Film
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Olivia Rodrigo and Louis Partridge look smitten with one another in new photos from Venice, Italy, where the couple attended festivities together at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Fresh off of the second U.S. leg of her Guts Tour, the “Obsessed” singer-songwriter spent the weekend publicly supporting Partridge at the premiere of his upcoming Apple TV+ limited series Disclaimer, an Alfonso Cuarón-directed psychological thriller starring Cate Blanchett.
As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the Venice Film Fest marked Rodrigo and Partridge’s debut as a couple at an “official” event.
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They didn’t do a typical red carpet launch at Palazzo del Cinema for Disclaimer‘s Venice premiere on Thursday (Aug. 30), but together they attended a cocktail reception at the Hotel Excelsior, as a well as a post-screening reception at Palazzina Grassi.
They posed together and were captured in candid moments in select photos that hit the wires from the Venice events, with the actor adorably kissing the top of Rodrigo’s head for one cute photo opp. At another point, Partridge was seen photographing Rodrigo with his own camera.
Eric Charbonneau/Apple TV+ via Getty Images
THR reports Rodrigo was spotted taking a cell phone video of her beau while Disclaimer received a warm, standing ovation at Venice’s Sala Grande cinema. When Partridge took his seat among the show’s cast, he turned to look at Rodrigo; she mimed a sweet kiss in his direction.
Over the weekend Partridge also shared a romantic image from Venice of the couple hand-in-hand, and gazing at one another, via a temporary Instagram Story.
Rumors that Rodrigo and Partridge were dating began to swirl in October 2023, and two months later it seemed the romance was real, thanks to a PDA-filled moment at a gas station. In June, Rodrigo called the Enola Holmes actor “angel boy” in a sweet happy birthday message on Instagram.
Disclaimer, adapted for Apple Studios from the Renée Knight novel of the same name, has Partridge in the role of Jonathan Brigstocke in an ensemble cast featuring Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Lesley Manville, Leila George and Hoyeon. The first two episodes are set for an Oct. 11 release on Apple’s streaming service, followed by new episodes every Friday.
Rodrigo, currently on a short break from her world tour, returns to the Guts stage Sept. 15 in Bangkok.
When Maren Morris began working on music for The Wild Robot, the animated adaptation of the beloved best-selling middle-school-aimed book by Peter Brown, all she had to do was put on her mom hat.
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“I was so emotionally moved by this story as a mother. Writing the songs for this film was such an honor because it made me feel even closer to my son, especially when I’m touring and sometimes have to be far away from him,” she tells Billboard. “The entire Wild Robot team has been so supportive of the creation of these songs and I’m so excited for the world to see this film.”
The movie tells of a shipwrecked robot, Roz, who lands on an uninhabited island and learns how to build relationships with the animals there, including an orphaned gosling, Brightbill, whom Roz adopts and watches become independent.
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Morris, who is mom to 4-year old Hayes, sings and co-wrote “Kiss the Sky,” which plays over a pivotal scene in the film. The uplifting song and video premiere below and show Roz helping Brightbill fulfill his destiny by teaching him to fly. DreamWorks Animation will release the film Sept. 27, while Back Lot Music will put out the soundtrack, which features a score by Kris Bowers, the same day.
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“When we were approached to write the song for the flight scene in The Wild Robot we understood how pivotal the moment was in the film,” says co-writer Michael Pollack, who penned “Kiss the Sky” with Morris, Ali Tamposi, Delacey, Stefan Johnson and Jordan K. Johnson. “The scene is literally Brightbill learning how to fly and eventually taking flight, but also metaphorically felt like a lifting off point to the back half of the movie. It was important for the song itself to feel uplifting and have triumphant elements but at the same time it had to evoke the struggles Brightbill was enduring at this point in the story. In a way the melodic arc of the song mirrors the actions of a bird taking flight, as it rises from section to section, ultimately soaring in the post-chorus.”
Morris also penned the end-title song, “Even When I’m Not,” with the same co-writer (with additional writing by Isaiah Tejada). Both songs were produced by The Monsters & Strangerz production team and Tejada. Kris Bowers handled orchestration and served as the movie’s composer.
The Wild Robot stars Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o as Roz; Emmy and Golden Globe nominee Pedro Pascal) as fox Fink; Emmy winner Catherine O’Hara as opossum Pinktail; Oscar nominee Bill Nighy as goose Longneck; Kit Connor as Brightbill and Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu as robot Vontra.
When Dave Stewart released his autobiographical album Ebony McQueen back in 2022, he promised there would be more to the story — like, a story, told on film. Now it’s lights, camera, action time.
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Under the auspices of his Dave Stewart Entertainment, the Eurythmics co-founder has announced an early 2025 production start for the Ebony McQueen film, which will be set and filmed in Stewart’s hometown of Sunderland in northeast England. It will be directed by BAFTA Award winner Shekhar Kapur (2022’s What’s Love Got to Do With It?, 1998’s Elizabeth) from a script written by Stewart, Lorne Campbell, Selma Dimitrijevic and Peter Souter. It stars Sharon D. Clarke — who was also part of Stewart’s Ghost the Musical, in the title role — and Sunderland singer-songwriter Tom A. Smith as the aspiring musician guided by the spectral McQueen’s presence.
“The kernel of this idea I had very early on in (the album), and it stayed in my head,” Stewart tells Billboard via Zoom from his home studio in Nashville. “As I was writing the songs there were all these concepts or ideas or imaginings. On the album, obviously it’s me singing all the songs but in the film, it’ll be the character, and I always had that in my head.”
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The Ebony McQueen story comes directly out of Stewart’s youth, from when he was an aspiring football (soccer here in the States) player laid low by a broken knee. The silver lining, and his savior, was music.
“It’s a time in my life when it was a total disaster,” Stewart recalls. “My mum had left my dad and he was depressed and my brother had gone away from college and I was alone with my broken knee. And this amazing intervention happened where a postman came with a box from my older cousin in Memphis…with two pairs of corduroy jeans and these blues albums — Robert Johnson, people like that. I had never listened to music but I was so bored and fed up, and my dad had made a little homemade record player in his workshop. So I put (the records) on and it was one of those boom! moments where in one hour everything went from gloom and doom to ‘What the hell is this?!’ How do I do this?!’ I never looked back.”
Ebony McQueen isn’t Stewart’s first foray into film. He’d directed music videos for Eurythmics and others and made his feature directorial debut with the black comedy Honest in 2000. He won a Golden Globe Award in 2005 for “Old Habits Die Hard,” a collaboration with Mick Jagger, for the Alfie remake. Prior to all that, and more on-point, he was a principle figure in producing the 1991 documentary Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads, which is also at the heart of his desire to make Ebony McQueen.
“It was a very slow process,” Stewart says of the project’s gestation. “During Covid I had quite a bit of time to develop and think about the whole thing, and it became more and more like a movie than something for the stage.” Co-producer David Parfitt (Shakespeare in Love, The Father) is a BAFTA and Academy Award winner (and also from Sunderland), while Stewart met director Kapur during 1994 in India, when they had neighboring hotel rooms and Kapur heard Stewart working on music through the walls.
“We got on like a house on fire then,” Stewart says, “and he invited me and my wife to a screening of Elizabeth, so I met him again then. Twenty-odd years later we’re suddenly doing this movie together. So it started to become like a great, very small group of people rather than sitting in a room with loads of writers at Paramount or somewhere, and some executives chipping in. This is a very homemade, indie group of people who all have the same feeling about how this should be.”
Stewart has no plans to appear in Ebony McQueen himself, not even in a cameo à la Alfred Hitchcock or Stan Lee. “It’s a very short snapshot of a period in my teenage life, probably six months, and it stays in that world so there’s no need to have me, now, in it,” he notes. He is, however, writing new music for the production, including score music with A.R. Rahman — who was a bandmate in the short-lived SuperHeavy project with Jagger, Joss Stone and Damian Marley — as well as some fresh songs.
“As the script develops and changes, you need bits of songs and melodies to fit this scene or in that spot,” Stewart says. “I love creating these melodies that can also fit in this other song later on, because that’s where you write something where the worlds are colliding and coming together. So you can have a theme for Sunderland on the river but you can also use it for a character. It’s a tool that can help tell the story.”
Firm dates as well as distribution plans are still being worked out for Ebony McQueen, while Stewart remains involved in other projects; he co-produced Daryl Hall’s latest album, D, and has toured since 2023 with a Eurythmics songbook show featuring an all-female band. Who To Love, a multimedia collaboration with Italy’s Mokadelic and actress Greta Scarano, premiered at the Rome Festival last October, and he’s been busy with Artificial Intelligence experiments in the recording studio.
“I’m getting at this amazing stage of my life where I’m not winding down. I’m winding up into a world where it’s going to be more and more adventurous with AI and things you can do now with sound and light and…sound and vision, as Bowie would say,” Stewart notes. “You can do incredible things now, in all sorts of venues. I know a lot of people are going nuts about AI, for valid reasons, but it’s not like people can make it go away. I remember when drum machines came out and there was an uproar from the musicians’ union — and drummers — and now it’s just part of everything. Or when the labels were all panicking about the Internet. It doesn’t matter how hard you try and resist it; once it’s already there it’s there, and it’s just something you have to work with — and hopefully for the better.”
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Though Sony hasn’t released a live-action Spider-Man film in forever and have no plans to anytime soon, they’re still not giving up on their own Spider-Verse, which features some of his classic villains and allies.
Following the atomic bombs that were Morbius and more recently Madame Web (just tuuuurible), Sony is hoping that their next Spidey spinoff, Kraven, can help rejuvenate comic book fans’ appetite for their struggling comic book universe. Good luck with that.
Still, they’ve just dropped off a new trailer for the origin story of one of Spider-Man’s deadliest foes and truth be told, it looks pretty entertaining. Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the titular character, the new trailer to Kraven shows just how merciless and blood thirsty Sergei Nikolaievich Kravinoff (Kraven) can get when he has a mission to complete. Stabbing men, using bear traps to almost decapitate other men and dismembering whoever’s in his way, Kraven seems like he can be the evil John Wick of Sony’s Spider-Verse.
In the previous trailer we learned that he got his superhuman strength from a lion who took a few chomps out of him but didn’t finish the job (sort of similar to Catwoman in 1992’s Batman Returns). So now that he’s learned how to utilize his newfound abilities, Kraven’s out to prove he’s the world’s deadliest hunter while dealing with some daddy issues (Russell Crowe) that we’re sure will come to a head by the end of the film.
Check out the new trailer to Kraven below, and let us know if you’ll be checking for this when it hits theaters Dec. 13.
While the solutions to climate change an also feel so big to be beyond our control, a new song from Diane Warren, Tiwa Savage and producer Damon Elliott intends to remind listeners otherwise.
Out Friday (Aug. 16), “One Heart Can Change The World” is sung by the Nigerian singer, produced by Elliott and written by Diane Warren, the 15-time Oscar-nominated legend.
The bright Afrobeats anthem is the sole song from the soundtrack to Ozi: Voice of the Forest, an animated film that tells the story of Ozi, an orangutan whose habitat is destroyed by deforestation. Forced from her home, Ozi goes on adventure through the forest, ultimately using social media to tell her story with the world.
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“One Heart Can Change the World” provides a climactic and uplifting end to the film, which is out Friday (Aug. 16) in Europe and will be released in the U.S. this fall. Hear the song below.
At a recent screening in Los Angeles, Savage, Warren and Elliott spoke on a panel after the film to talk about the song’s origins and intention.
“I was really touched by this movie and it really spoke to me,” Warren said of writing the soaring song. “What it has to say is what everybody needs to pay attention to, what’s going on with our planet. I sat down and wrote the song ‘One Heart Can Change the World’ because it’s true. One of us makes a little change and it can change the world.”
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Warren had Savage in mind to sing on the song, reaching to her via DM.
“I literally thought it was a joke,” Savage said of getting Warren’s message. “Then she said she wanted to send me the music, and when I heard it — I already I knew it was going to be an amazing song, because it’s coming from her. The lyrics and the melody were incredible and refreshing, because it’s different from everything that’s out right now, and I just loved the message behind it as well. I have a nine year old son, and it is something to think about: what kind of planet is my son going to grow up in, and his kids. I’m really honored to be able to lend my voice.”
For Warren, a longtime animal activist and vegan, working on this song was particularly meaningful. “The environment is ruined because of the greenhouse gasses which [are] caused by the cow industry and agriculture, aside from the horrible cruelty of it,” she said, “so I feel like my little one heart can make a change, and that’s how I choose to do it, by choosing kindness over cruelty.”
Elliott, a close collaborator of Warren’s who’s releasing the song through his own Kind Music Group, added that he took a course in Afrobeats production to make sure he got the sound right. “I was like, ‘This has to be the real deal,’” he said.
Ozi: Voice of the Forest was produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Mike Medavoy and is an Appian Way and GCIFILM Production. While the film is a smart, heartfelt and entertaining way to introduce children to ideas around deforestation and climate change, Warren emphasizes that the movie and song’s message is for everyone.
“I didn’t write a song for kids,” she said. “I wrote a song for people of all ages. You could be five years old or 50, or whatever age. This song is saying something that’s important, that one heart can change the world, however old your heart is. “
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Looks like a popular ’80s franchise will be given some new life as a new Ghostbusters animated series is making its way to Netflix sooner than later.
Seventies and ’80s babies remember with fondness The Real Ghostbusters animated cartoon that ran from 1986 to 1991, and with the success of the recent Ghostbusters films, it seems like there just might be a market for the supernatural comedy/action franchise in 2024.
According to Variety, Netflix has just ordered a new Ghostbusters animated series and has tapped Elliott Kalan to serve as a writer for the project as well as its executive producer.
Per Variety:
The show was first reported to be in development at the streamer back in June 2022. Exact plot details are still under wraps, but sources say the 3D animated series will be tonally in line with the recent “Ghostbusters” films.
As previously reported, the series hails from Sony Pictures Animation, with Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan of Ghost Corps, Inc. onboard as executive producers. Reitman and Kenan recently co-wrote the live-action features “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” and “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” with Reitman directing the former and Kenan directing the latter. Production on the series will be handled by Netflix and Ghost Corps, Inc., which is based at Sony’s Columbia Pictures.
What’s the chances they get the OG Ghostbusters like Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson to voice their characters? Probably slim to none, but hey, we can dream, right?
What do y’all think of a new animated Ghostbusters series? Will you be checking for it? Let us know in the comments section below.
Streaming platform Disney+ announced on social media that it partnered with Austria’s ORF to broadcast Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version) on television for free Saturday night (Aug. 10), one of three evenings that Swift was supposed to perform live in Vienna. The Vienna Eras Tour dates, scheduled for Aug. 9, 10 and 11, were canceled earlier this week due to the threat of a terror attack at the city’s 65,000-capacity Ernst Happel Stadium.
The streamer addressed a letter posted to Swift’s fans (“Dear Swifties”) on the Disney+ DE Instagram account on Aug. 10 that, translated from German to English, announced the free TV showing of The Eras Tour film.
ORF, a national broadcaster in Austria, showed Swift’s concert movie at 9:45 p.m. local time on the public channel ORF 1.
Disney+ also offered a free 7-day trial subscription for those who wish to stream Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour on the platform in Austria and Germany. The announcement, which states the promotion runs through Aug. 12, is pinned to Disney+ DE’s account.
Three people were detained by Austrian authorities in connection with a potential terror attack at Swift’s now-canceled Eras Tour concerts in the city of Vienna. An 18-year-old man was arrested on Thursday, following previously reported arrests of 19-year-old and 17-year-old suspects taken into custody on Tuesday. Officials described a plot to carry out what could have been a mass casualty event over the weekend among the crowd of fans outside Ernst Happel Stadium.
Swift has not publicly commented on what happened in Vienna, with news of the event cancelations first delivered on Wednesday via Barracuda Music, the concert promoter for the pop star’s Austrian tour dates: “With confirmation from government officials of a planned terrorist attack at Ernst Happel Stadium, we have no choice but to cancel the three scheduled shows for everyone’s safety. All tickets will be automatically refunded within the next 10 business days,” read the promoter’s statement, which was reposted by Taylor Nation, an account associated with Swift’s team.
Vienna, where Swift was set to play three nights in a row, was to be the second-to-last city on the map for the European leg of The Eras Tour.
The Tortured Poets Department hitmaker is currently scheduled for five nights at London’s Wembley Stadium (Aug. 15, 16, 17, 19 and 20), followed by a break before she resumes the tour in North America from October-December — with multiple dates in the cities of Miami, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Toronto and Vancouver.
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One of the very few things that DC has going for it on the cinematic tip is the villains that people can’t seem to get enough of.
From the new upcoming Joker sequel to the HBO Max Batman spinoff series, The Penguin, DC has a lot riding on these projects until James Gunn officially reboots the DCU with his highly anticipated Superman: Legacy film. Yesterday, a new trailer was released for the upcoming Penguin series and from the looks of it, it’s going to be one helluva Sopranos-sh affair.
Centered around Oswald Cobblepot’s ascension to the crime boss of Gotham City, the series takes place following the events of 2022’s The Batman, which saw Gotham City’s criminal underworld experiencing a power vacuum with the death of Carmine Falcone. Now that there’s no actual crime lord left to run the streets of Gotham City, The Penguin (Colin Farrell) is looking to place his stamp on the city and take that position for himself by any means necessary.
With the “support” of his mother who tells him she deserves a “better life,” Oz Cobb stabs, shoots and kills his way to the top as Batman is nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately for him though, Carmine’s daughter, Sofia, has been set free from Arkham Asylum and seems to have some skin in the game as to who will be taking over her daddy’s day-to-day operation.
This seems hella good. Can’t front.
Check out the latest trailer for The Penguin below, and let us know if you’ll be catching it when it premiers on HBO Max on Sept. 19.
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While the world awaits word on what movie revered film maker Jordan Peele is planning on releasing come Oct. 13, 2026 (rumors is it’s a remake of The People Under The Stars), the man is keeping himself busy with another project, which happens to be a remake of a prank show that hasn’t been seen in years.
According to Deadline, Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions is teaming up with Universal Television Alternative Studios to resurrect the horror comedy show from the early 2000s, Scare Tactics, and word is it will be launching sooner than later as they have a tentative premier date of fall 2024 on the USA Network. Having originally aired for five seasons from 2003 to 2013, the prank show had a solid following of viewers who would tune in and watch everyday people get scared out of their minds when put in supernatural life and death situations.
Now that Peele is working to bring the show back, it will be interesting to see what kind of situations his creative mind can conjure up to get the most terrifying reactions out of his unsuspecting subjects. With the help of Elan Gale (Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club) serving as the showrunner and executive producer, it will be interesting to see how intense and real certain situations will play out and the kind of “fight or flight” reactions we’ll get out of everyday people.
Deadline reports:
“As one of the most visionary creators of the day, there is nothing Jordan Peele can’t do. We’re honored to be making our first unscripted series together,” said Corie Henson, EVP, Unscripted Content, NBCUniversal Entertainment. “This brilliant reimagining of the classic Scare Tactics has it all – laughs, jump scares and outrageous moments. In the hands of Jordan and Monkeypaw, you never know what’s coming next.”
“We’re so grateful at Monkeypaw to help reimagine one of our all-time favorite hidden-camera shows. Working with showrunner Elan Gale, one of the most creative and mischievous minds in unscripted television, and Scott Hallock, the brilliant creator of the original Scare Tactics, has been an absolute blast,” added Win Rosenfeld, President of Monkeypaw Productions. “It’s cathartic and hilarious to watch people get a little scared, and the scenarios we cooked up for this season are really wild. We can’t wait to share a little light-hearted schadenfreude with audiences soon.”
So long as it doesn’t lead to someone having a heart attack or trying to kill their way out of a bad situation, it should be hilarious and harmless fun.
Would you be interested in seeing a new season of Scare Tactics with Jordan Peele’s team at the helm? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Rapper Robin “The Lady of Rage” Allen will star in a new Lifetime biopic about the controversial telephone psychic Miss Cleo. The film, Miss Cleo: Her Rise and Fall, also stars Shane Johnson (Power) and Ian Bohen (Yellowstone) and is directed by longtime Hollywood star, Tim Reid.
According to a press release from A&E Networks, the film starts in the late ’90s when single mom Youree Dell Harris finds herself desperate to take care of her family and takes a job at the Psychic Readers Network — only to become one of the network’s most beloved personalities, Miss Cleo.
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However, when the Psychic Readers Network is charged with being fraudulent and false advertising–fans criticize its most popular face. It is only now that the psychic reader known for her colorful turban and lilting Caribbean accent is having her story told.
Miss Cleo: Her Rise and Fall also stars Daphne Maxwell Reid, Cocoa Brown, Dwayne Boyd, Towanda Braxton, Jaida Standberry, Marley Taylor, Amelia Young, Stevie Baggs Jr., and Leslie Black. Miss Cleo: Her Rise and Fall is produced by Hillionaire Productions for Lifetime and produced by Jami McCoy-Lankford and Samone Norsworthy, Anthony Standberry, Ahmed Hussain and Jami McCoy-Lankford serve as executive producers, and William J. Cone serves as consulting producer. Tim Reid directs a screenplay by Camara Davis.
Following the biopic, Lifetime will also air the recent documentary, Call Me Miss Cleo, chronicling the icon’s rise, fall and reinvention.
The Lady of Rage was recently named by HipHopWired as one of the Greatest Female Rappers of All Time.
The 56-year-old rapper and actress struck it big with her 1994 single, “Afro Puffs,” from the Above the Rim soundtrack. Originally from Queens, New York, Rage is best known for her affiliation with the Los Angeles rap crew, Death Row.
In a recent Instagram post about the Lifetime biopic, Rage wrote, “I don’t even know how to process this! I’ll be back later to discuss…”
Rage recently collaborated on a new song with Tha Dogg Pound that also featured RBX, called “Who Da Hardest?” Check it out.
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