A slew of actors have booked their tickets to Thailand. HBO has confirmed that Leslie Bibb, Dom Hetrakul, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Tayme Thapthimthong, and Parker Posey will be checking into the White Lotus for season three of the Emmy-winning anthology series from Mike White. They join previously announced returning cast member Natasha Rothwell, who will reprise her role as spa manager Belinda Lindsey for the Thailand-set third season. Production on season three of The White Lotus is set to begin in and around Koh Samui, Phuket, and Bangkok in February.
As per usual, the cast is a mix of well-known faces and lesser-known actors. An indie darling, Posey’s starred in such films as Party Girl,Best in Show, and, most recently, Beau Is Afraid. Bibb is no stranger to franchises, having starred in Iron Man, as is Isaacs, who appeared in the Harry Potter franchise. Monaghan returns to her old HBO stomping rounds after starring in the first season of True Detective. Hetrakul has starred in Bangkok Dangerous, while Thapthimthong is a relative newcomer.
Rumors have been swirling about casting for the third installment, so much so that White’s friend and School of Rock collaborator Jack Black had to shoot down talk that he’d be checking into The White Lotus as well. “I’ll deny because that’s easy to tell the truth,” he recently told Vanity Fair. “I have to throw ice water on that sweet, sweet theory.”
While Black may not be making his way to Thailand, these newly announced names will be booking longer trips than usual: the third season of The White Lotus will be “supersized,” as White recently told Entertainment Weekly. White promised that the show’s next chapter will be “longer, bigger, [and] crazier” than the previous two seasons, which took place in Hawaii and Italy, respectively. “I don’t know what people will think, but I am super excited, so at least for my own barometer, that’s a good thing…I’m super excited about the content of the season.” At the Wonka premiere, Rothwell told Vanity Fair that the show made her “gasp out loud a minimum of five times, and this was just me reading the scripts.”
The Emmy-nominated second season of The White Lotus focused on sexual power dynamics and starred Aubrey Plaza,Meghann Fahy, and Theo James, among others. It also saw the demise of Emmy winner Jennifer Coolidge’s fan-favorite character, Tanya McQuoid-Hunt, at the hands of some “evil gays.” After the season two finale, White told Vanity Fair that he was interested in exploring “something that’s a little more celestial” for the third season. “We are going to scout in Asia and look at countries there,” he told Vanity Fair. “My instinct is that maybe it has something to do with spirituality. Eastern versus Western religion, or Western people in an Eastern culture.”
So, will Posey and Bibb play feuding yoga moms on a retreat searching for inner peace? We’ll likely have to wait until 2025 to see.
Colman Domingo is one of the more successful actors working in Hollywood today, but that wasn’t always the case. According to the actor, he nearly gave it all up after being turned down for a hit HBO series.
Speaking to The New York Times (via Variety) in a recent profile, Domingo recalled a time where he was having trouble finding big roles and began auditioning for roles that might not offer many lines (known as “under-fives” roles for their lack of lines). One of those auditions was for the hit HBO drama series Boardwalk Empire.
According to Domingo, the role was for the maître d’ at a Black-owned nightclub, and the actor went all out. At the callback audition, Domingo wore a tuxedo and even performed some singing and rap dances. Despite impressing those behind the show, however, the profile notes that Domingo was passed on for the role due to the producers of the show wanting someone more “light-skinned” for historical accuracy’s sake.
Domingo nearly quit acting after the decision
The auditions went so well that both Domingo and his agent thought this would be a “big break” for the actor. However, a historical researcher on the show told producers that maître d’s for nightclubs of the time were typically “light-skinned,” meaning Domingo didn’t fit the role, forcing the show to pass on him.
According to Domingo, the decision made him nearly lose his mind, and almost had him ready to quit acting forever. “That’s when I lost my mind,” Domingo said, with his agent noting that Domingo told him that “I can’t take it anymore, I think this is going to kill me.”
Thankfully for Domingo, he didn’t end up quitting on his pursuit to be an actor, and the patience paid off. Now, Domingo is one of the most successful actors in Hollywood and has appeared in a ton of high-profile films like Lincoln, Selma, If Beale Street Could Talk, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He’s also an Emmy-Award-winning actor for his performance as the recovering drug addict Ali in the HBO hit series Euphoria.
Bertha Russell did the damn thing. In The Gilded Age’s second season finale, Carrie Coon’s ruthless robber baroness emerged the victor in the great war between her beloved Metropolitan Opera and The Academy of Music, championed by old-money society queen Lina Astor (played by Donna Murphy). Even those casually acquainted with American history most likely had an inkling as to who would reign supreme—these days, the Met is arguably New York’s grandest cultural institution, while the Academy of Music has gone the way of the dodo. Still, the battle was thrilling all the same.
“The stakes come from not knowing what the cost will be to each individual person,” Coon says over Zoom. “Also, a lot of people in the audience don’t know any of this history. They don’t know there’s a Metropolitan Opera in New York. I mean, that’s stuff that I didn’t know growing up in Ohio. I didn’t know there were mansions in Newport people lived in for six weeks in the summer.” She laughs at the extravagance. “Bananas.”
What’s bananas is Coon’s ferocious performance as Mrs. Russell, loosely based on historical millionaire-wife and Anderson Cooper relative Alva Vanderbilt. In a cast absolutely stacked with theater luminaries —including Murphy, Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald—Coon still stands out, enough to land a spot on Vanity Fair’s list of the best performances of 2023. She credits the love of her character partially to Bertha’s relationship with her husband, Mr. Russell, played by Morgan Spector, which she cheekily calls “#couplegoals.”
“I think people have found themselves rooting for robber barons in spite of themselves on the show, partly because Julian [Fellowes] has written such a solid, cohesive, sexy marriage,” says Coon. “Even as they are ruthless in the world of business and in their social climbing, they are ultimately looking out for their children. Bertha can’t be a senator. She can’t be a CEO. She’s not the president of anything. This is her purview.”
Below, Coon goes deep on filming season two’s grand finale, Gilded Age: The Musical, and potentially saying goodbye to the series for good.
The season finale seemed to strongly imply that Bertha offered up her daughter, Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), as a sacrificial lamb to get the Duke in his seat. Did she promise Gladys’s hand in marriage just to get him to come to the Met?
It’s not explicit, but we know how George feels about it. And we’ve seen many, many times that Bertha has done something in spite of George’s counsel. I think we can absolutely assume Bertha would, in a heartbeat, trade Gladys for that status.
Now, Bertha doesn’t see herself as any kind of villain. Bertha is gifting the city of New York a brand new opera house with the best singers in the world, and an entertaining evening with a Duke. And they were all anglophiles. Everyone was obsessed with British status. It’s the reason Mrs. Astor had the families of the 400—all the rules were social constructs designed to catch people out so they wouldn’t get entree into this society. You had to really learn those rules before you could play the game.
Bertha is a quick study, and she’s also willing to call bullshit when she sees it. She believes that people should be able to earn their way in. She believes she’s earned her way in, and she believes that she’s living in a meritocracy. For her, that’s true. For people of color and the immigrants being crushed under the capitalist machine, that was not true—but she really in her heart believes that. I think that’s why the rise of Turner (Kelley Curran) is so interesting, because, given the same circumstances, I think Bertha is not sure she could have accomplished what Turner has accomplished. I think that’s very intimidating for her.
It was exciting to see the Russells fight about Mrs. Turner’s indiscretions earlier in the season. During their fight, we saw a rare crack in Mrs. Russell’s emotional armor.
The award-winning comedy series “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” created by and starring Larry David, is finally coming to an end after 24 years. The 12th season of the show will be its last, Warner Brothers-Discovery announced Thursday.
“As CURB comes to an end, I will now have the opportunity to finally shed this ‘Larry David’ persona and become the person God intended me to be — the thoughtful, kind, caring, considerate human being I was until I got derailed by portraying this malignant character,” said David, who plays himself an “over-the-top” version of himself on the show.
Larry David and Cheyenne Jackson on location for “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on the streets of Manhattan.
Photo by Bobby Bank/WireImage via Getty Images
The series also stars comedians Jeff Garlin, Susie Essman, Cheryl Hines, J.B. Smoove and Ted Danson, among others, who will be returning for the final season to reprise their roles.
The first episode of “Curb” aired in 2000, and had since garnered 51 Emmy nominations and two wins, along with five Golden Globe nominations and a win.
The final season will be comprised of 10 episodes and will premiere on Feb. 4, on HBO and streaming on Max, with new episodes airing each Sunday at 10 p.m. until the series finale on April 7.
Larry David is also well-known for having created the show “Seinfeld” alongside comedian Jerry Seinfeld. David was head writer and executive producer on the sitcom for its first seven seasons.
“Curb” previously took a six-year break between its eighth and ninth seasons before ultimately coming back — but David is leaving no room for speculation about another revival this time around: “‘Larry David,’ I bid you farewell,” said the star.
“Your misanthropy will not be missed. And for those of you who would like to get in touch with me, you can reach me at Doctors Without Borders,” he quipped.
A movie about George Santos is in development at HBO Films, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Saturday.
HBO Films has optioned the rights to Mark Chiusano’s book, The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos, which was released on Nov. 28.
The film from Frank Rich (HBO’s Veep and Succession) is described as a “forensic and darkly comic look” at the unprecedented congressional race in Long Island, New York, that led to Santos being elected to Congress.
The movie announcement comes days after Santos became the first U.S. House member to be expelled in more than 20 years. He is also just the sixth House member in history to be removed by his colleagues.
The film is set to be written by Mike Makowsky (HBO’s Bad Education), who will also executive produce with Rich. Chiusano will serve as a consulting producer.
According to the logline, the film tells “the story of a seemingly minor local race that wound up a battle for the soul of Long Island, and unexpectedly carved the path for the world’s most famous (and now disgraced) congressman. The Gatsby-esque journey of a man from nowhere who exploited the system, waged war on truth and swindled one of the wealthiest districts in the country to achieve his American Dream.”
Since arriving in Washington nearly a year ago, Santos has found himself wrapped up in several scandals. More recently, the bipartisan House Ethics Committee issued a report that detailed allegations that the disgraced congressman filed false campaign statements and used donor money to fund his lavish lifestyle. He has also been indicted on 23 federal charges, including wire fraud and money laundering, which he has pleaded not guilty to.
House of the Dragon is returning to Max for its second season. It was already confirmed to be in the works in 2022, with filming expected to commence at the beginning of 2023 and end around the summer of 2023. The start of production had indeed been confirmed with a post on the official House of the Dragon Instagram reading, “It’s time to return to King’s Landing. Season 2 of #HouseoftheDragon is now in production.”
Judging by the usual lead times of Max shows of this magnitude, we speculated that we could probably expect to see House of the Dragon season 2 in 2024. That estimate has been proven correct. Here’s everything we know about season 2 of the blockbuster Game of Thrones spinoff—so far, starting with the first official posters featuring the show’s main characters.
The trailer for House of the Dragon season 2 is finally out!
As a large part of the fandom suspected, the much-anticipated first trailer for the second season of House of the Dragon was released on December 2, 2023, as part of the show’s panel at CCXP 2023 in São Paulo, Brazil.
The trailer, which predictably spread like wildfire across the Internet in a matter of minutes, shows us glimpses of all our favorite characters as they gear up to truly get their hands bloody in the Dance of the Dragons.
Rhaenyra and Alicent, both seen in their royal regalia as well as anguished over the choices they’ve made, ponder the cost of the throne while also realizing that there’s no stopping the civil war that is well underway—no matter how destructive it will be, as Rhaenys warns Rhaenyra. And then there are the realm’s most unhinged second sons, Daemon and Aemond, who are both ready to be considerable powers beside their respective thrones—and that look Aemond gives the empty Iron Throne makes me think that he still very much believes himself to be the best choice rather than his elder brother.
Tthe trailer, armies march through Westeros and dragons soar overhead—some with riders we’ve never seen in the air before, like Daemon’s daughter Baela Targaryen. And for those who have read Fire & Blood, which serves as the show’s original material, there is also a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene that hints that a very significant plot point involving Queen Helaena is rapidly coming our way.
When is season 2 of House of the Dragon coming out?
Just like the first season of House of the Dragon dominated Sundays back in the summer of 2022, the show’s second season will return to do the same in the summer of 2024. As reported by Entertainment Weekly, HBO head Casey Bloys confirmed the expected premiere date at an event at Warner Bros. Discovery’s headquarters in New York City.
“They are done shooting and in post,” Bloys said. “We hope to have that early summer.”
This release window was further confirmed by the show’s first trailer, which was released on social media with the caption “SUMMER 2024”.
Who is in House of the Dragon season 2?
(HBO)
With no more time jumps expected in Season 2, House of the Dragon will stick with the majority of the cast for the next season. That means everybody’s favorite duo, Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy, will return as Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen, respectively, alongside Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen, Steve Toussaint as the Sea Snake, Corlys Velaryon, and Eve Best as the Queen Who Never Was, Rhaenys Targaryen.
For the Greens, Aegon II Targaryen and Aemond Targaryen will also continue to be played by Tom Glynn-Carney and Ewan Mitchell, with Phia Saban as their sister Helaena. Grandfather Otto Hightower will be brought to life once again by Welsh actor Rhys Ifans. We can also expect to see much more of Matthew Needham as Larys Strong and Fabien Frankel as whiny Commander of the Kingsguard Ser Criston Cole.
(HBO)
Of course, a sprawling world such as the Seven Kingdoms means an equally massive cast of characters. Readers of Fire and Blood—the in-universe chronicle of the three centuries of Targaryen reign that serves as the basis for House of the Dragon—know that we are bound to see some new and very beloved faces in future seasons.
The first round of casting announcements included four new characters, which will be listed here with no spoilers, but with a huge, meaningful glance to those who know. Aboubakar Salim will star as Alyn of Hull, a sailor in the Velaryon fleet who already fought with Lord Corlys in the Stepstones—so we can expect him to fight for the Blacks.
On the Greens’ side, we’ll see the addition of Freddie Fox as Gwayne Hightower, son of Otto Hightower and brother to Queen Alicent. In the book, he’s just the younger of her unspecified number of brothers, but in the show, he has been bumped up to Otto’s heir.
Then there are Simon Russell Beale and Gayle Rankin, who will play Ser Simon Strong—great-uncle to the gone-too-soon Harwin Strong and his brother Larys—and Alys Rivers, respectively. They are based in Harrenhal, the greatest castle in the Seven Kingdoms and a strategic stronghold whenever winds of war are blowing in Westeros.
(FX)
Fans expected at least another casting announcement, one that included some more major characters—the last of Queen Alicent’s children, Prince Daeron Targaryen, first of all. George R.R. Martin has already mentioned Prince Daeron as having been fostering with his Hightower family in Oldtown during the events of the first season of House of the Dragon.
And then there’s Cregan Stark, the current Lord of Winterfell, who we should likely be seeing as we follow Prince Jacaerys Velaryon’s mission to gain allies for his mother among the Northern houses. Neither of the characters has been officially announced, but they’re sure to pop up as the show progresses since there is no Dance of the Dragons without them.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Emily Carey, who played young Alicent Hightower, also shared that there had been talks about both her and Milly Alcock (young Rhaenyra) returning for flashbacks. This has yet to be confirmed.
(HBO)
What will House of the Dragon season 2 be about?
The second season of House of the Dragon will see the civil war that is the Dance of Dragons kick off in earnest. We’ve already put together some predictions for what will come next, but few details are confirmed yet.
“We will get to the spectacle,” showrunner Ryan Condal told The Times. “But you have to understand these people’s complexities before they’re thrown into war. Series two will hit the rhythms people came to expect from the middle run of Game of Thrones, but it will have been earned, and viewers will feel the tragedies because we put the work in.”
The actors have definitely put their work in if what Tom Glynn-Carney revealed before the official start of production on season 2 is to be believed. Speaking at the Game of Thrones Fan Convention in December 2022, he said that they were “training very hard and we are making sure our bodies are in good enough condition for how strenuous season 2 is gonna be.”
As noted above, there will be no huge time jumps in season 2, so the story will be told in a slower, more linear fashion.
Where is House of the Dragon season 2 filming?
Many of the locations used in season 1, such as Cornwall and Derbyshire in England, Cáceres in Spain, and Monsanto in Portugal, will be revisited in season 2.
Spanish fan site Los Siete Reinos has confirmed that House of the Dragon will return to shoot scenes in Cáceres in 2023, between March and June. This is the real-life location of King’s Landing, so there’s no surprise that we’ll be returning here.
(HBO)
How many seasons of House of the Dragon will there be?
George R.R. Martin has said he thinks there should be four seasons of House of the Dragon to tell the story fully. However, he also argued for 10 seasons of Game of Thrones and didn’t get them.
You’d think HBO would learn from the disaster that was Game of Thrones season 8 and take Martin’s advice on this one, yet it seems like season 2 of House of the Dragon will be shorter than the first one, with Deadline reporting in March 2023 that there will be eight episodes instead of 10.
HBO has so far only confirmed a second season of the show. We imagine that the number of seasons House of the Dragon receives will have a lot to do with how future seasons are received, so that means the pressure is on the show’s creatives to keep delivering. That same Deadline report revealed that discussions are still happening about whether House of the Dragon will have three seasons—with the third one seemingly already mapped out—or four, as in Martin’s original design.
(HBO)
Will House of the Dragon season 2 be impacted by the WGA strike?
Studios’ refusal to meet the reasonable demands of the WGA and the union’s subsequent strike have resulted in delays on several productions—as strikes are rightly meant to do. George R.R. Martin, himself a member of the Writers’ Guild, shared his support of the strike on his blog, saying that he wanted “to go on the record with my full and complete and unequivocal support of my Guild.”
However, according to both Martin and an article published by Variety at the beginning on May 2023, season 2 of House of the Dragon will continue full steam ahead. The scripts for the upcoming seasons were all completed before the start of the strike and House of the Dragon’s showrunner Ryan Condal says he is currently on set in a strictly producing role, without any writing-related work.
As most members of the WGA will tell you, writing doesn’t end when production begins, but Martin has assured fans that writing is most definitely complete on season 2. “The scripts for the eight [season 2] episodes [of House of the Dragon] were all finished months ago, long before the strike began,” Martin wrote in his blog post. “Every episode has gone through four or five drafts and numerous rounds of revisions, to address HBO notes, my notes, budget concerns, etc. There will be no further revisions. The writers have done their jobs; the rest is in the hands of the directors, cast and crew … and of course the dragons.”
The strike has predictably halted pre-production work on the new Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight. Being in the very early phases of development, there’s not much progress to be made without writers. Martin confirmed this in his blog post, stating that the show’s writers room “has closed for the duration” of the strike.
This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the work being covered here wouldn’t exist.
“While all of Van Ham’s claims are without merit, her sexual harassment claim fails as a matter of law because (1) it is time barred, and (2) she does not plead facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action because she had failed to allege conduct that was both ‘because of’ her sex and also so ‘severe or pervasive’ that it altered the conditions of her employment,” states the defendants’ November 30 filed Demurrer without Motion to Strike to First Amended Complaint (read it here). “Accordingly, Defendants’ Demurrer should be sustained in full and without leave to amend,” the paperwork from Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp’s Adam Levin and Sandra Hanian adds.
Not rehired by the HBO chat show in the second half 2020 as Covid-19 protocols opened up production again, long time set photographer Janet Van Ham sued HBO and Maher Live on July 31 for sexual harassment and retaliation under the Federal Housing & Employment Act, as well as wrongful termination.
Calling the long running Real Time a “hostile work environment,” Van Ham, who worked on the show from 2011 to 2020, alleges repeated harassing behavior over the year from one Alex Brooks and other male crew members who were buddies of Brooks. Van Ham also spotlights how the production and CBS security at the Fairfax facility where the show is filmed did little to protect her or pursue her complaints, in her POV.
Even after Van Ham was axed from Real Time (“Van Ham is informed and believes that all former employees of RTWBM were invited back to work, and that she is the only one who was constructively terminated from the show following the March 2020 Covid shutdown,” her initial suit asserts), things seemed to go ever weirder and worse – including “Attorney Dina Zaki of Warner Media” responding to personal file request from Van Ham “arguing that Van Ham was never an employee.” The complaint goes on to say: “From November through December of 2021, HBO hired a third-party investigator to investigate Van Ham’s whistleblower and FEHA complaints to HR and the Labor Commission. The third-party investigator is the same investigator HBO always hires to downplay its misbehavior in preparation of litigation. This third-party investigator made a series of misrepresentations in its January 2021 report…”
“It is so hard being a woman on this set,” Van Ham claims Maher’s stylist Kelly Smith told her after a 2014 incident involving Brooks. “If you say something, you might get fired.”
Van Ham’s lawyers at Kane Law Firm filed a First Amended Complaint for their client in late August. The jury trial seeking FAC trimmed the initial complaint’s six claims to now four of Whistleblower Retaliation in Violation of Labor Code, Age, Sex & Gender Discrimination in Violation of FEHA, Sexual Harassment in Violation of FEHA and Retaliation in Violation of FEHA.
For now, HBO and Maher Live are only centering on stripping the sexual harassment action out of the FAC.
In fact, in their filing this week in LA Superior Court, the premium cabler and the comic’s company go on to throw responsibility for what they clearly think is a legal mess on Van Ham herself. “As a matter of law, Van Ham’s 2014 complaint about sexual harassment establishes that the she ‘knew, or through the exercise of reasonable diligence should have known, [that she] was being discriminated against at the time the earlier events occurred,’” the 15-page demurrer to the FAC says, citing previous cases of a similar nature.
“As a result, there is no justification for Van Ham’s eight-year delay in pursuing legal action,” HBO and Maher’s response bluntly says, using procedure as a blunt object to smash Van Ham’s suit.
HBO and Maher Live’s MSK lawyers are requesting a January 5 hearing before LASC Judge Holly Fujie on their demurrer. A case review hearing is already scheduled in the matter for December 13.
Gamers are a passionate bunch, and we’re no exception. These are the week’s most interesting perspectives on the wild, wonderful, and sometimes weird world of video game news.
The Top 10 Most-Played Games On Steam Deck: August 2023 Edition
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, the new animated series based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels, is out on Netflix. The eight-episode series reunites the voice cast of the 2010 live-action movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and is a hilarious blend of the series’ quick wit and well-measured pop culture references. All of this sounds like a recipe for success, right? Well, it’s a little more complicated. Read More
Ubisoft’s new The Divisiongame isn’t even out yet, as it’s still in beta testing and won’t launch officially until 2024. But after trying the beta, I already want one feature from the upcoming game to become standard in every video game I play in the future. Read More
OpenAI is the research organization behind ChatGPT, the AI-generated chatbot that took the internet by storm last year for its capacity to have really weird conversations with tech journalists. It’s at the center of Microsoft’s big bet on generative AI tools transforming the world, gaming, and more, and it’s now at risk of imploding after its CEO, Sam Altman, was mysteriously ousted by the OpenAI board of directors and Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear was desperately recruited to replace him. Here’s all you really need to know about OpenAI to appreciate what a clusterfuck the last few days have been. Read More
How much time has to pass before it becomes acceptable to remaster or even remake a game? 10 years? 15 years? What about three-ish years? Is that enough time between the original and the remaster? Well, that’s what’s happening early next year as Naughty Dog is remastering 2020’s The Last of Us Part II.Read More
Image: Kotaku / Asier Romero / Luis Molinero (Shutterstock)
Whenever a new blockbuster first-person shooter drops, gamers limber up so they can once again argue over how multiplayer matches get made and the algorithmic systems that determine who plays against whom and when. The recent release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is no exception—not long after its multiplayer servers booted on November 10, players began flocking to Reddit, X (Twitter), and everywhere in between to complain about the quality (or perceived lack thereof) of Activision’s matchmaking. But, as with so many issues in the gaming industry, there’s a serious lack of nuance and true understanding at play here. Read More
Remember when it took us seven years to get a new The Last of Us game? Remember when there was even a question about whether or not we’d ever get a sequel to Naughty Dog’s post-apocalyptic action game because the ending was so intentionally ambiguous and thought-provoking?
Now, it seems we can’t go a year without being reminded that Sony thinks as many people should experience this series as possible, while folks associated with the HBO adaptation praise the game in ways that border on the absurd. Now, we’re getting a remaster of The Last of Us Part II, and it feels like we’re reaching peak Last of Us fatigue. Read More
According to the Film & Television Industry Alliance, production on HBO‘s highly-anticipated The Last of Us Season 2 has been scheduled to begin on January 7, 2024. The listing also states that the horror drama’s filming location will take place in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike, Season 2 was originally slated for a late 2023 filming start.
What is The Last of Us about?
“The live-action series takes place 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed,” reads the synopsis. “Joel and Ellie, a pair connected through the harshness of the world they live in, are forced to endure brutal circumstances and ruthless killers on a trek across a post-pandemic America.”
The Last of Us currently stars Pedro Pascal as Joel, Bella Ramsey as Ellie, Gabriel Luna as Tommy Miller, and Rutina Wesley as Maria. Season 2 is expected to be based on Naughty Dog’s acclaimed video game sequel The Last of Us Part II, which will feature a significant time jump introducing a now grown-up Ellie. Due to the 118-day-long actors’ strike, new casting announcements for Season 2 have not yet been made.
The series is executive produced and co-written by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin and original game writer Neil Druckmann, who is also serving as one of the directors. It is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television in association with PlayStation Productions. Executive producers are Carolyn Strauss, Naughty Dog President Evan Wells, and PlayStation Productions’ Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan.
As Kelsey Grammer says in his 2020 low-budget action movie Money Plane, “Whatever you want to wager on, the money plane has you covered. You want to bet on a dude f*cking an alligator? Money Plane.”
Somehow, John Oliver, on his latest episode of HBO‘sLast Week Tonight, managed to use the film to highlight the absurdity of abortion laws in the U.S.
The British comedian spent the majority of Sunday night’s episode discussing the current situation involving abortion following the Dobbs decision, particularly as it pertains to a number of local elections coming up this week.
How did he connect the dots? The money plane is much like floating abortion clinics, an idea proposed to get round some states’ making abortions illegal.
“Lawless territory, no rules, anything goes. It’s not only a foolproof plan, but it’s also the literal premise for the movie MoneyPlane. You didn’t hallucinate that during peak COVID. There really was a film about a casino in the sky full of thieves, cartels and arms dealers who can never be arrested because the money plane is always moving in international airspace,” said Oliver.
He continued, “If you haven’t seen it, you should, frankly, stop watching this show right now and go watch that instead. If you pop an edible immediately, it should start to kick in right around when you meet the film’s villain – Darius Emanuel Grouch III, aka “The Rumble”, played by Kelsey Grammer.
“It is the Frasier reboot that we deserved,” he joked.
Money Plane, which was distributed in the U.S. by Quiver Distribution, also starred WWE Superstar Adam “Edge” Copeland, Denise Richards and Thomas Jane. It was directed by Andrew Lawrence, who wrote it with Tim Schaaf and was produced by Taylor & Dodge Entertainment and Dawn’s Light Productions.
Elsewhere on the show, Oliver dinged Business Daddy aka Warner Bros. Discovery for its decision to reboot Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as Wonka starring Timothée Chalamet.
He highlighted comments from Idaho Republican Mark Sauter, who didn’t realize how much impact such abortion laws would have on his constituents. “That’s not a cute little oopsie, it’s not joking that Timothée Chalamet may could play a young Willy Wonka and the studio immediately greenlit and now you have to figure out what the fact that means.”
Game of Thrones is a juggernaut in the entertainment world – and has a huge cast…but how many of them chill out
For at home entertainment, Game Of Thrones (GOT) is rare, it still commands a huge audience 3 years after its finale. Law and Orderand a few others can claim such status, but it less than 1% of shows who become culturally huge. It’s consistently ranked high in engagement since it concluded and House of the Dragon,” a prequel series, is pacing ahead of Amazon’s “The Rings of Power” in demand. But who in the Game of Thrones universe uses weed?
The Game of Thrones universe can be stressful. You have to contend with everyone possibly trying to stab you in the back (literally), dragons, White Walkers, cult religions, murderous barbarians, incest, and every wedding you attend ending in murder. House of the Dragon is no easy picnic either. Fans are eager for the start of season two of Dragon.
The grand dame of GOT, Diana Ring, was a lifelong smoker of cigarettes to the end, but we have been unable to verify if she was a fan of cannabis. Peter Dinklage is a big wine buff, but no signs of an edible.
Playing characters on HBO’s GOT can be tense, which is why Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams incidentally became friends on the show. To detox from long days being Sansa and Arya Stark, the actresses would wind down like the rest of us—smoking some weed and acting silly.
“We’re kind of like loners on Game of Thrones, just because the past few seasons Maisie and I have sleepovers every night when we’re shooting. Or every night whenever both of us are in town. We just used to sit there and eat and watch stupid videos and smoke weed,” Turner said “I don’t know if my publicist will kill me for saying this. We’d get high and then we’d sit in the bath together and we’d rub makeup brushes on our faces. It’s fun.”
One big fan is Australian actress Milly Alcock. Have been spotted consuming, she stars in House of the Dragon. She made a name for herself in the comedy/drama Upright and has been in a variety of vehicles including a music vehicle.
GOT Richard Madden has since starred as Ikaris in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Eternals (2021) and as a spy in the action thriller series Citadel (2023-present). He mingles marijuana in with all his gigs on screen.
Emilia Clarke excited fans with a brief backstage appearance with Snoop Dogg, but we don’t know if he gifted her any of his products.
Unfortunately, no one will be experiencing Euphoria for another calendar year. On Thursday, HBO Chairman Casey Bloys confirmed that Euphoria, the hit teen drama from auteur Sam Levinson starring Emmy-winner Zendaya, will return to the premium cable network in 2025 after three years off air.
Details about the third season have been kept close to the chest, with Levinson teasing this past August that he sees the third season of Euphoria as a “film noir.” In the next batch of episodes, Zendaya’s troubled but well-intentioned Rue will “explore what it means to be an individual with principles in a corrupt world,” says Levinson. Read on to learn what else we know about the upcoming episodes.
SoEuphoriaisn’t back for another year?!
Production for season three of Euphoria has not yet begun, in part due to the now-concluded writers’ strike and the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. Sorry!
What happened at the end of season two, anyway?
The season two finale of Euphoria was, to put it mildly, a doozy. It picks up with the second part of a very meta play written by Lexi (Maude Apatow) about her childhood in Euphoria-ville. Maddy (Alexa Demie) comes to the startling realization that she is a central character in the play (“Is this play about us?”), causing her to go on a slap-happy rampage against her ex-best friend Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) that completely derails the performance.
Outside of the theater, Nate (Jacob Elordi) confronts his father, Cal (Eric Dane), with a flash drive containing all of Cal’s explicit videos, and tips off the police about them, leading to Cal’s arrest. Fez (Angus Cloud) also has a run-in with the police, resulting in a shootout in his apartment where his little brother Ashtray (Javon Walton) is shot and he is arrested. Rue has a heart to heart with her estranged bff-slash-girlfriend Jules (Hunter Schaeffer), confessing her love for Jules and hoping to reconcile. The season ends on a cautiously optimistic note as Rue reveals that she stayed clean for the rest of the school year and is, for once, looking forward to the future.
Can I at least watch the stars ofEuphoriasomewhere else while I wait for the new season?
Yes! While Euphoria has been off the air since airing its second season finale on February 27, 2022, its cast of troubled teens have been keeping busy filming other projects. Zendaya was set to star in two highly anticipated films this fall—Dennis Villeneuve‘s Dune follow up Dune: Part Two and Luca Guadagino‘s tennis menage-a-trois Challengers, co-starring Josh Charles and Mike Faist. However, both films were postponed to 2024 due to the ongoing SAG strike, which prevents Zendaya from promoting either film.
Hunter Schaeffer, who plays Jules, Rue’s best friend turned girlfriend turned ex-bestie, can be seen in the forthcoming Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes opposite Rachel Zegler and Viola Davis. Sydney Sweeney who plays lovable mess Cassie on Euphoria, has shown her range by filming two very different movies: Reality and Anyone But You. Sweeney has garnered some awards buzz for her role as American intelligence leaker Reality Winner in the Max drama, which hit the streaming platform in May of 2023. She’s also turned heads with the romantic comedy Anyone But You, set to hit theaters on December 23, 2023, in part due to off-screen romance rumors with her co-star Glenn Plowell.
The head honchos at HBO are apparently reading your tweets, and they are not happy about them. According to a report from Rolling Stone, a new wrongful termination lawsuit filed against HBO alleges that HBO CEO Casey Bloys instructed staffers to make secret social media accounts in order to clap back at critics of the premium cable network.
Per Rolling Stone, Bloys sent multiple texts asking HBO staffers to target critics—both professional writers and anonymous Deadline commenters. Some of the texts are included in material being compiled for a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by former HBO staffer Sully Temori against HBO, HBO senior vice president of drama programming Kathleen McCaffrey, HBO head of drama Francesca Orsi,The Idol’s Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, and two other producers for The Idol.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff began working at HBO in 2015 as a temp and became an executive assistant in 2017. He worked on The Idol in August 2021 and was laid off in October 2021, the lawsuit says. Rolling Stone reports that Temori’s suit alleges that he was “harassed and faced retaliation and discrimination after disclosing a mental health diagnosis to his bosses.” According to Rolling Stone, lawyers representing HBO have requested that a judge dismiss Temori’s suit, with HBO denying “each and every allegation.”
Temori’s complaint claims that McCaffrey asked him to create fake accounts in 2020. Per texts being prepared for the complaint and reviewed by Rolling Stone, McCaffrey said that Bloys was “obsessed with Twitter,” and “always wants to pick a fight on Twitter.”
“He always texts me asking me to find friends to reply,” reads one of the messages from McCaffrey, according to Rolling Stone. “Is there a way to create a dummy account that can’t be traced to us to do his bidding?”
Per the report, the lawsuit also contains multiple text exchanges displaying what Temori’s attorney, Michael Martinez, calls the “very petty” culture at HBO. “They joke about people outside of HBO, they joke about people within HBO,” Martinez told Rolling Stone. “You suffer through some bullying until you can’t suffer anymore.”
As Rolling Stone reports, in 2020, when Bloys was HBO’s president of original programming, he allegedly became upset when Vulture television critic Kathryn VanArendonk tweeted about HBO’s Perry Mason, then in its first season. Bloys then reportedly ordered some staffers to “go on a mission” and fire back at VanArendonk. According to text messages reviewed by Rolling Stone, Bloys texted VanArendonk’s tweet to McCaffrey with an idea for a rebuttal. “Maybe a Twitter user should tweet that that’s a pretty blithe response to what soldiers legitimately go through on [the] battlefield,” read Bloys’s text. “Do you have a secret handle? Couldn’t we say especially given that it’s D-Day to dismiss a soldier’s experience like that seems pretty disrespectful…this must be answered!”
Bloys reportedly went on to text McCaffrey that they needed to find a “mole” at “arms length” from HBO’s executive team who was ready and willing to take on VanArendonk. Rolling Stone reported that the text exchange between Bloys and McCaffrey is one of six exchanges discussing firing back at Twitter critics that occurred between June 2020 and April 2021.
Jesus, Joel!Photo: Eater San Francisco / Open House Bakery
A bakery in San Francisco constructed a sculpture of a Last of Us Clicker, one of the series’ menacing, mushroom-infested zombies, out of bread. And it looks pretty darn scary.
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The life-size Clicker sculpture, whose official name is “The Last of Crust,” was made by One House Bakery, a mother-daughter shop. In an interview with Eater San Francisco, owners Catherine and Hannalee Pervan revealed that they fell in love with HBO’s Last of Us TV show and decided to try their hand at making a sculpture of the infected enemy for the 16th annual Downtown Benicia Main Street Scarecrow Contest.
“And let’s be honest, we also fell in love with Pedro Pascal,” Hannalee told Eater San Francisco.
Get in line, Pervans. We all love that man. But anyway, back to bread.
Image: Eater San Francisco / Open House Bakery / Kotaku
By now you’re probably asking yourself how such a large sculpture was made out of bread, as well as how long such an artistic culinary process would take. According to the SF Chronicle, it took the One House Bakery team over 400 hours to make the Clicker statue. How’d they do it? Well, the process apparently involved wrapping a bunch of balloons in a thin layer of dough and then baking them to evoke the infected zombie’s grimy fungal look.
“When the popped balloon is removed, it leaves behind these really strange pod-like shapes we were able to use,” Catherine told SF Chronicle.
This isn’t the first time One House Bakery made a pop culture-inspired sculpture out of bread. In fact, last year the bakery made a Star Wars sculpture of Han Solo frozen in carbonite called “Pan Solo,” which took home second-place at the 2022 event.
Time will tell whether One House Bakery’s video game-inspired bread sculpture will eat up the other businesses’ entries when this year’s Scarecrow Contest takes place on October 23.
Citing the need “to bring people back to work,” comedian Bill Maher announced Wednesday that his HBO political talk show “Real Time” will return to the air, but without writers amid the ongoing strike, now in its fifth month.
“The writers have important issues that I sympathize with, and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction, but they are not the only people with issues, problems, and concerns,” Maher said in a statement posted to social media, indicating that the economic wellbeing of his staff played a role in his decision.
“Despite some assistance from me, much of the staff is struggling mightily,” Maher wrote.
The 67-year-old also noted that although the show would resume, it would be without several writer-driven segments, including his monologue and his end-of-show editorial piece, admitting that the new episodes “will not be as good as our normal show, full stop.”
“I love my writers, I am one of them, but I’m not prepared to lose an entire year and see so many below-the-line people suffer so much,” Maher said of his show, which is filmed at Television City studio lot in Los Angeles.
His announcement comes just two days after Drew Barrymore also said that her daytime talk show would be returning with new episodes beginning Sept. 18.
“I own this choice,” she said in a statement Monday. “We are in compliance with not discussing or promoting film and television that is struck of any kind.”
Her announcement sparked significant backlash in the entertainment community and prompted the Writer’s Guild of America to say they would picket the show, which records at the CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan.
“‘The Drew Barrymore Show’ will not be performing any writing work covered by the WGA strike,” A spokesperson for CBS Media Ventures, which distributes the show, said in a statement.
In early May, just days after the WGA strike began, Barrymore had pulled out of hosting duties for the MTV Movie & TV Awards in solidarity with WGA.
“I made a choice to walk away from the MTV, film and television awards because I was the host and it had a direct conflict with what the strike was dealing with which was studios, streamers, film, and television,” Barrymore said in her statement this week. “It was also in the first week of the strike and so I did what I thought was the appropriate thing at the time to stand in solidarity with the writers.”
MTV and CBS Media Ventures are both part of Paramount Global, which also owns CBS News.
Hollywood writers have been on strike since early May, and they were joined on the picket lines by Hollywood actors in mid-July after the two groups each failed to reach a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group which represents all major Hollywood studios. It marks the first time since 1960 that both the WGA and the Screen Actors Guild have been on strike simultaneously, effectively shutting down nearly all scripted production in Hollywood.
Paramount Pictures, one of the studios involved in the negotiations, is also part of Paramount Global. Some CBS News staff are SAG-AFTRA or Writers Guild members, but their contracts are not affected by the strikes.
— S. Dev and Gina Martinez contributed to this report.
After only one highly criticized season, The Idol is over.
On Monday, HBO announced the TV drama from Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye would not return for a second season.
“The Idol was one of HBO’s most provocative original programs, and we’re pleased by the strong audience response,” HBO said in a statement. “After much thought and consideration, HBO, as well as the creators and producers have decided not to move forward with a second season. We’re grateful to the creators, cast, and crew for their incredible work.”
The Idol‘s five-episode season, starring Tesfaye and Lily-Rose Depp, was certainly “provocative,” but not well-received.
The drama follows Jocelyn (Depp), a pop superstar who navigates through dark corners of Hollywood and falls in love with her abuser, the rat-tail-sporting cult leader Tedros (Tesfaye). Through ample nudity and real lines like “Mental illness is sexy,” co-creators Tesfaye and Levinson spun a dark, often laugh-worthy narrative shunned by critics and viewers alike.
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Even before its debut in June, there was controversy surrounding The Idol. Director Amy Seimetz quit the production in April, and was replaced by Levinson, who reshot many scenes. One month later, Rolling Stone released a report claiming the show is a “rape fantasy” that was filmed on a film set with a toxic, disorganized work environment. (In response to the Rolling Stone article, Tesfaye notably shared a deleted scene from The Idol that sees his character call the outlet “irrelevant.” The post has since been deleted.)
As The Idol aired, more negative press rolled in. GQ said The Idol gave viewers “the worst sex scene in history,” and described Tesfaye’s performance as one with “all the energy and sexual enticement of Gollum scurrying for a fish.” The Guardian said Tesfaye ought to “be tried at The Hague” for his performance, alongside the “limp, glazed-over, chain-smoking nothingness of Lily-Rose Depp.”
thinking about how sam levinson said the idol was about to be “the biggest show of the summer” only for it to be cut short and cancelled after 1 season
The Idolonly ran on HBO for five episodes. (The show was originally greenlit for a six-episode run, but during an extensive reworking of the series during production, it was trimmed down to five.) Maybe given its reception and subject matter, that’s for the better.
The show starred Lily-Rose Depp and Abel Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd. The show’s plot centers around Depp’s character, Jocelyn, a pop star who grows increasingly enmeshed with Tesfaye’s character, Tedros. Jocelyn had suffered a nervous breakdown and is trying to put her struggling music career back together. Tedros owns a nightclub and appears to be a powerful man in the industry. Eventually, it becomes clear that he’s also a cult leader and an extremely dangerous presence.
Sam Levinson, creator of the HBO teen drama Euphoria, and Tesfaye worked together to cook this series up, and it definitely has that feel. Unfortunately, critics also point out that it’s almost unnecessarily dark. Some felt it didn’t really do a great job satirizing the industry it’s trying to exploit; that instead it was just as mean-spirited as the world it was trying to depict.
After a first season filled with controversy — and rumors earlier this summer that the show would not return for a second season, which HBO denied at the time — the series is now officially done. Here was a channel spokesman’s comment on the news:
The Idol was one of HBO’s most provocative original programs, and we’re pleased by the strong audience response. After much thought and consideration, HBO, as well as the creators and producers have decided not to move forward with a second season. We’re grateful to the creators, cast, and crew for their incredible work.
Additionally, it seems that some of the people behind the show had mixed understandings of what was intended from the start. Moses Sumney thought it was a limited series, while Da’Vine Joy Randolph had assumed there would definitely be a second season. The show sits at 19 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Consider Jocelyn’s days of world-class sinning to be no longer. A second season of HBO’s The Idol starring The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp as power tripping pop figures, is officially dead at HBO, the network confirmed to Vanity Fair on Monday.
“The Idol was one of HBO’s most provocative original programs, and we’re pleased by the strong audience response,” the network said in a statement. “After much thought and consideration, HBO, as well as the creators and producers have decided not to move forward with a second season. We’re grateful to the creators, cast, and crew for their incredible work.”
The Sam Levinson-created series, which courted controversy for its sex cult subject matter and alleged behind-the-scenes drama, yielded just five episodes. It came with a reported $54 million–$75 million price tag, undoubtedly making it one of TV’s more expensive experiments. Although ratings didn’t exactly soar and critics largely shrugged, search interest for The Idol spiked by 1,134% after its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, according to a report of Google Search data by JeffBet. Research conducted by Parrot Analytics and reported by the Los Angeles Times found that audience demand for the show was more than 20 times higher than the demand for the average series. “Traditional ratings have been dismal, which suggests that people are more interested in posting about how bad The Idol is than they are in actually watching it,” wrote the LA Times.
And yet, the show could never outpace the negative buzz surrounding it. As Jane Adams, who played label executive Nikki Katz on the series, told VF, “What is amazing to me is no one’s listening—I’ve not seen that before in all my days, such a dogged ‘We refuse to change the narrative,’” she said. “I especially want to say to all the feminists, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ All these women that I’m working with are talking about their experience and you’re not listening. You’re not listening!”
Page Six reported on June 15 that The Weeknd, who described the series as a “five-hour film,” was not expected to move forward with a second season due in part to his alleged “egomaniacal” behavior on set. HBO denied the report the same day, tweeting, “It is being misreported that a decision on a second season of The Idol has been determined. It has not, and we look forward to sharing the next episode with you Sunday night.” However, the episode count shrunk from six to five as a result of a creative retooling, with a source telling TVLine: “The season ended up being five episodes when it was all said and done after Sam took over and made significant changes. The story only ended up requiring five.”
A New York City drug dealer was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for providing “The Wire” actor Michael K. Williams with fentanyl-laced heroin, causing his death.
Irvin Cartagena, 40, of Aibonito, Puerto Rico, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams. Cartagena had pleaded guilty in April to conspiring to distribute drugs. As part of a plea deal, Cartagena agreed that some of the drugs he sold resulted in the death of Williams.
Williams overdosed in his Brooklyn penthouse apartment in September 2021, a day after purchasing the drugs. Authorities said he bought the heroin from Cartagena on a sidewalk in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood in a deal recorded by a security camera.
Williams famously portrayed Omar Little, the rogue robber of drug dealers, in HBO’s “The Wire,” which ran from 2002 to 2008. In addition to his work on the critically acclaimed drama, Williams also starred in films and other TV series such as “Boardwalk Empire.” He was nominated for five Emmys throughout his career, including three for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.
A photo of the alleged drug deal captured on surveillance footage.
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Cartagena faced a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and could have faced up to 40 years behind bars.
“I am very sorry for my actions,” he said before the sentence was announced. “When we sold the drugs, we never intended for anyone to lose their life.”
Abrams noted that those who knew Cartagena said that he was “helpful and humble and hard working” when he was not using drugs himself.
“I’m hopeful that with treatment, … it will help you move forward on a more productive and law-abiding path,” the judge said.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams noted that those who participated in the sale of drugs to Williams already knew that someone else had died from drugs they were peddling. CBS News previously reported that the drug trafficking organization had been identified by authorities and had been operating in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn since August 2020.
Prosecutors said Cartagena and others continued to sell fentanyl-laced heroin in Manhattan and Brooklyn even after Williams died, although Cartagena eventually fled to Puerto Rico, where he was arrested in February 2022. Three other men were arrested in Manhattan in February 2022.
In a defense submission prior to sentencing, Cartagena’s lawyer, Sean Maher, said his client was paid for his street sales in heroin to support his own use.
“In a tragic instant, Mr. Cartagena was the one who handed the small packet of drugs to Mr. Williams — it easily could have been any of the other men who were there or in the vicinity selling the same drugs,” Maher wrote. “Sentencing Mr. Cartagena to double digits of prison time will not bring back the beautiful life that was lost.”
Prosecutors in a presentence submission had requested a sentence of at least 12 years while the court’s Probation Department had recommended a 20-year term after citing Cartagena’s 14 prior convictions for drug-related crimes, including burglary, robbery and prison escape.
Abrams, though, said the recommendations were “simply too high.”
“This sentence, while severe, is sufficient but not greater than necessary,” she said.
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