Entertainment

In a new installment of his podcast The Problem with Jon Stewart, Jon weighed in on the controversy surrounding The Joe Rogan Podcast on Spotify.

Recently, artists including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell boycotted the platform, accusing Rogan of “spreading misinformation” about COVID-19. 

Stewart took a different tack. “Don’t leave, don’t abandon, don’t censor. Engage,” he declared.

He also said Rogan has been the target of “overblown rhetoric,” adding, “I don’t see Rogan as an ideologue in any way.” 

As evidence, Stewart mentioned an episode in which a guest corrected Rogan on-air regarding COVID-19, and Rogan admitted his mistake — something Stewart said Fox News host Tucker Carlson would never do.

Rogan’s podcast attracts some 11 million listeners an episode, which is obviously worth a lot to Spotify. Stewart snarked, “First of all, I love…Neil Young’s music, but to think it was worth $4 billion in value to Spotify caught me off guard.”

Spotify subsequently agreed to add disclaimers to controversial episodes of Rogan’s shows — to which Stewart commented, “I’m a ‘Cinnamon Girl’ as much as the next guy…but when he pulled his music off of Spotify, and Spotify [blinked], that doesn’t seem right.”

Stewart writer Chelsea Devantez added that if Taylor Swift had boycotted the streaming service, there’d be hell to pay.  In response, Stewart joked, “She’s spread disinformation as well. She’s out there saying Jake Gyllenhaal isn’t a stand-up individual. And I will say this: I don’t think he even has the scarf!”

Knowing he might incur the wrath of Swifties for the joke, Stewart admitted Taylor fans — like those of BTS and other groups — can be rabid. 

“I got less blowback from Israel/Palestine than I got from a One Direction joke I did,” he admitted.

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Netflix rolled out the red carpet for a star-packed preview of its upcoming 2022 movies, featuring a Who’s Who of Hollywood. 

Interestingly, the stars sound off from the sets of their respective films for the streaming service, as if their characters are breaking the fourth wall to talk to viewers.

“Tonight is movie night,” Jennifer Lopez opens the preview, on a boat in her upcoming film, The Mother.

“You can go places your dreams can’t dream of,” follows Jason Momoa, in full costume — and goat horns — from the set of Slumberland.

Jamie Foxx, in the middle of a Day Shift car stunt, continues, “Or, see things that will give your nightmares nightmares.”

Ryan Gosling, choking a guy on top of a speeding bus in the spy thriller The Grey Man, offers, “In here, you can make your escape.” 

Henry Cavill, from the narrow 19th-century London streets of Enola Holmes, says, “In here, mystery sparks extraordinary adventure.” Co-star Millie Bobby Brown replies, gesturing to the camera, “The real mystery is why you’re talking to them! I thought that was my thing!”

“In here you can make an incredible discovery,” Halle Berry adds from an outdoor set on The Mothership, to which The Adam Project star Ryan Reynolds continues from an elevator, “Or feel like a kid again.”

Interspersed between the comments are clips from all the stars’ films, as well as sneak peeks of Daniel Craig in Knives Out 2, Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key in Wendell & Wild, Kevin Hart and Mark Wahlberg in Me Time, Hustle and Spaceman from Adam Sandler, Foxx’s They Cloned Tyrone, and many more.

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The forthcoming movie musical of The Color Purple has found its leading ladies.

American Idol season three winner Fantasia will play Celie and Orange Is the New Black alum Danielle Brooks will play Sofia, it was announced Thursday during ABC News’ Soul of a Nation Presents: Screen Queens Rising.

The parts were made famous by Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, respectively, in Steven Spielberg‘s 1985 film adaptation of Alice Walker‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel of the same name. Both actresses earned their first Oscar nominations for their work in the movie.

A musical version of the iconic work was staged on Broadway from 2005 to 2008, with Fantasia playing the role of Celie from 2007 to 2008 during the original Broadway run. Brooks earned a Tony nod for playing Sofia in the Broadway revival, which ran from 2015 to 2017.

Winfrey surprised a very emotional Brooks with a Zoom call to tell her she landed the role, saying, “I am here representing all things purple to tell you that you are our Sophia. I’m so happy to pass whatever baton from 35 — almost 40 — years ago to you. And I know you’re gonna kill it.”

“My heart is so full,” a teary Brooks said. “I’m going to make you so proud.”

“You already have,” Winfrey responded. “I wanted to be the one to tell you because you know I have such love for her, this character, everything she represents and everything she brought to my life. And what I’m hoping is that she does the same thing for you.”

Fantasia and Brooks join a star-studded The Color Purple cast including Taraji P. Henson, H.E.R. and Halle Bailey. The film, to be directed by Blitz Bazawule, begins production this spring and is slated for release in 2023.

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Halle Berry has starred in a couple of action movies recently, including Bruised and John Wick: Chapter Three — Parabellum.  Now there’s Moonfall, out today.

The 55-year-old actress tells ABC News she’s enjoying her action star status, especially with this film.

“I love the diversity of being able to play different kinds of roles and especially in this movie. This role was written for a man. Talk about diversity,” she says. “You know, I love that [director Roland Emmerich] had the forethought and the idea to diversify this role and make her a Black woman. That was pretty impressive.”

So what can we expect from Moonfall?

“Get ready. It’s a classic Roland Emmerich disaster film that’s surely going to entertain you,” notes Berry. “You’re going to see some special effects and things that, you know, you probably haven’t seen before.”

Moonfall may be an action-disaster flick, but Berry says there are “real conversations to be had” around its subject matter, which centers on the Moon being knocked from its orbit by an unknown force and put onto a collision course with Earth.

“You know, and there’s a debate, and we would have a healthy debate all the time on the set about all of these theories and what was true and what wasn’t true and what we all believed and things we had read. And you know, it’s never ending, actually,” says Berry.  

Moonfall also stars Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu and Donald Sutherland.

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Paramount has greenlit a sixth installment of the Scream franchise from the creative team behind the current film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film series debuted in 1996 and is written by Kevin Williamson, with the first four films being directed by Wes Craven. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette have starred in all six films, which have collectively grossed over $800 million. The new Scream — the first since Craven’s death in 2015 — has grossed $106.2 million worldwide over its first three weeks of release. Casting for the next chapter has yet to be announced…

Peacock dropped the first trailer for Joe vs. Carole, the limited series based on the Wondery podcast Joe Exotic: Tiger King. The series, starring Saturday Night Live‘s Kate McKinnon, centers on Carole Baskin, “a big-cat enthusiast, who learns that fellow exotic animal lover Joe ‘Exotic’ Schreibvogel is breeding and using his big cats for profit. She sets out to shut down his venture, inciting a quickly escalating rivalry. But Carole has a checkered past of her own and, when the claws come out, Joe will stop at nothing to expose what he sees as her hypocrisy.” Joe vs. Carole also stars Kyle MacLachlan, Brian Van Holt, Sam Keeley, Nat Wolff, Marlo Kelly, William Fichtner, Dean Winters and David Wenham. All eight episodes will debut March 3 on Peacock…(Trailer contains uncensored profanity.)

Paramount has renewed Yellowstone for a fifth season, according to Variety. The modern-day Western stars Kevin Costner as John Dutton, a fifth-generation rancher defending his sprawling Montana property from land developers while dealing with dysfunctional relationships with his four adult children. The series also stars Kelly Reilly, Cole Hauser, Luke Grimes, Kelsey Asbille, Gil Birmingham, Wes Bentley, Brecken Merrill, Jefferson White, Forrie Smith, Denim Richards, Ian Bohen, Finn Little and Ryan Birmingham, all of whom will return for season five, along with Jen Landon and Kathryn Kelly, who have been upped to series regulars…

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Jackass Forever hits theaters today. It’s the sixth movie in the bone-breaking MTV franchise, but if its your first time tuning in, have no fear, Steve-O, who stars in the film, provided some insight on what to expect. 

“I would describe Jackass to somebody who hasn’t seen it as wholesome in the most surprising way,” he told ABC News. “You know, we do reckless things, irreverent things, but we’re not mean-spirited at all. And the spirit of what we do is so positive that I really feel that it’s wholesome and wonderful. And I think that this is a time when when people need that.”

Johnny Knoxville, who also stars in the action-comedy, added, “I think you need to watch it in the theater because you…don’t want to be on a roller coaster alone. You want to be on a roller coaster with everyone else.”

Jackass Forever reunited Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Wee Man, and the rest of the gang, which Knoxville equated to getting “a dysfunctional family back together.”

“We’ve been friends for so long and we love each other, and it’s great to get the family back together, a dysfunctional family back together,” he explained. “And even though the guys know they’re going to be put through hell, bless them. They still love it. And I know that I’m going to go through so much and I still love it.”

Part of what they go through in Jackass involves stunts and despite what it looks like, the stars aren’t fearless. 

“It’s not about being totally fearless and brave, it’s, you can be totally scared, but you still do it,” Pontius said.

“And that’s what makes it,” added Steve-O. “That’s the definition of courage. It’s not being fearless. It’s fighting through your fear.” 

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Mystery fans who have been searching for a new puzzle to solve will have to put on their thinking caps when Suspicion airs Friday on Apple TV+. The show, which stars Uma Thurman, Noah Emmerich, Kunal Nayyar, Elizabeth Henstridge and more, aims at keeping the audience guessing about a kidnapping and its sociopolitical implications. 

Nayyar, best known for playing Raj on The Big Bang Theory, tells ABC Audio the series has a classic feel.  “It is a really, really good, big, suspenseful drama.  A real, true whodunit,” he says, noting that the audience will be kept questioning “if these characters did it” and “who was responsible.”

Star Tom Rhys Harries echoes Nayyar’s summary and adds, “What the show does well is makes us question, I guess, people in authority. We are, as a people, more suspicious.”

“There’s also a lot of information out there that we can access by just reaching into our pocket and grabbing whatever device you have on you. But then there’s misinformation, there’s facts and lies,” he adds. “And then these are questions that the show is posing to all of us and, you know, asking the audience to engage with, but not necessarily answering them.”

Aside from keeping viewers suspecting everyone on the show, Henstridge, who you might know from Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, adds the series is not only about a mystery — it’s an action thriller.

“I just love fight scenes, car chases, massive explosions, and this show has all of that,” she teases. 

Suspicion is available now on Apple TV+ with new episodes arriving every Friday.

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Fifty Shades of Grey star Dakota Johnson is reportedly attached to a Spider-Man universe movie called Madame Web for Sony Pictures.

Deadline reports the actress will play the title character, first introduced in the pages of Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man #210 in 1980. 

However, despite the character’s name, she’s not a female Spider-Man — instead, Cassandra Webb was actually a mutant with psychic and other abilities, whose incredibly powerful mind was trapped in a body confined to a hospital bed, thanks to the degenerative neuromuscular condition myasthenia gravis.

Blind and enfeebled, Cassandra Webb’s physical form is kept alive thanks to a life support system that featured enough tubes to resemble a spider’s web — so it’s likely that the character will be reworked to better fit the 32-year-old actress. 

Then again, comics being comics, one issue explored Webb being magically cured of her disease and reborn younger; another run saw the Madame Webb powers and mantle being passed to a younger heroine altogether, Julia Carpenter.

S.J. Johnson, the executive producer and lead director of Netflix’s acclaimed Marvel series Jessica Jones, is calling the shots on the film.

Incidentally, Deadline didn’t mention Disney-owned Marvel Studios in its story, which could mean Sony Pictures is undertaking the project without being attached to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as its hit Venom movies were…until only recently. 

Sony’s last Spidey film, Spider-Man: No Way Home — which was a co-production with Marvel Studios — has made $1.7 billion worldwide.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Presumed Innocent, the Scott Turow legal thriller that became the hit 1990 film starring Harrison Ford, the late Raul Julia, and Bonnie Bedelia, is becoming a series for Apple TV+. 

The new limited series will be produced by The Practice and Boston Legal‘s David E. Kelley, along with J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production house. 

The series, like the book, will center on a Chicago prosecutor who is accused of the murder of a colleague, with whom he’s having a torrid affair. Greta Scacchi played the “other woman” and victim, and Die Hard‘s Bedelia played the wife of Ford’s character, who struggles to clear his name against all odds.

According to producers Warner Bros. Television and Apple TV+, the series will be, “exploring obsession, sex, politics, and the power and limits of love, as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Since the original film hinged on a major twist that most know by now — the prosecutor’s seemingly meek wife did it — it’s not known how the series will deviate from Turow’s bestseller.

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Samuel L. Jackson will receive the Chairman’s Award during the 53rd NAACP Image Awards.

The honor recognizes individuals who demonstrate exemplary public service and use their distinct platforms to create agents of change. Past honorees include the late U.S. Congressman John Lewis, Danny Glover, Tyler Perry, and Barack Obama.

As previously reported, Jennifer Hudson, Lil Nas X, Megan Thee Stallion, Regina King and Tiffany Haddish are the nominees for Entertainer of the Year. The 53rd NAACP Image Awards, hosted by seven-time NAACP Image Awards winner Anthony Anderson, airs Saturday, February 26 at 8:00 PM ET/PT on BET.

In other news, Spike Lee announced that he will direct and produce an ESPN docuseries about former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Colin played six seasons for the San Francisco 49ers, and in 2013, led the team to the Super Bowl, where they lost 34-31 to the Baltimore Ravens. During the 2016 season, he ignited a national controversy when he knelt during the National Anthem to protest racial injustice. ​The series will explore his life, including his eventual release after that season and blackballing from the league.

Finally, Issa Rae is inviting fans to stay at her Airbnb during Super Bowl weekend, February 12-14, in Los Angeles. For only $56 a night, guests can visit the landmarks popularized by her series, Insecure.

“Since my series debuted in 2016, it’s been an honor to showcase the people, culture and businesses that make South LA such a vibrant part of the city,” Issa explained in a statement. “I became an Airbnb host to create a stay where fans of the show can experience this for themselves. From dinner by Worldwide Tacos on game day, to art from my favorite local artists on the walls – this is LA, my way.”

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