Rob Zombie has premiered the first full trailer for his film adaptation of The Munsters.
The clip, which Zombie posted to his Instagram, focuses on the origin of the relationship between Herman and Lily Munster, played by Jeff Daniel Phillips and Sheri Moon Zombie, respectively.
A voiceover in the trailer proclaims, “Rob Zombie, the director of House of 1000 Corpses, Halloween and The Devil’s Rejects, brings you the greatest love story ever told.”
The preview also illustrates the goofy, lighthearted tone of the film, which may be surprising for fans of his otherwise violent and gory filmography. Zombie previously confirmed that his Munsters will be rated PG in an effort to stick to the vibe of the original ’60s sitcom.
The Munsters is set to debut in September. The cast also includes Daniel Roebuck as Grandpa Munster plus Lost alum Jorge Garcia, Cassandra Peterson aka Elvira and original Munsters actors Butch Patrick and Pat Priest.
New shoe alert! Billie Eilish is once again teaming with Nike for a new set of sustainably made sneakers — her fourth overall.
Sneaker News shared the first images of Billie’s upcoming “Sequoia” line, a Nike Air Force 1 High build, which is made of environmentally friendly matter.
Looking much like her recently sold-out “Mushroom” line, this new high strap offering features a darker color motif with charcoal-colored laces, fabric, straps and sole. Again, this new shoe is created from recycled materials and is made from synthetic nubuck — a type of buffed, durable leather.
Billie is vegan, which explains why she would steer clear of animal byproducts being in her new collaboration.
It is unknown at this time when she will drop her new Sequoia sneaker line, but Nike has released the official images and that is leading fans to believe more information will arrive shortly.
Death Cab for Cutie has released a new song called “Here to Forever,” which will appear on the band’s upcoming album, Asphalt Meadows.
“It’s a song both about our impermanence and the anxiety of these times,” says frontman Ben Gibbard. “It’s also about wanting to believe in something bigger even when it feels like nothing is out there.”
You can listen to “Here to Forever” now via digital outlets. Like the previously released single “Roman Candles,” “Here to Forever” is accompanied by a video directed by filmmaker Lance Bangs, who’s previously worked with artists, including Nirvana, R.E.M. and Green Day. You can watch that streaming now on YouTube.
Asphalt Meadows, the 10th Death Cab album, arrives September 16. After finishing off a batch of summer dates this week, Gibbard and company will launch a full U.S. tour in support of Asphalt Meadows in September.
Hulu’s hit animated series Solar Opposites returns for its third season Wednesday.
The series centers on a group of aliens who fled an extinction-level event on their home planet and crash-landed on Earth instead of an uninhabited world they hoped to repopulate. There, they pretend to be a family and have to live among humans in suburbia and all that that entails.
The absurdist animated series was co-created by Rick and Morty‘s Justin Roiland — who plays the leader and defacto patriarch, Korvo — and shares a strong absurdist streak with his previous hit.
Solar Opposites picked up a strong following during the pandemic, which Thomas Middleditch, who voices Terry, calls a “special treat.”
“…[T]o have such a positive response, it just makes the whole process that much more enjoyable, because …I love this show,” he says. “It’s so funny to me. I’m cackling as I watch it. And so all that means is that we get to make more.”
The Goldbergs’ Sean Giambrone, an animated project veteran, plays Yumulack. He tells ABC Audio he loves working in the medium. “It’s awesome….I watched a lot of cartoons growing up…and so being a part of animation has been really cool. But then being on a show like this where I never know what to expect from the script and I get to see some really fun things — it’s awesome,” he says.
Mary Mack, who shares a voice with Yumulack’s teen “sister” Jessie, adds of her experience, “I’ve been getting voice recognized in the airport because I’m…friendly to people and they’re like, ‘This might sound weird but you on Solar Opposites?’ And then they kind of whisper like, ‘I’ve been watching with our kids,’ and I’m like, ‘How old are your kids?!’
“Sometimes I want to step in and be like, ‘Your kid’s how old?’ You’re watching this? And like, if they say ‘He’s heard worse,’ you should call the child protection services, ’cause there’s no way your kid should be hearing ‘worse,’ Mack says, laughing.
In a sneak peek clip of season two of Peacock’s Hart to Heart, the 28-year-old comedian says he’s “definitely a family guy” and expresses that his dream is to have a child.
“My favorite thing ever, which I have yet to achieve, is I want to have a kid,” Davidson tells host Kevin Hart. “That’s like my dream.”
“It would be so fun to dress up a little dude,” the Saturday Night Live alum continues. “I’m so excited for that chapter, so that’s kind of what I’m just preparing for now is trying to be as good as a dude and develop and get better, so when that happens it’s just easier.”
While Davidson doesn’t have any kids of his own, he is likely getting some good practice thanks to his girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, who shares four children with ex Kanye West — North, 9, Saint, 6, Chicago, 4, and Psalm,3.
Alice in Chains is the latest band to get the Funko Pop! treatment.
The toy company has teamed up with the grunge rockers to create a new line of its ever-popular big-headed vinyl figures to celebrate the upcoming 30th anniversary of AiC’s 1992 album, Dirt.
“This year marks the 30th anniversary of Dirt, and we’re starting the celebrations early with our Funko Dirt Pop! Collection,” the band says.
The package includes Pop! versions of each member of the Dirt lineup — frontman Layne Staley, guitarist Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Starr and drummer Sean Kinney — accompanied by the album artwork. It’s set to be released November 30 and is available to pre-order now.
Dirt, Alice in Chains’ sophomore album, will officially turn 30 in September. The RIAA quadruple-Platinum album spawned AiC classics, including “Them Bones,” “Rooster,” “Would?” and “Down in a Hole.”
Shawn Mendes postponed his tour for three weeks so he could “take care of myself and my mental health,” but as a source tells People, that’s actually a good thing.
According to the source, “being in the public eye has long put a lot of pressure” on Shawn, and in the past, he’s found it hard to find “a balance between work and taking care of his mental health.” But the good news, the source adds, is that Shawn is “now able to identify triggers that make it necessary for him to slow down and focus on his health.”
“He wants to give 100 percent of his energy and focus to his tour and his fans,” the source adds.
In a statement to fans announcing the postponement, Shawn explained that he’d initially felt ready to go on tour, but that decision was “premature and unfortunately, the toll of the road and the pressure has caught up to me, and I’ve hit a breaking point.”
Shawn has previously spoken about his struggle with anxiety, which inspired his hit “In My Blood.” Back in April, long before he started his tour, he posted a message on Twitter saying that he’s a “23-year-old who constantly feels like he’s either flying or drowning.”
He added, “Even with so much success, I still find it hard to feel like I’m not failing.”
The following week, Shawn wrote on Instagram, “i’ve been going through it lately. Tryna be the best ain’t really doing it for me anymore if i’m honest.”
Daniel Kaluuya burst onto the Hollywood scene with a leading role in Jordan Peele‘s Get Out, however, during a recent interview the British actor admitted that it almost didn’t happen.
While chatting with Peele for Essence, Kaluuya revealed that he almost quit acting altogether before getting the starring role.
“I’ve never told you this, but when you reached out to me and we had that Skype, I was really disillusioned with acting,” he admitted. “I had stopped acting for like a year and a half.”
“I checked out, because I was just like, this isn’t working,” he continued. “I wasn’t getting roles, because racism and all this kind of stuff — so you reaching out was like, Okay, I’m not crazy. It’s proper. It’s going to be all right.”
Kaluuya went on to share that following Get Out he became more intentional about projects he decided to partake in, telling Peele, “I was just like, If it’s not a ‘F*** yeah,’ it’s a no. That kind of cleaned house.”
“A ‘F*** yeah’ to me is when you’re doing plays, you’re doing it for 400 pound a week. That’s pre-agent, pre-tax, pre-everything. So I was like, Would I do this for 400 pound a week? And if the answer was yes, then all right, cool, I’ll do it,” he explained. “I want to go into places that I don’t know I can. I want three-dimensional characters. I want to tell the story, no matter how big or how small.”
Using his role in Widows as an example, Kaluuya added, “I’m not in the film that much, but my character had an arc — he had a story and an evolution. As long as that’s there, then I can engage with it.”
(WASHINGTON) — Mexico on Tuesday agreed to contribute $1.5 billion to a joint initiative with the U.S. to improve infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a person familiar with the commitment.
The agreement came on the same day President Joe Biden hosted his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for a meeting in the Oval Office.
Part of their discussions were expected to include a commitment from the two countries to carry out “a multi-year, joint, U.S.-Mexico border infrastructure modernization effort for projects along the 2,000 mile border,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters on Monday ahead of the meeting.
The infrastructure project is intended to improve processing and security along the border, the person familiar with the agreement said.
Biden alluded to Mexico’s investment in remarks alongside López Obrador before their meeting, saying, “We’re also making historic investments in infrastructure modernization across our 2,000-mile border with Mexico.”
He noted the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law he championed last year was “delivering $3.4 billion to major construction projects at the ports of entry between our two countries to make our border safer and more efficient for people, trade and commerce.”
“And the American people should know, Mr. President,” Biden told López Obrador, “that you’re also making a significant investment on your side of the border to improve infrastructure to meet the needs of our times and the future.”
The collaboration signifies something of a reset between Mexico and the U.S., as Biden tries to distance himself from the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with Mexico.
In 2019, then-President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican imports “until Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory.”
When Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015, he promised: “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”
It was a promise he repeated time and time again throughout his run and his presidency, ultimately building more than 450 miles of new wall with money that had originally been allocated to the Pentagon. But the project ended when Trump was voted out of office; Mexico never paid for any of it.
When asked to comment on the commitment, a White House official said, “Core to the prior administration’s immigration strategy was to build a wall, and they couldn’t even accomplish that in four years, let alone get Mexico to pay for it. By contrast, President Biden is taking unprecedented action to secure the border.”
Still, Biden has faced political roadblocks in implementing his immigration agenda.
Although the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing him to end “Remain in Mexico” — a Trump-era immigration policy that made more than 70,000 migrants wait in Mexico as their asylum claims were processed in the U.S. — another Trump policy, Title 42, has prevented hundreds of thousands of migrants from accessing the asylum system citing increased public health risk due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday arrives in the Middle East for the first time as president, visiting Israel, the occupied West Bank and Saudi Arabia in a trip centered on encouraging the growing ties between Israel and Arab countries, while resetting his administration’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.
Coming as his administration has focused on countering China’s rise in Asia and uniting Europe against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden’s visit underscores the volatile region’s strategic importance to U.S. foreign policy and the global economy, analysts told ABC News.
From Biden’s highly-anticipated meeting with Saudi Arabia’s de-facto leader, to his efforts to address high gas prices at home and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security, here are seven things to watch on the trip this week.
A Saudi reset?
As a presidential candidate, Biden vowed to make oil-rich Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state over the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi – an operation U.S. intelligence agencies later concluded was authorized by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is also known as “MBS” and who effectively runs the Gulf nation.
Biden also pledged to “reassess” the traditionally close U.S.-Saudi alliance, amid calls from families of Sept. 11 attack victims to hold the kingdom “accountable” for links to the hijackers behind the terror attacks – and a push from within his own party to pressure Saudi Arabia to end its intervention in Yemen’s civil war, which according to the United Nations has led to one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Since taking office, Biden has spoken twice with King Salman, the crown prince’s father, who officially rules the country.
But he had also dispatched Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to serve as his administration’s point of contact with the crown prince, in what was widely perceived as a snub to the powerful Saudi leader.
Relations between the two countries reached a low point last spring when the Wall Street Journal reported that Prince Mohammed and his Emirati counterpart declined to schedule a phone call with Biden over frustrations with U.S. policy in the region. (The White House at the time told reporters there were “no rebuffed calls.”)
On Saturday, Biden plans to attend a summit of Arab leaders in Jeddah, a meeting that the crown prince will also attend, though it’s not yet clear how the two leaders will interact or engage.
The White House has said that Prince Mohammed is expected to attend a bilateral meeting Biden will hold with King Salman and the king’s “leadership team” on Friday. But U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday declined to say if the public would see Biden and the crown prince shake hands.
Oil, Ukraine force Biden’s hand, experts say
Several experts told ABC News the rapprochement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia was inevitable, given the kingdom’s influence in the region – and its status as one of the world’s largest oil producers at a time when gas prices have skyrocketed and the West has attempted to boycott Russian oil.
“Without the Ukraine war, there would be a lot less focus [on Saudi Arabia]. There’s no question about it,” Dr. Gregory Gause, a Saudi Arabia expert and head of Department of International Affairs at The George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, told ABC News.
Biden has defended his approach, writing in an op-ed for The Washington Post published Saturday that “my aim was to reorient — but not rupture — relations with a country that’s been a strategic partner for 80 years.”
“As president, it is my job to keep our country strong and secure,” he wrote. “We have to counter Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to outcompete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world.
“To do these things,” he continued, “we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those outcomes. Saudi Arabia is one of them, and when I meet with Saudi leaders on Friday, my aim will be to strengthen a strategic partnership going forward that’s based on mutual interests and responsibilities, while also holding true to fundamental American values.”
Will the Saudi visit itself lower gas prices? Probably not, experts say
Biden plans to attend a summit of leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council, a union of Arab states, who will also be joined by the leaders from Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan; the grouping is being referred to as the “GCC+3.”
Sullivan said Monday the White House believes the oil-producing Gulf states have “a capacity for further steps that could be taken” to increase oil output, although he would not say if Biden planned to ask Saudi Arabia and the other countries to raise production by a certain amount.
Experts have told ABC News that it is not clear that Saudi Arabia could really do much to impact gas prices in the U.S., which have already started dropping in recent weeks — as demand falls off — from record $5 per gallon averages.
“There are things the Saudis can do,” Gause, the expert on Saudi Arabia, said. “But I don’t think that even if they really opened the spigots, it would bring prices down to, you know, where they were… in the midst of COVID.”
Amy Meyers Jaffe, the managing director of the Climate Policy Lab at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, said it’s most important to ensure “that the supply that’s already in the market stays in the market.”
“Part of that is engaging with the producers of the Middle East, because it’s not clear to me how much more they can all produce,” she told ABC News.
In fact, French President Emmanuel Macron was reportedly overheard last month telling Biden that the United Arab Emirates was already at “maximum” production capacity, and that the Saudis could only increase output by a relatively small 150,000 barrels per day in the short term.
A new Middle East?
When Biden first visited Israel nearly 50 years ago, the country was at war with much of the Arab world.
Now, following several peace agreements brokered by the Trump administration known as the Abraham Accords, Israel has diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco — in addition to existing peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt.
Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states share a mutual enemy in Iran: Israel considers Iran’s nuclear program an existential threat, while the country’s ballistic missiles and regional proxies have targeted Saudi and Emirati oil infrastructure.
While a major diplomatic breakthrough isn’t expected on this trip, Biden’s visit could help move Saudi Arabia and Israel toward normalized relations and greater coordination on regional security — at a time when renewed negotiations to limit Iran’s nuclear program have stalled.
“The region is watching to see how far the Saudis are willing to go,” Jacob Walles, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who served as U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, told ABC News.
Walles said that while Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has signaled support for inching closer to Israel, significant diplomatic progress could take time, given Saudi public opinion and opposition to Israel.
The 86-year-old King Salman would also likely “limit” any breakthrough with Israel absent progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which has traditionally been a sticking point in relations between Israel and its neighbors, Walles said.
In his Washington Post op-ed, Biden noted that he will be the first U.S. president to fly from Israel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, describing it as a “small symbol” of the deepening ties between Israel and the Arab world.
“The Israelis believe it’s really important that I make the trip,” Biden told reporters at a press conference last month.
Walking a fine line on human rights
As Biden pursues rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and a strong relationship with Israel, he must balance economic and security interests with human rights concerns.
The U.S. has walked a fine line in the wake of the death of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a well known Al Jazeera correspondent killed in May while covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank.
During her funeral, Israeli police beat mourners and pallbearers — drawing widespread, global condemnation.
The State Department said on July 4 that after reviewing U.S. and Palestinian investigations into Abu Akleh’s death, it found that Israeli military gunfire likely killed her — but that it “found no reason to believe that this was intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances.”
Asked if Biden planned to press Israeli officials on the case during his visit, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that “we want to see accountability.”
But Abu Akleh’s brother wrote in a letter to Biden late last week that “your administration’s engagement has served to whitewash Shireen’s killing and perpetuate impunity,” Reuters reported. He asked for Biden to meet with his family while in the region.
Meanwhile, Khashoggi’s 2018 murder was the reason Biden pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah,” but the White House has repeatedly declined to say whether the president will even bring it up with the crown prince when he meets with him.
Biden constantly argues that the world is at an inflection point between democracy and autocracy, and his trip to Saudi Arabia shows that democracies may feel forced to kowtow to autocratic nations when economic and security interests are at stake.
“For an American president to go to [Saudi Arabia] is very, very humiliating,” Hossein Askari, an economist and Professor Emeritus of International Business and International Affairs at George Washington University, told ABC News.
“Maybe the American people don’t see that,” he continued. “But in the eyes of dictators around the world, and in the eyes of the Middle East, people will be laughing.”
What about the peace process?
The Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab nations are one of the few foreign policies pursued by President Donald Trump that Biden has praised.
But the agreements cast aside longstanding doctrine that elevated the Palestinian issue in any normalization talks with Israel, cutting the Palestinians themselves out of talks — although the Arab nations did seek concessions from Israel favorable to the Palestinians.
Experts do not expect any breakthroughs in Israeli-Palestinian relations this week – nor has the Biden administration telegraphed any expected developments.
There have been, though, reports of discussions over Saudi Arabia allowing Israeli planes to fly over its territory — and U.S.-backed diplomacy aimed at resolving an international dispute over islands in the Red Sea.
And the Biden administration has reversed several Trump policies that downgraded the U.S. relationship with the Palestinians — such as resuming funding for a U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees — although he has not delivered on a promise to reopen an American consulate in Jerusalem for Palestinians that Trump closed. Other Palestinian desires – reopening an office in Washington and resolving other funding issues — are subject to congressional action that has not materialized, according to Michael Koplow, the chief policy officer of Israel Policy Forum.
Israel’s unstable political dynamics have also worked to lower expectations for the peace process on the trip, experts told ABC News — adding uncertainty and diverting attention from the U.S. commander-in-chief’s trip among Israelis.
The country will hold its fifth election in four years in November, following the collapse of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s fragile governing coalition — a mix of right wing, centrist, liberal and Arab parties with little in common besides a shared opposition to former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The right-wing leader, a fixture in Israeli politics for decades, could make his way back into power as prime minister this fall, despite his ongoing corruption trial.
In Israel during the campaign season, Biden will meet with interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid — a moderate serving in the role through the next election — and is expected to meet with other key leaders on the trip, including Netanyahu.
He will also meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and is expected to visit a hospital catering to Palestinian patients, as his administration reverses the Trump administration’s decision to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Palestinians.
Yemen war a major focus
Yemen’s civil war has paused for the last four months as the result of a negotiated truce.
It’s the longest ceasefire in the nearly eight-year war that caused what the United Nations has labeled the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Saudi Arabia has led a coalition that has backed Yemen’s government in its fight against a rebel group called the Houthis, who are backed by Iran. The U.S. has supported Saudi Arabia’s involvement, which has relied heavily on airstrikes.
Biden had ended offensive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, though, over its handling of the war, and accused the kingdom of “murdering children” in Yemen as a presidential candidate.
While Sullivan told ABC News Monday that that ban would remain for now, the White House has in recent weeks praised Prince Mohammed’s role in bringing about the ongoing ceasefire as it works to improve relations with Saudi Arabia.
White House officials have said the war in Yemen will be a major focus for Biden while he visits Saudi Arabia – but human rights advocates and members of his own party have called on him to speak out more forcefully against Saudi involvement in the conflict while he’s in the region.
