Netflix takes its Neil Gaiman adaptations seriously, even when those shows are honest-to-god silly likeLucifer. Fantasy drama series The Sandman delivered a stunningly faithful rendition of Gaiman’s creation of The Endless, and the second season of that series has begun its lengthy second-season production process. Fortunately, a stop-gap series from The Sandman universe arrived this month, and Dead Boy Detectives viewers are now wondering whether they’ll see a second round of that show, too.
Will There Be A ‘Dead Boy Detectives’ Season 2?
Netflix hasn’t yet announced whether they will renew the spin off about Edwin and Charles, the ghosts who pick up the paranormal mysteries that stump human detectives. And to be fair, Netflix took its time renewing The Sandman, so we might not hear about the spin off’s status for months. However, should that rewewal happen, co-showrunners Steve Yockey and Beth Schwartz told Variety who they would like as a crossover character:
Yockey says a second season would be a great time to rope in Desire (Mason Alexander Park), who could be a tempting figure to put in front of the Dead Boys as they build relationships beyond their friendship.
Beyond “Sandman,” their wishlist for Season 2 is longer than Esther’s kill list. Also on it, Schwartz says, are more cases in London and more animated sequences, following the finale’s gruesomely fun origin story segment for Esther that was done by Warner Bros. Animation.
As viewers are already aware, Despair (Donna Preston) and Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) already appeared in the first season of this spin off. The latter was, of course, particularly suitable for a crossover event given the job that she must do. Surely, nobody would be upset to see Death again, either, but until the streaming service makes its decision known, we await more magic.
The first season of Dead Boy Detectives is currently streaming on Netflix.
All good things must come to an end at some point, and sometimes that good thing is something you don’t know you have until it’s gone, like MoviePass or seasonal Reese’s cups where the peanut butter to chocolate ratio is perfect. NBC’s streamer Peacock used to be a mostly ad-free place, and had a modest $11.99 price point, but as with everything in the ever-changing industry, that ship has sailed, and the streamer is getting ready for yet another price hike.
Starting this summer, the ad-free tier of Peacock known as Peacock Premium Plus will jump up $2 to $13.99, while Peacock Premium (with ads) will increase to $7.99. As for those yearly payers, Peacock Premium’s annual price will increase from $59.99 to $79.99, while Premium Plus will land at $139.99 per year.
The price hike will go into effect in July for new customers, ahead of the Summer Olympics which will kick off the last week in July. The streamer has exclusive rights to the games, which takes place in Paris. Existing customers will see the price alteration on their August bill.
For comparison, Netflix’s basic plan goes for $11.99/month while Hulu’s ad-supported tier jumped to $9.99 last year. So it seems like, for now, Peacock is still the place to be if you are looking to save $2. But you’ll have to make up for it by watching all of that Bravo content, which might cause more harm than good.
The only thing more fun than staying up late, swapping manly stories, and making waffles the next morning? Visiting Universal Studios Orlando this summer. The Florida-based resort announced that DreamWorks Land, a new area featuring characters from DreamWorks movies like Shrek, Puss in Boots, and Kung Fu Panda, will open on June 14. There will be coasters (sorry, “Trollercoaster”), play areas for the young ones, and themed foods and drinks. Also, you can finally — finally — visit Shrek’s toilet.
Other summer 2024 highlights coming to Universal Studios Orlando include CineSational: A Symphonic Spectacular, a nighttime show featuring scores and scenes from movies like Harry Potter, Jurassic World, Jaws, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Fast and Furious; and on select nights, Hogwarts Always, a castle projection show in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade. Both begin on June 14.
Universal has one more event in store: the Universal Mega Movie Parade, which is described as “Universal Orlando’s biggest daytime parade to date” that combines “13 brand new floats, nearly 100 performers – including dancers, skaters, stilt walkers, poi performers, and more – and special effects.” Beginning July 3, there will be a 16-foot Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and a Tyrannosaurus rex aboard the Jurassic World float. No word on whether Jimmy Buffet will be immortalized on a Margaritaville (rum) float(er).
Ever since Jason Kelce announced his retirement from the NFL, one question keeps popping up: What’s next? Kelce, the future Hall of Fame inductee who spent the entirety of his career as a center for the Philadelphia Eagles, is one of the biggest personalities in sports right now, and he’s seen his popularity skyrocket due to his podcast “New Heights,” which he co-hosts with his brother, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
On Monday, we finally got an answer. According to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, Kelce is headed to ESPN, where he will team up with the Monday Night Football pregame team. Apparently, this was only one option that was presented to Kelce, as a number of networks wanted to try and bring him on board as part of their NFL coverage.
Via The Athletic:
Kelce and his brother, Travis, have a popular podcast called “New Heights.” Jason, 36, has been interested in media and drew interest from NBC, CBS and Amazon, among others. He and his wife, Kylie, already had a pre-existing relationship with Amazon as they did a documentary series called, “Kelce,” which followed him around during his final season. Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night set is already pretty packed. NBC and CBS were both interested in adding Kelce to their Sunday desks.
Currently, Monday Night Countdown is hosted by Scott Van Pelt, and features Robert Griffin III, Marcus Spears, Ryan Clark, Alex Smith, and Larry Fitzgerald on its roster of analysts.
Southern California’s annual BeachLife Festival is returning to Redondo Beach this weekend with a lineup that includes acts from a truly impressive variety of genres and generations. The headliners are Incubus, My Morning Jacket, and Sting, with additional performances from Devo, Fleet Foxes, Pepper, Santigold, Seal, Sugar Ray, and more. With four stages, there will be a lot going on at any given time, so you can check out the set times below and schedule your day to make the most of your time. The three-day festival runs from Friday, May 3 to Sunday, May 5 at Seaside Lagoon.
BeachLife Festival was founded in 2019, and its 2023 edition was featured performances by Gwen Stefani, The Black Keys, Pixies, John Fogerty, The Black Crowes, Modest Mouse, Sublime with Rome, Band of Horses, Tegan and Sara, Kurt Vile, and the Violators.
Friday, May 3
Hightide Stage
2:00–3:00 — The Samples
4:00–5:00 — Donavon Frankenreiter & G. Love
6:15–7:25 — Seal
9:00–10:30 — Sting
Lowtide Stage
3:00–4:00 — Bedouin Soundclash
5:05–6:10 — City And Colour
7:30–8:50 — Dirty Heads
Saturday, May 4
Hightide Stage
12:00–1:00 — The Expendables
2:00–3:00 — Chevy Metal
4:00–5:00 — Pepper
6:15–7:25 — Local Natives
9:00–10:30 — Incubus
You couldn’t make Seinfeld today. That’s because Julia Louis-Dreyfus is busy being awesome in other things, but Jerry Seinfeld seems to think it’s because of [world’s longest sigh] cancel culture.
The comedian recently spoke to The New Yorker about how the “extreme left” is ruining comedy. “It used to be, you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, ‘Oh, Cheers is on. Oh, M*A*S*H is on. Oh, Mary Tyler Moore is on. All in the Family is on.’ You just expected, There’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what — where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people,” he said.
The death of the sitcom monoculture, where 30 million people would watch the same episode at the same time, isn’t because streaming services destroyed the concept of timeslots, you see. According to Seinfeld, it’s the woke mob’s fault.
Seinfeld continued, “Now they’re going to see standup comics because we are not policed by anyone. The audience polices us. We know when we’re off track. We know instantly and we adjust to it instantly. But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups — ‘Here’s our thought about this joke.’ Well, that’s the end of your comedy.”
The Unfrosted director later named a Seinfeld plot, from season nine’s “The Bookstore,” that he thinks wouldn’t fly in today’s culture.
“We did an episode of the series in the nineties where Kramer decides to start a business of having homeless people pull rickshaws because, as he says, ‘They’re outside anyway.’ Do you think I could get that episode on the air today?… We would write a different joke with Kramer and the rickshaw today. We wouldn’t do that joke. We’d come up with another joke. They move the gates like in the slalom.”
Seinfeld pointed out that “there were no sitcoms picked up on the fall season of all four networks,” and that is a big bummer. But I’m not sure if it has to do with “P.C. crap.” It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Bottoms, to use two recent examples, are delightfully tasteless comedies that are popular with the younger, more culturally sensitive generations. Seinfeld seems hung up on the way things were, rather than the way they are.
The highly-anticipated finale of Disney+’s X-Men ’97 will be released in three parts, so you know that enough serious drama will be going down over the next few weeks, hopefully only on-screen.
X-Men 97 picks up where the classic animated series left off in the ’90s and follows the mutant superheroes as they co-exist with those of us normies. The series features familiar favorites like Wolverine, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Storm, and Rogue.
In the previous episode, it was revealed that the presumed-dead Magneto is alive and well, though he is being held by the big bad Bastion. The first installment of the upcoming finale, titled “Tolerance Is Extinction,” will be released on May 1 on Disney+ at 12:00 a.m. PST / 3 a.m. EST. Parts two and three come out on May 8 and 15, respectively. If you can even wait that long.
Is this the end of the road for the X-people? Probably not! Cast and crew have already confirmed that season two is in the works. Composer Taylor Newton Stewart said, “We’re working on season two. But we haven’t started yet. I know a little bit of the storylines and characters. It’s always upping the ante. I mean, it’s pretty intense what happens. Yeah, immediately when I was told, I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s happening? This is incredible.’ So, just as a fan alone, I am very excited.”
Until then, here is the official trailer for the final batch of episodes:
If you haven’t caught Baby Reindeer yet on Netflix, comedian, creator, and star Richard Gadd‘s limited series is still racking up views on the streaming service. The limited series, which is a version of Gadd’s one-man stage show dissecting a spiral of traumatic experiences, including being stalked by a female dubbed as “Martha,” has even managed to freak out horror maestro Stephen King: “BABY REINDEER: Holy sh*t.”
The show’s rapid ascent also caused internet speculation about the identities of two characters, including Martha, and Gadd has asked people to refrain from speculating, but a woman who now claims to be the real-life Martha has declared that she is not entertained by this series. The Daily Mail spoke with the woman, who they are purposefully not identifying, who claims that Gadd is “bullying an older woman on television for fame and fortune” and that she has received “death threats and abuse” from those who support Gadd. The woman further claims that she is considering a defamation lawsuit, and that “[h]e’s using Baby Reindeer to stalk me now.” She also added, “I’m the victim. He’s written a bloody show about me.”
The Daily Mail writes that this woman “bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Martha” (who is portrayed by Jessica Gunning on the Netflix show) and that other aspects of her life parallel that of the character. That includes the woman’s previous record of stalking, although Gadd stressed that he had changed details to make sure that Martha (and the character of Darrien) couldn’t be traced to their real-life identities. As already mentioned, this hasn’t stopped the speculation, and as Hollywood Reporter previously reported, Gadd took to Instagram: “People I love, have worked with, and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly getting caught up in speculation.”
Foley has been fending off accusations regarding the Darrien character, and he responded on Twitter: “Police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory abusive and threatening posts against me.”
Police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory abusive and threatening posts against me.
The Kansas City Chiefs got Patrick Mahomes a new pass catching threat in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft last week, as the team executed a trade with the Buffalo Bills to move up and select Texas speedster Xavier Worthy with the No. 28 overall pick. Now that that’s out of the way, the team has turned its attention to making sure Mahomes’ all-time favorite target doesn’t go anywhere.
According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, the Chiefs and Travis Kelce agreed to a 2-year contract extension that will make the Hall of Fame right end the league’s highest-paid player at his position.
No more Champagne Problems: The #Chiefs and All-Pro and Pro Bowl TE Travis Kelce have agreed to terms on a new 2-year contract extension to make him the NFL’s highest-paid tight end, sources say.
In a bit of news that will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, Mahomes could not be happier that Kelce — who floated that retiring could be on his horizon last season — has decided to return to Kansas City for a few more years.
While Kelce’s numbers took a small step back during the regular season last year, he was nothing short of excellent as the Chiefs went on to win the Super Bowl. Kelce caught 93 balls for 984 yards and five touchdowns in 15 games last year before reeling in 32 catches for 355 yards and three scores in four playoff games last year.
Three isn’t always a crowd. In fact, in the case of Luca Guadagnino Challengers, it’s the foundational formula for one of the horniest sports movies ever committed to the screen. When clips of the Justin Kuritzkes-penned drama began to trickle online last year, a consensus was drawn. Soaked in sweat and throbbing synth beats, sporting hunks grunting their way through a hard-court showdown as a bobbed-up Zendaya watched on, this tennis drama wasn’t really about tennis. In fact, its athleticism and setting – a high-pressure environment that breeds aggression, ambition, and chiseled physiques – was just a tool for hammering out the finer aspects of a storytelling trope that’s been done to death on-screen.
The love triangle has been a plot device favored in everything from Greek mythos to 90s rom-coms, Shakespearean tragedies and CW-housed teen soap operas. It’s most bare-bones, heterosexual interpretation is two men duking it out for the affection of the same woman, but over the years, cinema has toyed with that premise. Some films, like the 90s thriller Wild Things, use the framework to sexualize female women for a male character’s gratification. Others, like Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite, use the story structure to pit anti-heroes against one another, reveling in themes of betrayal, revenge, and the pursuit of power.
But Challengers, a story about three toxically co-dependent athletes whose emotional growth has been stunted by their insular profession, leaving them perpetually horny (and angry about it), is a different animal. It’s not the first love triangle to explore Queerness – see last year’s Passengers and Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien as examples there. Nor is it a film that uses its metaphorical shape to glut itself with sex scenes meant to shock and awe audiences – see The Dreamers, Spring Breakers, Savages.
Instead, Kuritzkes’ tale is a love story that begs a laughably straightforward yet refreshingly revolutionary question: What if all three sides of a cinematic love triangle touched? What if, through the lens of a performance-based profession, one built on rules, routine, and self-regulation, we contemplated the inherit instability of love, especially when it involves wanting more than one person?
“What’s true about a love triangle is that every love triangle is, by its nature, queer,” Kuritzkes told Variety of the film’s premise. “Whether you intend to be or not, you’re in an intimate relationship with two other people.”
While Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan, a prodigiously talented tennis player whose star is on the rise at the beginning of Guadagnino’s film, is the fulcrum on which Challengers’ plot rests, the intimate relationship audiences are first introduced to is that of Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist). Friends and on-court partners who’ve grown up together, Patrick and Art’s dynamic is loving… and complicated. Even before they met Tashi, there’s tension and familiarity in the way they touch and rib each other, a constant push-and-pull that speaks to their competitive nature and their yearning for the others’ approval. When the pair have an orgasmic romantic epiphany watching Tashi decimate an opponent on the court, they do so while embracing each other. Gripped thighs, backs encased in casually-thrown arms, sexual innuendos involving tennis racquets – their hunger, for Tashi, for the greatness she possesses, is always shared.
It’s only when Tashi accepts their invitation to insert herself into their relationship that the dynamic changes – not necessarily because of jealousy, but because she pushes them to confront hidden parts about themselves. Perched on a rock overlooking the water, Tashi is the siren luring their friendship – in its current form – to its doom.
When she visits their hotel room, pulling uncomfortable truths about past girlfriends (or the lack thereof) and pubescent explorations, their bond begins to fray. It’s easy to see that, while Patrick seems to be more at ease with the fluid nature of his sexuality, Art is resistant to experimentation. That contrast pops up when discussing the boys’ game as well. Patrick is wild, uncontained energy on the court, clawing for every point, chasing down every ball, and acing opponents with what may be the technically ugliest serve depicted on screen. Art, meanwhile, is all controlled patience, content to wait for his winning moment instead of actively pursuing it. Neither player sees tennis the way Tashi does – as a relationship between two people on a court who perfectly understand each other for a fleeting moment in time – but then, neither man sees the reality of their relationship the way she does either. It’s what compels her to seduce the pair into a makeout session that ends with her playing voyeur to their unleashed physical desires. It’s also why she dangles herself as the reward for whoever wins their next match. In some ways, Tashi sees Patrick and Art more clearly than they do themselves, understanding that, while they’re happy to coast on their talent on the court, and aimlessly tread water in their relationship off it, their shared desire for her might unlock something greater in them both.
While Guadagnino flirts with positioning Art and Patrick as true rivals, every scene that sees them battling over Tashi or tennis carries an undercurrent of unrequited (or unrealized) lust. They’re chugging protein smoothies and deep-throating bananas, backhanding each other’s genitals and manspreading on the steamed planks of a two-person sauna. They’re drowning in sweat and stripping their clothes at some backwoods tennis tournament put on by a tire store. In a scene that may just be the spiritual on-screen successor to Barry Keoghan’s now legendary bathwater slurping moment in Saltburn, the pair chomp each others sugared churros while tussling over Art’s manipulative attempts to cause a rift in Patrick’s relationship with Tashi. Instead of upsetting him, Art’s vicious longing – for Patrick’s girlfriend, his game, maybe even Patrick himself – only arouses the struggling pro, proving what he’s always known to be true, that Art is just as dirty and hungry as he is.
Repressed desire is a theme of Kuritzkes’ love triangle. It’s why he chose tennis as the sport to facilitate its evolution. “Tennis is about being all alone, and being at a distance from somebody, and trying not to touch them. It’s a very repressed sport,” he told Variety. “The point is no contact. The point is to just miss the other person. To me, that’s almost like a Victorian romance. It’s very sexy. So tennis, of its nature, is erotic, and you usually play tennis against somebody of the same gender. So tennis, by its nature, then becomes almost homoerotic.” That sentiment mirrors how both O’Connor and Faist chose to interpret the friendship between Patrick and Art – and their eventual throupling with Tashi.
“He is the least talented out of the three in terms of the sport itself, the least secure,” Faist said of Art to The Advocate. “So he is attracted to these people, these two who are so secure in who they are. There’s kind of this quality that he does not possess. He can’t help but be attracted to that, to the point of, I always say, to want to consume them is the truth of the matter.”
But it’s not just Art longing for things he can’t have in the film. Patrick’s Tinder-swiping for a nightly place to sleep reveals the absence of real intimacy in his life. He’s in a locker room filled with other pros, but all alone in this world, inferring that he yearns for what he had with a former teammate who he obviously still thinks about. Tashi’s focus on Art’s career once her own is prematurely ended by injury borders on obsession. It’s why she’s willing to risk her marriage and professional reputation to bribe an opponent to lose in order to bolster her husband’s confidence. Well, it’s part of the reason. Her brief interludes with Patrick over the years – at swanky bars and in the backseat of his beat-up SUV – demonstrate the lack of passion in her life. She craves a challenge, to be tested, to be pushed, to compete again. Patrick gives her that when Art cannot or will not.
In Challengers, no one’s motivations run a clear line from point A to point B. Tashi doesn’t just want Art, or Patrick. She wants tennis – damn good tennis that resembles that relationship she’s been missing ever since she left the sport. And she knows she can experience it again by pushing the men she loves to be better than what they are. Art doesn’t just want Tashi, or to beat Patrick. He wants to be desired the way those two desire each other, to be free like his friend, to be of worth like his wife. And Patrick doesn’t just want to come between Art and Tashi, he wants to embed himself there, to become a permanent angle in this shape they’ve been orbiting for most of their lives. Whether any of that happens or not after the final point is played is up for interpretation, but it’s the idea that a love triangle on film can be used to explore the desires of three people in equal measure that makes Challengers so damn interesting.
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