Entertainment

James Corden is marking his final season as the host of The Late Late Show by returning with a week’s worth of shows staged in his native London.

The four-show stint will be shot at Freemasons’ Hall in Central London, starting Monday, June 27 through Thursday, June 30. It will be the fourth time The Late Late Show will stop in the U.K., and the first time since the pandemic.

When Corden announced last month that he was stepping down from the chat show, he promised to “make the most” of his final season, and the U.K. trip is part of that: CBS hints Corden will “share highlights of his homeland with American viewers, and The Late Late Show‘s signature musical and comedy segments will get a British makeover.”

In the past, Corden’s staged “Crosswalk the Musical” and “Carpool Karaoke” across The Pond.

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Francis Ford Coppola‘s cast for his big-budget, long-gestating film project Megalopolis has been revealed

The Hollywood Reporter reports that the legendary 83-year-old Godfather series filmmaker’s upcoming movie will feature Oscar nominees Adam Driver and Lawrence Fishburne, and Academy Award winners Forrest Whitaker and Jon Voight, along with Fast and Furious series and Game of Thrones alumna Nathalie Emmanuel.

Five-time Oscar winner Coppola is financing the reportedly $120 million film himself. While the exact plot is a secret, it has been described as an “epic story of political ambition, genius, and conflicting interests,” centering on the goal of creating of an ideal society.

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Bridgerton‘s upcoming third season will see a new face playing a familiar character. Deadline is reporting Hannah Dodd will play Francesca Bridgerton in the bodice-ripper series, taking over for Ruby Stokes.

Stokes, who played the dry-witted character for two seasons, left during production of the sophomore frame to star in a new Netflix series called Lockwood & Co., based on the Jonathan Stroud book series.

It’s possible that with the new casting, the third season could focus more on the enigmatic Bridgerton sibling, in the way the second season has turned the attention to Jonathan Bailey‘s Anthony Bridgerton and his conflict between what his heart wants and his familial duty to find a bride.

The official Bridgerton Twitter account acknowledged the casting swap from Stokes to Anatomy of a Scandal vet Dodd with a post responding to Deadline’s headline. It reads, “The only thing the Ton loves more than a scandal is a celebration. Do joyously welcome the newest member to the Bridgerton family.”

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The Flash star Ezra Miller came up with a speedy excuse for a March incident for which he was arrested for disorderly conduct: It was for art.

TMZ has obtained police body cam footage of the actor, who uses they/them pronouns, both before and after their arrest. The incident, the first of Miller’s two recent arrests in Hawaii, occurred at a karaoke Margarita Village in Hilo, Hawaii.

Police said the actor grabbed a mic from a singing woman and lunged at a man playing darts. He was charged disorderly conduct and harassment, but as part of a plea deal, prosecutors later dropped the harassment charge, along with an unrelated traffic charge.

In the footage, Miller can be seen telling the cops, “I film myself when I get assaulted for NFT crypto art,” before screaming repeatedly screaming at the arresting officers, “Tell me your name and your badge number!”

The cops ignore Miller’s demands, who moments later is handcuffed and insists he is the one who was assaulted. Of one of their alleged victims, Miller the Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore star claimed the man “declared himself to be a Nazi,” and “he attacked me.”

They also invoked their “Ninth Amendment rights” to not be “unlawfully persecuted [sic] for a crime of no designation,” as well as their Fourth Amendment rights not to be unlawfully searched.

Miller also claims the officers touched his genitals while searching them, declaring, “I’m transgender and non-binary and I don’t want to be searched by a man.”

Last month, Miller was arrested for second-degree assault for allegedly hitting a woman with a chair at a house party in Hawaii.

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In a world full of reboots, would Zac Efron be down for a High School Musical reunion? Let’s just say you can bet on it.

When asked if he’d be interested in a reboot, the actor, who portrayed Troy Bolton in the original 2006 film and its sequels in 2007 and 2008, told E! News, “Of course.”

“Seriously, having the opportunity in any form to go back and work with that team would be so amazing,” he continued. “My heart’s still there.”

Though the original HSM cast, which also included Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Corbin Bleu and others, has yet to reunite for a revival, High School Musical: The Musical, a spinoff starring Olivia Rodrigo currently has two seasons under its belt on Disney+.

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A Simple Favor stars Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively are set to reprise their roles in an upcoming sequel to the 2018 dark comedy-thriller, with Paul Feig returning to direct as well, sources tell Deadline. A Simple Favor was a global box office hit, earning upward of $97 million. It starred Kendrick as Stephanie, a mommy vlogger who attempts to figure out why and how her best friend Emily — played by Lively — goes missing. In the process, she discovers Emily isn’t exactly who she said she was…

Jennifer Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions is teaming up with Skydance Television and Concord Originals for a series based on Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, with Rachel Shukert, who created The Baby-Sitters Club for Netflix, adapting the musical and serving as showrunner, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Cinderella, the only musical Rogers & Hammerstein created for television, debuted in 1957 starring Julie Andrews. A revival, starring Lesley Ann Warren as Cinderella, aired in 1965, followed by another in 1997 with Brandy Norwood as Cinderella and Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother…

(NOTE LANGUAGE) E! announced on Wednesday that it will add six new original scripted rom-com movies to its current pop-culture-centric programming. No further details were given. They join the channels new series slate that includes Celebrity Beef, hosted and executive produced by Joel McHale; Black Pop, executive produced by Stephen Curry; and Raising a F***ing Star, which follows “larger-than-life parents and their budding child stars, who are dancers, actors and models”…

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Andy Dick was arrested on Wednesday in Orange County, California on charges of alleged felony sexual battery after an adult male claimed the actor and comic sexually assaulted him.

Video of the arrest on Captain Content’s RV‘s live stream shows several Orange County Sheriff’s Deputies speaking with Dick, 56, before walking him to their vehicles, continuing the conversation and eventually cuffing him and taking him away.

Dick and a group of live streamers have been living at the site in RVs for some time now, according to the outlet. Sheriff’s deputies were reportedly seen searching Dick’s RV after he was placed into custody. They also requested the male victim’s pants as evidence, according to TMZ.

This isn’t the first time Dick, who starred in Road Trip and the sitcom NewsRadio, has been accused of inappropriate behavior. He has a long history of it, something he readily admitted to The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, joking, “My middle name is ‘misconduct’.” The comment came after Dick was fired from the film Raising Buchanan over sexual misconduct claims.

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In the new film The Duke, Helen Mirren and Jim Broadbent star as Dorothy and Kempton Bunton, a real-life husband and wife involved in a famous art theft in London in the 1960s.

Mirren tells ABC Audio that the movie “wasn’t just a comedy…it had this tragic side to it as well where you genuinely are investigating the effects of grief on a marriage and on personalities along with a comedic caper.”

Mirren says the couple deals with grief in two very different ways. 

“You would think that the wife would be the one who wants to constantly engage with the grief, and the husband would be the one who’d want to just try and put it in the past,” she explains. “In fact, in this film, it’s the other way round.”

Mirren says she was particularly fascinated with Bunton’s argument in court that he “wasn’t stealing” Francisco Goya‘s famous portrait of the Duke of Wellington, “just borrowing it for a while.”

Mirren goes on to explain Bunton claim that he “was always going to give it back” and “wasn’t going to sell it or anything like that. So, you know, it was actually a very clever argument.”

In the film, when Dorothy gets stressed, she cleans, and the Oscar-winning actress says she can relate, admitting, “there’s something very satisfying about making your bath sparkle, your basin and the taps, you know, the faucets, as you say, in America.”

“I have to say, I had a very close relationship with my Dyson vacuum cleaner during COVID. I posted on it, you know, it had become my best friend, I absolutely loved it. And laundry…I genuinely love doing laundry.”

The Duke opens nationwide this week.

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While Netflix’s hemorrhaging 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of the year had some in the industry thinking streaming might have some headwinds ahead, now comes news that Disney+ beat Wall Street expectations.

According to an earnings call for ABC News’ parent company, Disney, it was revealed that Disney+ now has nearly 138 million subscribers, adding nearly 8 million in the first three months of 2022 alone. Wall Street anticipated its subscriber growth to be in the neighborhood of 5 million.

All told, Disney+ numbers bumped up 33% from last year.

Buoyed by hits like Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight, and Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian, and the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi, the streaming service isn’t slowing down, says CEO Bob Chapek. He predicts some 230 million to 260 million subscribers by the end of 2024.

Disney-partnered property Hulu attracted 45.6 million subscribers; Disney-owned ESPN+ now has 22.3 million subscribers, it was also revealed. Both streaming services saw increases over last year.

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Actress Alexandra Daddario, who played the role of Annabeth Chase — daughter of the Greek goddess Athena — in the two Percy Jackson films The Lightning Thief and Sea of Monsters, gave her support to the casting of Black actress Leah Jeffries in the same role for the upcoming Percy Jackson and the Olympians Disney+ series.

“Leah Jeffries is going to be an incredible Annabeth!!!,” Daddario tweeted Tuesday night.

The support is welcome, as Jeffries, who’s only 12, has been experiencing blowback from being cast in the role. She explained during an Instagram live that her TikTok account was banned due to people being upset, saying, “all the people did not want me to be Annabeth, they took down my whole account…but that’s not going to stop us!”

Author Rick Riordan, who wrote the Percy Jackson book series, hit back at all the casting controversy in a blog post Tuesday titled “Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase.” He directly addressed the naysayers, writing that they are “judging her appropriateness for the role solely and exclusively based on how she looks. She is a Black girl playing someone who was described in the books as white.”

Percy Jackson and the Olympians will follow the story of Riordan’s best-selling novels, in which the main characters are introduced as 12 years old. Riordan says that embodiment of the character and age were his main concerns when casting, writing that “the true nature of the character lies in their personality…once you see Leah as Annabeth, she will become exactly the way you imagine Annabeth.”

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