Zack Snyder on crafting the intricate universe in ‘Rebel Moon’

December 21, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Are you ready to travel to Rebel Moon?

Zack Snyder’s latest directorial effort is the sprawling space epic Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, which streams Thursday on Netflix. Snyder told ABC Audio that the film is a cathartic redemption story.

“It’s about finding home, and about finding a family and finding that thing in your life that is worth fighting for, worth dying for,” Snyder said.

The film’s universe was intricately crafted. Snyder says he and his team spent the last five years building out mythology and languages, trying to always find the answer to specific questions that came up along the way.

Such questions included: “What does Motherworld’s historical map look like? What are their origin stories? Where did they come from? What are their genesis myths? What are their religious, competing religious beliefs that all got kind of distilled down to a single kind of singular way of thinking?” Snyder said.

In fact, Snyder’s been crafting this universe so intricately, he says it’s reminiscent of a guy in a basement with a corkboard full of pictures connected with strings.

“I have a version of it,” Snyder said. “We have a giant dry erase that has, like, all the different planets and their stories and the timeline. And there’s a few of those around the different offices.”

Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire becomes available for streaming Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on Netflix.

Shannen Doherty says ‘Charmed’ co-star got her fired from series

December 20, 2023 by WDNY Radio

On the latest episode of her Let’s Be Clear podcast, Shannen Doherty let something off her chest: She never quit the series Charmed.

Doherty recounted with her guest, former Charmed co-star Holly Marie Combs, that she was all but fired by their co-star Alyssa Milano.

“The narrative that I ‘quit’ was assigned to me by other people,” Doherty declared.

The actress added, “I don’t want to keep lying about something that meant the absolute world to me, something that I loved doing. I loved going to that job. I loved the people that I worked with.”

She continued, “Now, at my age, and dealing with Stage 4 cancer, I just don’t feel like I have to keep telling a lie.”

Combs agreed with Doherty’s revelation, explaining Milano had reportedly threatened legal action against the former Beverly Hills, 90210 star.

Recalling a conversation with Charmed producer Jonathan Levin, Combs quoted him as saying, “‘We were told that it’s her [Doherty] or me. Alyssa has threatened to sue us for a hostile workplace environment.'”

Combs continued, “Because [Milano] went to … the corporate mediator … she built a case for herself where she was documenting every time she felt uncomfortable on set and for whatever reason, whereas you and I refused to speak to him. So that’s where the deck was stacked.”

For her part, Shannen says, “I don’t ever remember being mean to [Milano] on set. I remember an episode that I directed where … they asked me to work around some things with her and I couldn’t have been more kind and understanding.”

Doherty asserted the network built the show around her, but the “competitiveness” soon kicked in between her and Milano.

Co-writer says Quentin Tarantino’s R-rated version would have been the “greatest ‘Star Trek’ film”

December 20, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NOTE LANGUAGE) Quentin Tarantino is reportedly ready to call it a career with his 10th directorial effort, the forthcoming The Movie Critic. But that likely means fans will never see what he would have made of Star Trek.

According to Mark L. Smith, who co-wrote the “hard-R”-rated script with Tarantino, the project would have gone where no Star Trek adventure had gone before.

“I would love for it to happen,” Smith tells Collider. “It’s just one of those things that I can’t ever see happening. But it would be the greatest Star Trek film, not for my writing, but just for what Tarantino was gonna do with it.”

Smith added, “I think his vision was just to go hard. It was a hard R. It was going to be some Pulp Fiction violence. Not a lot of the language, we saved a couple things for just special characters to kind of drop that into the Star Trek world, but it was just really the edginess and the kind of that Tarantino flair,” the writer says.

Smith says wistfully that the film’s “different vibe” would have “changed things” in same way as Thor: Ragnarok, Taika Waititi‘s skewed take on the God of Thunder that became that hero’s biggest box office hit.

Ultimately, however, Tarantino’s focus on ending his run with 10 films may have sealed Trek‘s fate. “I remember we were talking, and he goes, ‘If I can just wrap my head around the idea that Star Trek could be my last movie, the last thing I ever do. Is this how I want to end it?'” Smith explains.

“And I think that was the bump he could never get across, so the script is still sitting there on his desk.”

Taraji P. Henson gives tearful response about quitting acting, citing unfair pay

December 20, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Taraji P. Henson says she’s tired of being paid unfairly for her work as an actor and as a result, she may quit.

One of the stops as part of the press run for The Color Purple included a sit-down with Gayle King, who asked the star about rumors regarding the end of her acting career.

Henson, who became emotional in video of the interview, said, “I’m just tired of working so hard, being gracious at what I do [and] getting paid a fraction of the cost.”

She added, “I’m tired of hearing my sisters say the same thing over and over. You get tired. I hear people go, ‘You work a lot.’ Well, I have to. The math ain’t math-ing. And when you start working a lot, you know, you have a team. Big bills come with what we do. We don’t do this alone. … It’s a whole entire team behind us. They have to get paid.”

The Proud Mary star explained the large percentage of funds taken from paychecks: “Uncle Sam is getting 50%. … Your team is getting 30% … off what you gross, not after what Uncle Sam took.”

“Every time I do something and I break another glass ceiling, when it’s time to renegotiate I’m at the bottom again like I never did what I just did,” she said. “And I’m tired. I’m tired. I’m tired. It wears on you.”

Sobbing at one point, Henson added, “If I can’t fight for them coming up behind me, then what the f*** am I doing?”

Henson said that despite her success in acting, she’s told there’s not enough money because Black actors “don’t translate overseas.”

“When it’s time for us to go to bat, [they] don’t have any money,” she said. “Enough is enough.”

Sydney Sweeney describes the “shock” of losing ‘Euphoria’ co-star Angus Cloud

December 20, 2023 by WDNY Radio

In a wide-ranging conversation with Glamour UK, Sydney Sweeney says she hasn’t fully processed the July 31 death of her Euphoria co-star Angus Cloud.

Cloud died at 25 years old from what authorities said was an accidental overdose.

She recalls hearing the news, and how she and her co-stars “were constantly on the phone with each other crying, because it was just such a shock.”

The Emmy-winning HBO show doesn’t get back before the cameras until 2024, and Sweeney notes, “I don’t think it’ll truly feel real or hit me until we’re filming and I won’t see Angus on set.”

The Anyone But You star adds that being back together will help the cast better support each other.

“[W]hen we are filming, all of our eyes are on each other and we’re there for each other, just in a different way than we’re able to when we’re all in very separate places in the world,” Sweeney expresses.

Sweeney says, “It’s really interesting when someone passes away in our industry, because they’re still alive in so many forms.”

‘Mean Girls’ musical film giving fans their own burn books and digital looks

December 20, 2023 by WDNY Radio

‘It’s Wednesday, so that means there’s more Mean Girls fun to be had.

Paramount Pictures is getting fans ready for the January 12 release of the musical film version of the blockbuster with their very own burn books.

The digital versions of the infamous tome that shook up North Shore High School can be customized on the movie’s official website.

Meanwhile, the studio is also getting would-be Plastics camera-ready with another multimedia offering: Mean Girls selfie presents and other themed digital makeup looks for FaceTime.

As reported, Angourie Rice succeeds Lindsay Lohan in the role of Cady Heron, a homeschooled student who is welcomed into the top of the school’s social food chain by the elite group of popular girls called The Plastics.

Reneé Rapp plays queen bee Regina George; Bebe Wood is Gretchen; and Avantika plays Karen in this film adaptation of the hit stage musical spinoff.

Also starring are Christopher Briney, Auli’i Cravalho [Ow-lee-ee], Jaquel Spivey and original Mean Girls writer, co-producer and co-star Tina Fey.

Nicole Kidman stars in dramatic trailer for ‘Expats’

December 20, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Nicole Kidman, Sarayu Blue and Ji-young Yoo star in the dramatic new trailer for Expats.

The six-part limited series, from The Farewell director Lulu Wang and based on Janice Y. K. Lee‘s novel The Expatriates, premieres January 26 on Amazon’s Prime Video.

According to the official synopsis, Expats is set in 2014 Hong King and “centers on three American women — Margaret (Kidman), Hilary (Blue) and Mercy (Yoo) — whose lives intersect after a sudden family tragedy.”

“The series interrogates privilege and explores what happens when the line between victimhood and culpability becomes blurred,” the synopsis continues.

Also starring in the limited series are Brian Tee as Margaret’s husband, Clarke, and Jack Huston as Hilary’s husband, David.

Meghan Markle cameos in coffee brand’s Instagram update

December 20, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation

For those who miss seeing Meghan Markle on camera in Suits, the so-called runaway royal plays multiple members of a hard-working coffee company team in a new Instagram video.

Markle appears in a post from Clevr, a California-based instant latte company in which she’s invested.

As Clevr co-founder Hannah Mendoza gives followers a tour of her facility — and the team that has been toiling away on holiday orders — the Duchess of Sussex pops up as a packing line worker, a “slightly nerdy” IT worker and a member of the ops team, called “the glue” that holds the company together.

On the latter “job,” Markle is pretending to be busy on the phone, but accidentally cracks up as she passes the camera.

Captioning the video, Mendoza noted, “Damn, you’re keeping us BUSY right now! Had to call in some reinforcements.” She added, “[S]o grateful for the immense love and support this year—thanks for helping us keep the latte-loving dream alive, and thriving!”

George Clooney reflects on loss of “great, funny” Matthew Perry

December 20, 2023 by WDNY Radio

NBC’s 1990s “Must See TV” line-up famously saw Seinfeld, Friends, and ER dominating Thursday nights, and George Clooney looked back at those days to Deadline, through the lens of the loss of Matthew Perry.

“I knew Matt when he was 16 years old. We used to play paddle tennis together,” Clooney recalled of the actor who died at 54 on October 28.

An autopsy report named acute effects of ketamine as Perry’s cause of death.

“He’s about 10 years younger than me,” Clooney adds. “And he was a great, funny, funny, funny kid. He was a kid and all he would say to us … was, ‘I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom and I would be the happiest man on earth.'”

Clooney continues, “And he got on probably one of the best ever. He wasn’t happy. It didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace. And watching that go on on the lot — we were at Warner Brothers, we were there right next to each other — it was hard to watch because we didn’t know what was going through him.”

He adds he didn’t know about Perry’s Vicodin addiction at the time. “We just knew that he wasn’t happy … And it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life.”

Clooney says the casts of Friends and ER made their debuts together at NBC’s Upfront presentation in 1994, and remained “all really close.”

He explains, “Two weeks after we debuted, we were on the cover of Newsweek. Everything changed for us after that.”

Can you feel the ‘Ken’ EP? Ryan Gosling’s ‘Barbie’ track spawns new record

December 20, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Ryan Gosling‘s turn as Ken in the blockbuster Barbie has spawned his very own EP.

Along with collaborators Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, Gosling’s Ken: The EP features not only his show-stopping track “I’m Just Ken” from the Grammy-nominated Barbie soundtrack, but also alternate versions “I’m Just Ken (Merry Kristmas Barbie),” “In My Feelings Acoustic” and “Purple Disco Machine Remix.”

The holiday version of the tune also dropped a performance video of Gosling, Ronson and company laying the track down in a studio bedazzled with Christmas lights, after they riff on the possibility they’re creating a year-round classic that can also be celebrated at the holidays, à la Die Hard.

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