Month: March 2023

Rocky IV is the highest-grossing movie (domestic box office only) in the Rocky series, but it didn’t have the biggest opening weekend. That honor belongs to 2018’s Creed II ($35 million), at least for now. Creed III — the third Creed film with star Michael B. Jordan and ninth overall in the franchise — is on track for a $38-40 million three-day debut weekend. That’s a major(s) achievement.

Previous Creed pics played during the Thanksgiving frame in 2015 and 2018, respectively opening to $29 million and $35.5 million off of A CinemaScores. Already, Creed III is 90 percent certified fresh with Rotten Tomatoes critics, which is higher than Creed II‘s 83 percent fresh and a bit lower than Creed‘s 95 percent.

Creed III is the first Rocky movie to not star Sylvester Stallone, who explained his absence in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “That’s a regretful situation because I know what it could have been. It was taken in a direction that is quite different than I would’ve taken it. It’s a different philosophy — [producer] Irwin Winkler’s and Michael B. Jordan’s,” the Tulsa King star said. “I wish them well, but I’m much more of a sentimentalist. I like my heroes getting beat up, but I just don’t want them going into that dark space. I just feel people have enough darkness.”

Creed III better still check in on the turtles, though.

(Via Deadline)

Conference tournament season is upon us, and with the elevated stakes of playing for your ticket to the Big Dance comes raised tensions on the court.

In the SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament, we saw that lead to a brawl between Florida and Kentucky, sparked by an incident between Florida’s Tatyana Wyche and Kentucky’s Ajae Petty. After a Kentucky bucket, Petty caught the ball coming through the hoop and stuck it in Wyche’s face as she turned to run back up the floor, which unsurprisingly did not sit well with Wyche. The Florida big then turned and launched the ball at Petty’s head, missing as Petty seemed to not even realize she was almost the recipient of a basketball to her dome as she jogged back on defense.

Wyche was not satisfied with that effort, so she chased Petty down the court to try and fight her, leading to the benches clearing as players and coaches tried to settle everything down.

This would’ve been even wilder, one would think, if Wyche had connected on her throw at Petty’s head, so it’s probably for the best that she missed because that thing was moving with some heat. Instead, it turned into the usual basketball kerfuffle with players pulling each other apart and pointing and yelling. Ultimately, the game was stopped for a considerable amount of time to go over the replays and figure out who left what bench areas and instigated things, with eight players getting tossed — including Wyche and Petty — for their involvement in the fracas.

Cardi B and Offset’s McDonald’s meal is as big a hit as the duo’s musical collaborations. Whatever your judgment of the meal’s quality, there’s no denying that it’s selling like gangbusters along with the cutesy merch that accompanied it. Meanwhile, even strip clubs are getting in on the meal’s popularity; one apparently hosted a themed event with staff dressed up in signature red and yellow outfits with Cardi & Offset signage.

Cardi shared some photos from the event on Twitter, writing, “This is sooo dope !!!!! A club did a Cardi & Offset meal theme ….Why I ain’t thought about this?! I love this ….I love cheeseburgers and bad bitches.”

While things are going great on the business side of Cardi’s life, she’s found the bright side of one of her personal setbacks. Ordered to complete community service in lieu of jail time for her late 2018 strip club brawl, Cardi said that it’s “the best thing that has happened to me.” She described the service as “almost like a spiritual journey because sometimes I leave these centers in tears .Those people that we leave behind they just need somebody to talk and a lil push and YOU might be able to change their life forever.”

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

WARNING: Spoilers for The Mandalorian Season 3 below.

The Mandalorian Season 3 premiere shows Mando (Pedro Pascal) preparing to embark on a quest for redemption after being exiled by The Armorer for breaking his clan’s creed by removing his helmet. (They hate that.) However, that quest involves bathing in the mines of Mandalore, which is easier said than done considering the whole planet has been blasted to bits by both warring Mandalorian factions and the Empire. There’s also the problem of Mando having no freaking clue where those mines are.

With nowhere to turn, Mando seeks out Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) who now sits in an abandoned castle after being abandoned by her people following the events of the Season 2 finale. After fighting her whole life to restore Mandalore to its former glory, Bo-Katan watched as Mando gained possession of the mythical Darksaber after winning it in combat from Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). By right, Mando is now the true leader of Mandalore, which leaves Bo-Katan to sulk alone in her castle. While she’s clearly wounded by Mando carrying the Darksaber, and his devotion to his “death cult,” she still offers him guidance on where to locate the mines.

It was all very dramatic stuff. But if you ask the internet, the main action was Bo-Katan’s throne sitting, baby! People could not get enough of Sackhoff lounging on her space throne, and they were not shy about it on Twitter.

You can see some of the reactions below:

New episodes of The Mandalorian stream Wednesday on Disney+.

One thing that is so crystal clear about Boygenius is that the trio loves being together. That’s obvious even by just the nature of the project: Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker all have successful solo careers, so there’s not really a pressing need for any of them to put those aside in favor of sharing the spotlight in a group project. So, it’s perhaps unsurprising that after their self-titled EP in 2018, the three are reuniting for a new full-length album, The Record. That’s actually coming at the end of the month, and as an appetizer, Boygenius shared a video for “Not Strong Enough” today.

The spirit of their friendship is so clear in the video, which was self-shot (and handed it off to Jackson Bridgers for editing) and features Bridgers, Dacus, and Baker spending a fun-as-heck day together. Laughs and other signs of merriment abound as the three jam out in the car, play arcade games, take in some art, and otherwise revel in what seems to have been a delightful time.

The carefree video echoes the album’s mission statement, which was described in previous press materials as being “about recapturing joy.”

Watch the “Not Strong Enough” video above.

The Record is out 3/31 via Interscope Records. Pre-order it here.

Just days after dropping his live concert film Live At SoFi Stadium, The Weeknd is dropping a companion album. The pop star announced the live album via social media today (March 1).

In the concert film, fans see The Weeknd performing at the iconic Los Angeles venue, delivering live performances of songs from all of his eras. Fans are seen singing and shouting the lyrics to his universal hits like “I Feel It Coming,” “The Hills,” and “Die For You” — the latter recently got an Ariana Grande remix nearly seven years after its original release.

In a 2021 interview with GQ, The Weeknd shared what he thinks makes his music so timeless.

“What makes any of my albums a successful album, especially this one, is me putting it out and getting excited to make the next one,” he said. “So the excitement to make the next project means that this one was successful to me. I want to do this forever. And even if I start getting into different mediums and different types of expressions, music will be right there. I’m not going to step away from it.”

Find the cover art for Live At SoFi Stadium below.

Live At SoFi Stadium is out 3/3 via Republic Records.

Joe Jonas, as part of the promotion for the forthcoming Jonas Brothers album, took to TikTok to share a truly hilarious new video that references Harry Styles’ chaotic press tour for Don’t Worry Darling last year — which included the questionable Spitgate.

For those who don’t remember, Styles also notoriously had a viral answer during a Q&A for the movie at the Venice Film Festival.

“My favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie,” Joe lip-syncs to a TikTok sound of Styles’ quote, as he puts on a pair of sunglasses and wears a hat reading “Here comes trouble.”

Despite the joke, Jonas also used the time to poke fun at him and his brothers, who gave their album the straightforward title The Album (not to be confused with Boygenius’ The Record, which drops this month). “My favorite thing about THE ALBUM is it feels like an album,” he captioned the video.

After Styles’ response made the internet rounds, his co-star, Chris Pine, came to his defense — noting that it was one of his few press events for acting.

“Sometimes when you’re doing these press things, your brain gets befuddled and you start speaking gibberish,” Pine said, according to Billboard. “We had a joke: ‘It’s just words, man.’”

Check out Jonas’ new TikTok above.

Pedro Pascal is TV’s favorite father figure, thanks to his roles on The Last of Us and The Mandalorian. But before he was daddy for, uh, other reasons, he was in the season four premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Eddie, a fresh-faced University of California, Sunnydale student. And vampire.

Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar celebrated the return of The Mandalorian with a photo of her and Pascal. “When #Mother met #Father,” she wrote.

“What I just found out — which I am very excited about, and I can’t wait to get my phone back so that I can look it up myself — is that Sarah Michelle Gellar remembers me,” Pascal told Access Hollywood about SMG’s Instagram post. “I remember every moment of shooting that episode, as brief as it was, she was such a kind scene partner and we had the best time.”

The Last of Us actor also remembers that “she had ice cream in her trailer, and she gave me some. She went back to her trailer, she got me some ice cream and she shared, because it was a night shoot, it was in the middle of the night, and we were on the UCLA campus.” He added, “She was incredibly kind. She taught me how to use a sandbag to hit my mark. She was the best.”

I bet the guy who played the bloater is equally effusive about Pascal.

(Via EW)

Harry Styles has done a disgusting thing or two since entering the public eye — the Grammy Award winner recently participated in the Australian tradition of drinking alcohol from his shoe during his Love On Tour. However, spitting on Don’t Worry Darling co-star Chris Pine isn’t one of them.

The Don’t Worry Darling spitgate scandal was, at one point, a trending topic on social media. Even actor Nick Kroll chimed in on the conversation while visiting The Tonight Show. However, now Pine is clearing the air about what really happened.

Appearing on Esquire’s video segment Explain This, Pine puts it plainly, “Harry did not spit on me.”

Pine went on to clarify further, stating, “Harry is a very kind guy. I think Harry leaned down and said, ‘It’s just words isn’t it?’ We had this little joke. We were all jet-lagged and trying to answer questions, and sometimes when you’re doing these press things, your brain goes befuddled, and you start speaking gibberish, so we had a joke: ‘It’s just words.’”

Styles has been embarrassed in the public eye in the past thanks to a nearly disastrous wardrobe malfunction but at least the stigma of spitgate can be put behind him.

Watch the full segment above.

A viral video on YouTube by author Mark Manson (“The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k”) explains a fundamental aspect of psychology that significantly affects how we view ourselves and others.

The concept is a cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which states that people who know a lot about something tend to underestimate their expertise on a subject, whereas those who know little about a subject think they know much more than they actually do.

Manson puts it simply in the video: “The idiot thinks he knows everything because he literally doesn’t have enough knowledge to know better. Meanwhile, the expert thinks he knows nothing because he is so aware of all the ways in which he may be wrong.”

Warning: This video contains strong language.

The fact that those who aren’t experts can be more confident in their opinions than those who know what they’re talking about can cause a whole host of problems. It encourages people with ill-informed ideas and prevents those with real solutions to life’s issues from speaking up.

It’s also a chilling reminder that it can be challenging to change others’ minds because they don’t know what they don’t know. The solution? Manson says that knowing about our cognitive bias is a reminder to be less egotistical about our beliefs because we’re wired to unintentionally fool ourselves.

“Any sense of false certainty is really just gonna cause more pain than necessary,” Manson says. “I think that the Dunning-Kruger effect teaches us to be more humble.”