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American Vandal was a brief but glorious two-season dive into the absurdity of high school existence in the age of social media. And while the Netflix mockumentary series will not return for a third season, its creators have set their sights on the world of competitive gaming for their next project.

The Hollywood Reporter shared on Friday that Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault will work together on Players, a Paramount+ show about a fictional League of Legends team. And though it won’t be American Vandal, it will likely look very similar to the show’s documentary-like style.

Like American Vandal, the new series will be filmed in documentary style, and it will follow a fictional League of Legends team trying to win a championship.

CBS Studios and Funny or Die, which teamed on American Vandal, will produce Players as well. League of Legends maker Riot Games is also involved.

Players will focus on a LoL team that’s looking to win its first championship after years of close calls and heartaches. In order to make it to the top, they’ll need their prodigy, a 17-year-old rookie, and their 27-year-old veteran to put aside their egos and work together.

Considering the first season of American Vandal centered entirely around penis graffiti and its second season was all about human excrement, it’s safe to say Yacenda and Perrault can turn a simple concept into a full-fledged show. And they’ll have plenty to work with in the esports world. Competitive gaming is absolutely a young person’s game, and the two have a lot of experience in making teen social circles compelling and hilarious television. If Players is anything close to what American Vandal was on Netflix, gaming fans should be very excited about this project.

Chloe Bailey — aka one half of the R&B/pop duo Chloe x Halle — has opened up on where she stands with her upcoming solo album. “I’m wrapping it up with such bad-bitch energy,” Bailey revealed to Billboard of the still-untitled project, adding that this is “the most liberated and happy that I have felt.”

“It’s 90% done,” she continued of the project, which will be distributed by Beyoncé‘s Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia, and said she’s currently narrowing down the tracklist from about 50 songs. So far, she’s released some enticing promo photos for the single “Have Mercy,” which Bailey is set to debut live at the 2021 MTV VMAs next month. The album, she said, “is definitely more pop,” adding, “I’m creating my own lane, as well as paying homage to the ones who have inspired me. It has been fun finding my voice.”

Telling Billboard why this was the right time to work on a solo album, Bailey said: “My sister [Halle] went to London to film her movie [the upcoming live-­action version of The Little Mermaid] for seven or eight months, and it was so hard being without her. That is when I started creating my project. I found my confidence ­— like, ‘OK, you can do this now.”’ I always have my sister’s support, and she will always have mine, no matter what we do together or individually.”

Check out the full interview here.

For as long as there have been movies there have been movie studios. And for as long as there have been movie studios there have been movie studio executives making all sorts of dumb suggestions to movie directors about how to make their films “better.” In the case of Glengarry Glen Ross, James Foley’s iconic 1992 adaptation of David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the studio’s idiotic note was: Can we somehow work an explosion into the beginning? Which is how Alec Baldwin’s now-legendary “Always Be Closing” speech came to be.

Earlier this week, as The Hollywood Reporter noted, Brooklyn Nine-Nine star John C. McGinley was a guest on The Rich Eisen Show. At one point, talk turned to the actor’s role in the 2012 revival of Glengarry Glen Ross (McGinley played Dave Moss, the role Ed Harris played in the movie and in the show’s original 1984 Broadway run). While McGinley was not in the movie version of the film, he shared an interesting story that Al Pacino had told him about the film:

“They asked David Mamet to put a special effect to get the movie going, like an explosion or something. And he wrote the Alec Baldwin diatribe. That’s the explosion that’s not in the play. Alec Baldwin’s character is a threat off-stage in the play. That’s how David solved that problem.”

Yes, someone at the studio thought that the best way to kick off this brilliantly written character piece was with an actual explosion or some sort of special effect. Fortunately, Mamet was smart enough to realize that an emasculating speech delivered in the most perfectly patronizing way possible had the power to deliver the same kind of jump scare the studio wanted. While the movie tanked in theaters, it grew a cult following when it was released on home video—in large part because of that humiliating dressing-down. Today, it’s Glengarry’s most enduring legacy and has been referenced and parodied countless times over the years—including by Alec Baldwin himself.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

If I sound defensive in my recommendation of Vacation Friends, new in theaters and Hulu/Disney+ this weekend, that’s only because I was its biggest skeptic. It’s fair to say I wouldn’t have walked across the street to see this movie. And yet it turned out to be one of those rare, wonderful experiences as a film critic, in which I force feed myself a film professionally that I had no interest in seeing personally and discover that I was actually wrong about it.

Not that there wasn’t abundant cause for skepticism. Vacation Friends casts in a major role former WWE wrestler John Cena, whose enormous head I’ve admitted in the past that I find “exceptionally unpleasant to look at.” It also seemed like one of those hyper compressed comedy concepts whose title seems to encompass the entirety of it — Night School. Girls Trip. Book Club. Game Night. Fist Fight. Tag. The title is the premise is the poster is the plot. “Vacation Friends,” we know what to expect from that movie: characters hamming it up in a pre-fab premise, lots of winking, “it’s funny because he’s a wrestler,” etc.

Vacation Friends begins exactly the way you’d imagine. Uptight guy Marcus, played by Lil Rel Howery, has taken his soon-to-be fiancée Emily (Yvonne Orji from Insecure) on vacation in Mexico. Only their suite gets ruined before the vacation even begins. This thanks to the blasé, possibly psychopathic couple upstairs — Ron and Kyla, played by John Cena and Meredith Hagner — who have flooded their jacuzzi tub and who Marcus and Emily first saw when Kyla was trying to hit a weed pipe while traveling full speed on the back of Ron’s jet ski. Marcus and Emily end up having to shack up with Ron and Kyla, hijinks ensue, blah blah blah.

Again, we all know exactly what to expect in a movie like this. Lots of awkward situations, the crazy white couple bulldozing the buttoned-up black couple’s boundaries, CGI slapstick, a stylized drug scene, and eventually Marcus learns to loosen up. In the words of the great Tracy Jordan, “This is how white people dial a phone, beep bop booooop…”

Those things are all true of Vacation Friends, but only in the broadest sense. Probably the smartest thing director Clay Tarver (a writer and co-executive producer on Silicon Valley) and his team of screenwriters (*deep breath* Tim Mullen, Tom Mullen, Clay Tarver, Jonathan Goldstein, and John Francis Daley) do is to limit the “Marcus is uptight” storyline to the first 10 or 15 minutes or so. Awkwardness has been vastly overrated as a vector for comedy in recent years, and in Vacation Friends you can feel the correction coming.

The manic bickering you might expect in a film like this mostly evaporates early, Marcus’s reticence, perhaps the most boring quality for a movie character to have, almost immediately overwhelmed by Ron’s relentless positivity. The wide-eyed shouting you expect quickly settles into unlikely bonding situations. I’m not quiet ready to say that John Cena should be carrying major roles in comedy movies yet, but they give him some amazing lines, all edited and paced to perfection. He can’t turn a straight line into a laugh line through performance alone the way Lil Rel or Meredith Hagner can, but the movie mostly doesn’t ask him to.

There’s a racial humor dynamic at play in Vacation Friends, but it’s not the “black people dial a phone like this” jokes you might expect (I mean, there are still a couple). What Vacation Friends does instead is to cast John Cena in the role of the caucasian Magical Negro — the selfless assistant to the lead blessed with supernatural abilities. Not only is this funny in concept — basically anything John Cena plays, with his baby smooth chest and waxed armpits, looking like an anthropomorphic balloon animal with a cinder block for a head, is funny in concept — but also in execution. Ron is sort of an international man of mystery, a park ranger and former Green Beret whose many odd skills include the ability to predict the precise moment when a bird is about to shit. He also has a habit of explaining things that are self-evidently obvious, a perfect job for John Cena.

The effect is that rather than Vacation Friends being a movie about Lil Rel and Yvonne Orji trying to escape a nightmare couple, it takes the shape of a weird four-way friendship that we find ourselves rooting to succeed. It’s not an overt parody of the rom-com format (the way that, say, I Love You, Man was a direct parody of the rom-com format with two dudes bromancing), but it gives the plot precisely the kind of momentum that most of these kinds of movies lack. So often the plot is just a place for the comedic actors to tread water while hamming it up and shouting; in Vacation Friends, we actually, kinda sorta, care what happens.

Vacation Friends isn’t exactly groundbreaking or revolutionary in its comedy — it does have a few stock situations and characters (the extended stylized drug scene, the disapproving father played by Bunny Colvin) — and one could argue that it doesn’t have much in the way of nutritional value. Yet it allows us to enjoy empty calories in a way not many movies of its ilk do, offering just enough to elevate the genre. All of which is to say, it’s pretty fun while it lasts, which is probably all it ever aspired to be.

‘Vacation Friends’ is available on theaters, Hulu (US) and Disney+ (International) Friday, August 27. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Chris Cuomo’s brother, Andrew, is probably having the worst week in the extended family tree when you consider he just resigned in shame following a sprawling sexual misconduct scandal. Absolutely obliterating your own political legacy in New York State is one thing, sure, but The Daily Show is here to remind us that Chris, the CNN anchor who spent a lot of time hanging out with his brother on camera, isn’t out of the woods yet either.

The “Dailyshow-ogrophy” of Cuomo was released on Friday, an 11-minute collection of lowlights from Cuomo’s time on CNN over the years. The segment asks how we know what makes a great journalist, with the conclusion being that the greatest journalist who “simply knows that they’re the greatest and will throw down with anyone who disagrees.” It’s pretty telling, and describes his biggest asset being “bullying people like a coach on The Biggest Loser.”

It’s all cringe-worthy stuff, especially given the context that’s been widely reported (that the television-brother was allegedly deeply involved in the government-employee-brother’s defense-strategy against the multiple allegations against him in recent months). As of Friday, one of the brothers is still employed. But The Daily Show certainly makes a good point that Chris isn’t exactly a shining example of ethics here, either.

Camila Cabello, who is currently starring as the titular role in Amazon’s Cinderella reboot, stopped by The Tonight Show to shut down those pesky engaged-to-Shawn-Mendes rumors. “Ooh, is this news?,” Cabello laughed when host Jimmy Fallon asked her point-blank if she and her boyfriend of two years were affianced. “No, guys,” she said. “He has not [proposed], and I am not engaged. I swear to God I don’t know what hand the engagement ring goes on.”

Cabello then went on to explain that her parents both lost their wedding rings, and they didn’t even know which hand an engagement ring goes on. (This is all stemming from a TikTok where fans saw Cabello wearing a ring on *that* finger, thus the rumors) “Literally, my mom couldn’t tell me either,” she said. “She could save me from this but she doesn’t because she doesn’t know either.”

After clearing that up, Cabello talked to Fallon about her upcoming “bad-ass” musical version of Cinderella, coming to Amazon Prime on September 3 and featuring Pose star Billy Porter as her fairy godmother, plus Idina Menzel, Minnie Driver, James Corden, Nicholas Galitzine and Pierce Brosnan.

Finally, Cabello offered an update on her in-the-works third album, Familia, which is done but has a release date TBD. “Obviously, you never know what’s gonna happen in the world,” she said, offering that the album is “about community […] “There’s independence… [but] this album for me was about interdependence and community.”

Watch Cabello’s interview above.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Listen to me

The fact of the matter is that Jake Johnson should play Batman. We should let him do it. We should probably make him do it if he gets a little wishy-washy about it. Nothing too forceful. No kidnapping or threats of violence or any of that. Just a really hard sell. It’s for his own good. And ours. Mine, mostly. Jake Johnson would be a blast as a Batman. We all deserve this. Jake Johnson deserves it. I deserve it.

The problem here is that Batman has gotten too dark. I think I blame Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale. The Dark Knight trilogy was incredible and I will probably rewatch at least one of the movies again this week for the 15th time, but that sucker was devoid of whimsy. Which, okay, fine. Batman is a dude who spends half his day in a cave preparing to fight crime because someone killed his parents outside the opera when he was a little boy. There’s some trauma there. No one is saying Batman has to be a zany goof.

But Batman used to be, like, fun, at least in an off-kilter way. The Adam West Batman television show was basically a live-action cartoon, but that might not be the best example. The best example is Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton played Batman in two movies in back in the 1980s and 90s and was the only person to grasp what an absolute weirdo Bruce Wayne is. Just a world-class nut, as one has to be to wake up one day and say “I will thwart villains while dressed as a flying rodent.” I mean, look at this.

This is why Jake Johnson should play Batman. He has the dramatic chops to make it all work, and he’s got some action-type roles under his belt (The Mummy with Tom Cruise), and he has a strong enough jawline to look convincing in the mask. But he’s also, like, kind of a lunatic. I mean that in the best possible way. I think he would grasp that Keaton-y flair that has been sucked out of the character ever since. Robert Pattinson is set to be some sort of super-emo Caped Crusader in The Batman. That’s fine, even if, as we’ve discussed, Robert Pattinson is way more of a Joker than a Batman. There can be different takes on all of this. I’m just saying one of the takes should be like, well, this.

I’m serious about this. This is not a bit. I think Jake Johnson would be a good and cool Batman and I think it could breathe some new life into a character we’ve now seen about 700 times, getting a little darker and more brooding with each iteration. Let’s let Jake Johnson be Batman. Let’s make him if he pushes back. I feel confident enough about this that I think he would end up thanking us later. It is time for Batman to be cool and weird again. No more growling. I don’t think I’m out of line here. Think about it.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — And now, a few notes on the increasingly heated Ted Lasso Discourse

Ahahahahaha

Ahahahahaha

Ahahahahaha

No.

Absolutely not.

You have lost your entire mind if you think I have any intention of wading into this, especially on a Friday. You may wade into it if you like, if I can’t convince you not to, but please know that I will not be on the shore to save you if you get in too deep and the undertow starts dragging you out. I will be somewhere with a metaphorical and/or real umbrella drink, just basking in the unfiltered joy of choosing not to engage with any of it.

It’s always nice to remember that this is an option, the not engaging. It feels great, kind of like what a bird must feel like while soaring above a raging forest fire, just quiet and peace amidst the chaos.

I know I’m throwing a bunch of metaphors at you here, between the bird stuff and the umbrella drinks. If it helps to picture me as a soaring bird with a tiny beer helmet on, with tiny umbrella drinks in the holders, flying and sipping from a bendy straw, that’s fine. I started picturing it, too, as I was typing it just now. It was a much better use of my time than whatever else I had planned. I’m still doing it now, to be perfectly honest. Little birdy in the sky, flying all crooked as the rum hits the bloodstream, diving this way and that like a lopsided paper airplane. I feel great about it.

So those are my thoughts on the Ted Lasso Discourse.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — This is, in my opinion, too many skydives

The thing I like about Tom Cruise is that he’s a maniac. Like, objectively, for all the bad reasons you’re probably ticking off in your head right now, but also for good reasons. Or fun reasons, at least. I think an example will help. Let’s go with this one, from yesterday, during the big event where footage of the new Top Gun and Mission: Impossible movies were screened for critics and journalists. Read this out loud a few times.

Skydiving 500 times in a year is madness. I bet there are actual skydivers who don’t skydive 500 times in a year. Lots of them. It works out to almost 1.5 skydives per day, which is so many skydives, with no days off. I suspect these numbers come with a qualification that makes them make more sense but, also, I do not care. And do not show me the qualification if you find one. You’re going to have to let me have this one. I’m begging you.

Somehow, against staggering odds, it gets better, because the people involved elaborated on the what and why of it all, and you really need to read some of these quotes.

Cruise barrels down a ramp off a cliff and in mid-air lets the bike go before his parachute is released. McQuarrie’s mouth drops as he watches the first take.

“Tom Cruise just rode a bike off a cliff six times today,” says one of crewmembers in the BTS shot.

“The only thing that scares me more is what we’ve got planned for Mission 8,” says McQuarrie.

You know how everyone joked about the Fast & Furious movies going to space because they were running out of things to do on Earth and finally the people involved were like, “Okay, fine, let’s do it”? This is kind of like that, but if Ludacris and Tyrese actually did film the stunt in space. This sounds like a joke until you remember that Tom Cruise actually is going to film a movie in space. McQuarrie is right. There is no limit to where this goes next. He might insist on a scene where Ethan Hunt loses a finger like John Wick did in John Wick 3 but then actually cut off one of his fingers in real life. We simply cannot rule it out at this point.

And then, as if all that weren’t enough, Tom also said this.

“I wanted to do it since a little kid,” says the actor in the behind-the-scenes clip with director Christopher McQuarrie and his stunt production ensemble.

Two things are true here:

• I do not doubt for one second that he is being honest here and a little 8-year-old Tommy was telling people that one day he would drive a motorcycle off a cliff and parachute to safety
• None of this is the weirdest thing an actor admitted to doing for a role this week

Michael Caine has entered the chat.

Sir Michael, veteran of more than 130 films, including A Bridge Too Far, picked up the tip from a book, Teach Yourself Film Acting.

He said: “One thing that stuck in my mind was, ‘Don’t blink. You must never blink’.

“For the next eight years, I walked around trying not to blink. People around me, my mother and everybody, thought I had gone nuts.

No one tell Tom this. He’ll never blink again. His eyes will be so dry, especially with all that skydiving.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — One of the frustrating things about being in a wheelchair is that I need a ramp to get on my soapbox, but I will do it for you

Regular readers know this but we might have some newbies here who were sucked in by my fresh Batman takes so let’s just run through it all real quick. I’m in a wheelchair. Spinal cord injury and everything. It’s a whole deal, to use the official medical terminology. I mention it again here, now, for a reason. And that reason is that famed British writer Jack Thorne is saying some stuff I think you should hear.

“Actors – actors I admire – have taken roles they shouldn’t have; I’ve been complicit in some of those decisions. Producers have ignored disabled writers. Commissioners haven’t taken the opportunity to tell disabled stories. There are very few disabled people in front of the camera, and even fewer behind it.”

This is true, all of it. Television and film are really bad at telling stories about disabilities. Most of the stories they tell are either the sappy inspirational ones about some plucky wheelchair guy who saves Christmas with his can-do attitude or ones about a guy who is depressed and wants to kill himself about it. And yes, those people exist. Those are real stories, for sure, but they’re not the only ones. I spend most of my day typing increasingly unhinged words into a box about my beloved Philadelphia 76ers. Make a show about that, you cowards.

Complicating factors here, as Thorne alluded to, is the thing where disabled characters are usually played by non-disabled actors. The picture up there is from a movie called The Upside, in which Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston plays a quadriplegic millionaire. While I can understand some of the reasoning behind this kind of casting (he’s a big name you can put on the poster, actors pretend to be people they’re not all the time), even if I concede all of that, it still kind of stinks. There are only so many good roles for actors who use wheelchairs. It’s not like they can act like they’re not disabled, you know? This was a good opportunity for a disabled actor to make inroads in an industry that is already almost impossible to break into. But nope. It’s Heisenberg. Not great.

Hey, while I’m already mad…

Thorne said there needed to be an “attitude change” as to the importance of disabled drama, describing how he was once asked to consider rewriting a series treatment about a wheelchair basketball team to make it about a non-disabled basketball team, because it was “full of good ideas” and it needed “the best chance it could.” He said that the fact it was about a disabled team was “dragging it down,” adding that, up until 2021 (he’s currently working on Then Barbara Met Alan with the BBC and Netflix), he had never made a single disabled story on a full drama budget.

This sucks. Please, let’s try to do better. I promise it will not be very hard. You can tell a fun and interesting story about disabled people. It doesn’t always have to be bummers and inspirational hooey. Call me if you need ideas. I have fun all the time. Thank you.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Shoutout to Sydney Sweeney’s cool grandmas

White Lotus star Sydney Sweeney has a new movie dropping on Amazon next month. It’s called The Voyeurs and it’s being billed as an erotic thriller and you are perfectly welcome to watch the trailer and develop all the opinions about it that you like. I want to talk about Sydney Sweeney’s Nanas. I want to talk about the thing where, per Sydney, her two Nanas were in town visiting during the filming and Sydney got them a role. In the erotic thriller. Starring their granddaughter.

This thing.

“Yeah, it’s probably not the most grandma-friendly movie to watch,” Sweeney said. “But then my grandma also thought it would be great to bring her son – my uncle. I couldn’t say no. So it’s my uncle, my aunt, my two grandmas, my mom and a couple of friends who are here. I did tell them there are going to be some moments where you have to cover your eyes and ears. They did. Actually, my Nana sat there going, ‘Whoa!’”

We go back to the bullet points, this time for three things:

• Sydney Sweeney’s Nanas seem like some pretty chill ladies
• It delights me very much that her Nanas apparently travel together to visit her on set, which is so staggeringly pure and healthy for everyone involved that it kind of evens out the thing where they’re appearing in an erotic thriller starring their granddaughter
• I hope this ends up being their big break and Amazon cuts the check for a hyper-violent $200 million action movie where they travel the world looking for somewhere who wronged them, leaving smoking piles of dead bodies and destruction in their wake

Don’t act like you wouldn’t watch.

ITEM NUMBER SIX — I am really happy Bob Odenkirk is doing better

The nice thing about this clip is that it requires minimal setup. All you need to know is that it’s from a show where one guy pretends to be George Lucas and another guy pretends to be a Star Wars character and another guy is comedian Paul F. Tompkins. My colleague Josh explained it all here, if you would like more backstory. I promise it is not necessary. All you really need to know is the stuff I just said and the thing where Bob Odenkirk is currently at home recovering from a health scare.

Okay, now watch the clip.

The first thing that probably jumps out at you here is how good it is to hear Odenkirk’s voice after all of that. That was the first thing that jumped out at me, anyway, because I love Bob Odenkirk. But then once that first thing settles in, maybe a second thing jumps out at you: Bob Odenkirk, weeks off a heart episode and coming in completely cold, picks up the bit right away and rolls with it as though it has been all scripted out.

That’s awesome. Some real Jedi business on display here. Bob Odenkirk is the greatest. Please never forget that

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Anthony:

I’ve been a reader for a while now and I find that I tend to agree with your taste in almost everything. Television shows, movies, even the dumb local news and heist stories you’re always posting on Twitter. I’ve never really gotten a beat on your musical preferences though. I know you like Wu-Tang and I know you love a good Mambo Number Five joke, but what else? What are some classic Grubb jams?

Oh, yeah, no. I am not the guy you go to for music recommendations. I love music and listen to it real loud while I’m driving around, but most of my input here would be, like, “Hmm, have you heard of Stevie Wonder? Beastie Boys?” I spend most of my time listening to music that came out before I was born. Some people call this being an old soul. Others call it being a loser. Both can be true.

Here’s what I will tell you, though, a little trick I started doing this summer. I’ve had this rotating playlist going, 100 songs, always exactly 100. If I put a new one on, an existing one has to get bounced. There’s no method to it. It’s all kinds of genres and stuff from all kinds of time periods. And then I get in my van and I open it up and hit shuffle and let the algorithm take the wheel. The wheel of the playlist, I mean. Not the van. That would not be too safe, I suspect.

It’s extra fun for me because of the thing we talked about earlier where I’m in a wheelchair. I drive the whole van with this super-elaborate joystick system with a little touch screen. That is already A LOT for people to process when I, say, pull into the parking lot at the grocery store and they peek in the window and realize what’s happening there. Now imagine that, really put yourself in this person’s shoes, and picture, to pick a song at random that is currently on the playlist, “Take Me Home Tonight” by Eddy Money absolutely blasting out of the open window you’re peeking through. (I watched MacGruber again recently and got it stuck in my head. I don’t have to explain myself to you.) Try to think about how you’d react to seeing all of that.

The joy I get out of seeing people’s faces as they attempt to make sense of all of it, as they push their overflowing shopping carts through the pedestrian walkway, still a little cranky over how much the bill was and a little out of it as their mind wanders toward the next parts of their day… buddy, that right there is a real treat for Brian.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Pennsylvania!

Officials in Chester and Bucks counties are investigating a string of thefts involving Snoop Dogg bobbleheads.

Hell yes.

Caln Township police say a man loaded the 43-inch-tall figurine into a red Toyota Corolla and took off. The bobblehead is valued at $300.

I love it. It’s beautiful. But tell me more about this “string” of bobblehead heists. This implies there has been more than one. Tell me about another one.

In that case, a 3-foot tall Snoop Dogg bobblehead, which was part of a Corona beer display, was stolen from an Acme store. This figurine is also valued at $300.

Incredible. All of it. I’m picturing these guys as roommates and I’m picturing a dozen of these Snoop Dogg bobbleheads, bobbling away at various speeds and patterns, surrounding the two recliners in their studio apartment that they brainstorm excellent ideas in while watching YouTube videos of people getting wrecked to hell while doing the Milk Crate Challenge. They are both watching videos on their phones. Different videos. Sound way up. They sleep in the chairs, too. That was probably implied by the thing about the studio apartment.

I feel like I’m close here. I feel like I know exactly who these dudes are. Maybe one more detail will help. Some shading. Just something minor. Again, I feel like I have this one pegged but let’s just be extra sure.

Police describe the suspect as a man standing nearly 6-feet-tall with a medium build. He was last seen wearing a black baseball cap, a white “Ron Swanson Pyramid of Greatness’ t-shirt, long black shorts with a white stripe down the side of the leg and black Nike slides.

Yup. There it is. Bullseye.

After 58 years of spellcasting, cape swooshes, and saving lives, the Sorcerer Supreme’s time is just about up in the Marvel Universe. A trailer released earlier this week revealed the Marvel is currently working on new series titled Death of Doctor Strange. The five-issue storyline is set to release this September, and tells the story of Strange’s final days, as well as how his super-powered peers react to his untimely demise. According to Marvel’s official blog post announcing the tragic story, readers can expect a “terrifying tale filled with deadly new villains, outstanding mystical feats, and complex mysteries that all of Marvel’s heroes will be desperate to solve.”

At the center of these mysteries, of course, is a pretty big one: who killed Doctor Strange. Death of Doctor Strange writer Jed MacKay and artist Lee Garbett are framing the series as a sort of “whodunnit” of mystical, and Marvel, proportions. While superhero deaths are often shrugged off in comic books (which is fair considering the staggering number of ‘resurrections’ that follow them), the series could still be an incredibly big deal for Strange’s character and the Marvel Comics Universe. Death of Doctor Strange marks the first time Strange has ever died in the comics, and the death of the world’s Sorcerer Supreme is not one to take lightly and is also the crux of what MacKay wants to dig into:

What happens to the world if Doctor Strange isn’t in it?’ It’s a question that I’m excited to show people the answer to in Death of Doctor Strange. Strange has been a Marvel fixture from the early days, but now, his time has run out and as a Strange fan, it’s been my bittersweet privilege to shepherd him through his last day and the effects that snowball out of it.

You see, without Strange, the world is left without the chief hero responsible for ensuring multidimensional peace and fighting back actual horrors the likes of which other Marvel heroes don’t encounter as much. It’s also worth noting that whenever Marvel has used the “Death of…” title — such as in Death of Captain Marvel, Death of Wolverine, and Death of the Mighty Thor — it’s led to major changes that have completely altered the shape of the Marvel Comics Universe. Will there be a new Sorcerer Supreme? Did an ally kill Strange? Is he gone for good? The answers to all of these have serious repercussions. At the very least, we can expect the run to make an impact in Marvel’s upcoming titles, as his absence allows for the emergence of some pretty unique evils. It all starts this September when the first issue of Death of Doctor Strange hit comics book stores.

You don’t have to be ripped and/or jacked to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it sure helps. Ever since Andy Dwyer stopped drinking “too much” beer to play Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy, Kumail Nanjiani, Chris Hemsworth, and, earlier this week, Brie Larson have all documented their “superhuman strength” on social media.

The newest member of the MCU (Muscular Cinematic Universe): Kathryn Newton.

On Thursday, the Halt and Catch Fire, Big Little Lies, and Freaky star took to Instagram to show how she’s been preparing to play Cassie Lang in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. “Honestly why I haven’t been posting,” along with two gym selfies.

The photos were also posted on a Marvel fan account on Twitter (4,900+ likes and counting). “Abs? I could never! I’m excited to see her as Cassie,” reads one reply, while another adds, “ain’t never seen a single antman movie, but imma be in theatres for this one just for her.” There’s no better endorsement than that.

Newton is the third actress to play Cassie in the MCU, following Abby Ryder Fortson in Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp and Emma Fuhrmann in Avengers: Endgame. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (a title I will never remember, no matter how many times I mutter “Quantumania” to myself) is scheduled to open on February 17, 2023.

(Via CinemaBlend)

Lauri Markkanen’s time as a free agent has come to an end, as the now-former Chicago Bulls big man is headed to the Cleveland Cavaliers as part of a three-team deal. The news of the Cavs landing Markkanen originally came via Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, who reported that the team will give him a four-year deal worth $67 million in a sign-and-trade.

Wojnarowski and Shams Charania of The Athletic then explained that the deal is actually going to be a three-team deal, one that also involves the Portland Trail Blazers. In addition to the various picks that are going to be on the move, the Bulls will land Portland wing Derrick Jones Jr., while the Blazers will bring in Cavaliers steady hand Larry Nance Jr.

The Cavaliers appear to be betting that Markkanen can have a career resurgence in the team’s already-loaded frontcourt, as Jarrett Allen got paid this summer and the team opted to take Evan Mobley with the No. 3 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. As for the other two teams, Jones gives the Bulls some much-needed help on the wing and prevents them from giving Markkanen the kind of payday he coveted, while Nance brings a level of consistency when he’s healthy and helps the Blazers in their attempt to bring in new faces as Damian Lillard has made clear he wants the team to revamp its roster.