Entertainment

TV seems to be in repeats: That is, a repeat of 2020. TV Line is reporting the ABC dramas The Rookie, Grey’s Anatomy, and Station 19 have paused their planned upcoming post-holiday restart of production over concerns of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. 

Grey’s and Station 19 were both set to start shooting on January 10, and as of today, that start date has been moved to January 12. It’s not yet known when The Rookie will walk the beat again.

The pauses were out of “an abundance of caution,” not because anyone involved in the shows had tested positive. That said, the move is reminiscent of the height of the pandemic in 2020, where Hollywood productions were forced to shutter over COVID concerns. 

The entertainment industry has since employed strict pandemic protocols for all motion picture and television sets, which minimizes contact, and employs testing and swift isolation for any positive cases.

The news comes on the same day the Grammy Awards announced this year’s festivities have been postponed over Omicron, and the Sundance Film Festival said it will cancel its planned in-person events.

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As Beavis and Butt-Head would say in unison: “YES!”

Mike Judge, the creator of the one-time MTV animated phenomenon, took to Twitter today to announce, “Beavis and Butt-Head will be returning this year with a brand-new movie and more on Paramount+.”

Judge, who also created the Emmy-winning animated series King of the Hill, as well as the live-action classics Office Space and Idiocracy and HBO’s acclaimed Silicon Valley, added that there’s “[n]o exact date yet,” but teased that fans will see the new content “soon.”

His post was accompanied by sketches of what the two sniggering teens might look like if the animated characters didn’t age well. Judge referenced Beavis’ and Butt-Head’s split-screen appearances, noting, “They need some time to get back in shape.”

Back in 2020, ABC Audio reported that Judge had inked a deal to write, produce and, of course, voice new B&B content for Comedy Central.

Paramount+ is owned by the same parent company as the comedy network.

Beavis and Butt-Head launched on MTV in 1993 with a series of janky-looking animated shorts, including Frog Baseball — the likes of which would never pass in today’s society — before the series took on a life of its own. The episodes were interspersed with scenes of the boys making fun of music videos…because those were still a thing in 1993.

Beavis and Butt-Head spawned a hit movie, the 1996 road-trip flick Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, which spawned a hit soundtrack to boot.

Beavis and Butt-Head will be returning this year with a brand new movie and more on Paramount+. No exact date yet, but soon. They need some time to get back in shape. pic.twitter.com/tN5rePP9Kn

— Mike Judge (@MikeJudge) January 5, 2022

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Five-time NAACP Image Award winner Shonda Rhimes appears on this week’s cover of TIME magazine as the publication declares her “TV’s Greatest.”

The executive producer of numerous hit series, including Bridgerton, Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder, was named to the TIME 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2021. She was also on the 2007 list.

Rhimes has excelled in a male-dominated entertainment industry, and the 51-year-old mogul rebels against the label “girlboss.”

“A nice catchphrase to grab a bunch of women into one group and say, ‘This is what women are doing right now.’ Nobody ever says, ‘This is what men are doing right now,'” Rhimes maintains in the TIME cover story. “I think the girlboss archetype is bulls*** that men have created to find another way to make women sound bad,” she adds.

In other news, after her recent breakup with Common, Tiffany Haddish is aggressively looking for a new man. In an Instagram Story, the 42-year-old comedian and actress shared a video of a couple on vacation, and commented, “This will be me next holiday season! Accepting male applicants only. Now interviews start next month! So have your life in order.”

Finally, Haddish, Anthony Anderson, Nick Cannon, Dave Chappelle, Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey, Regina King, Craig Robinson and Chris Tucker are among the stars featured in the docuseries Phat Tuesdays, which premieres February 4 on Amazon Prime video, Deadline reports. The series tells the story of Guy Torry‘s Los Angeles showcase in the ’90s that launched the careers of numerous Black comedians.

“It was more than a night of laughter — it was a movement. Phat Tuesdays was Black, bold, and brilliant,” Torry says. “It was the best damn comedy show!”

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Calling it a “deep loss,” the organizers of the annual Sundance Film Festival have announced the “difficult decision” to turn the in-person elements of year’s event in Utah into an online one. 

The Omicron variant of COVID-19 is to blame.

“We have been looking forward to our first fully hybrid Sundance Film Festival and our teams have spent a year planning a festival like no other,” the organizers opened their announcement. “But despite the most ambitious protocols, the Omicron variant with its unexpectedly high transmissibility rates is pushing the limits of health safety, travel and other infrastructures across the country.”

The statement continued, “As a nonprofit, our Sundance spirit is in making something work against the odds. But with case numbers forecasted to peak in our host community the week of the festival we cannot knowingly put our staff and community at risk,” saying doing so “would be irresponsible in this climate.”

The Festival will instead be held virtually, starting as planned on Thursday, January 20, and continuing for eleven days. Already scheduled online elements of the festival will remain unchanged, but the event’s film screenings — the key draw of the annual gathering that started in 1978 — will be both online, and unspool in various locations from January 28-30 with the help of the festival’s satellite partners.

The Sundance Film Festival statement adds, “It has become increasingly clear over the last few days that this is the right decision to make for the care and well-being of all of our community.”

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For a second year in a row, the Grammy Awards will not take place on January 31 as originally planned because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABC News confirms the Recording Academy has delayed this year’s ceremony, which was to be hosted again by Trevor Noah.

“After careful consideration and analysis with city and state officials, health and safety experts, the artist community and our many partners, the Recording Academy and CBS have postponed the 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards Show,” the organization announced in a statement on Wednesday. 

The Recording Academy continued, “The health and safety of those in our music community, the live audience, and the hundreds of people who work tirelessly to produce our show remains our top priority. Given the uncertainty surrounding the Omicron variant, holding the show on January 31 simply contains too many risks.”

At this time, the organization has not announced when the Grammys will be rescheduled, but promised the new date “will be announced soon.”

Currently, federal data reports that more than 100,000 people are hospitalized in the U.S. for COVID-19.  Data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from the weekend shows that the U.S. is now averaging nearly half a million new cases a day — averaging out to nearly six Americans testing positive every second.

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(NOTE LANGUAGE) Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson just “paused his workout for a second” to share some news with his 287 million Instagram followers. 

Johnson explained in a post that Netflix had just called to inform him that currently, the streaming giant’s “top three movies in the world belong to me.”

He went on to explain that Red Notice still sits at number one on the global ranking — Johnson thanked fans for making it “the biggest movie of all time for Netflix.”

The second is the Fast and Furious spin-off Hobbs and Shaw, which Rock noted had “the highest audience score of all time for…any Fast and Furious movie.”

The third is a 2012 throwback called Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, which Johnson called a “very special family movie.”

“I’m a lucky son of a b****,” Johnson added, admitting, “it’s because of all of you that any of this is possible.”

“I’m privileged to deliver the goods for you,” Johnson said, before signing off by blowing the camera a kiss.

Incidentally, while Johnson mentioned Hobbs and Shaw‘s Rotten Tomatoes audience score, the comment can’t be seen without considering the bad blood with his former Fast 5 co-star Vin Diesel.

Johnson and his Hobbs co-star Jason Statham‘s breaking off to do their own blockbuster film reportedly didn’t sit right with Diesel, and their co-star ,Tyrese Gibson.

Last November, Diesel posted a message to his “little brother Dwayne” — who, at six foot five stands some five inches taller than Diesel — hoping they could reunite for the final Fast and Furious film. 

In December, Johnson explained to CNN that while he “would always be supportive of the cast and always root for the franchise to be successful,” there was “no chance” he’d return.

He also called Diesel’s public post a “manipulation.” 

 

 

 

 

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Hulu has released a second trailer for the upcoming Pam & Tommy limited series about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee‘s infamous sex tape.

While the first teaser focused mostly on the two men who stole and then sold the tape, played by Seth Rogen and Nick Offerman, the new clip gives us more of a preview of Lily James and Sebastian Stan‘s respective performances as the Baywatch superstar and the Mötley Crüe drummer.

“You don’t seem to understand what a big deal this is,” James’ Anderson tells Stan’s Lee, who replies, “I’m on that tape just the same as you.” When Anderson says that the tape is “worse” for her, Lee shoots back, “How is this worse for you?”

Pam & Tommy is set to premiere February 2 with three episodes. Subsequent episodes will air weekly.

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Oscar winner Quentin Tarantino has announced auction dates for his exclusive NFTs from his groundbreaking 1994 crime epic, Pulp Fiction. 

Each of the seven non-fungible tokens will give owners exclusive access to seven scenes, including audio commentary and handwritten notes that promise, “a unique look into the mind and creative process of Quentin Tarantino.”

Broken into seven “chapters,” the Pulp Fiction NFT auction from data privacy firm Secret Network will kick off January 17 and end January 31. Interested bidders can find more information at TarantinoNFTs.com. 

Here’s full auction release schedule: 

Chapter #1: January
17-21, 2022

Chapter #2: January
24, 2022

Chapter #3: January
25, 2022

Chapter #4: January
26, 2022

Chapter #5: January
27, 2022

Chapter #6: January
28, 2022

Chapter #7: January
31, 2022

In a statement, Secret Network notes, “Tarantino owns the exclusive rights to publish his Pulp Fiction screenplay and the original, handwritten copy has remained a personal creative treasure he has kept private for decades. In collaboration with SCRT Labs, Tarantino has turned chapters from this historic document into a one-of-a-kind NFT publication.”

Released in 1994 and set in Los Angeles, Pulp Fiction starred John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel and Ving Rhames, among others. The influential — and widely imitated — film spun an inter-weaving tale of shady characters and spawned classic, still-quoted dialog.

Made for under $9 million, the movie went on to gross nearly $214 million, and earned Tarantino and co-writer Roger Avary the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Tarantino earned nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, and the film also earned a Best Actor nomination for Travolta and respective Best Supporting Actor and Actress noms for Jackson and Thurman.

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Weeks after its prequel series, 1883, became the most-watched original series premiere ever on Paramount+, last Sunday’s Yellowstone‘s season 4 finale lassoed 10 million viewers on the Paramount Network. 

The Kevin Costner-starring Western-themed drama managed to wrangle 9.3 million of those viewers live — that is, without relying on streaming. That’s no small feat in today’s entertainment environment. The premiere’s numbers also were an 81% increase from the show’s hit season 3 finale.

In a statement, Chris McCarthy, ViacomCBS Media Networks president and CEO, celebrated, noting “Yellowstone continues to shatter records…proving we’ve hit a cultural nerve — from the center of the country to each of the coasts…”

The series sees Costner playing John Dutton, a Montana rancher whose interests seem to constantly be under attack. The show also stars Kelly Reilly, Piper Perabo, Cole Hauser, Luke Grimes, Wes Bentley and Gil Birmingham.

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(NOTE NATURE) Viewers of Adam McKay‘s dark comedy Don’t Look Up, streaming now on Netflix, discovered an X-rated Easter egg after dialing a number suggested by Leonardo DiCaprio‘s character, astronomer Randall Mindy, to relieve stress caused by a “planet-killer” asteroid hurtling towards Earth.

The number, 1-800-532-4500, connects to a sex hotline.

The PSA in the film features DiCaprio’s Mindy acting as a figurehead for the White House and their partners at the made-up telecommunications giant BASH Cellular.

“Am I the only one that called the FEMA/Bash hotline and got a phone sex operator?” tweeted one viewer.

“Called the 800 number they used in Don’t Look Up. It’s a phone sex chat service. LMAO, good prank,” added another.

Don’t Look Up also stars Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Timothée Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, Mark Rylance, Jonah Hill, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi and Tyler Perry.

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