Category: News

Reacher‘s third season has now come to a bone-crunching end with another season already renewed. Alan Ritchson’s Big Guy finally defeated Oliver Ritchers’ Bigger Guy (although Ritchson did get knocked unconscious in the process), and now, the wait will begin for Neagley, but there’s much more coming from Alan Ritchson outside of Lee Child’s skull-crunching universe.

Have you seen his IMDb page full of upcoming projects?

His lack of calendar white space is evident, but the important thing to note right now is that, beyond Ritchson’s Reacher physicality, he is always in on the joke, and sure, his recently displayed humor is of the dry variety, but he is nonetheless capable of being broadly funny. And although he will star in several upcoming movies, including War Machine and Motor City, Ritchson will also go back to his former comedic stomping grounds. Let’s talk about what’s in the works for more Blue Mountain State.

Plot

Back in the early aughts, Blue Mountain State ran for three seasons on Spike TV (which has evolved into Paramount Network and the home of many Taylor Sheridan shows). Creators Eric Falconer and Brian Robbins followed up the show’s run with a kickstarter-funded movie, 2016’s Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland (also from Falconer and Robbins), revolving around Ritchson’s Thad Castle losing his drafted NFL status after senior-year partying devolves into lasting chaos. Distributed by Lionstage, the movie seemingly ended with finality after the demise of Thad’s budding football career and the explosion of Goat House. However, Thad somehow lived and even surfaced with a mojito, so an opening was always there for more.

Well? Ritchson revealed that a fourth season is happening, and this sounds like a direct result of Reacher‘s Prime Video success.

“We’re actually setting it up with Amazon,” he divulged, according to Deadline. “We are going to make a fourth season happen; I’m trying to work it into my schedule. Honestly, I think it’s going to be the best season of BMS we’ve ever had. It is so damn funny, and it’s perfect, the way we resurrect the characters and bring them into the way that things are now.”

Actual plot details remain a mystery, so let the speculation begin on how Thad gets the gang back together, maybe for Goat House 2.0 or even 3.0 at this stage. Key cast members, however, are already on board.

Cast

Darin Brooks (as Alex Moran) and Chris Romano (as Sammy Cacciatore) are already confirmed to return, and clearly, these dudes are well-past college years, or are they? We shall see. The jury also remains out on whether we’ll see other original cast members including Denise Richards (as Debra) return.

Release Date

Ritchson didn’t detail when filming might begin, but since his schedule is packed, we can assume that when production begins, Amazon will want to stream this as soon as possible to further capitalize upon Reacher mania.

Trailer

If you haven’t lived the unbridled joy of Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland, a flashback can be found below.

The Handmaid’s Tale has managed longevity and the extension of Margaret Atwood’s subject matter in the face of, well, everything. The top-of-the-crop Hulu series debuted in 2017 and is ending in 2025, and it doesn’t require too much stretching to see where the first and sixth seasons have bookended themselves against our current times. Frozen bank accounts were only the beginning of the horrors awaiting June, and this universe will also continue with the in-the-works The Testaments, which is being helmed by The Handmaid’s Tale‘s longtime showrunner, Bruce Miller.

Soon, June (Elisabeth Moss) and Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) will begin moving their respective chess pieces toward an endgame for the flagship show. The pair has been open about how this final season will largely focus on their evolving and devolving relationship, but also, the show has made clear that the “red” of the handmaids’ hooded robes will symbolize rage amid the revolution. So, you’ll want to know when new episodes will be available and if Hulu is going for binge format.

Will The Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 Premiere All At Once?

Nope. Hulu will premiere the sixth season on Tuesday, April 8 with three episodes. From there, new episodes will land weekly until the May 27 series finale.

If you want to watch the entire season at once, that will require waiting until the finale. Given the spoilers that will fly on the Internet, choose your battles carefully here.

The sixth season incites that “June’s unyielding spirit and determination pull her back into the fight to take down Gilead” while “Luke and Moira join the resistance.” Meanwhile, “Serena tries to reform Gilead while Commander Lawrence and Aunt Lydia reckon with what they have wrought.” From there, June’s actions will “highlight the importance of hope, courage, solidarity, and resilience in the pursuit of justice and freedom.”

The final season cast includes Madeline Brewer, O.T. Fagbenle, Bradley Whitford, Samira Wiley, Amanda Brugel, Josh Charles, Sam Jaeger, Ann Dowd, Max Minghella, and Ever Carradine, and a trailer is available below.

Dreamville may not officially kick off until this weekend, but things in Raleigh, North Carolina are already popping off. Leading up to what will be the final year of the festival, several pop-ups and exclusive events are being hosted throughout the city that are notable not just because they are great places to pre-game before the weekend, but because they allow for early access to one of Dreamville’s best pieces of merch — the Festival Brew.

What’s better than merch from the last Dreamville Fest ever? Merch that you can drink!

For every year that Dreamville has been a thing, it has been a tradition that the festival sell a hyper-exclusive small-batch locally crafted beer. The brew serves as both a collectible and a totem of North Carolina pride. Dreamville has always been a festival with deep connections to the state (J. Cole is a Fayetteville native) and the festival brew, with its collaboration with local brewers like R&D Brewing, Foothills Brewing, and this year, HAZE, is the perfect icon of homegrown craft.

We spoke with Adrian Larrea, a longtime Raleigh resident, beverage entrepreneur, and one of the creative forces behind Dreamville’s Fest Brew to talk about the origins of the tradition, the inspiration behind this year’s brew, (spoiler: it’s a Strawberry Lemonade Shandy), and what the future holds as Dreamville comes to a close.

So how did the Dreamville Festival Brew become an annual thing?

I first met Adam Roy, one of the founders of the festival, through some mutual friends in Downtown Raleigh. In 2018, when they were going to run the very first Dreamville, Adam reached out to me because he knew I was in beverage, and asked, “Hey, what could we do that is cool, different, and unique for the festival?”

That year I was running a kombucha company at the time. We had made Kombucha Pale Ale as a trial thing to see how people liked it. I had a big batch of it that was going to be getting done right around the time of Dreamville, so I said, “Well, what if we did some custom Dreamville cans and we did a custom beer for you guys?”

So we built the first can design, it had the date and everything, then that festival got canceled because of a hurricane, and so we had to drink a lot of those beers. The rest of them got scrapped. We couldn’t reuse them because it was the only year that we put the specific date on the can. We learned our lesson after that. Don’t ever put the specific date on your event can!

When that festival got moved to 2019, Adam hit me up again and asked me, “Hey, are we running back The Fest Brew?” And I was like, “Let’s do it.”

And so we did a Kombucha Pale Ale. They hit all the concession stands in the beer tent and all of them were gone before it got dark. Everybody got in line for it. It was a piece of merch, it was a piece of history. It was a really cool beer that you could only try that one day. And so it sold out, crazy, crazy fast.

The next year we were going to have the festival and then COVID happened, so we got delayed.

So in 2022 we did another brew and it kind of turned into a thing for Adam and I. We came up with all of these different concepts just to have fun with it, and it started to turn into: what’s the branding going to be of the festival this year? How do we tie in the stage names? How do we get artists to promote it? It started to be really fun. That year EARTHGANG actually took a picture with one of the cans and he posted it.

When did it feel like the festival brew program was really becoming a phenomenon?

The third Dreamville we partnered with R&D Brewing in Raleigh and they made an orange creamsicle flavor. It was so delicious and everybody just loved it so much. That year people started posting that they were drinking these beers on the beer drink review sites. And we also threw an intro party with R&D where we had a DJ come and spin, and we posted it out there as a release party and all these Dreamville fans from all over the country, all over the world started showing up for that party and people were coming to us and they’re like, “Hey, just to let you know, we’ve been collecting the brews for the last couple of years. We go to a lot of different festivals and nobody has this kind of program and we just think it’s so cool, please keep doing it.”

It really hit for us that people were really following the program and what we were doing. That year we started tying in some local bars and some local bottle shops, and there were some pre festival events and the festival had moved to the two-day model. Last year we did the Rise and Shine Ale, which was our attempt at a dark and stormy liquor drink. It had vanilla and lime and it was a little bit darker than anything that we had done before. Super funky and different and a little bit almost beer snobbish. We went really in that direction and again, people showed up.

Can you take us into this year’s Strawberry Lemonade Shandy?

When news came out that this was going to be the fifth and final Dreamville, Adam and I, we got together and we decided what we wanted to do.

I had started a new beverage brand called HAZE. We are a THC infused soda and energy drink company out of North Carolina. We were originally thinking how cool it would be to do a THC drink for the festival, but we decided to just keep this a beer program since we had done it for four years and this was going to be the final. But we had a flavor from our company, Lifted Lemonade. It’s like this strawberry lemonade flavor.

And we were like, “Well, what if we did a strawberry lemonade Shandy?” It was light, it was bright, it had an influenced by HAZE type vibe to it, but not a THC drink, just normal beer. We partnered with Foothills Brewing Company, these guys have been known for 25 years in North Carolina. They’re in Winston-Salem. So we started taking flavors from HAZE and different beer styles that Foothills knew how to make, and we were blending it all together trying to figure out how to make a funky lemon shandy.

And we nailed it.

And so it’s really cool to see everything coming together for this fifth and final year. And this year we’re actually going to have them at the pop-up, which is this really cool merch program that they do with special exclusive merch.

But the excitement is there, people are already asking for it by name. People are calling it “Fest Brew.” We actually trademarked “Fest Brew” because we thought that this is something that maybe we could work with other festivals to do or figure out a way to take this concept even further. But our roots will always be with Dreamville. That’s what Dreamville is all about about. It’s about figuring things out. It’s about discovering things.

The Dreamers and Dreamville brand that they’ve built, all the artists that they bring in every year that are part of the Dreamville label, it’s all just so cohesive and it’s so well done. The brand is all intertwined into everything. The artists are all intertwined, the drinks are intertwined, the merch is all intertwined. It’s a big incredible story and adventure.

When did you come up with the idea to make a new brew for every festival?

We wanted to do something different every year. But a Kombucha Pale Ale or Kombucha Sour, nobody had even heard of that. So we didn’t even know how it was going to be received, but it just sparked the creative experimental vibe, and I think that that’s what we’ve carried through for the five years, asking “how do we be experimental and how do we be different and how do we make sure we bring the brand and that year’s branding into the fold every year while also keeping it North Carolina?”

How important was keeping the production process local?

J. Cole is from Fayetteville, and we all have family and friends that’s spread out through North Carolina. It just so happened that we could keep things in Raleigh for years because Raleigh has so much going on. It has so many different breweries and so many different groups to work with. The focus with the program was how do we keep everything North Carolina, how do we keep ingredients North Carolina? How do we do everything that we possibly can in North Carolina?

That’s a absolutely huge part of it because people come to this festival to know what is happening in Raleigh. The amount of economic growth and support that Dreamville brings to Raleigh and the Greater Triangle and to North Carolina every year with people flying in from all over the world to come here, spend money here, support our businesses and our bars and our breweries and our restaurants and our clubs and our hotels and everything, it makes a huge economic impact.

So it was a really big part of the program.

This might be a tough question for you, but do you have a personal favorite festival brew?

The one that resonates as being the most true to my heart was the first year that we did it, because it was just so new and it was so different. It was super experimental. Then I’d say second favorite year is probably this year. Bringing HAZE into the mix is kind of like a dream come true. To be able to tie my brand in, how big Dreamville’s gotten, and for it to all be connected together is just beautiful.

And then my third favorite would be the Dreamsicle Orange Cream. We just nailed it so well. It was like a sun-kissed root beer float with vanilla ice cream. It was just so balanced and delicious. So I’d say those are my favorite three. But I actually just tasted this beer for the first time since it had been packaged and I mean, it’s really good. So people are going to really, really enjoy it this year.

Because the brews have kind of a cult following and this is the last Dreamville, are there any plans to do a collector’s edition of all five or offer them outside of the festival? Or are these just forever locked to Dreamville?

They are locked to Dreamville, but “Fest Brew” as a concept might not be locked to Dreamville. We would love to figure out a way to work with other festivals to be able to create cool custom programs. It adds such a vibe and it’s such a cool thing and has the potential to create a cult following that it would be silly to just let it go. But if it does and it was just this five year run, I’m really happy that I got to be a part of it.

What’s the game plan going to Dreamville this year? What do you suggest we do first and how many Strawberry Lemonade Shandys are we drinking?

Well, it depends if you’re just going to the two-day festival or if you’re coming for all the events. Because the pop-up shop started Wednesday in Downtown Raleigh, and then Friday is a whole day of events. We’re going to be at the CAM center.

How many you drink is on you, but I think that over the course of the whole festival, everybody’s going to be drinking three, four, five, six of them or at least until they run out. That’s one thing everybody needs to keep in mind: if everybody goes absolutely HAM for them in the first day of the festival, there might not be any left for the second day!

It’s Coachella month, and among the acts heading out to the desert in a couple weeks is Jessie Murph (who’s performing on the 13th and 20th). She’ll have some new music to bring to the festival stage, too, as today (April 4), she shared a fresh single, “Gucci Mane.”

The track interpolates Mane’s “Lemonade” and it sees her flexing her country storytelling abilities, starting the first verse, “I’m from Alabama, I’m ’bout 4’11” / I’ve got a sh*tty father and I’d like to go to Heaven / Internally, I’m scrappy, but I’m afraid to fight / I prefer to keep my hoops in. so I stay in at night.”

A press release teases that Murph has “a whole lot more to come” “very soon.”

In a 2024 interview with Uproxx, Murph described when she first got a big reaction to her singing, saying, “I think I was 11, and I posted a video on YouTube of me singing ‘Titanium,’ and I remember it got like 24,000 views. I remember being so freaked out and excited about that. I think that was the first moment that I was like, ‘Whoa, I could really do this if I work hard enough.’ I always wanted to be a singer, but growing up, especially in Alabama, everybody’s like, ‘That is not realistic.’”

Listen to “Gucci Mane” above.

Unfortunately, all good things eventually come to an end. This weekend, that most definitely applies to J. Cole’s beloved annual outdoor event, Dreamville Festival. After five years, the “Port Antonio” rapper’s hometown program will say goodbye and do so with a group of pre-festival events, which of cource includes the highly anticipated multi-day festival.

Today (April 4), Dreamville organizers shared the weekend’s set times, which include when headliners Lil Wayne with Hot Boys & Big Tymers, Erykah Badu, Tems, 21 Savage, and J. Cole will take the stage.

Continue below to view the set times for the final edition of Dreamville Festival. All times are p.m. and ET, and set times are subject to change.

Dreamville Festival 2025 Set Times For Saturday, April 5, 2025

Rise Stage

01:30–01:50 p.m. — Omen
02:30–03:00 p.m. — Ab-Soul
04:00–04:30 p.m. — Bas
05:30–06:00 p.m. — Ari Lennox
07:00–07:30 p.m. — Ludacris
08:40–09:25 p.m. — 21 Savage

Shine Stage

01:10–01:25 p.m. — Kai Case & Niko Brim
02:00–02:20 p.m. — Lute
03:15–03:45 p.m. — Young Nudy
04:45–05:15 p.m. — Chief Keef
06:15–06:45 p.m. — Keyshia Cole
07:45–08:30 p.m. — PartyNextDoor
09:35 p.m. — Lil Wayne with Hot Boys & Big Tymers

Dreamville Festival 2025 Set Times For Sunday, April 6, 2025

Rise Stage

01:20–01:35 p.m. — Trap Dickey
02:15–02:35 p.m. — Anycia
03:30–04:00 p.m. — Earthgang
05:00–05:30 p.m. — Wale
06:30–07:00 p.m. — GloRilla
08:15–09:00 p.m. — Erykah Badu

Shine Stage

01:00–01:15 p.m. — Akia
01:45–02:05 p.m. — Cozz
02:45–03:15 p.m. — BigXThaPlug
04:15–04:45 p.m. — Coco Jones
05:45–06:15 p.m. — J.I.D
07:15–08:00 p.m. — Tems
09:30 p.m. — J. Cole

Back in 2002, at the height of his battle with Benzino, Eminem declared in his diss track “Nail In The Coffin,” “Nobody wants to hear their grandfather rap.”

Well, he’d better hope he was wrong, because he’s officially entered grandfatherdom with the birth of his daughter Hailie Jade‘s first son, Elliot Marshall McClintock (aw, he’s named after pop-pop). Hailie announced her son’s birth on social media two weeks after his actual birthday, March 14, posting a photo of the baby snuggled up in a cute onesie with a corkboard revealing his name and birthdate above him.

Of course, Em probably isn’t sweating his prior prediction too much; while he’s only a year removed from his last full-length release, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), it seems unfathomable that his fans wouldn’t want to hear new music from him should he decide to follow-up with a new album this year.

They would probably especially love it if Em delivered on the speculation that he and 50 Cent would release a joint project at some point in the future. Last year, he agreed of the rumored project, “That would be great. I think we just gotta stop bullsh*tting and just do it.” 50 also expressed his approval, writing on Instagram, “Looks like I’ll be back in the booth after all ! Just gotta do this residency in Vegas first.”

For now, the rap icon seems to be focused mainly on bringing a WNBA franchise back to his hometown while clearing up some legal issues regarding his biggest hit.

There are no breaks in Ken Carson’s immediate future. Last year, the “Leather Jacket” rapper hit the road for his Chaos World Tour, after his scheduled run around the world with Playboi Carti was canceled. But instead of taking time off in 2025, Carson is eager and ready to expand his discography.

Today (April 4), Ken Carson announced his next studio album, More Chaos. Over on Instagram, Carson posted what appears to be the project’s official cover. “FourEleven-Link-In-Bio,” he captioned the upload.

The pre-save link in his profile confirmed that More Chaos is indeed a new original album, and it is slated to hit streaming platforms on Friday, April 11.

So far, Carson’s album release schedule has remained consistent. Carson’s sophomore studio album, X, dropped in 2022. In 2023, Carson gave fans A Great Chaos. Then he circled back in 2024, with A Great Chaos Deluxe. Now, More Chaos joins the mix.

Given the body of work’s release date is around the corner, Carson has decided not to share any further details about it including its tracklist or potential guest features. However, many fans believe his 2024 single, “Delusional,” will make the final cut. Continue below to view the artwork for Ken Carson’s forthcoming album, More Chaos.

Artwork

More Chaos is out on 4/11 via Opium/Interscope. Find more information here.

WARNING: 1923 spoilers will be found below.

Taylor Sheridan’s fiercely loyal audience waited years for the second and final season of 1923. The Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren (and Brandon Sklenar, Michelle Randolph, and Robert Patrick)-starring Yellowstone prequel takes a swan dive into Dutton history and connects unexpected dots in the family tree. Last week’s penultimate episode, “The Mountain Teeth of Monsters,” was a gut punch and killed off several characters, including Jack Dutton. Will the dominoes continue to fall in the “supersized” series finale?

Surely. From there, the Yellowstone universe will continue with The Madison, a contemporary spin off that arrive later this year with Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Fox, and Patrick J. Adams among the ensemble cast. And there will of course be further seasons of free-standing Taylor Sheridan shows like Tulsa King, Landman, and Mayor Of Kingstown, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves and need to answer today’s question.

When Will The 1923 Season 2 Episode 7 Stream And How Long Is It?

This week’s series finale, titled “A Dream And A Memory,” will stream on Sunday, March 6 at 12:00am EST on Paramount Plus, which offered a brief description: “Jacob and his crew eagerly await Spencer’s return at the train station; Teonna has a fateful run-in; Alexandra braves the cold.”

The episode will run two hours in length, presumably to provide closure over last week’s deaths and fill in more family tree gaps (according to Elizabeth Strafford actress Michelle Randolph speaking to Brit + Co) before signing off.

Meanwhile, Spencer Dutton actor Brandon Sklenar has promised Radio Times that Sheridan’s script hits a different level with this finale. “It’s so poetic and poignant and beautiful,” The Housemaid star raved. “[S]o badass but so vulnerable. And just filled with so much love. This finale is one of the best things I’ve ever read in my life.” He added, “It was hard to prep for the finale because of how emotional I got just reading [it].”

1923 is streaming on Paramount Plus.

Britney Spears is perhaps the defining pop star of her era. If you ask Lizzo, though, he thinks that Spears is doing an “impression” of Janet Jackson.

Towards the beginning of a recent episode of the Sibling Rivalry podcast, Lizzo explained her perspective:

“I have to really clear up some sh*t, because people came for me on the internet because I said Janet Jackson is the queen of pop. I said Janet Jackson is the queen of pop, and here is why I said Janet is the queen of pop: Britney Spears is doing a Janet impression, and she said it. Janet is her diva. There were no such things as pop divas before Janet. Janet was first; She was famous when Madonna was a kid watching her on television. And I’m just putting it out there: It’s not because someone is better than the other, she was just first, and she is Janet. She invented this sh*t.”

In 2024, Spears wrote of Jackson, “Thank you to this beautiful lady for keeping my dreams and heart alive. She’s always been the deepest and brightest woman at the same time. She went through so much but I feel she is someone I will look up to for the rest of my life. Thank you for your music and your divine way of untangling intelligence to a far more clear view than anyone could ever imagine.”

Check out the Sibling Rivalry episode above.

Shinichirō Watanabe is best known for his work on Cowboy Bebop, arguably the most acclaimed anime ever made. But since then, he’s largely stayed away from science-fiction — until his new show for Adult Swim, Lazarus.

“After Cowboy Bebop, I wanted to try something different genre-wise, which was how I ended up making Kids on the Slope and Carole & Tuesday,” he told The Verge. “When I wound up working on Blade Runner Black Out 2022, it felt so good to come back to sci-fi, but because that was just a short, I still felt like I needed to find an opportunity to stretch those specific creative muscles.”

Watanabe continued, “I didn’t just want to repeat or rehash what I’d done with Cowboy Bebop, though, and that’s part of why I initially reached out to Chad Stahelski, who worked on the John Wick films. I thought that he was able to really update action sequences in a new way, and I wanted to bring that kind of energy to my next project.”

Here’s everything to know about Lazarus.

Plot

Lazarus begins in 2052, when the world is on the verge of a Common Side Effects-level change thanks to the miracle drug known as “Hapna.” Developed by Dr. Skinner, it supposedly frees people from all pain. But in 2055, it’s discovered that Hapna is “designed with a fatal, retroactive effect, which manifests three years after ingestion, even by those who have only taken it once,” according to the official plot synopsis.

Humanity is doomed in 30 days… unless five agents, including Axel, can find Skinner and get the cure to save civilization.

“We’re talking Watanabe here – this show is an amazing mix of great characters, super fun high-stakes, brilliant directing, and of course, some pretty great music,” Adult Swim president Michael Ouweleen said in a statement. “We are all so lucky to be able to watch this genius do his thing.”

Since this is a Shinichirō Watanabe show we’re talking about, Lazarus obviously has killer action sequences, courtesy of the aforementioned Chad Stahelski, and an amazing soundtrack.

“Lazarus is made up of elements I have created in the past. But I am not reviving them, I’m doing something new,” he told Vulture. “There is a certain flavor to this work that is not just action — it’s a story about the end of the world. It is futuristic, but there’s something profoundly sad and melancholic. So with those moods and themes, I picked musicians I thought would fit. I first decided on Bonobo and Floating Points, and the producer Jason Demarco asked me what I thought of Kamasi Washington. I was of course a big fan, and he offered to introduce us. The series goes into a lot of big questions, and Kamasi’s music is suited to that.”

The animation is provided by Studio MAPPA, who also work on Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Vinland Saga (season 2 only).

Cast

The English-language voice cast features David Matranga (who also voices Shoto Todoroki in My Hero Academia) as Dr. Skinner, Jade Kelly as Hersch, Jack Stansbury as Axel, Luci Christian as Chris, Bryson Baugus as Leland, Jovan Jackson as Doug, Annie Wild as Elaina, and Sean Patrick Judge as Abel.

Release Date

Lazarus premieres in English on Saturday, April 5, at midnight during Adult Swim’s Toonami block, and streams the next day on Max. English-language encore airings will debut every Thursday at midnight beginning April 10. Episodes in Japanese with English subtitles will debut in the U.S. on Adult Swim and Max 30 days after the English-language premiere.

Trailer

You can watch the trailer for Lazarus below.