Back before The Mandalorian became a smash hit for Disney+ (until its troubled Season 3), writer/director James Mangold was reportedly developing a standalone Boba Fett movie. At the time, Lucasfilm was looking to deliver a slate of standalone Star Wars films, which had so far proven successful with Rogue One. However, when Solo bombed those plans were scrapped along with Mangold’s Boba Fett movie, which he’s never fully talked about. Until now.
During a new interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Mangold finally opened up about his Boba Fett movie that never came to be, and why it would not have been the best place for Baby Yoda (or, fine, Grogu) who became the immediate star of The Mandalorian.
“At the point I was doing it, I was probably scaring the s— out of everyone, but I was probably making much more of a borderline rated R, single-planet, spaghetti western,” he said. “The world would never be able to embrace Baby Yoda if I had made that, because he didn’t really belong in the world I was kind of envisioning.”
While the reins to Boba Fett and the rest of the Mandalorians were handed over to Jon Favreau, Mangold still got to play in the Lucasfilm sandbox. Not only did he get to be the only non-Steven Spielberg director to tackle an Indiana Jones movie, Mangold is currently set to dive back into Star Wars with the new film Dawn of the Jedi, which will reportedly explore the origins of the Force in a time period set 25,000 years before The Phantom Menace.
Gus Dapperton started sprinting. It was the fall of 2020, at the tail end of an all-night, chaotic adventure that would only happen in New York City, when he got off the train in Brooklyn and was met by the beaming sun beginning to rise over the skyscrapers. He didn’t know why his instinct was to run upon seeing the sun, but in doing so, his body cued his mind to explore what he had been carrying inside.
“Sunrise, tearing down the old / In a moment’s time, all is set in stone / Sometimes I like to run the road / Though the light moves fast, I still race it home,” Dapperton sings on the acoustic-based, lilting “Wet Cement,” which he penned in the summer of 2021, becoming the first song for Henge, his major-label debut album out via Warner Records on July 7.
“I wrote down song names ‘Sunset’ to be the intro and ‘Sunrise’ to be the outro before I even had ideas for the songs,” Dapperton tells Uproxx via phone in late June. “The lyrics are loose enough to paste your own experiences in and relate, but from my point of view, there’s a really strong concept of this person who’s lost in this New York City underworld. As the sun sets, they get trapped in this underworld and have to make it home before the sun comes up.”
Dapperton’s muse became the annual phenomenon known as “Manhattanhenge,” when the sunset perfectly aligns with the street grid of New York, New York.
“Gus is the only person that I’ve ever walked into a session with and had basically a PowerPoint presentation of the concept of Henge — the album, the vision, the arc, and the story,” says Ian Fitchuk, Dapperton’s Henge co-producer and two-time Grammy winner for his production on Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour. “That was amazingly inspiring for me to just want to find a way to keep that momentum going. I wish more people would walk in the studio, like, ‘Here’s the world I’m creating; you want to be a part of it?’”
It took about a full year for Dapperton to gain PowerPoint-level clarity. He was trapped in early 2020, as everybody was suffering through the indefinite aura and unpredictability of the initial COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. “Supalonely,” his double-platinum earworm with Benee, was going viral, charting on Billboard‘s Hot 100, Radio Songs, and Streaming Songs charts, but Dapperton felt abandoned by who he thought he was and the tightly held beliefs atop which he’d built his identity. He questioned everything.
“I always believed that quality would prevail and good art would prevail. At that time, I didn’t think that it mattered,” Dapperton says.
Throughout his Warwick, New York adolescence, Dapperton was painfully introverted. His parents set up a camera in front of the television when Dapperton and his sister were young children, and they would watch themselves dance, allowing him to fall in love with music within the comforts of his home. Luckily, he could also discover GarageBand without having to venture outside of his comfort zone. He wasn’t one to attend parties or go out of his way to hang out with anyone, but an eighth-grade class project forced him to collaborate with his peers. (They won, and their song was played on a local radio station.)
“I was just making a song today, and that’s when I feel the most happy — just by myself making a song,” Dapperton says. “Because of my career, I’ve had to be extroverted and sort of train myself. I get this nervous, butterfly-like adrenaline rush from socializing with people. That was something I worked on for so long. When COVID happened, it erased all the work I had done with that part of me.”
Orca, Dapperton’s September 2020 sophomore album, helped him relearn that part of himself and reinforced that he was never wrong for believing his music mattered.
“My sister, my family, and my partner — my sister particularly — had listened to those songs a lot, and [my sister] told me that they were keeping her sane and whatnot,” Dapperton says. “After I released the first song, ‘First Aid,’ I got a lot of people reaching out to me with things that they’d never said before about my music. In the past, people were just really excited by the sound and just me. With these particular songs, people were interested with the lyrics and how it was making them feel. You know, a lot of people saying that it was saving them in this time.”
Dapperton took that reassurance and ran with it. Orca, in his eyes, orbited around “mental health” themes, but the subject matter remained vague enough to be universal. Henge is even more universally resonant because it finds Dapperton completely unafraid to explore and subsequently expose his vulnerable nuances.
“Everything on the album [represents] the battle between seeking out chaos, freedom, and change, and then also having that part of you that wants safety, routine, and monotony,” Dapperton says.
The frenetic, synth-fueled “Midnight Train” captures the chaotic confrontation of daunting dichotomy (“Midnight train / Fire and ice in my veins”), while “Spent On You” more tenderly reveals Dapperton’s longing for someone to call home (“I’d dig my own grave if it meant we could make it right”).
“I love that [Henge] is a cohesive thought,” Fitchuk says. “‘Sunrise,’ ‘Sunset,’ when he described to me the feeling of walking through the city and the images that he had in his mind, creating it, it’s not just like, ‘Here’s a pile of random songs that I think are cool and hopefully people will like them.’ It’s actually much like how you would watch a film or read a book. There’s a contour and a flow to it.”
Fitchuk continues, “Because of the way that music is being consumed, to me at least, it seems it’s a little bit more rare to be able to pull that off and have an album that you really feel like, from top to bottom, keeps you engaged and tells a story.”
Dapperton holds his fans’ attention by appealing to multiple senses. Each of his projects has featured him with a different hair color and style on the cover, an intentional through line that Henge continues.
He started with a whiteboard, pinning photos and styling a moodboard, with the sonic palette as the engine. Eighties synths are scattered across Henge‘s 11 tracks, which is reflected by Dapperton’s ’80s-style suits worn during this era. “Sunset,” the atmospheric, immersive Henge opener, plays in swelling synths that drop into a shuffle beat-like guitar and swing beat, resembling jazz from the 1920s prohibition era.
“Those two eras, the sounds were dictating the aesthetic in my head. The hair I’ve been doing is almost like a flapper style. The makeup is more eighties, I think,” Dapperton says. “I never was a good singer or a good guitar player. I just had something that I wanted to say, and so I would use all the tools around me to do it. I don’t really consider myself a musician as much as a creative director, or like a master of none — doing all the things, not being an expert at any of them but having a direction and an opinion on where to go with all of them.”
Dapperton’s acute self-awareness was refreshing for Fitchuk. It was a seamless entry point to evolve Dapperton’s sound and reposition him within the pop prism without compromising his artistic integrity.
Dapperton grew up on traditional pop stars like Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and The Beatles, while also loving old-school hip-hop fixtures like J Dilla, Madlib, MF Doom, and The Notorious B.I.G. In high school, he especially keyed in on the all-encompassing approach of Odd Future and Tyler The Creator. What they all had in common was a mastery of songwriting and a reputation for producing albums with “no filler tracks.”
“I think everyone, despite how cool they are or whatever, has this subconscious desire for melodies to be catchy, simple, and good,” Dapperton says. “There are a lot of things I don’t like about pop music, but I think there is an art to a really good song, and at the end of the day, I’m trying to make songs that are powerful.”
“Phases,” a poignant reflection of a relationship gone wrong, was the first song Dapperton played for Fitchuk when presenting him his Henges PowerPoint. From there, Dapperton and Fitchuk wrote and recorded intermittently across one year. They traveled to Los Angeles for a day or two. Fitchuk flew to New York to spend two weeks working from Dapperton’s apartment. Dapperton returned the favor by going to Nashville, where Fitchuk resides, to finish “Homebody,” a reclamation of Dapperton’s introverted tendencies with the impossibly melodic hook, “Homebody, I’m a / Nobody, but you’re / Somebody to me.”
Dapperton has fond childhood memories of chanting Taylor Swift songs with his family in the car. His dad cranked the volume — “Love Story” was a staple — and inhibition went out the window. When asked which Henge song possesses the most potential to be belted in the car, Dapperton chooses “Homebody.”
Fitchuk was drawn to another track while stuck in the car after testing positive for COVID-19 on the day they completed “Horizons,” an ascending, piano-driven anthem about shedding past inflictions in favor of boundless hope.
“I just felt myself dying, sitting at the piano as the day went on. The next day, I’m finding a rental car and driving 16 hours back to Nashville with COVID. I’m jamming that song over and over and over, hoping that it makes the project,” Fitchuk says. “But in that moment, all that you can ask for is that it excites you and inspires you.”
Different people claiming different tracks as a favorite is, arguably, the truest mark of a great album. Dapperton will witness that play out in real time across his headlining Henge Tour, a long-awaited embrace. The US leg is scheduled to begin on September 14 and wrap on October 21 before the European leg extends from October 31 to November 8.
“My holistic life mantras all come into my music a lot,” Dapperton says. “You have to experience pain in order to experience pleasure, and the inconvenience of expressing yourself — the reward is greater than the risk. I think all my music just revolves around feeling pain and then making the songs as therapy and a release of tension.”
Dapperton didn’t back down when his world came crashing down in 2020, peering around scary internal corners and marinating in an uncomfortable underworld to uncover the value in traversing a rubbled path if it leads to something beautiful.
“All we ever had on paper / Was a wild imagination / All we ever had to wager / Was my wild human nature,” Dapperton sings on “Horizons.”
With Henge, all bets paid off.
Gus Dapperton is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Back in April, Alicia Keys announced the Keys To The Summer Tour, a month-long run of concerts across North America from late June to early August. As Keys comes closer to hitting your area, what does her setlist look like?
The tour kicked off at FLA Live Arena in Fort Lauderdale, Florida last night (June 28), so we now have one setlist to work off of. It was a long show (per setlist.fm), with a 33-song main set and a one-song encore. Of course, hits like “Girl On Fire” and Jay-Z’s “Empire State Of Mind” were included in the proceedings.
Check out the setlist for Keys’ Fort Lauderdale performance below.
1. “Fallin’”
2. “New Day”
3. “Love Looks Better”
4. “Limitedless”
5. “You Don’t Know My Name”
6. “Teenage Love Affair”
7. “Karma”
8. “Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart”
9. “Un-Thinkable (I’m Ready)”
10. “Underdog”
11. “Blended Family (What You Do for Love)”
12. “Holy War”
13. “Come for Me”
14. “My Boo” (Usher cover)
15. “City of Gods (Part II)”
16. “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore” (Prince cover)
17. “Like You’ll Never See Me Again”
18. “Teenage Love Affair”
19. “The Thing About Love”
20. “A Woman’s Worth”
21. “Superwoman”
22. “Butterflyz”
23. “That’s How Strong My Love Is”
24. “Diary”
25. “Like You’ll Never See Me Again”
26. “I Need You”
27. “The Gospel”
28. “Where Do We Go From Here”
29. “Girl on Fire”
30. “Empire State of Mind” (Jay‐Z cover)
31. “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” (Eurythmics cover)
32. “In Common”
33. “No One”
34. “If I Ain’t Got You” (encore)
Even after a civil court found him liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Caroll, former president Donald Trump has continued to insist that he “never met her.” His lawyers, however, appear ready to concede otherwise.
While filing a motion that argues Trump deserves a new trial because he was only found liable for sexual abuse and not rape, Joe Tacopina and his legal team made an interesting remark that flies in the face of Trump’s insistence that he’s never met Carroll or even knows who she is.
“The purported sexual abuse found by the Jury could have only included alleged groping of Plaintiff’s intimate parts through clothing, which is clearly not rape,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.
To be clear, you’re not reading things wrong. Trump’s attorneys are arguing that since Trump didn’t rape Carroll, which would involve forced intercourse, he shouldn’t have to pay the $2 million ordered by the jury.
“Here, Plaintiff was not raped, was not diagnosed with any injury, and Plaintiff does not even argue that the battery had an effect on her career,” the attorneys wrote. “Consequently, the Jury’s $2 million award was clearly motivated by sympathy rather than by evidence of harm, and the Court should grant a new trial as to compensatory damages for the battery claim, or grant a remittitur of such award to an amount no more than $400,000.”
While Trump’s team is trying to get a new trial, Carroll has been successful in adding more damages thanks to Trump going on CNN hours after the verdict and basically repeating all of the things that got him sued in the first place. Our former president isn’t very smart, everybody.
There aren’t many names on the free agent market who are more in demand than Bruce Brown, who turned down the player option in his contract with the Denver Nuggets to become an unrestricted free agent this summer. The Nuggets, fresh off of the first championship in franchise history, have made clear that they desperately want to bring back to do-everything wing who is among the most impactful role players in the NBA, but they’re by no means the only squad trying to acquire his services.
One team that has remained interested in Brown throughout is the Los Angeles Lakers, and it’s very easy to see how the soon-to-be 27-year-old would be an excellent fit alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis. And apparently, Jovan Buha of The Athletic brings word that the Lakers are feeling better and better about their odds of bringing him on board.
The Lakers are increasingly confident they can sign Nuggets free-agent wing Bruce Brown Jr. for the non-taxpayer midlevel exception starting at a projected $12.4 million, multiple league sources not authorized to speak publicly on the matter told The Athletic.
Los Angeles has plenty of other business that needs to be taken care of as the offseason goes on, with players like Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura on the restricted free agency market. Having said that, the team can afford to be patient with those guys due to their status as restricted free agents, and it would certainly make sense for them to prioritize trying to get a guy like Brown on board as quickly as they can … if they can convince him to leave Denver.
Coco Jones is becoming the star many of us knew she’d be since her Disney days. After signing a deal with Def Jam at the top of 2022, Jones released her What I Didn’t Tell You EP which delivered the fan-favorite record “ICU,” a song that became her highest-charting record. Months after releasing a deluxe edition of What I Didn’t Tell You, Jones would go home with the Best New Artist award at the BET Awards where she also performed “ICU.” Things are just getting started for Jones, and it’ll all continue with a newly-announced tour later this summer.
Shortly after her BET Awards win, Jones announced the What I Didn’t Tell You Tour. The string of shows begins on August 5 in Ontario, Canada, and continue for a month before concluding in Norfolk, Virginia on September 3. Jones also revealed that rising singer Ebony Riley will join her as an opening act for the tour as well as Haben and S!mone on select dates.
You can view the full list of tour dates below and purchase tickets here.
08/05/2023 — Ontario, CA @ Toyota Theater
08/08/2023 — Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
08/10/2023 — Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre
08/11/2023 — Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theatre
08/13/2023 — Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
08/15/2023 — Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
08/17/2023 — Denver, CO @ Gothic Theatre
08/22/2023 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre
08/23/2023 — Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory
08/25/2023 — Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren
08/27/2023 — Dallas, TX @ The Echo Lounge & Music Hall
08/29/2023 — Birmingham, AL @ Iron City
08/30/2023 — Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl
09/02/2023 — Philadelphia, PA @ Made In America Festival
09/03/2023 — Norfolk, VA @ The NorVA
What I Didn’t Tell You (Deluxe) is out now via Def Jam. Find out more information here.
DeSantis is in hot water with the Muscatine County Republican Party of Iowa for what they deem “unlawful and unethical” behavior by his super Pac, Never Back Down. According to a letter they sent to DeSantis’ campaign team, the Muscatine GOP is irate over how the Florida Republican is using his super PAC to canvass voters on the ground. Apparently, DeSantis has been bussing supporters in from out-of-state, handing them t-shirts, and having them attend rallies, speeches, and parades in an effort to convince on-the-fence voters that he has a groundswell of support in the state.
“He is the first presidential candidate that is going out and buying and paying for representation … he’s not building a grassroots organization,” Muscatine GOP Chair Daniel Freeman said. “And it could very well be that he uses Never Back Down because he can’t garner state support from individual residents in Iowa. Therein lies the problem. He is misleading the public of Iowa by sending busloads of people to a parade and they don’t even live in the area and in fact, most of them don’t even live in the state of Iowa.”
While it’s likely what DeSantis is doing doesn’t break any campaign laws, it does make his presidential bid look pitifully weak, which is why his team has responded by … blaming Donald Trump.
They’re running a flailing Iowa campaign,” the super PAC’s spokeswoman said. “Trump can’t fill an event. They can’t match us in endorsements. They haven’t even tried. They can’t and won’t organize. They’re not capturing people at events the way we are. They’re not as sophisticated and, frankly, they’re not as well-staffed as we are. They’ve failed at every operational level.”
Does it really count as “filling an event” if you have to pay people to come and act as if they like you though?
Three-time NBA Sixth Man Of The Year Lou Williams officially retired from the league on Father’s Day. Williams’ announcement was made in the form of an Instagram video narrated by his daughter. “Finally, today, I’m happy you found peace with your decision,” she says. “You were a young dreamer out of South Gwinnett, one of the last to be drafted — straight to the league. You were eager to make a name for yourself.”
It turns out Jay-Z is responsible for Williams’ going 45th overall to the Philadelphia 76ers in the second round of the 2005 NBA Draft out of South Gwinnett High School, rather than playing at the University Of Georgia first.
“I went straight from high school [to the league],” Williams said to start a recent episode of The Starting Five podcast presented by DraftKings. “My thing was, my senior year in high school, I started experiencing things. I had this one night — LeBron and Mav [Carter] introduced me to Jay-Z. I kicked it with Jay for a night, and I went to school the next day.”
Lou Will continued, “I was looking around the class, like, ‘I’m nothin’ like none of y’all.’ I started experiencing different sh*t, so I was like, ‘I’m not going to sit in another classroom after this.’ I literally can’t do it, you know what I’m saying? I don’t think that’s going to be the path for me.”
Williams spent the first seven seasons of his career in Philly (2005 to 2012) before signing in free agency with his hometown Atlanta Hawks, where he initially played from 2012 to 2014. Williams ultimately finished his career in Atlanta, most recently appearing in 56 games during the 2021-2022 season, but he enjoyed stops with the Toronto Raptors, Los Angeles Lakers, Houston Rockets, and Los Angeles Clippers in between.
Flo Milli has done a lot of collaborating this year. The 23-year-old rapper worked with Saucy Santana on “Whole Family” or Lola Brooke and Maiya The Don on the “Conceited” remix. Now she’s back with a bigger, more iconic group effort.
For 7-Eleven, Flo Milli teamed up with Maiya The Don again, as well as 2Rare and Kari Faux for the new track “Anything Flows” produced by Nova Wav. The music video directed by Warren Fu is full of color and Slurpees. Plus, everyone’s outfits are impeccable and memorable, and the choreography is spot-on. The infectious track has Milli’s clever and fun flair, only made better and more catchy with the other rappers who she has obvious chemistry with.
Earlier this year, Milli worked with American Express on a partnership. “American Express and Depop are bringing my personal style to life this festival season and I’m so excited to be part of the first collection.” Flo Milli shared in a statement. “Through both my music and fashion, I always aim to express myself with authenticity and creativity. I can’t wait for Depop users to shop my festival-ready looks, featuring bold, glam pieces with Y2K and grunge influence.”
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
The is a lot going on here. Let’s start at the top: American Born Chinese is a coming-of-age story based on a popular graphic novel about a teenager named Jin who attempts to navigate high school while keeping a big secret about superpowers under wraps. Spider-man vibes abound, with crushes on biology partners and angry demons and magical amulets aplenty, which is by no means a complaint. Nor is the thing where the show reunites a big chunk of the cast from Everything Everywhere All At Once. More shows should have Michelle Yeoh in them. Most of them, really. This is not an unreasonable request.
Finally, an inventor biopic we actually care about. No offense to the Steve Jobs origin stories and World War dramas about geniuses who saved the world. You keep the Michael Fassbenders and Benedict Cumberbatches of the world employed and for that, we thank you. But it’s about damn time we learn of the genesis of the crunchy, spicy snack that saved America’s tastebuds. Eva Longoria directs this dramedy that follows a Frito-Lay janitor who claimed he created Flaming Hot Cheetos. Sure, it’s a movie about the mouthwatering alchemy of enriched corn meal, cayenne pepper, and red food dye, but it’s also an underdog story that just so happens to align with a capitalist turning point in our country. And yes, it burns … good.
It’s the 16th season of It’s Always Sunny and if you’re not already endlessly in love with this gang of moronic miscreants and their low-rent misadventures I don’t know that you can be saved. For those who have fallen off a little over the years, though, please allow us to reassure you that the show is as good, chaotic, vile, silly, and subtly smart as ever, trading international hijinks in Ireland during part of last season for a back to basics approach. In just the first two episodes we’ve seen Mac, Charlie, Dee, Dennis, and Frank giving us a cliffs notes understanding of inflation and crypto (as only Always Sunny can), revelations about Charlie and Frank’s cramped apartment, a crazy family road trip, and a whole lot of casual gunplay. And that’s just the first two episodes. We can’t wait to see the rest.
The Full Monty was a 1997 movie about a group of steelworkers who faced a troubling economic future and chose to address it by becoming strippers. It was a whole thing. People still use “the full Monty” as code for male nudity, which is kind of wild. And now it’s back, 25 years later. Again, kind of. It’s a television series now and it follows the same characters but this time they keep their clothes on, choosing new and somehow weirder ways to alleviate their financial struggles. There’s a lot going on here. Curiosity might be enough to reel you in.
From the outside, you may think that you know where this series is going, but the show promises to be even more chaotic than you expect. Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen play old friends who reunite after people grow apart (as they do), and it soon grows apparent that he shakes up her little world. Fortunately, she does appear to be happily married, and her husband approves of (and, in fact, encourages) this rekindled friendship — at least, until the horse tranquilizers come into play. It happens.
Kaley Cuoco has already proven that audiences and critics underestimated her sheer level of talent, and not only that, but she’s been working her butt off ever since the Big Bang Theory wrapped up. Cuoco has now turned to the true crime-esque realm to portray a woman who’s obsessed with the genre to such a degree that she is excited about a serial killer on the loose. This series arrives from producers of The Boys and Ozark, if that tells you anything about how darkly comedic things will soon get for this show, and it’s not as fun as The Flight Attendant, but it’s fizzy enough to be a hit.
The internet’s favorite sick and deranged sketch series is back for a third season. Expect to see your various social media feeds flooded with screencaps and GIFs in the coming weeks, most of them featuring creator and star Tim Robinson with a pained expression on his face. Maybe double back and watch the first two seasons again, too. There’s probably something in there you missed or forgot anyway. And hey, it’s never a bad weekend to yell at strangers about how they have no good car ideas. Maybe they get mad, sure. But maybe you’re right. And maybe they look at you and reply “I’m doing the best at this” and you make a friend for life.
Dystopian sci-fi has never been done quite like this before. In Apple TV+’s newest drama, a ruined and toxic future that forces humanity to dwell in underground silos hundreds of stories deep isn’t the antagonist of the story, it’s merely the setting. The real problem lies in a murderous cover-up whose unraveling threads reveal a bigger conspiracy when a scrappy mechanic (Rebecca Ferguson) and a disillusioned sheriff (David Oyelowo) start tugging in earnest. What is truth and who decides it are the questions this show is asking but even if the answers don’t come readily, the insane worldbuilding and thrilling action will leave you happy to keep guessing.
Succession’s Sarah Snook is back on our screens in what looks like an ultra-tense psychological thriller/horror film complete with a creepy kid, creepier paper masks, and even creepier crayon drawings. Also, there’s a rabbit. Which is VERY CREEPY. We don’t know if this is going to be the rare scarer that hits with audiences, but we know Snook always delivers a powerhouse performance that’s worth the price of admission… and this is Netflix, so there is not really a price of admission. So… win-win?
Hijack asks a question that has been on all of our minds for over a decade now: What if we took 24, with its real-time running clock playing out over the course of a full season, but instead it was seven hours and with Idris Elba and on an airplane? Okay, maybe you weren’t asking that exact question for the last 10 years. But you probably are now. Which is okay, seeing as that’s basically what Hijack is. Look at us, solving little problems we didn’t even know existed. It’s not as dramatic as, say, thwarting terrorists in the skies, to choose an example at random, but still. Not too shabby.
The last time we checked in with Boots Riley, he was taking us on a deeply wild ride with Sorry to Bother You. Well, he’s back, and deeply wild again, this time with a new series about a 13-foot-tall man named Cootie who has a bunch of interesting experiences out in the world, delving into everything from love to friendship to… actually, you should just watch this one to find out. Our words can’t do it justice. Especially not for the thing where Walton Goggins shows up as a character named The Hero. This is a weird one, to be sure but it’s a weird one in the best way possible.
All hail the never-ending franchise’s new spinoffs, which begin with Manhattan-bound misadventure to reinforce what a bad idea it is to head into cities with zombies afoot. Fortunately, this is a thrilling throwback, in which Maggie pretty much forces Negan to help her rescue Hershel Rhees, son of Glenn and Maggie, obviously. Hey, Negan owes her one, so let the walker variants roll
What we have here is a spinoff of one show (Star Trek: Discovery) that was itself a prequel to another show (the original Star Trek), now in its second season. We are deep into the lore here. But that’s okay. It’s a fun little ride, good for both diehard fans of the franchise and newbies trying to dip their toes in a little. You could use a little galactic escape sometimes. We all can.
Here’s what we know about Extraction 2: It sees Chris Hemsworth returning to action as the left-for-dead mercenary-turned-hero Tyler Rake (still a terrific name) who’s tasked with saving more people in peril. Here’s what we don’t know about Extraction 2: How the hell this movie got made. The stunt list alone should’ve had insurance companies running for the hills. There’s talk that Hemsworth is lit on fire at one point. There are dizzying car chases filmed on a continuous loop. Just 20-minute-long car chases, people! Helicopters are out here landing on moving trains. Who let these men do this?
Warrior is back for a third season, still starring Andrew Koji as Ah Sahm and still set in 19th century San Francisco and still based on the writings of Bruce Lee, but now it’s on Max, which was previously known as HBO Max, after originally debuting on Cinemax back in 2019. There’s a lot going on here, most of it involving some usage of the letters m-a-x, but the bottom line remains the same: it’s a good show that’s full of action and cool fights scenes and sometimes that’s exactly what you need when it starts getting hot outside.
John Krasinski is back for another run as Jack Ryan, the Tom Clancy character who has been saving the world for the last 30 or 40 years, played by everyone from Harrison Ford to Chris Pine. Wendell Pierce is in there, too. It’s kind of wild to think about, really, this thing where Jim from The Office and Bunk from The Wire have been running around for a few seasons now saving the world on a show made by the same company that ships vitamins and kitchen utensils to your house in 48 hours. But it’s happening. The future is pretty weird!
Nick Fury is having a not-so-great time with the “one last job” trope as he heads back into MCU hijinks for what might be his “one last fight.” We do live in unusual Hollywood times, and with Captain Marvel, the Skrulls somehow became the good guys, so we’ll see how Talos fares in this standalone series. Not only are Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn onboard, but Emilia Clarke and Olivia Colman also formally enter the MCU with this show, and we will apparently see some Rhodey on this “crossover event series,” too. Only enough, there’s some eye-patch-less Fury in the mix, so I hope we get some more Goose to add even more context.
Can the bleak freaky award-winning anthology series and buzz machine from a few years ago still scare the piss out of audiences now that the world has been brought closer to some of its popular themes about metaverses, AI everywhere, neural implants, evaporating privacy protections, and the malignancy of loneliness and hollowness of digital interactions? We’re about to find out with five new star-studded episodes that beg for our attention while it’s still ours to control.
4. Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators (Netflix)
NETFLIX
American Gladiators exists at the intersection of cheesy ’80s and early ’90s WWF/WWE wrestling, pro football, and action films like Running Man, a former weekend TV staple and likely forgotten piece of pop culture ephemera trapped in a time capsule that just got busted open for a new Netflix docuseries. What’s inside? A whole lotta spandex and tales of pumping up, sex, drugs, and mayhem, feeding Where Are They Now fascinations around larger-than-life one-named stars like Gemini, Ice, and Blaze. Oh, and there’s a behind-the-scenes power player who dressed up like Elvis.
Henry Cavill has one foot out the door of this franchise, which is unfortunate, but we’ll see what Liam Hemsworth brings to the table in the future. Further, this season will apparently bring us (from the looks of the above teaser) plenty of banger-filled Jaskier with newfound eyeliner. Ideally, this means that the show will go ahead and declare Jaskier canonically bisexual because they’ve been dancing around the issue long enough. And god only knows that the Netflix franchise has tweaked Andrzej Sapkowski books and the video games enough over the years already, so what’s one more time?
The super-rich mega-church proprietors are back and they’re ready to step into a new chapter that sees patriarch Eli Gemstone ceding control to his kids. Shades of Succession? In some surface ways, sure, but Gemstones is its own swirl of chaos and genius, and this new season goes all in on family feuds while adding monster trucks, romantic entanglements, backwoods survivalists doing that thing they do, and an all-new Baby Billy scheme.
The first season of The Bear was often chaotic and intense in the very best of ways. But while season two doesn’t move fully away from that formula, it all feels a little more slow-burn and structured as it seeks to tell a story about what happens when you dare to take a chance and change things up. How discombobulating it is and how the universe reacts. We thought last season was a main course, but it was apparently just an appetizer.
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