Category: News

Of all the surprise decisions Netflix has made about its programming, canceling GLOW an episodes into shooting its fourth season is perhaps the most puzzling. The cancelation news had its list of reasons, of course — shooting during a pandemic would have been difficult and the streaming service often likes to keep show runs short in favor of greenlighting new ideas — but each time a less-beloved show gets renewed the talk of GLOW getting another chance pops back up again.

There’s even some talk of a GLOW movie to wrap things up, as show star Marc Maron suggested shortly after it officially got the axe. But another star of the show, Allison Brie, is being careful not to get fans too excited about that possibility just yet. Brie has done a number of pandemic-altered promotional tasks for works shot prior to the COVID-19 era, and a reported appearance on The Fourth Wall podcast, Brie laid out why she wants it to happen as much as anyone but is trying her best not to get too optimistic just yet.

As The Playlist noted, Brie leaned on her experience with Community, which is a fan favorite that’s still trying to get a movie made years after the phrase “six seasons and a movie” became actual show canon.

“I certainly think a [‘GLOW’] movie could tie everything up,” said Brie. “Our creators, Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, are incredible writers. And they’re so devoted to these characters that they created. I think a movie would be a great way to wrap it up. I’m a little pessimistic about it actually happening just in light of everything that’s gone on this year and how difficult it is to get anything back into production with COVID, and I’m also part of the ‘Community’ cast, who’s been trying to get a movie going for six years, so what I’m saying is don’t hold your breath because if it does happen, it might take a minute.”

It certainly makes sense to be wary considering her experience with Community, but that’s unlikely to stop GLOW fans from taking any hint of good news about the show’s revival to heart until it actually happens. It’s, as she called it, “a bummer,” but if Netflix was willing to scrap footage they’d already shot because of budget and other concerns, it seems unlikely we’ll see any movement on something new in that universe for some time to say the least.

[via The Playlist]

Michael B. Jordan was recently named People’s Sexiest Man Alive, the thirst trap honor they’ve been doling out since 1985. (History’s first Sexiest Man Alive? No less than Mel Gibson.) It’s a big boon to the acclaimed actor, who will be seen — eventually — in the John Clancy adaptation Without Remorse. And he got a big congrats from a former SMA: Dwayne Johnson, who couldn’t help but rib him in the most 2020 possible.

https://www.instagram.com/therock/?utm_source=ig_embed

Johnson was the winner of the magazine’s 2016 iteration, and he posted a picture of the spread, with an image of him smiling earnestly as he talks about how much he loves working before the sun is even up. The caption offers a warm congrats to Jordan, followed by a little joke: “I CONCEDE NOTHING.”

That’s right: the winner of a 2016 competition refuses to concede victory to the one from 2020 — a little jokette about the constitutional crisis (still) gripping our nation. As of this writing, outgoing president Donald J. Trump is still making tall claims of voter fraud, gumming up the works for Joe Biden’s transition team. It’s a classic Trump move, both deeply troubling and worthy of scorn and mockery. So good on The Rock for joining in on the fun.

(Via EW)

On Thursday afternoon Miley Cyrus released the second single off her upcoming album, Plastic Hearts, a collaboration with fellow pop star Dua Lipa. After a raunchy, bloody-looking teaser, the video itself did not disappoint, with the kind of sexy chaos that makes for a great music video.

Not only that, but in a recent interview with Zane Lowe, Cyrus pointed out that the subject matter of the song is well-suited to everyone’s recent experience with quarantine this year. In her mind, the song is about confronting all the things that we’ve tried to suppress or compartmentalize.

“What I love about “Prisoner,” I mean, I think it’s also coming at a perfect time for everybody,” she told Lowe. “I mean, in a way …I feel too, I mean, we’re just trapped in our emotions right now. I mean, really me, there’s no escaping it. It’s like, ‘Locked up, can’t get you off my mind.’ Anything that you’ve tried to suppress or compartmentalize at that point, it’s coming up. It’s yours to own, to own it or release it.”

There’s certainly some weight to that point. “Prisoner” follows up “Midnight Sky,” the first single off her upcoming album. And from the strength of these too songs, Plastic Hearts is looking to be an excellent latecomer in a stacked year. Watch out for it next week and watch the “Prisoner” video below.

Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Atlanta Hawks have spent big this offseason with the apparent goal of making it back to the postseason for the first time since the 2016-17 campaign. Their latest attempt at building a playoff-caliber roster involves adding some reinforcements to the backcourt in the form of a point guard who just won a ring.

According to multiple media reports, the Hawks’ reported pursuit of Los Angeles Lakers guard Rajon Rondo has paid off. Rondo is headed to Atlanta to deputize Trae Young on a reported two-year deal worth $15 million.

Rondo isn’t the only piece that Atlanta added to its backcourt on Saturday, as the team went out and acquired former Chicago Bulls guard Kris Dunn, too. As Wojnarowski pointed out, it seems pretty clear that the Hawks really want to get more stout on the defensive side of the ball, because as long as Young is in town, there will be zero concerns about what they can do offensively.

While Rondo didn’t do all that much during the regular season for the Lakers last year — 7.1 points and five assists in 20.5 minutes per game — he had a number of big games in the team’s run to a title, including a 19-point effort in L.A.’s Game 6 win over Miami. Gone are the days when he can be a reliable contributor on the floor, but Rondo’s an excellent mentor for Young and someone who can still ball out on his day.

In just a few years, Lil Baby has became one of hip-hop’s favorite artists, and the last year has been one of his most productive periods yet. In 2020 the Atlanta native has released his sophomore album, My Turn, which turned him into the first double-platinum album-selling artist of the year. His single “The Bigger Picture” also became one of the soundtracks to this past summer’s protests against police brutality. And none of it would have been possible if Young Thug didn’t push the 4PF rapper to pursue rap and take it seriously — something Lil Baby confirmed earlier this year during an interview on The Breakfast Club. Now, during a recent interview, Young Thug shared his side of it.

The Slime Season rapper joined T.I. and Benny The Butcher on the former’s ExpediTIously podcast and when he was asked about paying Lil Baby to take rap seriously, Thug confirmed the story. “I used to read that young n****’s captions on his pictures and call him like, ‘bruh, you know you can rap.’ He in jail like, ‘bruh, I’mma goddamn get out, I’mma goddamn get me some money, get me a bag and do what I need to do,’” he said. “Just to groom him to you really could get paid from doing it, like, no cap.”

In The Breakfast Club interview earlier this year, Lil Baby said he now appreciates everything Thug did for him. “My mind wasn’t where Thug’s mind [was] at because I hadn’t been through what I’ve been through now,” he said. “Now I appreciate everything he said and I understand everything he said. It still put something in my head, but I still couldn’t see it.”

Young Thug is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Black Panther is still a movie franchise without its lead star, as the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman late this summer has left the Marvel Cinematic Universe stunned. But it seems that Marvel is getting closer to finding a path forward, and at the very least they will have to find one by next summer.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, filming for the Black Panther sequel will start next July, and the direction of the script in a Boseman-less MCU is starting to come into focus.

Multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Marvel is now readying Black Panther 2 for a shoot that will start in Atlanta in July and last for upwards of six months.

Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta, who was one of the stars of Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico, is in talks to play one of the antagonists, sources tell THR. Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke and Angela Bassett are expected to return for the new feature, with some saying Wright’s character may take on a more prominent role.

The report indicates that Disney and Marvel execs are focusing heavily on TV projects as the MCU gets a bit less cinematic on Disney+. Wandavision has a release date, for example, and the other TV shows will take up a lot of time in the coming months. And while that’s always been the focus, there’s another obvious factor at play here: the long-term state of the movie industry is entirely uncertain nine months into a pandemic. With release dates shuffled around, filming interrupted and the pandemic making it significantly more expensive to attempt safely, it makes sense that there’s some things left to decide for the movie.

Still, focusing on Wright’s Shuri would also make sense for a Black Panther sequel, and the studio has already said no body double/CGI magic will plop a Boseman look-alike into the lead role. There will be a new Black Panther once the movie finally hits the silver screen, but whoever and whenever that actually happens is still far from official.

Bayer Leverkusen beat Arminia Bielefeld on Saturday, 2-1, to move into second place in Germany’s Bundesliga. They did not allow a single shot or a single shot on goal in the entire match, which makes the fact that they allowed one goal to be best described as a total accident.

What an accident it was, though. Shortly after halftime, Leverkusen was simply kicking the ball around among its defensive players while Bielefeld pressed. They did a pretty common thing in these scenarios and passed the ball back to their goalkeeper, Lukas Hradecky. It was at this point that calamity struck.

Hradecky, for reasons that I cannot fully understand after watching this a few dozen times, tries to boot the ball up the pitch and fails spectacularly. He doesn’t whiff completely, but whiffs in such a way that the ball got some wicked backspin on it and rolled right into his net.

The good news for Hradecky is that the team managed to come back and pick up the win thanks to a goal in the 88th minute by Aleksandar Dragovic. Still, this is something straight out of FIFA, and if this ever happened to me in the game, I’d turn off my console and never play it again.

For the past week, the music community has kept Jeremih in their prayers after his peers revealed the singer was “not doing good” after being diagnosed with COVID-19. The effects were so bad that the Chicago native was forced to check into a local hospital and was later placed in the intensive care unit. Thankfully, the singer’s family reportedly confirmed that he is no longer in the ICU. According to TMZ, Jeremih will now spend the next stage of recovery elsewhere in the hospital. Chicago’s Andrew Barber of Fakeshore Drive also confirmed the news in a tweet that said, “Jeremih is off the ventilator, out of ICU and has been transferred to a regular hospital room!!!”

Prior to the latest news on Jeremih, his family put out a statement about his condition, which emphasized that “COVID-19 is real and not to be taken lightly.” They added, “Also, It’s important for people infected to quarantine and let their families and friends know ASAP. There’s no shame in contracting COVID-19, and people that have it need to be responsible and considerate of others.” They also thanked “everyone who is praying, and we ask for continued prayers. The family believes in daily prayers to God,” adding, “A great team of doctors and nurses is helping him pull through.”

(via TMZ)

A few years ago Universal crapped the bed with their latest stab at The Mummy, a Tom Cruise-led fiasco intended to launch a new “Dark Universe” featuring the studio’s many classic monsters from the ’30s and ’40s. It didn’t work out so well. But this year they found great success with being less ambitious, while spending less money: They released The Invisible Man, an inexpensive and inventive reworking of the classic film. Its success inspired them to green-light other stand-alones, including their latest one: a more comic entry that reunites Channing Tatum with the directors of 21 Jump Street.

As per Entertainment Weekly, the very busy Phil Lord and Chris Miller have tasked Tatum for what’s described as a “modern day, tongue in cheek thriller” inspired by Universal’s classic monster movies. Details are thin on the ground, and it’s not clear if it will be a parody or which monsters, if any, it will feature. Maybe it’ll be somewhat in the vein of 1987’s Monster Squad, in which teens square off against Dracula, The Mummy, and the Wolf Man, who apparently has “nards.”

Starting with the 1931 Dracula, Universal’s line of monster movies helped make the then-struggling studio become one of Hollywood’s heavy-hitters. And it made stars of actors like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., even Oscar-nominated British thespian Claude Rains, who became a star with the 1933 The Invisible Man, despite only being seen once, at the very end. This year’s loose redo of that one starred Elisabeth Moss as a woman escaping spousal abuse, only for her tormentor to create a cloak that makes him invisible.

Meanwhile, Lord and Miller have more than rebounded from being booted off Solo: A Star Wars Story, which underperformed at the box office shortly before Spider-Man: Into the Multiverse, which they produced, exceeded expectations and even won them Oscars for Best Animated Feature. They’re currently working on that one’s sequel, a Ryan Gosling astronaut movie (not to be confused with this), and a reboot of the cult show that made them names, Clone High.

(Via EW)

The last month has been quite the time for Jeezy, with the Atlanta rapper dueling against Gucci Mane in a Verzuz battle, sharing his tenth album The Recession 2, and announcing plans for a new talk show on FOX Soul. He also has a podcast in the works. If that weren’t enough, now he has a video for “Almighty Black Dollar.”

It begins with Jeezy and Rick Ross arriving at the venue of a boxing match, rocking expensive furs and flashy diamonds. The rappers take their seats ringside, with Jeezy boastfully rapping and sharing a toast with Rick Ross before letting him take over. Jeezy’s fiance Jeannie Mai also appears in the video.

Jeezy’s video comes after the rapper recently spoke about his reconciliation with Gucci Mane. “For me to hear him say on a stage, ‘You extended the olive branch,’ let me know where we’re headed,” he said. “I would’ve never thought in a million years I would’ve heard that type of verbiage out of his mouth.”

You can watch the “Almighty Black Dollar” video above.

The Recession 2 is out now via Def Jam. Get it here.

Gucci Mane is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.