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Deandre Ayton Continues To Prove Himself As A Two-Way Star In The Playoffs

Throughout the first-round matchup between the Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans, All-Stars Chris Paul, Devin Booker, and Brandon Ingram each enjoyed their moments. All of them, for one reason or another, though, experienced various games of silence. From injuries to shooting struggles to poor decision-making, their typical star impact evaporated on multiple nights.

The most consistent star of this series was fourth-year center Deandre Ayton, who never scored fewer than 10 points or shot worse than 61.5 percent from the field across the six games. Five times, he scored 19 or more. His series-long averages of 20.5 points, 9.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.2 blocks were exactly that of a star, reinforced by the film and punctuated by defensive artistry.

His 72.1 percent true shooting leads all eligible playoff players. Set for a new contract this summer, he’s dialed up his performance for the second straight postseason.

With Booker sidelined for Games 3-5, Phoenix required Ayton to shoulder an increased scoring load and he delivered, averaging 23.3 points and 15.7 shots in his teammate’s absence. Led by Paul, the Suns employ a pick-and-roll-heavy scheme designed to produce finishes for Ayton, kickouts for open triples, or inevitable midrange jumpers from the Point God.

Ayton’s long benefited from this attack, but displayed substantial signs of growth as a scorer throughout his fourth season. That shined brightly in round one, when he was decisive and aggressive off the catch, quickly let jumpers fly, and wielded ball skills not often seen before this year.

Whether it’s hook shots, floaters, or delicate finishes, his touch is immaculate from virtually anywhere within striking distance of the key. He proved too spry and light off the ground for Jonas Valanciunas to contain him on the catch, bemusing the veteran center for many of his tantalizing buckets inside.

Ayton’s looks weren’t confined to close range either. He buried deep, tough face-up and turnaround jumpers, drove from the perimeter to score through contact and even canned two of his four three-point attempts. His touch is truly special. The confidence he’s now operating with as a shooter and scorer is unprecedented in his NBA career.

According to NBA.com, during the regular season, 13.9 percent of his shots came after 2-6 dribbles. Against the Pelicans, that number sprung to 26.3 percent. He’s a premier release valve and has considerably expanded the way he effectively concludes possessions. Those traits are amplified by his knack for flipping the angle of screens or re-screening to carve space against defenses. Connecting with Ayton likely precedes prosperous offensive results.

Through expanding his scoring repertoire, ball-handlers can feed him in an array of spots and trust that he’ll execute. Setting him up for success demands much less specific situations than it did, say, a year and a half ago. That development greatly eases the responsibility of Phoenix’s initiators, especially when he’s cooking like this. New Orleans deployed an assortment of pick-and-roll coverages to try and frustrate Paul. Ayton was ready to thrive as an outlet regardless of the defensive approach.

Ayton’s shot chart from the first round is a highlighter come to life. Per Cleaning The Glass, he shot 86 percent at the rim (89th percentile among bigs), 70 percent from short midrange (4-14 feet, 96th percentile), 56 percent from long midrange (14 feet to the 3-point line, 79th percentile) and 65 percent overall from midrange (100th percentile).

The man was en fuego, evidenced by the fact that his worst region on the floor produced a sterling 1.12 points per possession.

Deandre Ayton shot chart
Cleaning The Glass

Ayton’s high-volume, uber-efficient scoring might’ve overshadowed his spectacular defensive series. Both as a helper and pick-and-roll custodian, he consistently quelled the Pelicans’ endeavors.

In ball-screens, his mobility, active hands and recognition of proper angles complemented Phoenix’s point-of-attack stoppers. He and Mikal Bridges are one of the NBA’s foremost pick-and-roll defensive duos, functioning with synergy and a rare ability to impede or extinguish space for opposing teams. When New Orleans involved him in actions, he posed problems and was adept playing against 1-on-2 scenarios.

As a help defender, Ayton etched a similar footprint. His awareness, lively limbs, and mobility enabled him to influence a bevy of possessions, primarily in the paint. According to NBA.com, he’s contested a playoff-high 56 shots within 6 feet of the hoop, where players are shooting 19.9 percent worse than their average.

His verticality and timing were essential, while his 7-foot-6 wingspan deterred numerous other field goals. Confronting him near the rim rarely panned out for the Pelicans.

With Phoenix now set to face the Dallas Mavericks in round two, Ayton will, as he always does during the playoffs, loom large. Luka Doncic is a vastly better pick-and-roll conductor than Brandon Ingram or CJ McCollum. He’s also a more devastating driver and downhill scorer. All of those qualities will challenge Ayton.

On the other end, Dallas’ small-ball 5 rotation of Dwight Powell, Maxi Kleber, Davis Bertans and Dorian Finney-Smith are an ideal matchup for Ayton. Whereas the Mavericks often neutralized Rudy Gobert as a roller by switching or sitting back to defend the lob, Ayton will torch switches and Paul’s intermediate game is more equipped to seize that available space than Donovan Mitchell’s or Mike Conley’s.

Dallas’ cast of rangy, well-connected perimeter defenders will have to overwhelm Paul’s maneuvering as it did Conley to really stymie Phoenix’s pick-and-roll game. But Ayton is a much more malleable and skilled scorer than Gobert, just as he emphasized against New Orleans.

Nobody was more reliable than him. He’s further solidifying himself as a star, one who’s ready to receive the massive payday that’s long overdue.

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Clipse’s Shelved Debut Album Is Now Available For Streaming

Just about 20 years ago this year, Virginia Beach brothers Malice and Pusha T — aka Clipse — released their debut album, Lord Willin’, via Pharrell Williams’ Star Trak and Arista Records. However, longtime heads know that this was actually the duo’s second chance at making their first impression after a previous deal at Elektra Records resulted in the 1999 album Exclusive Audio Footage — an album that was shelved after the poor response to the lead single, “The Funeral,” resulting in the end of the duo’s record deal. Now, a couple of decades later, it seems things worked out okay.

Until now, though, only a handful of people had ever heard that first album, which never made it to stores. And while you could get ahold of it relatively easily due to leaked promotional versions that found their way online, as of today, you can simply open your favorite DSP. That’s right; Exclusive Audio Footage is now available for streaming — legally — for the first time in nearly 25 years. According to 2DopeBoyz, the album is mostly unchanged (likely thanks to producers The Neptunes’ approach of building beats from scratch rather than sampling), meaning you’re likely to hear references to Pusha’s old rap name, Terrar, and reworked versions of beats such as the one from Jadakiss’ “Knock Yourself Out” on the second track, “Hear Me Out.”

The update is sure to fuel the long-simmering rumors of a possible reunion of the sibling act, which has been on unofficial hiatus since 2010, with Malice going Christian rap as No Malice — his last album was Let the Dead Bury the Dead in 2017 — and Pusha continuing as the number-one coke rapper, who recently went No. 1 with his fourth studio album It’s Almost Dry (which No Malice also appears on). Those rumors were helped along by two more recent collaborations on albums from Kanye West and their designer friend and DJ, Nigo.

You can hear it for yourself via Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal.

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HBO Max’s ‘The Staircase’ More Than Justifies Its Existence While Expertly Dramatizing The True Crime Classic

The streaming realm has recently gifted us (for better or worse) with a glut of shows about scammers and tech gods, but those shows owe plenty of their granddaddy, the true crime genre. That’s the simmering mainstay behind the flashier trend, and for sure, the public’s fascination with true crime will never die. Streaming has, of course, made those stories much more accessible (and plentiful) in binge-friendly form, but one would be hard-pressed to find a more notorious-streamable classic than Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s The Staircase, which is currently on Netflix for the taking.

That docuseries surfaced back in 2004 with a few re-up installments, arriving as recently as 2018 to fill in the audience on legal developments regarding convicted novelist Michael Peterson. And it’s safe to say that, for many viewers including myself, people still find it difficult to draw any definitive conclusions regarding the role played by Michael in his wife’s death. After a lengthy North Carolina trial, he ended up serving nearly 15 years for the murder of his wife, Kathleen, who died in 2001 under mysterious and possibly extraordinary circumstances involving (as the title suggests) a staircase in the expansive family home. To this date, theories abound about what really happened to her, and the series fuels all the questions that still surround her bloody and violent demise.

Did Kathleen die as a result of a wine-tipsy fall, or did Michael bludgeon her to death, or was there *cough* a third party involved? And beyond the whodunnit aspect of this story, can a dramatized HBO Max miniseries add enough texture to justify its existence — without exploiting the victim and broadcasting her plight as sheer entertainment?

Let’s just say that I was slightly worried about how the dramatization would go, given that one of the trailers leaned into campiness at about the halfway point. Fortunately, my fear was misplaced because the campiness is mainly bound to the trailer as well as the theatrics of law enforcement and courtroom counsel. There’s still some camp there, perhaps to diffuse tension, and there are places where the tone felt a little bit “off” to me, but that’s probably because dramatization of true crime (as with the recent Dirty John seasons) has to walk a fine line. In the end, there’s a very different product here than the cinéma vérité presentation of Lestrade’s docuseries. However, both the O.G. series and the HBO Max version (helmed by Antonio Campos of The Devil All The Time) take great pains (at least in the first five episodes screened for critics) to never declare, “Yep, this is what the hell actually happened to Kathleen”). And given that we don’t know what the hell happened in real life, that’s appropriate.

The Staircase family shot
HBO Max

I must say, though, that watching Colin Firth — the guy who’s beloved for playing Mr. Darcy, both in a Jane Austen adaptation and those Bridget Jones movies — as a potential (manipulative) killer is wild. He’s giving a master class here, making the audience wonder what his seemingly contradictory personality traits and his slightest of wavering expressions could possibly mean. And as always, Toni Collette finds it impossible to turn in a subpar performance, which lends at least some respect for Kathleen’s memory, even if there’s some hefty speculation about how Kathleen reacted upon learning one of Michael’s secrets. That sort of loosey-goosey vibe could have backfired, but this dramatization allows for some enhanced speculation on various scenarios that seem at least halfway plausible about Kathleen’s final moments. These sequences, peppered throughout the episodes, are incredibly brutal to behold. That’s to be expected, given that Kathleen’s autopsy revealed a number of lacerations on her head. Obviously, the subject matter can be difficult to watch during occasional scenes.

So yes, the lead actors really climb into their roles from the inside out, and they carry this series home with all the subtle turns that one would expect. Likewise, the grown-up Peterson biological and adopted kids (played by Sophie Turner, Odessa Young, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Dane DeHaan, and Olivia DeJonge) get stepped-up accounts of what they were doing behind the trial-and-documentary scenes. And my goodness, Miss Parker Posey also has a grand time with her assistant DA role, Freda Black, whose procedural bent was questionable at best (and who died in 2019 from late-stage liver disease due to alcoholism). Add in the portrayal of corrupt, biased, and bigoted members of law enforcement and we’ve got ourselves quite a cast of characters. And although the show does recreate many of the docuseries’ scenes and heavily supplements with flashbacks, there’s a key addition that sets this production apart: Lestrade (who produces this HBO Max series) himself becomes part of the story. He’s portrayed by Vincent Vermignon, who unfurls the process by which he frames Michael’s perspective for the camera.

In other words, there’s a whole lot of dissection on how this crime was positioned by not only law enforcement and prosecutors but also by the documentary filmmakers (including producer Denis Ponce, portrayed by Frank Feys). Everyone’s got their competing version of what could have happened, and yet, no one (but Michael Peterson) knows what went down for sure. He was, for certain, a skilled liar in many facets of his life, and Firth does a remarkable job of diving through the dances that Micheal does, both in an attempt to save himself after the crime but also beforehand, when he was living a double life. Likewise, we finally get to know Kathleen beyond the home movies that the docuseries showed. Collette does a fantastic job of making sure that her character — and she surely went through hell — surfaces as much more than an object of obsession for a voyeuristic audience. That is to say, Kathleen was a fully-formed, complex person, rather than a figurative chalkboard drawing in a crime scene.

Since the limited series will run eight episodes, and I’ve seen five of them, I can’t say whether this show will end with any kind of definitive judgment on Michael’s actions surrounding Kathleen’s death. It feels certain, however, that Firth will continue to evaporate from view and truly emerge as Michael Peterson, down to his characteristic manner of speaking. It’s a haunting performance, and if you’ve seen the O.G. docuseries (currently streaming on Netflix), you will likely marvel at the resemblance. More than that, you’ll learn more about Kathleen, much more than archival footage could deliver. Don’t be afraid of this dramatization of your baby, true crime fans. The Staircase is in good hands.

HBO Max’s ‘The Staircase’ premieres three episodes on May 5, followed by weekly installments.

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Kim Wexler Herself Rhea Seehorn Directed This Week’s Episode Of ‘Better Call Saul’

Rhea Seehorn is the breakout star of Better Call Saul, most likely because she is the only one who can put up with Jimmy/ Saul’s crap. She plays Kim Wexler, the lawyer who is much too good at her job and is often roped into Jimmy’s questionable shenanigans. As it turns out, Seehorn is making her directorial debut on this week’s episodes of Better Call Saul.

“It was definitely terrifying. People were like, ‘Was it fun?’ When I wasn’t sweating like Albert Brooks in ‘Broadcast News,’ yeah,” Seehorn told USA Today, “It was alternating just sheer joy and sheer adrenaline and terror. Yes, it’s daunting. This is not a first-time director type of show, let’s face it. This is an extremely advanced show.”

This is the final season of the hit Breaking Bag spinoff, which is split into two parts: part one is currently airing, and the second batch of episodes hits screens this summer. Seehorn knows the show well enough that she didn’t feel too intimidated to sit in the director’s chair. She even shadowed the other directors, co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould.

“It was a free master class any day you went to set to watch any department. When I am not frantically trying to learn my own stuff or getting to see my family, the only other place I prefer to be is on set,” the actress added. “I like watching other people’s work. I also like learning all of the other cogs in the wheel of this giant, collaborative art form… It helps me as a performer; it helps me as a human.”

As it turns out, Seehorn has a background in art. She graduated with a degree in studio art, which helped prep her for her work behind the camera. “They tell you all the time: Don’t do a cool shot just to do a cool shot. It has to be in service of telling the story,” she added. “So I looked for places to do that.” Okay, but Better Call Saul is known for its cool shots, so hopefully, she threw a few in there.

Fans are also hoping that Kim Wexler survives, and Seehorn appreciates it. She added, “You can’t imagine how amazing it feels as a performer to create this character that wasn’t even in the Breaking Bad pantheon that people have come to truly see as this three-dimensional person that they’re deeply concerned about. And that they also want to have a beer with and hang out with!”

Better Call Saul airs Mondays on AMC.

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Taylor Swift Will Discuss Her ‘All Too Well’ Short Film At The Tribeca Film Festival

Taylor Swift is heading to the Tribeca Film Festival to discuss her magnum opus, the All Too Well short film starring Dylan O’Brien and Stanger Things’ Sadie Sink.

All Too Well: The Short Film, directed, produced, written, and starring Swift, will screen at the Beacon Theater on June 11th with Swift giving a talk beforehand as a part of the Tribeca Film Festival. It seems like she is determined to get an Oscar nomination before her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn. Good for her! Swifties will undoubtedly try to attend the screening, which they can do for several hundreds of dollars (probably). Tickets are available to those who have festival passes.

The movie is an alleged fictional take on Swift’s relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal almost a decade ago. She premiered the 13-minute film last fall before projecting it during her performance on Saturday Night Live (a bold move). The song was released as a part of her re-recording of her past records in order to gain control of her masters.

Other artists who will lead talks during the festival include Pharrell, Seth Meyers with Aidy Bryant, and Cynthia Ervio, with other events featuring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. So, just another New York City day! The Tribecca Film Festival takes place June 8-19th in NYC.

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All The Best New Music From This Week That You Need To Hear

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw Justin Bieber drop two timeless classics and Kehlani unveil an anticipated new album. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters. Also find our Uproxx HQ Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly with the best new music, at the end of this post.

Justin Bieber — “Honest” Feat. Don Toliver

Justin Bieber dropped what is sure to be his defining song with “I Feel Funny,” which, in all seriousness, was just a joke-rap song and accompanying video he used to tease his real headlining release of the week. That was “Honest,” which sees Bieber leaning into his hip-hop side by teaming up with Don Toliver for the song and its snowy video.

Kehlani — “Everything”

Kehlani has been gradually working her way up the charts with her albums: 2017’s SweetSexySavage peaked at No. 3 while 2020’s It Was Good Until It Wasn’t rose to No. 2. Here’s hoping that’s a linear progression and last week’s Blue Water Road finds its way to No. 1. Whatever the outcome, we’ll always have the music, including “Everything,” a smooth tune that sees Kehlani waxing poetic about somebody special.

Future — “Keep It Burning” Feat. Kanye West

As Ye has been keeping his new music mostly exclusive to his Stem Player, fans without one look forward to West’s collaborations with other artists, aka songs they can actually listen to on their preferred streaming platforms. A pair of them popped up last month on Pusha T’s new album and now Ye is back again, this time on Future’s “Keep It Burning,” which arrived shortly after the news of Future’s new album, I Never Liked You.

Angel Olsen — “Big Time”

Angel Olsen has been on a productive tear over the past few years and she’s keeping it alive in 2022 with her recently announced album, Big Time. She shared the title track last week, which Uproxx’s Danielle Chelosky notes feels “weightless and grateful” and “[sways] with a jaunty, country twang and [contains] a wholesome hook: ‘I’m loving you big time.’”

Khalid — “Skyline”

Over the course of his young but already oh-so-prosperous career, Khalid has made friends with experimentation. He’s dipped his toes in a number of genres and aesthetics and he expands again on his latest, “Skyline,” which is the funkiest slice of summery pop he’s produced yet.

Baby Tate — “Dancing Queen”

No, Baby Tate isn’t referencing ABBA (who somehow only just got their first Grammy nomination last year, by the way) on her new song, “Dancing Queen.” The rising Atlanta rapper’s single is definitely about dancing, though, as evidenced by the movement-friendly rhythm of the song and its dance-filled warehouse video.

Arcade Fire — “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)”

A lot has been going on with Arcade Fire lately: They announced a new album in March, Will Butler revealed a few days later he had left the band, the group was a last-minute Coachella addition, and they booked a Saturday Night Live musical guest slot. They did even more a few days ago by dropping a new single, “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid),” a hopeful single that, like “Lightning I, II” before it, sees the band returning to the more anthemic, rock-driven sound that made them famous.

Lil Baby — “Frozen”

This summer is about to be a big one for music and Lil Baby is set to be a major part of that. He’s already bringing a chill to the warm months with “Frozen,” which Uproxx’s Wongo Okon notes “presents the Atlanta native as a laser-focused spitter who is determined to stick to his journey in life without letting unnecessary distractions deter him.”

Wilco — “Falling Apart (Right Now)”

Back in Wilco’s early days, the band was firmly known as an alt-country group. While they’ve strayed from that label in the years since then, it’s something they’re more actively embracing again on their newly announced album, Cruel Country. When announcing the project last week, they shared “Falling Apart (Right Now),” a pleasant mid-tempo tune that definitely sees the group leaning more into twang than they have in some time.

The Black Keys — “It Ain’t Over”

Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach have more prime blues-rock on the way with the upcoming Dropout Boogie, from which they shared “It Ain’t Over” a few days ago. They had a neat technical trick up their sleeve for this one, as Carney explained on Twitter, “We built this song around an optigan. Ralph Carney showed me way back in 1996 if you flipped the discs over they played in reverse. After the first two bars of this I flip it into reverse. Thanks uncle Ralph. Miss you.”

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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Oliver Tree Accuses The Kid Laroi Of Plagiarizing His Music Videos: ‘The Exact Same Thing’

A few days ago, Oliver Tree took to Instagram to accuse The Kid Laroi of plagiarizing his music videos. The post featured a montage of shots from several of the “Life Goes On” singer’s music videos compared to The Kid Laroi‘s most recent video for “Thousand Miles.” The resemblance is striking, especially the scene with a falling piano and the scene with an ambulance running the artist over. Fans in the comments agreed that the similarities were undeniable. Today, an interview with Oliver Tree about this controversy was posted on Rolling Stone.

“The exact same frame, the exact same ambulance, the exact same thing,” he told the magazine. “It just seemed a little bit odd that even the framing is exactly the same.” He found out that Laroi’s director Christian Breslauer follows him on Instagram, so he doesn’t even blame the singer. Tree even consulted a lawyer, but ended up deciding not to pursue legal action, and clarified that he’s “not trying to ruin the guy’s career.” “It’s a lot easier to just build off the things that already exist and flipping it than doing something new,” he said.

Watch the Instagram montage below and check out the full Rolling Stone interview here.

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

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Future Adds Five New Tracks Featuring Lil Baby, Lil Durk, And More To ‘I Never Liked You’

Future is only days removed from the release of his tenth(!) studio album, I Never Liked You, but he’s already released its deluxe edition, adding five new songs. When the original was released, some fans wondered where Future’s fellow Atlantan trap rap star Lil Baby was. That question has now been answered: He’s on “Like Me” with his 4PF signee 42 Dugg. Other guests on the extended version of the album include Detroit rapper Babyface Ray (“No Security”), Chicago drill pioneer Lil Durk (“Affiliated”), and Atlanta underground mainstay Young Scooter (“Stayed Down”).

They join a cast of featured artists that previously included multiple Drake appearances (on fan-favorites “Wait For U” with Nigerian rising star Tems and “I’m On One,” which is different than the previous Drake song titled “I’m On One”), 42 Dugg’s partner-in-rhyme EST Gee (on “Chickens”), Kanye West (“Keep It Burnin,” which Future shared as a release-day music video), Kodak Black (“Voodoo”), and Gunna with Young Thug (“For A Nut”).

The release of I Never Liked You capped a very successful first quarter for Future, who also shared warmly received tracks with Gunna and Young Thug, Earthgang, Travis Scott, and Lil Durk earlier this year.

The deluxe edition of I Never Liked You is out now on Epic Records. You can get it here.

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Florence Pugh And Harry Styles Make Sweet (And Not So Sweet) Love In The ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Trailer

There’s a lot of real-life intrigue about Don’t Worry Darling, the movie that brought together director Olivia Wilde and star Harry Styles — not to mention everything that happened at CinemaCon. But don’t let that overshadow the film itself. It looks really good.

In the 1950s-set psychological thriller, Jack (Styles) and Alice (the great Florence Pugh) seemingly live a perfect life, but there’s something else going on. There’s a top-secret Victory Project; an overly cheery CEO (Chris Pine); menacing dinner parties; smashed mirrors; and car chases. “Everyone is acting like I’m crazy,” a skeptical Alice wonders in the trailer above, and “I’m not crazy.” Here’s more from the official plot synopsis:

While the husbands spend every day inside the Victory Project Headquarters, working on the “development of progressive materials,” their wives, including Frank’s elegant partner, Shelley, get to spend their time enjoying the beauty, luxury and debauchery of their community. Life is perfect, with every resident’s needs met by the company. All they ask in return is discretion and unquestioning commitment to the Victory cause.

But when cracks in their idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something much more sinister lurking beneath the attractive façade, Alice can’t help questioning exactly what they’re doing in Victory, and why. Just how much is Alice willing to lose to expose what’s really going on in this paradise?

Don’t Worry Darling, which was written by Wilde and her Booksmart co-writer Katie Silberman and also stars Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, and Nick Kroll, opens on September 23.

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Director Justin Lin Reportedly Quit ‘Fast X’ Because Vin Diesel Was Being A Diva (Reportedly Again)

Less than a week into filming, longtime Fast and Furious director Justin Lin quit Fast X, leaving the studio scrambling to find a replacement for the highly anticipated film that would kick off a two-part ending to the epic “Fast Saga.” At the time of Lin’s abrupt exit, no reason was given except for the standard boilerplate Hollywood line of “creative differences.” However, a likely culprit has started to emerge: Vin Diesel.

According to New York Daily News, Diesel was reportedly back to his old antics of holding up production and not bringing the same level of professionalism as his co-stars. If all of this sounds familiar, it’s the same problem that sparked the now epic feud between Diesel and The Rock, prompting the latter to exit the main films and launch the spinoff series, Hobbs and Shaw.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. Lin’s giving up $10 or $20 million,” a veteran producer who is not involved with Fast X said about the director’s shocking exit. “Diesel shows up late to the set. He doesn’t know his lines. And he shows up out of shape.”

The source added, “No one is dissing Vin Diesel on the record, but everyone knows.”

On an interesting note, Lin’s exit (which is reportedly costing the studio “upwards of $600,000 to $1 million a day”) arrived shortly on the heels of Diesel revealing on Instagram that he fought to keep Jordana Brewster in the film after the first draft of the Fast X script left out her character, Mia Toretto, the sister of Vin’s Dominic Toretto and the wife of Paul Walker’s character, Brian, who is still alive in the franchise, which is… a whole other thing. The franchise is not without its own drama.

Anyway, was all of that about Vin getting head of the bad press, or was he simply being his carefree Diesel self and freestyling his thoughts to his legion of fans? It’s an interesting conundrum following yet another high-profile exit from a film series that’s supposed to be all about family.

(Via New York Daily News)