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Between seasons three and four of Stranger Things, Hopper went from dad bod to…. Marvel actor bod. Being a prisoner in Russia (and as a result, a prisoner of a boring storyline) turned out pretty well for him physically. Many fans noticed this change, and actor David Harbour, who plays Hopper on the beloved Netflix series, explained his transformation in a lengthy Instagram caption.

“Many of you have asked about Hopper’s physical transformation from season 3 to season 4,” Harbour wrote, adding that he worked with a trainer for eight months who he continued to work with throughout the pandemic to maintain the physique (Stranger Things season four started shooting but pauses production for several months due to the coronavirus pandemic).

“All told it was a difficult and exciting ride, changing diet and exercise plans (or lack thereof),” Harbour wrote. “All told I lost over 75lbs. 265-270 in season 3 and all the way down to 190 when we shot. Recently ballooned up again to play jolly ole st. Nick in a flick I can’t wait for you to see this holiday season, so I am struggling to fight back down towards a good weight for wherever hopper ends up in season 5. All this up and down is not good for the body, and I’ll have to give it up soon, but it is such a fun part of the job to live in a different version of your skin for a while,” he said.

While you wait for Stranger Things season five, you can catch David Harbour as Santa Claus in the action/comedy film Violent Night from Universal Pictures. The film, which follows a group of mercenaries who attack a wealthy family on Christmas Eve, is expected to come out on December 2.

Legendary college football coach Lou Holtz has three rules for living a good life: do what is right, do everything to the best of your ability, and show people you care.

Harley Quinn would care to disagree.

In season three of the fantastic HBO Max animated series, she shares her three rules: eat, bang, and kill.

In the clip below, Harley and Poison Ivy go on a “eat, bang, kill” tour. As you might expect, there’s eating, there’s banging, and there’s killing (there’s also prank calling Jim Gordon while he’s sitting on the can). But don’t worry, Harley only kills a member of the paparazzi. “Send our regards to whatever sh*tty tabloid you work for,” she yells at the photographer while punching him in the face and knocking him overboard. “And tell Ben Affleck I upper-decked his fancy SodaStream.” God, I missed this show.

Here’s more on what to expect in season three:

Wrapping up their “Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour,” Harley Quinn (Kaley Cuoco) and Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) return to Gotham as the new power couple of DC villainy. Along with their ragtag crew – King Shark (Ron Funches), Clayface (Alan Tudyk), Frank the Plant (JB Smoove) – “Harlivy” strives to become the best version of themselves while also working towards Ivy’s long desired plan of transforming Gotham into an Eden paradise.

Harley Quinn season three premieres on HBO Max on July 28.

As Disney+ prepares to bring some fan-favorite R-rated movies to the streamer, there are a few things to consider. One is that the scale of rating movies is so skewed these days, it doesn’t feel like it should matter. And the second (and most important) point is that there are some Disney movies that unreasonably traumatized children and it’s time they take responsibility for that! At least that’s what Ryan Reynolds believes.

The Deadpool star took to Twitter to announce the news about the superhero movie arriving on Disney+, but used it as an opportunity to bring awareness to the unnecessary violence that took place in those early Disney cartoons. Who leaves a baby deer out to fend for itself in the wild? That is some cold-blooded stuff.

“We’re supposed to announce Logan and Deadpool will soon be the first R-rated movies on Disney+. But we all know some Disney movies should already be rated R for irreversible trauma,” Reynolds tweeted, along with updated rating cards for various Disney classics.

Reynolds’ various fake rating updates include Snow White, Old Yeller, The Lion King, and, everybody’s first traumatic childhood memory, Bambi.

For Snow White’s updated rating, the card reads: “Rated R for breaking and entering, Borderline polyandry [and] pretty sure those diamonds aren’t cruelty-free.” Maybe there should be a sequel where the dwarves unionize? While Old Yeller gets an R rating for “Totally ugly-crying inducing straight-up murder of Old Yeller. Also, bear abuse.”

There are also some great points regarding The Lion King’s “Fratricide, mauling, very possibly half-sibling lovin’, or at least kissing cousins. Seriously.” Finally, Bambi got a much-needed rating update for “Cold-blooded killing of an innocent deer mom, that will cause life-long trauma.”

As long as this conversation is going, what about the opening sequence to Up or the gut-wrenching incinerator scene from Toy Story. Who let Disney do that?!

For days, word has been spreading that tonight’s January 6th Committee’s primetime hearing will be packed with some blockbuster moments and some never-before-seen footage. What many outlets are teasing is that viewers will be privy to a sort of “blooper reel” from the pre-taped speech that Donald Trump released on January 7, 2021, in which he only kind of condemned the violent actions of the previous day’s rioters.

The Daily Beast, picking up from a story in The Washington Post, reported that the creation of that three-minute video we all saw (and you can watch again above), in which Trump finally acknowledged that a “new administration” would soon be settling into the West Wing, was basically the political video version of Apocalypse Now, with Trump in the role of Marlon Brando. The then-president’s two biggest hangups? Publicly admitting that he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, and placing the blame for the violence on January 6th squarely on the shoulders of the violent rioters, according to WaPo sources.

“The outtakes, which could be released as early as Thursday night, reportedly show about an hour of [Trump] struggling to make the remarks that were ultimately shown to the public,” writes The Daily Beast news editor Allison Quinn. “A day earlier, he had famously told rioters still occupying the Capitol that they were ‘very special’ and declared ‘We love you.’”

We’re also scheduled to hear from two key witnesses in the investigation into the events surrounding the Capitol riots: former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews and former Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, both of whom had the dignity to resign their posts following the deadly events of January 6th.

In other words: Make sure your popcorn supply is well-stocked.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Sit down in a room alone and dim the lights to prepare for Chris Pine in the incredibly sexy and spooky trailer for Don’t Worry Darling, which follows a 1950s housewife living in a glamorous utopian community who realizes that her husband’s company is hiding some disturbing secrets.

While the first Don’t Worry Darling trailer provided a mere glimpse into the psychosexual drama with some brief steamy moments between stars Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, this second trailer is a deeper dive into just how sexy the movie will be. And it adds Chris Pine to the mix: at the end of the trailer he calls Pugh a “good girl.” Hopefully, they didn’t just cram all of the movie’s hottest moments into the trailers.

Director Olivia Wilde (Booksmart) has promised that her second feature film won’t ignore good sex and that the film draws inspiration from some of the greatest erotic thrillers, including Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal. “I kept saying, ‘Why isn’t there any good sex in film anymore?’ I realized how rarely we see female hunger on film, and specifically this type of female pleasure,” Wilde told Vogue in 2021.

Don’t Worry Darling, which was written by Katie Silberman based on a story by Silberman and Carey Van Dyke & Shane Van Dyke and also stars Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Timothy Simons, and Nick Kroll, comes to theaters on September 23.

The world of NBA broadcasting looks like it’s approaching a gigantic crossroad. Charles Barkley, the Inside the NBA commenter who has spent the last 20+ years as one of the most popular analyst in the game, took a meeting with the upstart golf league LIV Golf earlier this week to discuss joining in some capacity.

LIV Golf, which launched earlier this year, is funded by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. This has led to criticism of the league and the golfers who have accepted gigantic paydays, primarily that they are participating in sportswashing by letting Saudi Arabia use sports as a way to take attention away from their record of human rights violations.

As Barkley explained to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post in the aftermath of his meeting with LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman, he does not believe this criticism is done in good faith.

“I told [Norman,]” Barkley said. “’Listen, they are making up words, like ‘blood money’ and ‘sports washing.’ I said, ‘We have all taken ‘blood money’ and we all have ‘sports washed’ something so I don’t like those words, to be honest with you.’

“If you are in pro sports, you are taking some type of money from not a great cause.”

Barkley, who confirmed to Marchand that he has three years and $30 million remaining on his deal with Turner (which he has said will likely lead to his retirement from broadcasting upon its conclusion), responded to a question about whether he views the NBA’s relationship with China as an example of this by saying he doesn’t “want to practice selective outrage,” then noted that he is sponsored by Nike and that “I’m not going to do that thing where I pick and choose what I’m outraged about, where my money comes from.”

He did, however, essentially mention that a major factor in all of this is that LIV Golf’s offer makes it worth leaving Turner and, potentially, losing his sponsors like Capital One and Subway, many of whom reached out in the aftermath of the news he would meet with Norman.

“Between the number you just mentioned [$10 million per year] and all my commercials, for me to risk all of that, it would have to be some serious money thrown my way,” Barkley said.

During his performance at Coachella this year, Harry Styles premiered “Boyfriends” live on stage. Billie Eilish was there for that moment, although some loud talkers were ruining it for her. So, she had no choice but to request they “shut the f*ck up and listen to this f*cking song.”

After today’s release of her new songs “TV” and “The 30th,” Eilish spoke with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about how that Styles performance inspired her to debut “TV” live before releasing it. She said:

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, that’s so cool.’ He’s such a big deal, and playing an unreleased song really opens the floodgates of all these questions: Will people sh*t on it? Will they hate it? Will they love it? Will it be a thing? Will they get bored of it? Will somebody steal it? […] I saw that and I was standing there, and he started playing that song, and I thought it was so beautiful. I was in the artist area at Coachella, and, literally, these motherf*ckers were talking so loud, and I turned around and I was like, ‘Shut the f*ck up and listen to this f*cking song’ [laughs]. And everybody was like, ‘Damn! Jesus Christ.’ But I was standing there and I was like, ‘This is so’… It’s really vulnerable to play a song that is not out that is that vulnerable to you, and that’s what I wanted to do. I missed doing that.”

Watch the full interview above.

Mutual beacons of controversy Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson seemed pretty tight on a lot of issues earlier this year when the former guested on the latter’s podcast. They both cater to a far-right audience (and Peterson defended Rogan after scientists urged him to stop spreading Covid misinformation, a mess that led to Spotify warnings), but Rogan’s not about to let every single Peterson stance fly without comment.

The issue that broke the Rogan’s back has been brewing for a few months, it seems, and involves Peterson’s deadnaming of trans Oscar winner Elliot Page. “Remember when pride was a sin?” Peterson tweeted. “And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician.” And for that, Peterson got suspended from Twitter, even though he also apparently got triggered and quit the social media platform (so much back and forth) due to backlash over his remarks about a Sports Illustrated cover model. Well, Rogan isn’t here for Peterson refusing to recognize Page’s chosen name and apparently believes that it’s a dumb hill to die on.

“He’s kicked off Twitter right now,” Rogan declared (via Mediaite). “I think that was the number one thing. The deadnaming.” Rogan continued while explaining, “My friend Brian Simpson had a very good thing to say about that. He was like, ‘I come to you for like heavy duty intellectual sh*t.’ He goes, ‘Not for this.’ Like this is not a thing to be getting offended about.”

From there, Rogan didn’t see why Peterson wouldn’t leave Elliot Page alone and why he was so dang offended by something that doesn’t even affect him. “Like everybody’s in favor of everybody doing whatever they want to do, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody until it gets to gender and then people start getting weird,” the host declared.

“Weird” is certainly one way to describe Peterson’s behavior. What’s quite wild is how — when Peterson visited Rogan in early 2022 — he compared being transgender to “satanic ritual abuse.” Fast forward to now, and Rogan’s making his perspective on Peterson’s deadnaming clear.

Previously, Peterson released a video, in which he acknowledged the Twitter suspension. He called it “impossible” to use Elliot’s chosen name, and he added, “[T]he suspension will not be lifted until I delete the ‘hateful’ tweet in question, and I would rather die than do that.”

Meanwhile, Elliot Page simply keeps ignoring Jordan Peterson.

(Via Mediaite)

When it was announced that Muse would be replacing Foo Fighters as the headliner for October’s Aftershock Festival, we were still wondering how Muse would stack up alongside the heavy metal music festival’s lineup of bands like Slipknot, Rob Zombie, and Lamb Of God. Well, now after hearing Muse’s gigantic new single, “Kill Or Be Killed,” it makes a lot more sense.

“Kill Or Be Killed” — which will appear on Muse’s upcoming album, Will Of The People, out August 26th — quickly opens with drums that can best be described as what singer Matt Bellamy calls “modern metal.” While Muse’s signature anthemic riffs rise up from there, Bellamy’s howl morphs from his usual belt into something that’s damn near demonic at times.

Bellamy said in a statement, “‘Kill Or Be Killed’ is Muse at their heaviest! We wanted to update our hard rock sound on this album and with ‘Kill Or Be Killed’ we found a modern metal sound featuring double bass drum action and even a death growl. Lyrically the song takes influence from my favourite Paul McCartney song ‘Live And Let Die,’ a dark take on how life’s adversity can sometimes bring out the worst human instincts to survival at any costs.”

Listen to “Kill Or Be Killed” above and check out Muse’s October tour dates below.

10/04 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern
10/11 — Chicago, IL @ The Riviera Theatre
10/14 — Toronto, CA @ The History
10/16 — New York City, NY @ The Beacon Theatre
10/23 — Amsterdam, NL @ Royal Theatre Carré
10/23 — Paris, FR @ Salle Pleyel
10/26 — Milan, IT @ Alcatraz

Will Of The People is out 8/26 via Warner. Pre-order it here.

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

Kevin Gates‘ new album Khaza is out now on Atlantic Records, and to celebrate, he stopped by Uproxx Studios in LA to drop off a passionate performance of his song “Hard To Sleep” for UPROXX Sessions. Perhaps he enjoyed the California weather because he left his shirt off camera, but he definitely enjoyed performing the new song because he kept it going until the camera faded to black.

In the lead-up to releasing Khaza — which is named after his youngest son, Khaza Kamil Gates — he released a handful of singles including “Super General” and “Intro,” and announced his Big Lyfe Tour, which kicks off next month in Dallas and runs through October, where it’ll conclude in Pensacola, Florida.

Watch Kevin Gates perform “Hard To Sleep” for UPROXX Sessions above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

Kevin Gates is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.