Month: October 2021

A number of esteemed artists have had the honor of writing the theme song for the James Bond movies, but Coldplay isn’t one of them. That’s not due to a lack of trying, though.

In a new NME interview, Chris Martin revealed that the band has been attempting to write a good Bond theme for decades, saying, “We kept trying to write one for 20 years, but never submitted them. We have Bond themes for about five movies, but they’re not very good, to be honest. Also I don’t know if we’re spiritually on the same trip as James. As much as I like the films, I don’t know if us singing would do it for him. He’d be like, ‘That’s not what I’m into at all, fellas. I like guns and sh*t. All this hippie stuff just isn’t going to work.’”

Meanwhile, the band performed with Billie Eilish and Finneas at a Global Citizen concert last month, and Martin said he’s a fan of their No Time To Die theme. He also said, “It was equally wonderful singing with them. I mean, [Eilish and Finneas] wrote ‘Ocean Eyes.’ I know when a song is great when my body goes into absolute furious jealousy for a minute — when I heard that song, I was like, ‘You f*cking bastards.’ But then I have to go, ‘This is really inspiring,’ and it becomes fandom. I love how much of a bond those two have.”

Check out the full feature here.

Coldplay is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Squid Game is a huge hit for Netflix — it’s officially the most-watched series in the streaming service’s history, beating Bridgerton. It’s also been hugely lucrative. The Korean series is “worth almost $900 million in value for the company,” Bloomberg reports, “underscoring the windfall that one mega-hit can generate in the streaming era.”

Squid Game stands out both for its popularity, and its relatively low cost. The South Korean show, about indebted people in a deadly contest for a cash prize, generated $891.1 million in impact value, a metric the company uses to assess the performance from individual shows. The show cost just $21.4 million to produce — about $2.4 million an episode. Those figures are just for the first season, and stem from a document that details Netflix’s performance metrics for the show.

The entire season of Squid Game cost as much as two episodes of Game of Thrones or HBO’s upcoming The Last of Us. This isn’t quite a “The Blair Witch Project making $248.6 million on a $500,000 budget” situation, but it’s still an unexpected windfall for Netflix — which is capitalizing on the show’s success with Halloween costumes.

Netflix estimates that 132 million people have watched at least two minutes of Squid Game, the amount of time the streamer counts as a “view.” As for what’s next for the show, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk said “there are a lot of possibilities out there for season two storylines.” The budget will probably be slightly bigger for season two.

(Via Bloomberg)

Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian have apparently been close for years now, but it was just in February they confirmed that they’re in a relationship. Now things appear to be going extremely well on that front, as the two just got engaged.

Kardashian shared the news in an Instagram post last night, which includes photos from Barker’s proposal. It went down on a beach, inside of a giant heart-shaped arrangement of roses and candles. Kardashian captioned the post, “forever @travisbarker.”

The post itself doesn’t confirm that the two are engaged — these photos could be of a general, non-engagement-related romantic gesture, after all. However, Barker shared posts confirming the news, including one from Kim Kardashian. That post is of a video, set to Bruno Mars’ “Marry You,” of the betrothed enjoying a kiss, with the engagement ring clearly visible in the shot.

According to a “source” via E!, “It happened during the sunset at Rosewood Miramar [Beach in Montecito, California]. They had just got back from NYC and decided to do a day trip to Montecito. Kourtney thought it was going to be a casual day, as they always go to Rosewood, and she was totally thrown off. It’s one of their favorite places and they have a lot of memories there.”

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Succession brought “killers” back, y’all, at least metaphorically. The third season has drawn battle lines following Kendall Roy’s decision to light the Waystar Royco world on fire, and everyone’s here to take a side in his war against Logan, i.e. King of the F*ck Offs. Speaking of which, Logan promised to go “full f*cking beast,” and that hasn’t happened yet, but give it time because the premiere was all about lining up who’s on what team.

In short, the civil war is looking pretty imbalanced at the moment. Shiv and Roman and their assorted associates/love interests/and so on are all Team Logan, and Team Kendall includes… well, Cousin Greg. We’ll soon see Alexander Skarsgård and Adrien Brody join the chaos, but for now, it’s all about playing with language, meaning that Logan’s getting Shakespearean again up in this motherf*cker, and Cousin Greg is making awkward-as-hell cultural references. That leaves us with a pretty fitting reference for Kendall, who finally proved to dad that he’s a “killer,” while Greg’s thrilled to be in a chase-like situation that will remind everyone of a certain white Bronco that carried O.J. Simpson in the mid-1990s as he fled from murder charges.

This led to the greatest line of the premiere. No, I’m not talking about Logan’s “I get the sh*ts, we’re f*cked.” Rather, let’s reflect upon how Cousin Greg (while being in a vehicle that’s the center of national news coverage) almost rapturously proclaimed, “This is like O.J….you know if O.J. never killed anyone.” Kendall was all like, dude, who told you I never killed someone, and he added, “Juice is loose, baby!”

It says a lot about Kendall’s mindset in an ongoing way. And yeah, people loved this, almost too much. It’s good to have Succession back again.

HBO’s Succession airs on Sunday nights.

The Chicago Sky became first-time WNBA champions on Sunday afternoon thanks to a thrilling comeback win in Game 4 to take down the Phoenix Mercury. For Candace Parker, it was the highest of highs, as she was getting emotional before the final buzzer sounded and let it all out in the celebration at midcourt, as the future Hall of Famer got to celebrate a championship with her daughter in her first season with her hometown team in Chicago.

As with all championship celebrations, there’s the other side where the losing team feels dejected, having come so close to the ultimate prize only to fall just short of that goal. The Mercury were gracious in defeat on the court, as Diana Taurasi and others made their way through the masses on the floor to congratulate some of the Sky on their achievement, but afterwards the frustration of losing Game 4 in the manner they did, blowing a 14-point second half lead, set in.

The entire team declined to speak with the media, which led to questions about possible fines from the league for the team for bowing out of media responsibilities after the loss, and Alex Simon of The Next Hoops brought word that the Wintrust Arena visiting locker room door bore the brunt of Taurasi’s frustration in the wake of the loss.

The door was severely cracked through the middle, which an eyewitness said came from Taurasi slamming the door multiple times. Neither the WNBA nor the Phoenix Mercury commented by time of publication.

In fairness to Taurasi, this doesn’t look like the strongest of doors, so it probably didn’t take an awful lot to break it. It was a tough series for the three-time champ, and particularly a rough Game 4 as she had 16 points on 4-of-16 shooting, as neither she nor any of her Mercury teammates could break free of their fourth quarter slump to stop the Sky’s 18-4 run to close the game.

Last week social media got in a tizzy upon learning that David Fincher had some mystery project afoot at Netflix. Many thought he was finally bringing back Mindhunter, the much-liked serial killer show that ended on a cliffhanger in 2019. Instead he was doing Voir, described as a “new documentary series of visual essays celebrating cinema.” That’s cool, too, but it’s no Mindhunter. And though Fincher, who’s an executive producer and occasional director on the show, has long said he was too busy to return to it, one of its directors claims it can be revived, with a little help from fans.

Asif Kapadia, the British filmmaker famous for the documentaries Senna and Amy who directed two of the show’s Season 1 episodes, recently took to Twitter, begging viewers to make their Mindhunter love known. “Audiences around the world need let @netflix know that there is a real interest & demand for Season 3 of @MINDHUNTER_ if you make enough noise, It might actually happen…”

It’s now de rigueur for people to use social media to effect change — or at least get shows or movies they want made. It happened with the “Snyder cut” of Justice League. Maybe it could also happen to a cerebral program in which feds interview murderers like Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, and Ed Kemper, the latter scene-stealingly played by Cameron Britton.

Will this inspire Fincher to take a break from movies about movies like Mank and return once more to one of his most frequented subjects? Maybe. But he was nice enough to release his cast, including Jonathan Groff, Hoyt McCallany, and Anna Torv, so they didn’t have to turn down jobs while waiting for him to get his act together. Even if Fincher decides Season 3 is a go, it still depends on whether they’ve become the ones who are too busy for Mindhunter.

(Via IndieWire)

The Chicago Sky are WNBA champions for the first time in franchise history, thanks to an 80-74 win at home in Game 4 of the WNBA Finals to beat the Mercury 3-1 in the series.

For much of the game, it looked like Phoenix would force a decisive Game 5 back in the desert, using a late second quarter burst to take a 7-point lead to the halftime break and led by as many as 14 in the third quarter. Brittney Griner was dominant inside, scoring 28 points and pulling down seven rebounds, and it seemed there were just no answers from Chicago for her presence in the paint — particularly as their three-point shot had gone cold for the better part of three quarters.

However, the Sky’s offense woke up and they figured out how to get stops — helped in part by Phoenix missing some good looks — and began to reel in the Mercury. Allie Quigley got hot, scoring 26 points on 9-of-14 shooting (5-of-10 from three), serving as the scoring catalyst for the Sky’s comeback.

With six minutes to play, the Mercury still held onto an 8-point lead at 70-62, but would see their offense go ice cold at the worst possible time as Chicago went on an extended 18-4 run to end the game and pull away for the win. Phoenix didn’t score a field goal in the last 4:42 of the game, with their only points coming on two Diana Taurasi free throws, as they went away from Griner and their perimeter players simply couldn’t put the ball in the basket. Taurasi and Skylar Diggins-Smith both missed bunnies late on the few times they created open looks, and otherwise they were stymied by the Sky defense down the stretch.

On the other end, Chicago’s stars shined brightest in the biggest moments. After Quigley got them within striking distance, Kahleah Copper got loose for a layup on one of 15 dimes from Courtney Vandersloot to cut the lead to three, and then Candace Parker hit a game-tying three to send a pulse of energy through the Wintrust Arena.

Then Vandersloot took over, orchestrating the offense to set up Stefani Dolson for a bucket and creating one of her own as well as she finished with 10 points, 15 assists, and nine rebounds in yet another sensational performance.

It was a phenomenal finish from Chicago or a gutting collapse from Phoenix, depending on which side you fell on, but it was a fittingly thrilling fourth quarter in a series that, while it didn’t go the full five games, produced some tremendous drama. Chicago now joins the ranks of WNBA title winning franchises and Candace Parker, who had 16 points, 12 rebounds, five assists, and four steals in the win, delivers a championship to her hometown team in her first season.

As for Finals MVP honors, those belonged to Kahleah Copper who came up big in key moments in each of the Sky’s wins in the series.

Aaron Rodgers might not play his entire career in Green Bay as he spent this offseason feuding with management and worked out a deal that will give him the opportunity to demand a trade this offseason from the Packers. However, whatever comes next for the future Hall of Famer certainly won’t involve him going to Chicago, a team he has tortured for his entire career.

The Packers paid a visit to Soldier Field on Sunday afternoon for what could be the final time with Rodgers at the helm, and No. 12 made sure that, if it was the final time, he reminded Bears fans of his dominance over them in a 24-14 win. Rodgers sealed the Green Bay win with a touchdown run in the closing minutes, getting popped as he crossed the goal line, but he bounced up immediately to tell the Chicago crowd “I’ve owned you all my f*cking life,” and yelling “I own you” over and over as he ran through the end zone to deliver the same message to the fans behind the end zone.

It is some tremendous villainry from Rodgers, who embraces the hate in Chicago and seemingly lives to rip out the hearts of Bears fans — although, to be fair, he does this to most teams in the NFC North. But the Bears in particular seem to be a team he loves to beat, and he’s done it a lot, going 21-5 in his career against Chicago, certainly backing up his taunt on Sunday. The good news for Chicago is that, maybe, possibly, he’ll be gone soon and the boogeyman that lived in the division will be no more.

There are a number of reasons that Ed Orgeron is going to be leaving LSU at the end of this season, as the school and football coach worked out terms of his departure on Sunday morning. For one, since winning a national title in January 2020, the Tigers have been downright mediocre on the field, posting a 9-8 record and falling completely out of contention in the SEC West.

Beyond the poor performance on the field, there was the investigation from a year ago into organizational culture within the program that revealed the team had failed to follow proper protocols when it came to rape and sexual harassment allegations against players like Derrius Guice. And on top of all of that, Orgeron committed the cardinal sin of any football coach: he crossed the wrong people higher up. Football programs at both the college and professional levels will willfully look the other way on a lot of things, which is among the larger overall issues with the sport as a whole, but making enemies out of the people with hiring and firing power is the surest way to get yourself ousted.

Much like Jon Gruden’s emails, which contained horrific language offending many groups and people but reached the point of no return by lobbing that hateful language towards commissioner Roger Goodell, one of the ways Orgeron pushed his way across the line by reportedly trying to hit on the pregnant wife of a high-ranking LSU official, per The Athletic’s Brody Miller.

It created messes for him, like the time Orgeron pulled up to a woman at a gas station wearing exercise attire. “Hey, you look like you work out,” he said, according to multiple sources. “We could work out together.” The woman informed Orgeron she was married and pregnant, to which he responded, “Why does that matter?”

That woman was the wife of a high-ranking LSU official. Word of this reached the LSU Board of Supervisors, the collection of prominent Louisiana attorneys and business owners appointed by the governor who make the most important decisions at LSU. And of course, it reached LSU athletic director Scott Woodward.

Following up on that report that Orgeron, who filed for divorce from his wife of 23 years weeks after winning the national title, became distracted by chasing women in the past two years was this one, which stated he would bring some of those women to practices to the point the distraction became one for the whole team.

This wasn’t the lone factor in Orgeron’s ouster from LSU, but it would stand to reason that it played a role in accelerating the timeline for his dismissal and made it so things couldn’t be repaired even if things on the field turned around, something that is evidenced by this all coming a day after the Tigers beat Florida.

The Phoenix Suns had a 2018 Draft for the ages, landing two core pieces of the team that would go to the NBA Finals last season. No. 1 overall pick Deandre Ayton has expressed his frustration with the lack of a max extension offer after he played a pivotal role in that Finals run, wanting the organization to show him the respect and commitment his counterparts like Luka Doncic, Trae Young, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander have received.

While the Ayton situation puts a bit of a damper on the enthusiasm of this upcoming season in Phoenix, Suns fans can be happy that the other core piece from that draft is now locked in long term, as Mikal Bridges agreed to a 4-year, $90 million extension on Sunday, a day before the extension deadline — as relayed via Adrian Wojnarowski.

Mikal was, understandably, pretty excited about the news.

Bridges has become a tremendous defender in his first three years in Phoenix, as his length, quickness, and activity allow him to wreak havoc on opposing offenses on the wing. Offensively, Bridges has made steady strides each season both in productivity and efficiency, having a career-best season in 2020-21, averaging 13.5 points with 54.3/42.5/84.0 shooting splits. With Bridges locked up, the Suns can shift full attention to Ayton, who it should be noted would, at the worst, head into next summer as a restricted free agent with Phoenix able to match any offer on him.