Year: 2022

Despite their pretty well-publicized feud, Sarah Jessica Parker very rarely talks about former co-star Kim Cattrall and mostly prefers to mention her character in passing on the Sex And The City reboot. Parker and the rest of the And Just Like That ladies like to tip-toe around their supposed feud with Cattrall, and the details of their falling out are slim, but Parker recently gave a rare glimpse into what really went down between the former friends, and it’s not pretty.

While speaking on The Hollywood Reporter Awards Chatter podcast, Parker opened up about the situation which led Cattrall to be absent from the controversial reboot. “I’ll be as clear as I can,” Parker began. “It’s very hard to talk about the situation with Kim because — I’ve been so careful about not ever wanting to say anything that is unpleasant.” It’s true–whenever Cattrall or her character are ever mentioned, Parker expertly navigates the conversation elsewhere.

Parker explained what went down when Cattrall allegedly made certain demands if she were to appear in a third film. Obviously, that never happened. “[The studio] didn’t feel comfortable meeting where she wanted to meet, and so we didn’t do the movie because we didn’t want to do it without Kim,” Parker admitted. “And the studio wasn’t going to do it, so it fell apart.” So…they made a TV show instead. “It wasn’t that she said ‘no’ to the movie; it’s that the studio said ‘no’ to the movie, which, you know, happens.”

Things turned even dark after their very public Instagram spat after the death of Cattrall’s brother. “I don’t need your love or support during this tragic time @sarahjessicaparker” Cattrall boldly posted in 2018. “You are not my family. You are not my friend. So I’m writing to tell you one last time to stop exploiting our tragedy in order to restore your ‘nice girl’ persona.” That pretty much marked the end of any potential Samantha appearances in the future.

“I’ve spent a lot of years working really hard to always be decent to everybody on the set, to take care of people, to be responsible to and for people, both my employers and the people that I feel I’m responsible for as a producer of the show,” Parker said on the podcast. “And there just isn’t anyone else who’s ever talked about me this way, so it’s very painful.” Thus, Cattrall was never even asked to appear on the show.

“We did not ask her to be part of this because she made it clear that that wasn’t something she wanted to pursue, and it no longer felt comfortable for us, and so it didn’t occur to us,” Parker concluded. “That’s not ‘slamming’ her, it’s just learning.”

Despite the rift, a second season of And Just Like That is in the works, with Samantha still off-screen, galavanting around Europe. To be fair, that’s on-brand for her character.

After Ezra Miller‘s most recent arrest for second-degree assault in Hawaii, the fate of the solo The Flash movie has not looked too great. Miller’s repeated run-ins with the law dominating headlines made replacing the actor look like a real possibility. It also didn’t help that Warner Bros. has reportedly put all future projects with Miller on “pause.”

However, according to a new report, the studio is still moving full speed ahead with Miller as the star of The Flash movie, mainly because it would be next to impossible to replace them without entirely scrapping the film. In other words, don’t expect to see another actor take Miller’s place — yet. (The next movie? Maybe!) Via Variety:

With “The Flash,” insiders say it would not be possible to replace Miller without reshooting the entire movie. They are in just about every scene, and there is not enough digital technology in existence to configure that magic without going back to square one. And redoing the entire film is not a realistic proposition for any movie — much less one that wrapped production months ago and already cost hundreds of millions.

As Variety also notes, The Flash is doing very well with test audiences and could potentially be a box-office smash for the studio, which it needs to get the DC Films to become reliable hits like the Marvel movies. More cynically, The Flash could turn a profit, or the very least, recoup the millions that have already been dropped before Miller put the whole film in jeopardy.

That said, all this hinges on Miller staying out of trouble for an entire year. The Flash is slated for June 23, 2023, and well, that’s a pretty long time. If Miller continues to rack up assaults, Warner Bros. might have no choice but to scrap the whole movie and cut their very huge losses.

(Via Variety)

Joe Rogan, like everyone else in the semi-civilized world, was enthralled enough with the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard U.S.-based trial to be super interested in the verdict. The circus, which aired on Court TV for the masses, went Johnny’s way, unlike the U.K-based libel trial against The Sun, which led to a ruling that tabloid’s “wife beater” term about him was “substantially true.” Yet the U.S. jury found that Amber had defamed Johnny to the tune of $15 million. Yes, he’s on the hook for two of those millions, but still, it’s hard to imagine how she’ll pay (and Amber agrees) those damages.

Amber’s side has motioned towards an appeal, and she issued a statement of feeling “heartbroken” by the verdict. Via Mediaite, Joe Rogan’s feeling sorry for her, and although he believes that she’s “crazy,” he’d hate to see her pay those damages. It’s a sympathetic stance that feels unexpected:

“She’s so crazy. I feel like, look, I don’t want her to have to pay him money. I really don’t,” Rogan said matter-of-factly. “Cause I think that that lady’s broken and psychologically she’s so damaged.”

“She’s so crazy,” he continued, “I think the real punishment is that it’s been exposed to the world, how insane she is! Like she’s insane and she’s a liar and it’s like that lady needs to go to the jungle and do some ayahuasca and get connected to the mother and then come back and apologize.”

Again, it’s hard to imagine what Amber will do to settle up here. Johnny will likely see some sort of career resurrection following the verdict (he certainly has some celebrity support behind him), but Amber’s future roles could be in jeopardy. And yep, Court TV is the true winner out of this whole mess.

(Via Mediaite)

You’ve seen Beavis and Butt-Head do America. Now they’re ready to do the universe.

In Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, two of television’s greatest dummies (who occasionally showed signs of brilliance, like the time they told Pavement to “try harder”) are blasted into space in 1998 — and return, via a black hole, in 2022. Things have changed a lot in 24 years, but two things are as true then as they are now: “the Earth sucks,” as Butt-Head says in the trailer above, and 69 is the funniest number.

The voice cast is headlined by creator Mike Judge as an “older, more mature” Beavis and Butt-Head, as well as Gary Cole, Chris Diamantopoulos, Nat Faxon, Brian Huskey, Chi McBride, Tig Notaro, Stephen Root, Andrea Savage, Martin Starr, and Jimmy O. Yang. A sneak peek of the film will air during the MTV Movie and TV Awards on June 5.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

In perhaps the dumbest space movie ever made, Beavis and Butt-head are sentenced to Space Camp by a “creative” judge in 1998, leading to a trip on the Space Shuttle, with predictably disastrous results. After going through a black hole, they reemerge in our time, where they look for love, misuse iPhones, and are hunted by the Deep State. Spoiler: They don’t score.

Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe premieres on Paramount+ on June 23.

Over the past 10 days, we’ve been deluged with one dumb idea after the other about the “reason” a teenager in Uvalde, Texas bought himself two AR-15 semi-automatic rifles and proceeded to kill 21 innocent people. Laura Ingraham says it’s weed. Tucker Carlson votes for COVID lockdowns. Don Jr. went with “crazy teachers,” which few people saw coming. While Ted Cruz is insisting that doors—yes, doors—are the real problem. (For the record: 2 Chainz thinks Cruz’s argument is “dumb as f**k.”) But now Missouri congressman Billy Long has entered the chat.

As Mediaite reports, the one-time auctioneer who has been representing Missouri’s 7th district since 2011 may have just won the award for Most Unhinged Excuse for Gun Violence That Isn’t Guns. On Wednesday, while being interviewed on 93.9 The Eagle in Columbia, Missouri, the topic turned to last week’s school shooting in Texas. While Long at first lamented the fact that people are “trying to blame inanimate objects for all of these tragedies,” the conversation went sideways from there. As Long explained:

“When I was growing up in Springfield, you had one or two murders a year. Now we have two, three, four a week in Springfield, Missouri. So something has happened to our society, and I go back to abortion—when we decided it was ok to murder kids in their mothers’ wombs. Life has no value to a lot of these folks.”

Ummmm….

Errrrr….

Ahhhh….

Needless to say, people had some thoughts:

(Via Mediaite)

Jason Mantzoukas has graduated from playing Tommy Lee’s penis on Hulu’s Pam & Tommy to playing Dionysis, god of wine on Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Variety reported several casting announcements for guest stars on the series based on Rick Riordan’s popular book series, including Mantzoukas. Megan Mullally of Will & Grace fame will Alecto/Mrs. Dodds, Percy’s strict math teacher. Mantzoukas will play Dionysus/Mr. D., the “irritable and sarcastic” wine god who runs Camp Half Blood, a camp for demigods. Walker Scobell is set to play Percy Jackson, and lead the show with co-stars Aryan Simhadri and Leah Jeffries. The Percy Jackson series is a separate entity from the film franchise including Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2010) and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013). The film series starred Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson and Alexandra Daddario.

Variety also reports that Virginia Kull, Glynn Turman, and Timm Sharp are set to recur on the Disney+ series. Disney describes the Percy Jackson series as “the fantastical story of a 12-year-old modern demigod, Percy Jackson, who’s just coming to terms with his newfound supernatural powers when the sky god Zeus accuses him of stealing his master lightning bolt. Now Percy must trek across America to find it and restore order to Olympus.”

There is no release date yet, but the casting announcements indicate that production is nigh, so we can probably expect the series to premiere sometime in 2023.
(Via Variety)

Earlier this year, David Crosby found himself in the news after he joined the Neil Young-started wave of artists taking their music off of Spotify due to issues with Joe Rogan. Back in the day, though, he may have been similarly raging against technologies like fire and the wheel. No, that’s not a jab at the 80-year-old musician’s age, but a joke about the reason he was trending on Twitter this afternoon.

First, some context: according to IFLScience, in 2019, an exhibition at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery’s Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery showed off facial reconstructions of ancient people who lived near what is now England. One of them, known as the Stafford Road man, is believed to have lived around the year 550 during the Anglo-Saxon period.

Well, one of those Stafford Road renders was shared on Twitter recently and a lot of music fans who saw it came to the same conclusion: The image looks a heck of a lot like Crosby. That was such a popular opinion, in fact, that Crosby ended up trending on Twitter. Crosby, an active Twitter user, has yet to respond to being compared to the Stafford Road render.

Check out some tweets about the Crosby/Stafford comparison below.

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

Yesterday, the jury in the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial voted in favor of Depp, whom Heard alleges abused her during their marriage. Depp was awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages in his defamation suit, while Heard will receive $2 million in compensatory damages. Although the jury found Heard guilty of defamation, the actress isn’t giving up the fight.

Speaking to Savannah Guthrie on Today per Deadline, Heard’s attorney Elaine Bredehoft said that the actress “absolutely” wants to appeal the jury’s decision. The jury was not sequestered throughout the trial, although they were strongly encouraged not to read news about the trial or go on social media.

“She has some excellent grounds for it,” Bredehoft said of an appeal. “She was demonized here. A number of things were allowed in this court that should not have been allowed, and it caused the jury to be confused.” In the United Kingdom in 2020, the court ruled against Depp after he sought a judgment against the publication The Sun because it referred to him as a “wife-beater.” When asked if Heard can afford to pay Depp the millions of dollars in damages Bredehoft said, “Oh no. Absolutely not.”

Following the verdict, Heard posted a statement on social media. “The disappointment I feel today is beyond words. I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband,” she wrote.

Bredehoft suggests that the jury’s accessibility influenced their decision in favor of Depp. “They went home every night. They have families. The families are on social media,” she said. “We had a 10-day break in the middle because of a Judicial Conference. There’s no way they couldn’t have been influenced by it, and it was horrible. It really, really was lopsided. …It was like the Roman Colosseum, how they view this whole case.”

(Via Deadline)

Those dang Looney Tunes are at it again! Though this time, instead of dropping anvils on each other, they are getting their own NFTs. Who wants a Looney Tune NFT? Who knows!

Warner Bros. is teaming up with Nifty for the project, which is dubbed “Looney Tunes: What’s Up Block?” Honestly, the name is pretty clever, though also very corny. Tweety, the brand’s iconic yellow bird with many enemies, will now be among the Bored Apes of the NFT world. The NFT comes just in time for Tweety’s 80th birthday, which is conveniently the same age as someone who has no idea what an NFT is. Other Looney guys to be immortalized in NFT form will be Bugs Bunny and Marvin The Martian, with more to be announced later.

Josh Hackbarth, head of NFT Commercial Development for Warner Bros, told The Hollywood Reporter: “Looney Tunes is not afraid to make fun of itself, or the broader pop culture as a whole. It will be a bit tongue in cheek with how we are playing with blockchain technology, but what is more exciting is that we can use that to bring people into a new space to play.” That’s one way to look at it! Here’s another way.

Hackbarth added “We think that blockchain and NFTs and web3, in general, is going to be a great evolution in entertainment,” says Josh Hackbarth, head of NFT Commercial Development for Warner Bros. “It doesn’t need to be really deep, deep storytelling, it is about gags and gimmicks and really recognizable characters, so it was a fun one to dig into.” We all know those Tunes love their gimmicks.

The New York Knicks are expected to try and shake things up on their roster this summer, with very few players, if any, guaranteed to be on the roster next season as trade rumors swirl. At the top of their to-do list is finding a new starting point guard, as that position has remained a problem spot for years and is the biggest area of need.

The player the Knicks have been connected to most often is Mavericks guard Jalen Brunson, who had a terrific postseason to cement himself as one of the top free agent guards set to hit the market. Brunson has a connection to the Knicks through his father Rick, who played in Newy York in the late 90s and has worked with Tom Thibodeau in the past, and that has only further stoked rumors he could choose to bolt Dallas for the Garden this summer. Those rumblings certainly won’t be going away anytime soon, even as reports indicate the Mavs are prepared to offer whatever is needed to keep him, after a report from SNY’s Ian Begley emerged on Thursday that Rick Brunson is joining the Knicks coaching staff as an assistant.

The Knicks are finalizing a contract with Rick Brunson to become an assistant coach on Tom Thibodeau’s staff, SNY has learned. Brunson, a nine-year NBA veteran, has been an assistant coach under Thibodeau in Chicago and Minnesota. The deal is expected to be finalized in the coming days, per people familiar with the matter.

As Begley notes, Brunson, who has most recently been the head coach at Camden High School in New Jersey, has been an assistant for Tom Thibodeau on two separate occasions in Chicago and Minnesota, and will fill the vacancy left behind by Kenny Payne, who took the Louisville head coaching position earlier this year. As such, it’s not solely a play for Jalen to come to New York, as Thibodeau turning to a familiar face isn’t a shock, but the timing will certainly perk people’s ears up and it does feel an awful lot like when a player’s parent gets hired during the recruiting process at the college level.

What one does wonder is if Jalen wants to play for his father or not, as it’s not a guarantee this is something that would be a draw for the young guard. We’ll find out in early July whether this swings Brunson’s decision-making or not.