Category: News

After working together for over two decades and delivering such comedy classics as Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers, creative partners and seemingly still friends Will Ferrell and Adam McKay announced in 2019 they were pulling the plug on their joint company Gary Sanchez Productions. At the time, Ferrell and McKay released a statement saying, “The two of us will always work together creatively and always be friends. And we recognize we are lucky as hell to end this venture as such.” Unfortunately, they would never work together again nor remain friends, it appears.

In a lengthy new profile for Vanity Fair to promote his new star-studded disaster film, Don’t Look Up, McKay has opened up about the split from Ferrell, which he blames himself for causing. According to the writer/director, the situation deteriorated after he made a decision to replace Ferrell as former Lakers coach Jerry Buss in a new HBO limited series about the team’s dominance in the ’80s.

As a huge Lakers fan, Ferrell was excited to play Buss. However, there were concerns that Ferrell wasn’t right for the part, and ultimately, McKay recast mutual friend John C. Reilly as Buss. The problem was that McKay did it without telling Ferrell first, and it imploded both their company and friendship. Via Vanity Fair:

McKay says he’s written emails to Ferrell, attempting a rapprochement, but has never heard back. “I f*cked up on how I handled that,” McKay laments. “It’s the old thing of keep your side of the street clean. I should have just done everything by the book.”

“In my head, I was like, ‘We’ll let all this blow over. Six months to a year, we’ll sit down, we’ll laugh about it and go, It’s all business junk, who gives a shit? We worked together for 25 years. Are we really going to let this go away?’” But Ferrell, he continues, “took it as a way deeper hurt than I ever imagined and I tried to reach out to him, and I reminded him of some slights that were thrown my way that were never apologized for.”

What stings even more with the split, as the profile reveals, is that Ferrell and McKay are not fans of “Hollywood clichés,” and now, they are one. “Let’s not become an episode of Behind the Music. Don’t let it happen,” McKay said. “And it happened.”

(Via Vanity Fair)

It’s time to saddle up and press play on Ginuwine’s “Pony” one last time — after nearly a decade, the Magic Mike trilogy is officially coming to an end. While the news comes as a blow to fans of the comedic drama (and washboard abs), the good news is three of the series’ biggest players have all agreed to return for Magic Mike’s Last Dance: director Steven Soderbergh, writer Reid Carolin, and the magic man himself, Channing Tatum. Tatum took to Twitter to share the big news earlier today, writing “well world, looks like Mike Lane’s tapping back in” before tagging HBO Max in the post and sharing a screenshot of the film’s script.

According to Deadline, the upcoming film will be a direct sequel to 2015’s Magic Mike XXL, and follows Mike Lane’s (Tatum) final foray into the world of male stripping. As of right now, there’s been no word on if fellow XXL stars, such as Matt Bomer, Kevin Nash, and Joe Manganiello, will return for the final entry in the series, nor when it’s slated to release. However, the outlet did confirm the movie will be coming exclusively to HBO Max, a fact the streaming service is “thrilled” about.

“Is there anybody on screen more charismatic and appealing than Magic Mike?” said Toby Emmerich, Chairman of Warner Bros. Pictures Group. “We’re thrilled to be back in business with Channing, Steven and their creative team to bring back Magic Mike’s wonderful combination of dance, drama, romance and humor.”

However, while this might be the final Magic Mike movie, the importance of the series cannot be understated. When the first two films were released in 2012 and 2015 respectively, they grossed nearly $300 million worldwide and ultimately helped popularize male stripping acts such as Thunder From Down Under and Chippendales. In 2017, the franchise spawned the successful stage show Magic Mike Live, which launched in Las Vegas before quickly expanding internationally. Just this year, Magic Mike Live announced its first-ever multi-year North American tour, which launches April 6, 2022 in Nashville with additional cities to be announced. These stage shows then in turn led to the creation of HBO Max’s exclusive reality competition series, Finding Magic Mike, which premieres this holiday season on December 16 –just in time for all your not-so-family-friendly Christmas get-togethers.

After suffering a sprained ankle against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Nov. 14, Joe Harris has been sidelined for the past six games. On Monday, Brooklyn Nets head coach Steve Nash said Harris will undergo surgery on that ankle, though he will not miss the rest of the season.

Nash called the surgery “a good thing” for Harris, so the sweet-shooting wing can avoid long-term issues with the injury and return at full health down the line and be a factor for the Nets in their pursuit of a title.

Shortly after the initial news broke, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Harris is expected to miss four to eight weeks, according to Harris’ agent, Mark Bartelstein.

Harris’ absence is another blow for a Nets team already without All-Star Kyrie Irving for the foreseeable future. Nicolas Claxton has also suited up for just four games this season. Brooklyn will have to find a way to cobble together well-spaced lineups during the next month or two. It was already an issue affecting this team’s 12th-ranked offense and losing a premier off-ball shooter like Harris exacerbates the issue.

Through 14 games, Harris is averaging 11.3 points, four rebounds and one assist on 62.4 percent true shooting. He’s also knocking down 46.6 percent of his triples on more than six attempts a night.

The instant Halloween ended, Mariah Carey marked the start of the Christmas season by smashing some pumpkins and getting ready for the snowy days ahead. While her legacy has become indelibly connected to Christmas, she’s on board with multiple winter holidays, as she showed with a new video.

Yesterday marked the start of Hanukkah, so in a clip Carey shared last night, she sings a little ditty to her two children, which goes, “Hanukkah is coming, Hanukkah is coming, that’s a time we have the happiest days.” Carey also wrote alongside the video, “Happy Hanukkah!!!! Learned this one in grade school, thought I’d teach it to Roc & Roe, I don’t think they’ve got it yet [laughing emoji].”

Given that we’re just days away from December, Carey has some holiday festivities on her docket. She has a new special, Mariah’s Christmas: The Magic Continues, coming up soon, and earlier this month, she shared a song from it, a collaboration with Khalid and Kirk Franklin called “Fall In Love At Christmas.” Also, she also recently introduced her own McDonald’s menu, and while that’s not specifically holiday-related, it would certainly seem that it was timed to drop around Christmas to bank on Carey’s increased visibility during the season.

GOP Lawmaker Nancy Mace (out of South Carolina) knew her Sunday cable news audiences maybe all too well, while also forgetting that some people watch both Fox News and CNN. That realization is going down after Mace recklessly suggested on Fox News (while speaking to former Rep. Jason Chaffetz) that it’s more effective (from an immunity standpoint) to catch COVID than to get the COVID vaccine. That’s not a good look, given that the safe and effective vaccines are preferable to catching a deadly, readily communicable virus, and Mace was also wildly speculating about the Omicron variant. The initial news of that variant led the Fox and Friends holiday crew to launch into conspiracy theory mode, so it’s no real surprise that Mace felt comfortable with pushing a pro-“natural immunity” argument on the conservative news network.

Yet if one watches the below spliced clip, she sang a different tune on CNN. As Raw Story notes, these two appearances took place mere hours apart, and here’s a back-to-back look at them:

Here’s what Mace offered to Chaffetz on Fox News:

“In some studies that I’ve read, natural immunity gives you 27 times more protection against future COVID than a vaccination. So we need to take all of the science into account and not selectively choosing what science to follow when we are making policy decisions.”

And here she is talking to Kaitlan Collins on CNN, where Mace suddenly took COVID vaccination very seriously:

“COVID-19 is very serious business. I’m a long hauler. This is a disease and illness we should take seriously. I want to encourage the American people to talk to their doctors and talk about getting vaccinated. I was recently diagnosed, Caitlyn, with asthma and I had covid-19 a year and a half ago. I’m still feeling the repercussions a year and a half later.”

Life comes at you fast, as they say, especially when one’s a fan of Trump’s “both sides” rhetorical technique.

(Via Raw Story)

The Cleveland Browns are 6-6, which given the last 20 years of football in northeast Ohio wouldn’t normally be cause for a meltdown, but coming off of their best season since returning to the NFL in 1999, not only reaching the postseason but beating the hated Steelers in the Wild Card round, expectations were for much more this year than .500 football.

There are plenty of reasons for the Browns stagnating this season, with injuries playing a significant role in early defensive woes and, more recently, the offense falling off. Their latest effort saw the offense look awful in a 16-10 loss in Baltimore, as the Browns could not take advantage of four Ravens turnovers forced by the defense. They struggled to run the ball as Baltimore crowded the box, daring a banged up Baker Mayfield to beat them with his arm, something he was incapable of doing on Sunday night.

Frustration is mounting in Cleveland, and while Mayfield is very clearly not at 100 percent, that he continues to play requires some form of criticism to land on his shoulders, no matter his health status. Most famously, Mayfield was ripped by Odell Beckham Sr. on Instagram a few weeks ago, leading to Beckham Jr.’s release from the team, where he eventually landed in Los Angeles with the Rams. Normally, one player’s dad posting angrily about the QB on social media would be an anomaly, but in Cleveland it’s becoming something of a regular occurrence as Kareem Hunt’s dad apparently took the “next man up” mentality to Facebook on Sunday in some now-deleted posts ripping Mayfield for being “scared to throw” and blaming the Browns for continuing to play him when he’s clearly hurt.

It’s not ideal, and Mayfield hasn’t exactly helped his own cause by firing back at fans booing him and his own family members posting angry messages in his defense on their own social media. All told, the Browns are in a rather dreadful spot right now and the bye week will hopefully allow things to calm down, guys to possibly get a bit healthier, and a late kick to the postseason may be in order. If that doesn’t happen, frustration will only grow and we can only wonder whose father will be the next to post his way into headlines.

Taylor Swift isn’t short on praise by any means, but still, some compliments hit different. Such was the case with some recent words from Billy Joel.

In a recent USA Today interview, the legend was asked about his thoughts on some current artists. He mentioned Swift, saying, “Taylor is also a very talented girl and she’s productive and keeps coming up with great concepts and songs and she’s huge. You have to give her high marks. She knows music and she knows how to write. She’s like that generation’s Beatles.”

Swift caught wind of that and she was pretty floored by it. In a recent interview with Extra, she was asked about Joel’s compliment and she said, “That honestly broke my brain… I don’t really know how to process words like that from someone like him. I’m a huge fan of his, that’s an icon saying that. I don’t know if that really happened, I need to see a video.”

Beyond this, things have been pretty excellent for Swift lately. “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” recently became the longest No. 1 song ever thanks to the ten-minute version of it. She’s also up for a Grammy in 2022, even if her nomination was a last-minute decision.

Coming from Jacksonville, Florida, newcomer Nardo Wick has explosively crossed over with his new single “Who Want Smoke” with 21 Savage and G Herbo. He continues his hot streak with another new single backed by some of the biggest names in street rap, “Me Or Sum,” tapping Future and Lil Baby for a timely assist. The three rappers share their blunt observations on transactional relationships, offering material possessions in exchange for physical affection.

Although still a relative rookie in the rap game, Nardo Wick’s breakthrough single has already charted on the Hot 100, debuting at No. 17 in October and accruing 60 million streams across all major platforms. Notoriously, Wick claims he had to shoot the “Who Want Smoke” video twice simply because the gun-laden original concept couldn’t be shared on his social media. He also featured on the Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack last year, likely contributing to the buzz for his new music before the release of his viral single.

It hasn’t been all good news for Wick, however; in August, he was reportedly arrested by US Marshals for concealed weapons charges.

However, tapping in with big names like 21 Savage, G Herbo, Future, and Lil Baby seems to have raised his profile enough that he’s got more attention for his music than his legal issues, which is the sweet spot when it comes to crossing over and becoming a star.

Listen to Nardo Wick’s “Me Or Sum” above.

After starting his first 18 games of the season for the New York Knicks, Kemba Walker is out of the rotation “as of right now,” according to head coach Tom Thibodeau. Alec Burks will replace Walker as the team’s starting point guard, Thibodeau told reporters on Monday.

Thibodeau said he’s going to shrink the rotation and that “it would be tough to play three small guards together.”

New York is flush with ball-handling options in the backcourt beyond Walker, including Burks, Immanuel Quickley and Derrick Rose (who is injured currently). Not to mention, Evan Fournier has started all 20 games this year.

Hitting 41.3 percent of his threes, Walker remains a dynamite shooter, but knee issues have sapped a good bit of his explosiveness and ability to create inside the arc. He’s making just 44.7 percent of his two-pointers — his lowest mark since 2014-15 — and his 11.7 points per game are the lowest of his career. Even on a per 100 possessions basis, his 23.5 points ties his career-low. Similarly, his 21.1 percent usage rate is more than four points south of his previous career-low.

The Knicks will kick off the Burks-at-point-guard experiment on Tuesday night when they face the Brooklyn Nets inside Barclays Center. A win would move them to 12-9 and mark a second straight victory over a playoff contender after defeating the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday.

Amy Schneider, a transgender woman and engineering manager from Oakland, California, is already building quite the legacy over on Jeopardy! While this is largely in part to her impressive eight-time winning streak that kicked off during the middle of Transgender Awareness Week (and has already grossed her over $250,000 in winnings), another part of what makes Schneider such an endearing Jeopardy! champ is all the transparency, charm, and grace she displays after her victories — and her latest tweets opening up about her on-screen nod to the Transgender community are no exception.

Since securing her first win on November 17, Schneider has taken to Twitter nearly every night to walk her followers through both her strategies and feelings while playing the legendary game show. Through her tweets, Schneider has consistently shown a great deal of compassion towards her fellow Jeopardy! contestants, celebrating the success of former transgender champion Kate Freeman directly following her own Jeopardy! debut, and lamenting about how the worst part of the show is that, in order to win, “the other contestants have to lose” on November 25. On November 26, however, Schneider used her platform to talk about a subtle gesture she made on the prior day’s episode: wearing a special pin on Thanksgiving to honor the Transgender community.

“So, obviously the thing I hinted at yesterday was the trans flag pin I wore in today’s episode (not going to spoil anything else about the episode yet), so I wanted to explain a bit about why I chose to wear it,” Schneider began.

In the tweets that followed, Schneider explained the reason why she wore the Transgender flag pin solely on Thanksgiving, writing that while she fortunately doesn’t “think about being trans all that often,” she is aware that “Thanksgiving is a holiday that is all about family. And that can be hard for anybody who has been ostracized or otherwise cut off from their family a group which, sadly, still includes a disproportionately high number of trans people, especially trans youth and trans people of color.” Schneider then added that she felt it was therefore a good day for her to “show my membership in, and support of, a community that might be having a hard time right now,” before encouraging folks to find an “organization that helps LGBTQ people in need” to donate to this holiday season. Schneider then listed a couple of her personal favorites, Trans Lifeline and the Transgender Law Center.

Schneider will continue defending her remarkable winning streak on Jeopardy! tonight, at 4 PM PT on ABC.