Entertainment

The new show As We See It, debuting today on Amazon Prime Video, is very personal for creator Jason Katims, the guy behind Parenthood and Friday Night Lights.

The series is about three adults with Autism, and the various challenges they face trying to navigate work and love and life — a situation, Katims tells ABC Audio, that his own son experienced not too long ago.

“I have a son on the spectrum, and a few years ago, he was just getting to that age of being a young adult,” he explains. “And I realized, well, you know, there’s a lot that you see about and hear and read about children on the spectrum, less so about what the experience is really like for an adult on the spectrum. So it was a subject matter that was very personal to me that I was learning about. And that’s always a good thing to write about.”

Likewise, Katims, made sure the actors — Rick Glassman, Albert Rutecki and Sue Ann Pien — had a personal connection with the subject matter, which he accomplished by “casting the three leads who all identified themselves as being on the spectrum” so they could “make it feel as real and authentic as possible.”

“By making those choices,” he says, “not only is it real and authentic, but it’s also incredibly delightful to watch.”

And just like his other shows, As We See It will make you laugh and make you cry, a track record that Katims sometimes finds a little “weird.”

“I don’t know what I feel about it. I think that, though, the thing that nobody ever talks about is in order to have your emotions available to cry, you have to first laugh.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Apple TV+ has announced that it’s launching a live-action TV series based on Godzilla and his other giant monster friends and frenemies, the Titans. 

The untitled series will be backed by Star Trek: Enterprise‘s Chris Black and Matt Fraction, whose Marvel Comics’ Hawkeye run is a fan favorite — and was a major inspiration for the just-wrapped Disney+ series of the same name.

The recent so-called Monsterverse movies began with the stand-alone 2014 film Godzilla. That movie was followed up by 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, which hinted at an expanded universe of other Titans.

2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters was next, followed by 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong. The films earned more than $2 billion bucks worldwide.

Incidentally, those movies were co-produced by Warner Bros. with Legendary Pictures, so it’s curious that the Monsterverse series will stream on Apple TV+ instead of WB’s corporate sibling HBO Max, where the movies can currently be seen.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Jeannie Mai revealed the name of her first baby with husband Jeezy on Thursday

In a video posted on her Hello Hunnay YouTube channel, The Real co-host announced that the baby’s name is Monaco.

“I thought Baby J’s name should be a J name because obviously Jeannie and Jeezy, makes sense, but that wasn’t the name that came to us,” Jeannie explained. “What really came to us was how baby J came to fruition for us when we were dating.”

She recalled a trip to the European city-state of Monaco that she and Jeezy took where they talked about their goals for the future.

Then Mai pointed to a wall where Monaco’s name was printed and said that the nursery is themed after the moniker.

“That’s really the theme of the nursery: what Monaco is about. Family, moments, traveling, discussions, important key points in my life and Jeezy’s life that brought Monaco here,” she added.

On Thursday’s episode of The Real, the co-hosts also revealed the name, clarifying that the sex of the baby will be announced at a later date.

“Today is an extra exciting day because, guess what…we have a Baby J update,” Adrienne Bailon said. Then she pulled out an envelope and announced the name, reading, “Three years ago, Jeezy and Jeannie were talking on a bridge in France, talking about what it meant to do life together. Here they decided to grow and raise a family together. Hence, they named their child after the city that changed their lives forever: Monaco Mai Jenkins.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

The run time for The Batman, director Matt Reeves‘ forthcoming take on the Caped Crusader, has been revealed. 

The movie will run two hours and 47 minutes without credits, according to The Hollywood Reporter, making it one of the longest superhero movies ever released. The film, starring Robert Pattinson, Paul Dano, Zoe Kravitz, Colin Farrell and Jeffrey Wright, will be five minutes short of three hours with credits — and presumably will include a customary comic book movie end-credits scene.

That will make The Batman the third-longest superhero movie ever, behind only Zack Snyder‘s Justice League opus, which ran 242 minutes, and the 181-minutes-long Avengers: Endgame. 

In fact, the new film, which debuts March 4 in theaters and on HBO Max, is longer than what many Bat-fans see as a franchise high-water mark, Christopher Nolan‘s 165-minute The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and for which Heath Ledger won a posthumous Best Actor Oscar for playing The Joker.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Angela Bassett and husband Courtney B. Vance are serving as executive producers of the docuseries One Thousand Years of Slavery, which will premiere on the Smithsonian Channel during Black History Month on Monday, February 7 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Debbie Allen, Lorraine Toussaint, Soledad O’Brien, CCH Pounder, and Dulé Hill are among the personalities featured in the four-part series, which explores slavery’s legacy.

“One Thousand Years of Slavery stretches the canvas beyond the 400 years we’ve traditionally learned about, and I’m thrilled to bring this storytelling to life with Smithsonian Channel,” Bassett said in a statement. Vance added, “We are incredibly proud to be part of this journey.”

In other news, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie will make his directorial debut with Spark, a true story about Claudette Colvin, an unsung pioneer of the Civil Rights era, Deadline reports. Saniyya Sidney who portrayed Venus Williams in King Richard, will star as Colvin.

“It’s great to be a superhero in movies, but she’s a real live one living amongst us, and I’m honored to tell her story,” Mackie said in a statement.

Finally, grown-ish has dropped the trailer for the second half of its fourth season, which premieres January 27 on Freeform. In the clip, Zoey, portrayed by Yara Shahidi, is faced with choosing between love or her career as graduation approaches.

Specifically, Zoey must decide whether to pursue a fashion career in New York City with her ex-boyfriend, Luca, played by Luka Sabbat, or to accept the invitation from her current boyfriend Aaron, portrayed Trevor Jackson, to accompany him to South Africa, where he’s received a grant from the University of Johannesburg.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Bill Paxton‘s untimely death in 2017 was at the center of a Los Angeles’ judge’s decision on Wednesday. 

Deadline reports Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Steven J. Kleifield is allowing the actor’s widow, Louise Paxton, and the couple’s children, James and Lydia Paxton, to sue Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for punitive damages in connection with actor’s death.

The Twister and True Lies star’s cause of death was officially listed as a stroke, which he suffered 11 days after surgery to replace a heart valve and repair aorta damage. He was 61.

However, according to the family’s lawsuit, reports Deadline, surgeon Dr. Ali Khoynezhad — who no longer works for Cedars — “was known prior to the Paxton death to practice what has been testified to by the hospital staff as ‘cowboy medicine’…In Khoynezhad’s quest to generate more surgeries and higher numbers, he continued to push the envelope and pushed to do surgeries on cases that were marginal at best.”

After the actor’s death, the family’s suit alleges, “The heart surgery recommended to Bill Paxton was not indicated” in his cause of death, and continues, “Mr. Paxton did not meet even Khoynezhad’s own criteria for such a surgery.”

What’s more, the family claims Cedars-Sinai and Dr. Khoynezhad, “intentionally interfered with and thwarted their request for an autopsy to cover up the cause of Paxton’s death,” Deadline reports.

Further, Paxton’s relatives say that had they known that their requests for an autopsy would be denied, they would have made “alternative arrangements” to have one done before he was cremated.

A trial date for the punitive damages was also rescheduled from March to September 19.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

It has just been revealed where Tom Cruise‘s movie in outer space will be shot. U.K.-based Space Entertainment Enterprise (SEE) has announced that it’s co-producing the hush-hush film project for Cruise’s Day After Tomorrow director Doug Liman in SEE-1, the first dedicated movie studio in space.

Scheduled for completion in 2024, Axiom Space’s SEE-1 will be a fully functioning TV, film and streaming-content studio, which will couple with Axiom Station, a commercial space station that is scheduled to blast off on February 28.

The Axiom Station mission alone is another first: It will be the first fully commercial crew to join the astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS).

Axiom will first link to the International Space Station; the company says SEE-1 will join them in late 2024.

According to the company, the SEE-1 module “will allow artists, producers, and creatives to develop, produce, record, and live stream content which maximizes the Space Station’s low-orbit micro-gravity environment, including films, television, music and sports events.”

S.E.E.’s COO Richard Johnston said in the announcement, “From Jules Verne to Star Trek, science fiction entertainment has inspired millions of people around the world to dream about what the future might bring. Creating a next generation entertainment venue in space opens countless doors to create incredible new content and make these dreams a reality.”

As reported, while Cruise’s film will be the first Hollywood production to be shot in space, it won’t be the first movie to do so: In October, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress star Yulia Peresild and director Kim Shipenko blasted off to the ISS to shoot The Challenge, a film about a mission to send a doctor into space to save the life of a cosmonaut.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Kelly Rizzo is speaking out about her husband Bob Saget‘s sudden death and his impact on others.

In an interview that aired on Good Morning America on Thursday, an emotional Rizzo discussed her last conversation with her husband, his inimitable personality and how she is coping in the wake of his death on Jan. 9.

Saget, who was 65, was laid to rest in a star-studded funeral last Friday.

Rizzo, who wed the Full House actor and comedian in 2018, said her late husband had “the biggest heart.”

“He just wanted to spread love and laughter and he did it so amazingly, and I’m just so proud of him because he truly brought people together,” she said.

“He was just so wonderful and I was just so honored to be his wife and to be able to be a part of it and bring him any bit of happiness that I could because he deserved it so much.”

Rizzo added, “He did everything for everybody — if you had a problem, he was the first person that was going to…help you,” calling the stand-up comic and actor, “the most caring and kind and thoughtful person,” and the “most absolutely wonderful husband that I ever could have dreamed of.”

Rizzo described that her last conversation with her husband, following his comedy show in Florida, was a normal one: “He was just on his way…back to his hotel — and just was telling me what a wonderful show he had and how it was so amazing.”

“He was happy and just loving what he did,” she added. “It made him so happy to just bring laughter to people.”

She also shared that their final text communication was “I love you so much” and “I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Chrissy Teigen is six months sober.

On Wednesday, the Cravings author marked the milestone accomplishment, sharing photos of herself in an all-black outfit paired with a brown jacket to Instagram. 

“6 months no alcohol!” she announced in the caption. “Honestly kind of sucks saying it because even though I don’t ever crave it now, time has not exactly flown by haha.”

“I prob won’t be excited til a larger milestone like at leasssst 5 years, and sometimes I don’t even know if I necessarily won’t ever drink again? I have no idea what I’m doing honestly, but I do know a few things: I now have endless energy, way less anxiety (no more benzos!) and I am *happier* and more present than ever,” she continued.

Teigen concluded, “It’s pretty cool. I look forward to having my full body reset after 1 year, then reevaluating to see my new hopes and wishes for the future! Let’s goooo.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Tiffany Haddish is sharing an update on her plans to become a mom.

While chatting with E!’s Daily Pop, the comedian, 42, who has previously been open about her plans to adopt, shared an update about the adoption process. 

“I just went to Africa. I was just in Eritrea, and people were trying to give me their kids,” Haddish shared in the interview published Wednesday. “I was like, ‘Hold up now, I gotta get the paperwork right now. I can’t just be taking kids with me.”

So when is she planning to start that paperwork? “Not right now, but maybe at the end of the year, beginning of next year.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.