On Monday night’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart poked fun at President Donald Trump for some unusual behavior during a bill signing.
Stewart opened the show by explaining that Trump “did a solid” by signing a bill that fast-tracks the “FDA process for novel psychedelic drug treatments for veterans suffering from all forms of PTSD and other psychiatric conditions, including addiction.”
The show then cut to Trump in the Oval Office talking about a study on the psychoactive drug ibogaine, which showed that, in the president’s words, users “experienced an 80% to 90% reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety within one month.” Trump then joked, “Can I have some, please? I’ll take it. I’ll take it, whatever it takes.”
“Oh wow. He’s depressed, too,” Stewart quipped. “Hey, don’t be depressed, sir. Trump won’t be president forever. But I have to say, there are little moments in these Oval Office gatherings that are somewhat revelatory of the president’s psyche, and really a good starting place for any accredited mental health professional.”
Back at the Oval Office, Trump said to a room full of aides, “I don’t have time to be depressed. If you stay busy enough, maybe that works too. That’s what I do.”
“I don’t think Donald Trump should treat that with hallucinogens, but if he did, would we even notice?” Stewart said. “If he took them, he’d be like, ‘They’re eating the cats and dogs! Right near my beautiful ballroom. By the way, did you know I’m Jesus?’”
He added, “You know what, though? Maybe he’s already taken them, given how intensely he focused on the signing of this bill. I mean, he signed the shit out of this bill.”
Stewart then cut back to Trump, who took his time signing the psychedelics bill before saying, “That’s a good one. See that, Joe? You think Biden can do that?”
“’Have you ever really looked at your signature, on weed?’” Stewart joked. “And look, I think this is a good thing that he did, and this is not political, but that was weird as shit the way he signed that.”
During a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, the actress said she had gotten herself into a situation when she accidentally parked at an upscale hotel in New York City for the table read of the 2001 rom-com, starring McConaughey and Jennifer Lopez. Greer played Penny, the latter’s best friend in the film.
“I valeted my car; I didn’t know any better,” Greer said of when she arrived at the Roosevelt Hotel. “I didn’t have enough money to get my car out of the valet because I was so broke.”
She continued, “I was on the pay phone in the lobby, calling my friend Sean Gunn [Gilmore Girls and Guardians of the Galaxy actor], and Matthew McConaughey overheard me and gave me $20. I was so mortified, but also: my hero.”
The film, directed by Adam Shankman, follows Mary Fiore (Lopez), San Francisco’s most successful wedding planner, who books the biggest wedding of her career. But when she realizes she’s unknowingly fallen in love with the groom, Steve Edison (McConaughey), she has to decide if she’s going to help get him down the aisle to his fiancée or if she’ll finally get to be the bride.
When reflecting on her time filming The Wedding Planner, Greer said she remembers “how lovely Matthew McConaughey was. I loved seeing him in hair and makeup every morning, because he had pajamas on and a Yerba mate [tea]. I haven’t worked with him since, but I have a feeling not much has changed.”
After the film was a box office success, Greer went on to book roles in other rom-coms, including 13 Going on 30 and 27 Dresses.
It’s tempting to argue on principle that “Schmigadoon!” is everything that’s wrong with Broadway: a double-baked potato of familiar IP that relies on affection for a TV series, which itself relies on affection for golden age musicals. But the effervescent stage show, from creator Cinco Paul and director-choreographer Christoper Gattelli, is all but irresistible — a giddy love letter to the form that’s enough to turn even the most skeptical curmudgeon into a walking heart-eye emoji.
Start out a stick in the mud, and you’ll have Alex Brightman as your stand-in. The Tony-winning “Beetlejuice” alum plays the straight-man foil to the swirl of stock characters that greet him and his girlfriend, played by Sara Chase, when they stumble into a magical town — where all of life is a musical — after getting lost on a Catskills couples’ retreat. The only way back to their native New York City is, of course, to find true love.
That they’ll eventually rediscover each other is obvious, which means their dalliances along the way with various romantic leads from the American songbook need to deliver on entertainment value alone. “Schmigadoon!” doesn’t just want the couple to fall for each other again — it wants audiences to fall in love with the American musical in all its sincerity, absurdity, and cringeworthiness.
Paul, who co-created the Apple TV+ series and drew from season one for the musical’s script and score, performs a dexterous trick, poking fun at the form’s many ridiculous tropes with an unmistakably affectionate hand. Together with Gattelli, the pair are keenly aware of what makes a musical tick — and why people love, or love to hate them — leveraging much of it to their advantage.
Almost immediately, Chase’s character — a doctor back home, but a damsel out here — catches the eye of a carnival barker (a fantastic Max Clayton) who’s all brawn and broad smiles and straight out of “Carousel.” Brightman’s cynic is meanwhile a magnet for the town’s country-fried jailbait (McKenzie Kurtz), plucked from “Oklahoma!” Look out behind her! There’s daddy with a shotgun.
The town also has a pied piper of the purity police (Ana Gasteyer, in peak form) and a light-in-his-loafers mayor (Brad Oscar), who has a conveniently daft wife (Ann Harada, reprising her role from the series). While not exactly a feminist screed, the script grants nary a free pass to the glut of hackneyed gender conventions in the golden-age canon without at least cracking a joke. The overexaggerated femininity, in Linda Cho’s frosting-on-an-Easter-cake costumes, is its own winking critique.
The heart of the story is the bond between the IRL couple, and it has been drawn in finer detail since the show’s try-out last year at the Kennedy Center, where I found it thinly sketched. Additional material in the script, and deepened work from the actors, now lends an emotional charge to the will-they-or-won’t-they plot, despite the obvious happy ending to-be. Chase is a warm and wry powerhouse as a musical-theater geek still happy to drag her beloved artform’s dated faults. And Brightman, who’s built a reputation playing wilder roles, shows his range by going straightfaced as the sourpuss fish out of water. Not just in contrast to the hijinks around them, the two feel grounded and worth rooting for.
Gattelli, who also choreographed the TV series, does much of his best work here through dance, a hypervigorous storm of limbs that manages to be funny while conveying story and character. Together with the candy-colored, pop-up-book design (the set is by Scott Pask and lighting by Donald Holder), there’s a topline sense of frenzied too-muchness constantly willing the audience into submission.
This being a Lorne Michaels production, there are also well-timed punch lines everywhere — in the lyrics, the tone, the staging, and in the blinking arrow that says “fun” and points to a hunky bachelor’s crotch. But the plot also retains a serial quality that saps momentum and betrays its TV roots. The couple tries out one set of lovers in the first act, then another — “The Music Man”-coded schoolmarm (Isabelle McCalla) and “The Sound of Music”-inspired doctor (Ivan Hernandez) — in the second. By the time intermission hits, you can practically hear the writers’ room mapping out a season’s worth of episodes.
It’s no knock to say that you might leave the theater humming well-known tunes from other shows, so uncannily does Paul evoke beloved songwriting styles without replicating exact melodies. Just as the story mines humor from the collision of old-fashioned ways with a modern frankness, Paul’s score combines the appeal of jaunty golden-age sounds with a freshness that feels present day.
Not that anyone wants to think about the present day. The concept in “Schmigadoon!” of a literal portal through which to escape reality is undoubtedly part of its appeal. Even musical-theater haters would have to ask, why even bother trying to come back?
Oliver Jones is departing Apple TV after six years to join Amazon MGM Studios as senior commissioner for U.K. scripted, according to an internal email sent by Nicole Clemens, the studio’s VP and head of international originals, to her teams.
Jones will work closely with Clemens on the commissioning of new U.K. scripted series and is set to begin in May.
Jones relocates from Los Angeles back to London for the position, where he will spearhead commissioning of new U.K. scripted series. Existing scripted commissioners Gemma Brandler and Punit Mattoo will report to him.
“Oliver is a seasoned scripted executive with a proven track record in developing premium international content,” Clemens wrote in the email. “This appointment underscores our continued investment in world-class U.K. scripted programming as we expand our slate for U.K. and global audiences.”
At Apple, Jones served most recently as senior creative executive for international scripted television, a role in which he shaped the streamer’s international originals strategy from its early phases and guided projects across development, production, and global launch. His credits include “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” starring Kurt Russell, which delivered a record-breaking Apple TV premiere in November 2023; “Masters of the Air,” the Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks World War II series starring Austin Butler, which topped the platform’s charts following its January 2024 debut; and Alfonso Cuarón’s “Disclaimer,” starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline. His most recent project in production is “Berlin Noir,” written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Peter Straughan and starring Colin Firth, Jack Lowden and Jessica Gunning. Earlier credits include “Tehran,” winner of the 2021 International Emmy for best drama, and “Sunny” (A24).
Prior to Apple, Jones held senior positions at Fremantle, where he worked on “The Mosquito Coast,” “Fellow Travelers” and “American Gods.” He also spent time at The Weinstein Company, where he oversaw Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone,” and at Imagine Television on “Empire.”
The hire comes as Amazon MGM Studios accelerates its U.K. scripted push. In her note to staff, Clemens pointed to recent launches including “The Girlfriend,” starring Robin Wright; “Steal,” starring Sophie Turner; “Harlan Coben’s Lazarus”; and Riz Ahmed’s “Bait,” describing them as “fan favorite and genre defying series that have delighted customers not just in the U.K., but globally.” The studio has also recently greenlit “Dirty,” an original police thriller from writer Matt Charman, and an adaptation of Chloe Walsh’s BookTok novel “Boys of Tommen.”
“It has been a privilege to work alongside my brilliant colleagues at Apple TV for the past six years, and to collaborate with the remarkable artists I was lucky enough to work with,” Jones said. “It’s always a tough decision to leave a job I love, but the time is right to come back home and start a new adventure. Amazon MGM Studios’ commitment and momentum in telling ambitious, provocative, premium stories, together with the scale of their increased investment in the U.K., means it couldn’t be a more exciting moment to be joining Nicole and her phenomenal team.”
It seems Will Ferrell can add predicting the future to his list of talents.
Molly Shannon made a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where she opened up about her decades-long friendship with the beloved actor.
She recalled working at a “cappuccino, scone place” in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s, when she was introduced to Ferrell through the Groundlings comedy troupe. “We clicked right away,” she said, noting that they met for the first time at the restaurant where she worked, and that she served him a scone and a latte. “We’ve been friends ever since. 30 years.”
They were later hired on Saturday Night Livein 1995, which not only launched them both into stardom but also became a defining era for the NBC sketch comedy series.
While reflecting on her early SNL days with host Jimmy Kimmel, the Divorce actress remembered one conversation she had with Ferrell that was surprisingly predictive of modern-day Hollywood.
“One night when we were at SNL, we had just started, and I was so excited like, ‘Oh my god, this job’s so great,’” Shannon explained. “And Will was kind of dark and he was like, ‘I don’t know. Who knows how long this is going to last?’”
“‘I just think it’s not going to last long, and I think actors are eventually going to be replaced by robots, and they’re not going to need human actors anymore,’” The Other Two actress recalled Ferrell telling her.
Shannon admitted she dismissed the idea at first, focusing on a more optimistic view of the future: “I was like, ‘What? Are you crazy? You’re being so dark.’”
However, she said they “die laughing about it now,” seeing just how on the nose the Barbie actor’s comments were with the rise of artificial intelligence and AI actors in the industry over the last few years.
At the time, though, Shannon said Ferrell quipped that he would be alright with whatever happens: “He said, ‘I could have a job working as a dog groomer or as a UPS driver or as a coach and still be happy.’”
In response, Kimmel joked that he had some “bad news” for Ferrell about the UPS driver job, as “that’s going to be a robot situation, too. He can probably groom dogs, but I feel like they’re going to figure out dog grooming robots before they figure any of the other stuff out.”
In addition to SNL, Shannon and Ferrell have appeared in numerous movies together, including Superstar (1999), A Night at the Roxbury (1998) and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), among others. They’re also both starring in the upcoming TV series, The Hawk, which Ferrell created.
Disney+ is making moves to boost its output of live-action originals from Japan, a longstanding ambition for the company’s Asia-Pacific content team that has been given greater urgency as the House of Mouse works to grow its streaming business worldwide.
The company unveiled a multi-year development deal on Tuesday with Tokyo-based production company The Seven, one of Netflix’s most frequent partners on Japanese-language films and series. Disney described the deal as a “long-term, ongoing content development collaboration.” The duration of the pact was not disclosed, nor were financial details.
“Since the launch of Disney+ in Japan, general entertainment and local originals have become an increasingly important part of our content offering, making this collaboration a natural evolution in accelerating our content investment,” said Carol Choi, Disney’s executive vp of original content strategy in APAC. “It builds on the strong relationships we’ve developed over time and represents a meaningful step forward in deepening our storytelling roots in Japan,” she added.
Under the framework, Disney’s content team will be embedded at the earliest stages of project development, working alongside The Seven’s producers to shape Japanese-language series exclusively for Disney+. The deal represents a notable shift for the platform in Japan, where it has typically acquired or co-produced titles on a project-by-project basis rather than locking in dedicated development partners.
The Seven was established in late 2021 as a subsidiary of TBS Holdings (Tokyo Broadcasting System Holdings), one of Japan’s major commercial broadcasters, with an initial investment of ¥30 billion (then approximately $205 million). Led by president and CEO Katsuaki Setoguchi and vice president and chief content officer Akira Morii, the company has become one of the country’s most prolific producers of live-action originals for the global streaming market. Its highest-profile credits have come through a five-year strategic partnership with Netflix, signed in 2022. Morii and his team produced the hit dystopian survival series Alice in Borderland and manga adaptation Yu Yu Hakusho, among other titles. The Seven also produced the upcoming jidaigeki series, Song of the Samurai, which was recently scooped up by HBO for release in May, and it has a co-development deal with Hollywood producer David Permut (Hacksaw Ridge, Face/Off) for film projects straddling the U.S.-Japan market.
The Disney deal positions The Seven as the rare Japanese production house with partnerships at two of the world’s dominant streamers — a reflection of how scarce experienced live-action producers with global ambition remain in Japan’s once stagnant but now fast-changing production landscape.
The agreement also comes at a moment of accelerating competition for Japanese content. Japan’s premium streaming sector grew 15 percent in 2025 to hit revenues of $7.2 billion, according to a recent report from Media Partners Asia (MPA). The country is estimated to be the world’s third-biggest premium streaming market by revenue, behind the U.S. and China (the latter of which does not permit foreign platform operators). According to MPA’s estimates in February, Netflix leads the Japanese market with a 22 percent share of premium VOD revenue, while Amazon Prime Video holds the largest subscriber base at 19.3 million (although the company’s flagship e-commerce offering is a major draw in Japan). Disney+ currently trails both significantly, commanding just 3 percent of total viewing hours, though it recently expanded its footprint through a joint bundle with Hulu Japan.
Simultaneously, global appetite for Japanese-themed content has surged in recent years. Anime has long been a youth-culture juggernaut, but live-action Japanese storytelling has also begun to break through in a major way — as witnessed with Disney’s own Shōgun, the samurai epic that swept the 2024 Emmys with a record-setting 18 wins, including best drama series. Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said last year that Japanese titles on the platform have been viewed for a cumulative 25 billion hours, making them the second-most-watched form of non-English content globally, behind only Korean.
“I am confident that by unleashing the refined creativity of The Seven through Disney’s extensive network and expertise, we can evolve Japanese stories into the ‘next craze’ that people truly fall in love with,” said Katsuaki Setoguchi, CEO of The Seven.
Added Gaku Narita, Disney’s executive director of content production in Japan: “For our local production team, the focus is on developing stories that audiences will want to come back to again and again. This deal allows us to work closely with creators in Japan from the earliest stages of development, shaping projects that reflect local creativity while meeting the high bar of storytelling that Disney+ is committed to telling.”
The pair starred opposite the late legend in Gus Van Sant’s 1997 film, which also earned Williams an Academy Award for best supporting actor. And they will be making the trek up to San Francisco to receive the 9th Robin Williams Legacy of Laughter Award presented to them by Glenn Close‘s nonprofit, Bring Change to Mind, at the organization’s Revels & Revelations Celebration. The fundraiser is set to take place at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture on April 27.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck pose with Robin Williams and their respective Oscars won for ‘Good Will Hunting’ at the 70th Academy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on March 23, 1998.
(Photo credit should read HAL GARB/AFP via Getty Images)
Setting the stage for a special night, Affleck and Damon will be presented with their Robin Williams Legacy of Laughter Award by Robin’s children, Zak, Zelda and Cody Williams. It’s an honor designed to recognize “their impact and the power of storytelling and connection to spark real change.”
Affleck and Damon also released a joint statement to The Hollywood Reporter about the news and their friend. “Robin wasn’t just someone we admired. He made our dreams come true. We owe everything to him. He said yes to our movie and we got it made. Receiving the Legacy of Laughter Award, created in honor of Robin Williams, is incredibly meaningful to us. His legacy isn’t just about his talent and how much he made the world laugh — it’s about how deeply he cared. This honor carries his spirit, and that means everything to us,” the duo said.
The event, a milestone moment for Bring Change to Mind as it celebrates 15 years of impact and a decade steering student programming, will also fete philanthropist Pam Baer with a Champion of Change Award to acknowledge her leadership in advancing mental health awareness. The event, supported by lead sponsor American Eagle Foundation, is also supported by individual, foundation and corporate donations. Per official details, it’s already sold out.
Founded by Close in 2010, BC2M is a national organization dedicated to ending the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness by working with leading scientists to make a difference in the lives of teens and adults. The cause is personal for Close as her sister, Jessie, lives with bipolar disorder and her nephew, Calen, lives with schizoaffective disorder. The Revels & Revelations Celebration was mounted as a “powerful night of storytelling, celebration and impact” by bringing together advocates, partners and community members under a shared mission of making sure that every young person feels “seen, supported and empowered” to talk openly about mental health.
Williams died by suicide at age 63 on Aug. 11, 2014. His work with the pair on Good Will Hunting left a lasting impact.
“It was the very first day of shooting and Ben and I went to the set. We weren’t working that day and we just saw them rehearse and we were kind of sitting off to the side of the camera,” Damon previously told E! “By the time they said, ‘Action,’ tears were just falling down my face. I couldn’t believe it. I was just looking at Robin start to speak and say these words that Ben and I had just worked on for five years.”
He continued: “After the scene ended, [Robin] came over to us and he saw us. He put his hand on our head and just said, you know, ‘It’s not a fluke. You guys really did this. You really did it.’”
After his passing, they both offered tributes. “Thanks chief — for your friendship and for what you gave the world,” Affleck shared on social media at the time. “Robin brought so much joy into my life and I will carry that joy with me forever,” Damon said in a statement. “He was such a beautiful man. I was lucky to know him and I will never, ever forget him.”
Prior recipients of the Robin Williams Legacy of Laughter Award include Amy Poehler and Ryan Reynolds. Affleck and Damon most recently teamed on The Rip for Netflix. Damon next toplines Christopher Nolan’s star-packed The Odyssey.
U.S. film and TV production in Canada rebounded in 2025 as the local industry finally put the devastating impact of Hollywood’s year of strikes in 2023 in the rearview mirror.
The latest annual economic report from the Canadian Media Producers Association, representing local indie producers, points to foreign location and service production in Canada, mostly by American producers, rising 9.5 percent to CAN$5.32 billion (US$3.9 billion, compared to a year-earlier CAN$4.86 billion.
That production activity includes visual effects work done by Canadian VFX studios for foreign films and TV series. Hollywood production growth was due mainly to TV series production rising 12.1 percent to CAN$3.42 billion (US$2.51 million) and the total volume of other foreign production – including TV movies, specials, pilots and single-episode shoots — increasing by 54.4 percent to CAN$366 million (US$268.2 million).
The overall increase in Hollywood TV production last year offset a 2.2 percent fall in foreign movie production across Canada. The major American players active north of the U.S. border continues to be led by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+ as they center around production hubs in Toronto and Vancouver.
The big U.S. series to shoot in Canada last year included IT: Welcome to Derry, The Last of Us, Doc and Happy Face, while big budget movies to shoot in Canada included Frankenstein, Tron: Ares and Final Destination: Bloodlines.
Last year’s foreign production rebound was down, however, from the record CAN$6.62 billion in budgetary spending reached in 2023, just before the impact of the Hollywood actors and writers strike was felt by the Canadian industry as local soundstages went dark and production crews were left idle.
The Hollywood industry consolidation and the end of the Peak TV era is also working to reduce American production levels. U.S. film and TV production accounted for 398 projects in Canada last year, or 87 percent of overall foreign location shooting north of the U.S. border, with much of that concentrated in Ontario and British Columbia.
That compares to in all 425 U.S. film and TV series projects shot in Canada in 2024, which represented 86 percent of overall foreign production activity. The rebound in American production last year offset a 2.2 percent fall in local homegrown film and TV series production to $3.62 billion (US$2.65 billion), according to the CMPA report.
The overall volume of production in Canada rose last year by 4.6 percent to CAN$10.17 billion (US$7.54 billion, but that was 15.8 percent down on the peak of CAN$12.07 billion reached in 2023.
Oscar winner Sean Baker has found an unexpected way to inspire future generations of independent filmmakers — at the bank.
The auteur has secured the first big payday of his career for his follow-up to best picture winner “Anora,” the sex-worker dramedy that made history in 2025 when the Oscars handed Baker four trophies in one night, tying the record set by Walt Disney.
The project in question is “Ti Amo!” which Baker has described as “an ode to the Italian sex comedies of the ’60s and ’70s.” Warner Bros. announced it had won the film last week at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. It was a major flex for the studio’s new indie-centric label Clockwork, run by Christian Parkes (former marketing chief for Neon).
What they didn’t say onstage at Caesars Palace is that Clockwork bought the distribution rights to “Ti Amo!” for an eye-popping $22 million, five sources familiar with the deal tell Variety. Baked into that number is the film’s budget, which is being financed by FilmNation and is expected to be north of $10 million. The final cost of the film won’t be finalized until Baker completes a script.
However, the surplus will be divided among FilmNation, a few other key production players and Baker, who is poised to earn a multimillion-dollar salary for his work as writer, director, editor and producer of “Ti Amo!”
For Baker, the pact means greater financial security after years of roughing it in service of his art. His brand is scrappy, by-the-skin-of-our-teeth filmmaking with shoestring budgets and, in early days, shooting “Tangerine” on an iPhone. With Clockwork, Baker will have one distributor overseeing release, marketing and strategy (except in France) for the first time in his career.
“Isn’t it great to see a filmmaker like Sean who has earned his way up finally get rewarded so he can keep getting to make movies his way?” said one executive with knowledge of the deal.
Baker shopped the project last year to multiple bidders, including Neon and A24 and Disney’s Searchlight Pictures. One offer, for U.S. rights alone, came in at roughly $5 million, two sources say, while others came closer to Clockwork’s deal for global distribution. Baker is not signed to a major talent agency but had Lichter Grossman lawyer James Feldman to negotiate on his behalf. He is managed by Adam Kersh, an indie veteran whose clients include other auteurs like Ira Sachs and Amy Seimetz.
The project was sold as a pitch, sources add. Cameras are expected to roll in September. Another sign of Baker’s post-Oscar power is that the Clockwork sale was not contingent on cast, nor is he expected to hire an A-lister.
The “Ti Amo!” deal comes as indie filmmaking stars are finding it difficult to get fairly compensated for their work. Many projects leave festivals like Sundance or Cannes without distribution, and even those filmmakers that get deals have seen their residuals and back-end participation shrink as streaming has upended the economics of Hollywood. That’s led some to experiment with alternative ways of getting their passion projects to the screen.
“The Brutalist” director Brady Corbet is putting together his next project — an epic tale about the history of the occult in America — without a studio partner. Similarly, Tom Ford has adapted Anne Rice’s novel “Cry to Heaven” as an independently financed feature starring Adele. The hope in both cases is that the movies will get a bigger sale price after screening at a high-profile festival than they would if distribution rights were sold ahead of filming. That’s a bet Baker isn’t taking with “Ti Amo!,” and given the rich deal he secured, why would he?
As revered as he may be among cinephiles, Baker would normally have to pivot to directing a mid-budget or tentpole film or work for a streamer like Netflix to receive this kind of compensation. The latter is a nonstarter, given that Baker is a passionate defender of cinemas. Baker has long been underpaid in comparison with his reputation and influence in the market.
Most of his projects take three years to produce, and he tends to put any money he makes back into his next films. During the awards season run for 2017’s “The Florida Project,” Baker lived in a small West Hollywood apartment. On Oscar night 2025, he and partner Sammy Kwan went home to walk their dogs in-between the ceremony and the after-party. It’s doubtful that Christopher Nolan or Martin Scorsese did the same.
Mick Betancourt, a veteran writer, producer and showrunner with a long list of credits on crime dramas and action series like the newest seasons of the Alan Ritchson-starrer Reacher, witnessed a violent crime happening in real time on New York City’s Lower East Side as if it were ripped straight from one of his scripts.
Rather than sit idly by to see how it played out from afar, he sprang into action to chase down the suspect who — spoiler alert! — ended up in handcuffs by the time the harrowing incident was over. But not before Betancourt bolted approximately half a mile (or more) as he pursued the suspect over 15 minutes, a scene that had its own ebbs and flows and ended in time for Betancourt to make early dinner reservations with his wife.
“I grew up in a chaotic and violent area and with some violence in my own house and this felt a time when I could do something about it, though I don’t know if any of the Brown or Harvard guys I’ve worked with are chasing guys down like this,” said the native of Chicago, whose resume includes work as a showrunner, writer, executive producer, director and actor. “I also don’t know what the gods have in store for me now so this might’ve been my last hurrah.”
It started late afternoon on Friday, April 10, when Betancourt and his wife were standing near their hotel, Nine Orchard, near Canal Street, and he witnessed a man sprinting past them. “I spotted a bottle of alcohol in the sprinter’s left hand, a short, stocky bottle, like Don Julio. I turned to my wife and said, ‘The shit’s about to hit the fan,’” per details Betancourt laid out in a new Substack post published on Sunday titled “To chase or not to chase, that is the question.”
Moments later, Betancourt, who turned 52 in recent days, spotted a man in his mid-50s, someone he presumed to be the owner of a nearby store where the alleged robbery took place, running after the suspect. He caught up to him and a scuffle ensued, all of which Betancourt witnessed.
“As they wrestled, I looked around and nobody was helping. Nobody jumped in — including me,” Betancourt writes, adding that he pondered the worst possible outcomes were he to get involved. “In a flash, during the standing wrestling match, the robber got a hold of one of the store owner’s legs, lifted it up, effectively whiplashing the owner from a standing position, to slamming his head into the concrete. That THUMP is an unforgettable sound. The whole block, which had been watching, gasped, said ‘Oh fuck’ or screamed. The shop owner’s body went limp, his eyes rolled into the back of his head and his arms flopped out to his sides like he was crucified.”
Betancourt assumed the store owner was dead based on body language. He made a split-second decision to take action. “I didn’t want to go back to the scene and see them pulling a sheet over the guy or running caution tape around him and think I could’ve done something in that moment,” he said. So when the suspect took off running, Betancourt “gave chase” by kicking it into high gear.
He laid out the extensive and tense scene in detail, and he sprinted after the man across several New York City blocks. “God cursed me with little alligator legs, but in a cruel twist of fate and irony, he made those hairy little fuckers fast as lightning,” wrote Betancourt.
Mick Betancourt
Courtesy of Subject
At one point, he caught up to him and screamed, “Get on the ground now!” The serious direction gave the man pause and he did slow down long enough for the men to exchange words. The suspect also seemed sure that the man was fatally injured, as he told Betancourt that his actions were in self-defense. Betancourt, who is sober and in recovery for more than two decades, tried to reason with the man as he believed he might be in the throes of addiction.
Their exchange was brief as the man wouldn’t give up and he got away again. But Betancourt wouldn’t give up. He sprinted after him again, and when he lost his whereabouts momentarily, he sought the help of two elderly women who weren’t overly helpful in pointing out the right direction. In a twist of fate, Betancourt then ran past Housing Authority police officers who assisted in the effort and eventually called for backup from the New York Police Department.
Betancourt recalled that four NYPD cars arrived on scene, one carrying the store owner, who was alive, alert and came to identify the alleged thief while pressing a bag of ice on his head. “I couldn’t believe it. I really thought he was dead,” wrote Betancourt, who was able to then give an official statement and eventually reunite with his wife, who was still outside the hotel. “When I got back to the hotel, a woman who worked there, who saw the whole thing begin, called me a hero. No, I thought, I was a coward who decided to do something about it.”
The Hollywood Reporter verified the incident with the NYPD. A spokesperson in the office of the deputy commissioner for public Information confirmed that 35-year-old Iysa Muhammad was arrested and charged with third-degree robbery and second-degree assault after allegedly stealing two bottles of liquor from a store on Grand Street. The 37-year-old man, who was injured in the alleged assault, was transported to NYC Health and Hospitals/Bellevue in stable condition. The investigation is ongoing.
As for Betancourt, his legs were gassed and it took a few hours to decompress, but he’s now back home and back at work on the upcoming season five of Reacher as a writer and executive producer. He worked on season four, which is expected to debut sometime in 2026. He also worked on the Amazon Prime Video spin-off series, Neagley, focused on Frances Neagley, played by Maria Sten. Betancourt’s other credits include The Purge, Shots Fired, Wicked City, Chicago P.D., Chicago Fire, Ironside, Necessary Roughness, The Mob Doctor, Detroit 1-8-7 and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
When he’s back on set, he’ll have something to talk to Ritchson about after the in-demand star recently had his own wild real-life encounter near his Tennessee home that also looked like it could’ve been ripped from one of his episodes.
