Entertainment

With his defamation case victory over ex-wife Amber Heard in the rearview mirror — despite the Aquaman actress’s vow to appeal — the movie industry is speculating about what’s on the horizon for Johnny Depp.

One former Disney executive tells People a pirate ship might just break through the fog with Depp’s beloved Jack Sparrow at the helm once again.

“There is just too much potential box-office treasure” to be had, the unnamed executive explains to the magazine.

“With [Pirates of the Caribbean series producer] Jerry Bruckheimer riding high on the massive success of Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, there is huge appetite for bringing back bankable Hollywood stars in massively popular franchises.”

Box Office Mojo says the movie series has snagged nearly $4.5 billion in box office booty since it launched in 2003, with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl making more than $654 million worldwide.

Its sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, became the series biggest earner, making over a billion bucks.

So what’s next for the franchise after 2017’s Dead Men Tell No Tales?

As viewers of the recent trial witnessed, plans for a sixth film with Depp at the helm were scuttled after Depp’s messy divorce from Heard, and the English trial that brought to light accusations of abuse from both stars.

Officially, there are a pair of films set in the Pirates universe in the works, according to Bruckheimer.

The blockbuster-minting producer tells the U.K.’s Sunday Times, “We’re talking to Margot Robbie. We are developing two Pirates scripts — one with her, one without.”

So will Jack Sparrow return? “Not at this point,” Bruckheimer says, but allows, “The future is yet to be decided.”

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey, who recently witnessed his hometown of Uvalde, Texas, become the latest site of a school shooting, has had enough.

In an op-ed to the Austin American-Stateman, McConaughey opens by calling himself “a father and a gun owner, the son of a kindergarten teacher, and a Texan from Uvalde.”

He says, “I believe that responsible, law-abiding Americans have a Second Amendment right, enshrined by our founders, to bear arms. I also believe we have a cultural obligation to take steps toward slowing down the senseless killing of our children.”

The actor argues, “The debate about gun control has delivered nothing but status quo. It’s time we talk about gun responsibility.”

“There is a difference between control and responsibility,” McConaughey says.

“The first is a mandate that can infringe on our right; the second is a duty that will preserve it. There is no constitutional barrier to gun responsibility. Keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people is not only the responsible thing to do, it is the best way to protect the Second Amendment. We can do both.”

The actor and activist says, “Depraved acts of violence, with guns as the weapon of choice, are ripping apart families, testing people’s faith, and tearing at the fabric of society.”

There is an “epidemic…of deranged individuals killing indiscriminately, parents burying their children, of inaction and buck-passing,” the actor says.

He adds, “Saving lives is not a partisan issue. Responsible Americans must step up.”

McConaughey says he and his wife, Camila Alves McConaughey, “have seen it with our own eyes in my hometown…where parents are attending their own children’s funerals. We are all mourning.”

The celebrity couple recently created the Uvalde Relief Fund through their Just Keep Livin’ nonprofit.

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After over a year of dating, Michael B. Jordan and Lori Harvey are over.

News that the Creed actor, 35, and Harvey, 25, split first broke over the weekend with a source telling People, “Michael and Lori are both completely heartbroken. They still love each other.”

“Michael matured a lot over the course of their relationship and was ready to commit for the long term. He let down his guard with her, opening up emotionally in a romantic relationship for the first time,” the insider added. “They had great times together and brought out the best in each other.”

Although neither Jordan nor Harvey have publicly commented on the status of their relationship, US Weekly notes that photos of the couple have seemingly been scrubbed from Harvey’s social media.

The SKN by LH founder and Just Mercy star were first romantically linked in 2020 before going Instagram official in January 2021.

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Lionsgate on Sunday released an exclusive teaser clip for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. The film, per the studio, is set, years before 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow, played by Tom Blyth, would become the tyrannical President of Panem, and with the 10th annual Hunger Games fast approaching, he’s alarmed when he is assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird, the girl tribute from impoverished District 12, portrayed by Rachel Zegler. “But after Lucy Gray commands all of Panem’s attention by defiantly singing during the reaping ceremony, Snow thinks he might be able to turn the odds in their favor,” leading to a “race against time to survive will ultimately reveal who is a songbird, and who is a snake.” The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is due in theaters on Nov. 17, 2023…

President Joe Biden will be a guest on Wednesday night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC, appearing in-person on the late night talk show. Kimmel made the announcement on Sunday afternoon during ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live: NBA Finals Game Night prior to the network’s broadcast of Game 2 of the NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors. President Biden’s conversation with Kimmel will mark his first in-studio appearance on a late night talk show since being inaugurated in January 2021. Biden last appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in September 2019, in the midst of his campaign during the Democratic Party presidential primary. The president guested on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in December 2021, though he appeared via video. President Biden has also appeared on CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, most recently in September 2019…

HBO Max has canceled Raised by Wolves after two seasons, according to Deadline, The series followed two androids — played by Amanda Collin and Abubakar Salim — tasked with raising human children on a mysterious virgin planet, who soon discover that controlling human beliefs is difficult, as their religious beliefs threaten to tear the colony of humans apart. “It’s not surprising, especially after the news of the mergers and what is happening at Warner, that a lot of shows are not having their stories finished,” Salim tweeted on Friday, before adding that the show’s producers and creators, were “pushing for the show to be continued in other homes.” He then urged fans to use their voices to help with his effort to resuscitate the show…

Dermot Mulroney, best known for starring alongside Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding, has joined the cast of Paramount Pictures’ upcoming Scream sequel, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He joins Melissa Barrera, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding and Jenna Ortega, who are among the returning castmembers. Hayden Panettiere — one of the stars of 2011’s Scream 4 — reprising her character. Plot details are being kept under wraps. The sixth Scream film is due to shoot this summer, with an anticipated March 31, 2023 release date…

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Top Gun: Maverick spends a second week at #1. The sequel delivered an estimated $86 million, putting its total domestic gross at just under $292 million and nearly $548 million globally. Those numbers officially make Top Gun: Maverick the highest-grossing film domestically for star Tom Cruise, without adjusting for inflation, flying past 2005’s War of the Worlds.

Holding onto second place for second straight week was Disney/Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which delivered nearly $9.3 million. The movie’s five-week domestic now stands at $388.7 million. Overseas, Doctor Strange overseas has racked up $520.7 million, bringing its current global tally to $909.4 million.

The Bob’s Burger Movie grabbed an estimated $4.5 million in its second week of release for a third place finish. The big screen adaptation of the popular animated TV show has made $22.2 million in North America so far, to go along with $131 million coming from overseas, bringing it worldwide box-office total to $218.3 million.

Fourth place went to another animated comedy The Bad Guys, which collected an estimated $3.3 million in its seventh week in theaters. Its total domestic haul thus far stands at $87.3 million to go along with $131 million internationally. That bringing it current global tally to $218.3 million.

Rounding out the top five was Downton Abbey: A New Era. The film version of the beloved TV series earned an estimated $3 million. After three weeks, its scooped up $35.7 million domestically and $41 million overseas for a grand total of $76.7 million worldwide.

This week’s only debut, the David Cronenberg horror flick Crimes of the Future, starring Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux and Kristen Stewart, scared up a estimated $1.1 million in North America for a 10th place finish. It added an estimated $318,637, overseas, putting its first-week global tally at around $1.4 million.

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Another weekend on top for Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel dominating the box office for a 2nd weekend in a row.

Greg “Tarzan” Davis stars as Coyote in the film, he’s one of the new crop of fighter pilots, and he tells ABC Audio it’s easy to single out his favorite part about making the film.

“F-18. Flying an F-18,” he shares, adding that while it “wasn’t on a bucket list” of things to check off just having the opportunity was “incredible.”

While Davis had the most fun flying, he admits that it was also the most nerve-racking part because “you have to be your own cinematographer, camera operator, director, actor, costume designer” while in the planes. 

“You just want to make sure that you’re doing it correctly, especially when you know that every time you start the F-18 up, just to start it up was like $20-40,000,” he reveals. “You’re like you don’t want to be the person to mess that up.”

Having to wear many hats while in the planes also made for some “outtakes that are really funny,” Davis says, though he’s not sure if any will see the light of day. 

Some new aviation skills weren’t the only thing that Davis walked away with, though. He also went through some underwater training for the film, which left him shook.

“I’m traumatized,” he admits. “I was watching Castaway with Tom Hanks. And when the plane goes down and I just start hyperventilating, I kid you, not. I started having, like, a mini panic attack, like, yo, I know what this feels like. Get out. Just get out.”

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The 2022 MTV Movie & TV Awards aired live from the Barker Hangar in Los Angeles on Sunday night.

Vanessa Hudgens served as host for the awards ceremony, which celebrated the best in scripted content, before former Bachelorette Tayshia Adams took over as host of the UNSCRIPTED portion, which awarded some of the best reality shows and moments. 

Here’s the complete list of winners who took home a “golden popcorn” trophy.

BEST MOVIE 
Spider-Man: No Way Home 

BEST SHOW
Euphoria  

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A MOVIE
Tom Holland: Spider-Man: No Way Home

BEST PERFORMANCE IN A SHOW 
Zendaya: Euphoria

BEST HERO
Scarlett Johansson: Black Widow 

BEST VILLAIN
Daniel Radcliffe: The Lost City 

BEST KISS
Poopies & the snake: Jackass Forever 

BEST COMEDIC PERFORMANCE
Ryan Reynolds: Free Guy

BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE
Sophia Di Martino: Loki 

BEST FIGHT
Cassie vs. Maddy: Euphoria 

MOST FRIGHTENED PERFORMANCE
Jenna Ortega: Scream 

BEST TEAM
Loki: Tom Hiddleston, Sophia Di Martino, Owen Wilson 

HERE FOR THE HOOKUP
Euphoria

BEST SONG
“On My Way (Marry Me),” Jennifer Lopez / Marry Me

GENERATION AWARD
Jennifer Lopez

Comedic Genius Award
Jack Black

 

MTV Movie & TV Awards: UNSCRIPTED
BEST DOCU-REALITY SERIES
Selling Sunset

BEST COMPETITION SERIES
RuPaul’s Drag Race

BEST NEW UNSCRIPTED SERIES
The D’Amelio Show

BEST LIFESTYLE SHOW
Selena + Chef

BEST REALITY STAR 
Chrishell Stause: Selling Sunset 

BEST REALITY ROMANCE
Loren & Alexei Brovarnik: Loren & Alexei: After the 90 Days

BEST TALK/TOPICAL SHOW
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

BEST HOST
Kelly Clarkson: The Kelly Clarkson Show 

BREAKTHROUGH SOCIAL STAR 
Bella Poarch: @bellapoarch on TikTok

BEST FIGHT
Bosco vs. Lady Camden: RuPaul’s Drag Race

BEST REALITY RETURN
Paris Hilton: Cooking with Paris & Paris in Love

REALITY ROYALTY
Bethany Frankel

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

At 59 years old, Tom Cruise is about to have the biggest domestic hit of his blockbuster-filled career, and Top Gun: Maverick is just taking off.

Deadline predicts the film will pass the $274 million mark at the domestic box office by Monday — which will handily beat Cruise’s previous U.S. high-water mark, 2005’s War of the Worlds, which earned $235 million.

Maverick is doing so well — it still has a nearly unheard-of 97% Critics Score and a 99% Audience Score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes — that the 1986 original Top Gun is topping the streaming charts, according to watchdog Reelgood.

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As part of its American Masters series, PBS debuts Joe Papp in Five Acts — which examines the groundbreaking career of producer/director Joe Papp, who founded Manhattan’s famed Shakespeare in the Park festival and The Public Theater. He went on to produce signature Broadway Productions like Hair and A Chorus Line.

Martin Sheen, who starred in Papp’s production of Hamlet in 1967 at New York’s Public Theater, tells ABC Audio Papp’s influence was a game-changer for theatre.

“He was a force that managed to reach such a wide audience in the culture, with culture. He started that with the New York Shakespeare Festival and insisted that there be no charge so that the common people could have access and it worked, says Sheen. He notes Papp overcame many obstacles, including then-parks commissioner Robert Moses, who saw a chance to profit off the productions.

The Grace and Frankie actor adds that for three decades Papp not only changed American theatre, but thousands of lives as well. “Night after night I would look out into the audience in Central Park when I was playing there and you’d see Black and brown, and old and young, and rich and poor, and male and female all in one place and they all got it,” Sheen recalls.

Sheen says Papp’s early work came at a time of great turmoil in American history, and his productions needed to reflect that.

“Reverend [Martin Luther] King had just been assassinated, we had already lost Bobby Kennedy earlier. John Kennedy had been killed a few years before that. We were involved in a very, very intense war in Vietnam and there was great upheaval in the culture, and so he was trying to reflect that,” says Sheen. (AUDIO IS ABC 1-ON-1)

American Masters: Joe Papp in Five Acts premieres Friday on PBS.

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Jurassic World Dominion doesn’t open in the U.S. until June 10, but it has already begun to roar overseas.

The film, which unites Jurassic World stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard with Jurassic Park leads Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, earned $16.7 million this week from foreign moviegoers, Variety reports.

The trade notes that the reunited cast has goosed interest in the movie overseas. For example, Dominion‘s opening in Italy jumped 75% over Jurassic World‘s first sequel Fallen Kingdom; in Mexico, the movie’s $5.1 million second-day opening was the one of the highest of the pandemic era.

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