View Entire Post ›

Movie productions may be on shutdown during the coronavirus pandemic, but an industry that may lose $20 billion is still at work. As per Deadline, Netflix just paid $20 million for The Starling, a drama starring Melissa McCarthy, Kevin Kline, Chris O’Dowd, and Timothy Olyphant after taking part in auction with other companies. That may sound like a lot, but there’s more: The only thing they’d seen of it was a script and a four-minute sizzle reel, aka a montage of key scenes usually used for promotional purposes.

Directed by Ted Melfi, who helmed Hidden Figures as well as the McCarthy-featuring St. Vincent, it sounds like heavy stuff. The plot, according to Deadline:

McCarthy and O’Dowd play a married couple trying to rebuild their relationship after suffering a tragedy. While her husband heads off to deal with his grief in recovery, Lily Maynard tries to heal in the real world, one that becomes surreal when she grows a beautiful garden in their backyard, only to find herself repeatedly attacked by a starling that has built a nearby nest. She turns to a psychiatrist-turned-veterinarian with baggage all his own (Kline) who tries to help Lily with her bird problem and ends up making a larger impact on her life

Why the big payment? Deadline theorizes that it may be because they’re desperate to ensure there’s new content after the outbreak lifts, as there will definitely be a big lack from what could wind up being months of inactivity. And though they only saw a script and a reel, at least The Starling was able to complete its shoot prior to the near-national quarantine. On top of that, McCarthy is still enjoying the aftermath of her Oscar-nominated dramatic turn in the still pretty funny Can You Ever Forgive Me? Sounds like we’ll see how she fares once the filmmakers are able to piece it together in post.

(Via Deadline)

The Netflix documentary series Tiger King became the first pop culture sensation during the pandemic quarantine, turning its central figures — notably zookeeper-turned-convict Joe Exotic and his rival, Carole Baskin — into household names. Everyone’s seen it, except for possibly our president. But his probably opponent at this fall’s presidential election has, and he had quite the reaction.

As per Entertainment Weekly, Joe Biden and his wife Jill partook in a Zoom Q&A with their granddaughter Finnegan, which he then posted on his Twitter account. Being a family chat, it was refreshingly informal and loose, steering away from grim talk about the news or the presidential race. At one point Finnegan asked them what they were watching the kill the time.

“Everybody is watching this Tiger King show,” Jill said, “so I turned it on and we watched about 20 minutes of it. And Pops [Biden] looks at me and he said, ‘What are we watching?!’ I mean, it was like so crazy.”

You can watch the full video below, which also features Mrs. Biden talking about watching the Hulu series Mrs. America, about anti-feminist conservative activist Phyllis Schlaffly, and that the former veep himself has been reading a lot of Irish poetry. But what does he think of the songs Joe Exotic doesn’t actually sing?

(Via EW)

Get ready to take your at-home outdoor sanctuary to the next level.

View Entire Post ›

View Entire Post ›

Put the scissors down!

View Entire Post ›

“We most definitely have over $1,000 worth of returned items per week.”

View Entire Post ›

Two of the most powerful people in Hollywood right now are Joe and Anthony Russo, and with good cause: They made some of the biggest movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including delivering the goods with the one-two Avengers punch of Infinity War and Endgame. But they came from lowly beginnings. Indeed, one of the reasons they nabbed the MCU gig was because of their work directing some of the most genre-heavy episodes of Community. So why not finally make a movie about the Greendale Community College study group?

Good question! And Collider asked about it! While speaking about Extraction, the Russos-produced action thriller that just debuted on Netflix, Joe pointed out that also new to that streamer is no less than Community. And it’s been doing really well. So why not finally give the show, which ended in 2015, the full six-seasons-and-a-movie treatment it never quite got? Says Joe:

“We’d certainly be willing to do it. We love our Community family. That cast, we’re all still very close to all of them. It’d certainly be schedule-depending for us. But I believe there will be a Community movie, especially now that it’s doing so well on streaming. Someone like Netflix could step up and make that movie.”

Of course, a big screen Community wouldn’t be best if it was too big. “I don’t think you’d want to see it with a really big budget,” Joe pointed out.

“Part of what is so compelling about the show is that it’s very quaint, it’s Greendale as an underdog. I don’t think you’d want to suddenly execute it with crazy high production value and set design. Unless we were going somewhere fantastical or doing one of our genre exploration concepts. But I think you’d easily pull that movie off for a budget.”

Joe also spoke about the ways directing a comedy about a study group prepared them to helm MCU titles. For one thing, Community is an ensemble show, just like their Captain America: Civil War and their Avengers diptych. There wasn’t just the main group; there was everyone else at the college. “Sometimes we’d have 20, 30 speaking roles in an episode of Community that’s 21 minutes long,” Joe pointed out. He also spoke about how the show regularly had “bottle” episodes — one-offs where they’d do, for example, action movie send-ups.

Another thing we learned from working on Community is that we were just constantly exploring and subverting genre. It seemed every week we were chasing up our style and our tone, the look and feel of it, the score, the way the characters behaved. We were able to explore genre on a very deep level. When you’re subverting genre, you’re studying it to such an extent that you’re really understanding the nuances of it. That was critical and certainly the paint ball episodes were a huge part of our Marvel career.

So there you have it: There’s nowhere near a definitive word on whether or not they can get the gang back together, but at least it’s on the mind of two people who can get stuff done in this industry…at least when the industry, and the rest of society, is back on its feet.

(Via Collider)

The first two episodes of The Last Dance featured some fantastic stories, from Scottie Pippen’s instantly iconic “I’m not gonna f*ck up my summer” quote about putting off surgery to Michael Jordan’s 63-point playoff outing in 1986 being fueled by a bad golf game the day before with Danny Ainge.

Those helped set the tone for what figures to be a highly entertaining documentary, that will provide first-hand accounts and perspectives on some stories we’ve heard before (and, hopefully, some we haven’t). Missing from the first two episodes was the presence of Dennis Rodman, but for those wanting all the details of wild stories involving The Worm, have no fear.

The third and fourth episodes will look back on the Pistons-Bulls rivalry in the late 80s and early 90s — during which Rodman was on the Pistons — and then look into Rodman’s time in Chicago. One story we know will appear was teased in partial form by ESPN and the NBA, as Michael Jordan tells the story of Rodman’s request for a vacation after Scottie Pippen returned to the lineup.

The best part of this are the reactions from Rodman, Pippen, and Phil Jackson, who all get to watch Jordan tell the story on a phone. Jordan’s exasperated, “if anybody f*ckin needs a vacation, I need a vacation,” is incredible, as is “if you let him go on vacation, we’re not gonna see him; if you let him go to Vegas, we’re definitely not gonna see him.” This will surely be among the highlights of the upcoming episodes, but the entire Jordan-Pistons rivalry is fascinating and hearing all parties involved looking back and then finally getting to Rodman stories figures to make this week even more must-see TV.

View Entire Post ›