for Stranger Things surpassed 1.15 billion hours on the streaming service following the drop of season 4, volume 2 on July 1.

The show’s fourth season made up for more than 301 million hours of that staggering total for the week spanning June 27-July 3, landing it on the Top 10 for English language TV shows in 93 countries.

The previous seasons also landed on the list in that period: Its first season ranked #3; season 2 #6; and season 3 came in at #5.

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Thanks to a 2021 rerelease that nudged it past Avengers: Endgame, 2009’s Avatar remains the highest grossing movie of all time.

Its haul — before a September re-rerelease — stands at $2.8 billion.

That said, there are many who wonder how Avatar got there in the first place. Director James Cameron has heard those gripes; in true James Cameron form, the man working on four sequels to the original doesn’t hold back.

“The trolls will have it that nobody gives a sh** and they can’t remember the characters’ names or one damn thing that happened in the movie,” he grouses to Empire magazine. “Then they see the movie again and go, ‘Oh, OK, excuse me, let me just shut the f*** up right now.'”

He’s also not worried about the run time of December’s sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water which — as of now — is around three hours.

“I don’t want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch [TV] for eight hours,” Cameron says. “I can almost write this part of the review. ‘The agonizingly long three-hour movie …’ It’s like, give me a f***ing break …”

He adds, “Here’s the big social paradigm shift that has to happen: it’s OK to get up and go pee.”

As for its three sequels, which will roll out through 2028, the Titanic Oscar winner explains, “I think eventually … after [Avatar] three or after four — I’ll want to pass the baton to a director that I trust to take over,” he mused, adding, “Or maybe not. I don’t know.”

Cameron says the third Avatar movie is in the can, having shot concurrently with the second, which adds Kate Winslet to its original cast, which includes Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldaña and Sam Worthington.

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