Tag: Entertainment – Variety

Jordan Firstman is hoping to join an exclusive club: the Oscars. And he might have someone on his team that can help him do it.

“Club Kid,” Firstman’s directorial debut, arrived in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section and drew a six-minute standing ovation before A24 acquired it for a reported $17 million. Suddenly, one of the internet’s more recognizable comic personalities — currently a regular on Rachel Sennott’s comedy series “I Love L.A.” — had a movie, a major distributor and a fall festival trajectory far more serious than anyone might have expected. It bowed at the Telluride Film Festival on Friday night with much anticipation for those who weren’t on the Croisette, and the film is ready to make its big splash on the circuit.

That’s the first awards story. The second may belong to one of his co-stars, Colleen Camp.

Firstman writes, directs and stars as Peter, a washed-up New York party promoter whose life on the dance floor screeches to a halt when the 10-year-old son (played by the exquisite British newcomer Reggie Absolom) he never knew existed turns up on his doorstep. The premise invites the easy shorthand — a gay “Big Daddy” — but Firstman uses it as a way into something more complete. It’s a study of responsibility, loneliness and the possibility that adulthood might begin long after you’ve stopped expecting it. The film works on three fronts with a touching script, naturalistic direction and a genuinely endearing lead turn.

A24’s fall strategy only heightens the opportunity. The company is running “Club Kid” through Telluride before heading to Toronto and New York ahead of a November release, which is the classic runway for a movie built to play as a crowd-pleaser rather than a critics’ curiosity.

This is where Camp comes in — the veteran embedded in the ensemble whom many still aren’t clocking as the film’s secret weapon.

At 73, Camp is a character actress-turned-social connector whose close friends include half the A-listers in town. By many estimates, she’s a significant reason Andrea Riseborough landed that shocking best actress nomination for “To Leslie.” Da’Vine Joy Randolph even thanked her by name from the Oscar stage while winning for “The Holdovers.” In recent years, Camp has become an influential operator on the circuit, with high-powered parties, star-studded dinners and taste-making events that have redirected more Oscar campaigns than anyone will admit on the record. Think Countess Luann from “The Real Housewives of New York,” but with real sway over the people at her table. She’s part of the reason a healthy share of today’s Oscar nominees and winners got there at all, which is exactly why it would be foolish to discount her now.

But long before she was hosting the parties, Camp was working the sets. A Hollywood lifer whose credits run from “Apocalypse Now” to “Clue,” she has spent five decades inhabiting roles that make movies richer without turning into awards contenders. In fact, she has only two award nominations on her IMDb page — from the Razzie Awards — “The Seduction” (1982) and “Sliver” (1993). Wouldn’t it be heartwarming to see that rectified in a meaningful way?

In addition, she turns up twice in A24’s awards corridor, also appearing in Chris Rock’s “Misty Green,” which is just more visibility.

That could make “Club Kid” a particularly appealing vehicle, and one that awards pundits shouldn’t underestimate. The best comeback narratives aren’t manufactured. They tend to emerge when an actor with a real body of work lands a part that reminds everyone why they loved watching them in the first place. Camp’s turn here as a kooky neighbor who stumbles into an unexpected romance is exactly the kind of role that gets a room talking (and laughing).

The challenge here is scale, because she doesn’t have a ton of screen time. Not to mention, a scene stealer isn’t automatically an Oscar performance, especially in a supporting actress field expected to be overly crowded. A24 would have to convert the affection for Camp, and the film, into a sustained argument about the work, not merely leaning on nostalgia.

But nostalgia isn’t nothing. Voters love a rediscovery story, especially when it’s attached to a movie they actually enjoyed. “Club Kid” may offer the rare double with two generations of Hollywood recognition at once; Firstman is the new face arriving from the internet, and Camp, the veteran whose face the establishment already knows.

Halloween has officially arrived at Universal Studios Hollywood. 

Halloween Horror Nights opened Thursday at the theme park where screams of excitement turned to screams of fright. Guests rushed into the park to face this year’s collection of haunted houses, which included the Upside Down from Netflix’s “Stranger Things 5” and the vampire-infested Club Juke from “Sinners.”

Within just 30 minutes of opening, the wait for “Sinners”” had already reached 60 minutes. “Hellraiser,” which made its Halloween Horror Nights debut, had a 50-minute wait, while “Killer Klowns From Outer Space,” “Evil Dead Burn” and “Killceañera: Music by Slash” were each at 30-minutes. “Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness” reached 35-minutes, and “Stranger Things 5” and “Dead, Deader, Deadest” sat at 25 minutes. 

The scares extended beyond the haunted houses, with characters from this year’s lineup of horror roaming the park. Among them was a crazed, blood-soaked Nikki, from “Obsession.” She emerged from the crowds with the same unnerving affection she carried throughout the film, telling guests she loved them “so, so much” before slipping back into the masses in search of her next victim. Nikki doesn’t have a designated meeting location, instead roaming the park at random. Fans of the film will have to seek her out, or perhaps, Nikki will see vistors out!

The most crowded area could be found in the Lower Lot, where Universal paid homage to music legend Ozzy Osbourne. Ozzy’s Bar drew in an approximately hourlong wait by the end of the night, serving themed cocktails such as the Blizzard of Ozz-arita and the Ultimate Sin-ammon, as well as meals including a naan taco named Bark at the Naan. 

His haunted house, “Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness,” featured different variants of the musician jumping out to scare visitors, ranging from mad-scientist Ozzy to a demon-esque bat carrying what seemed to be Ozzy’s head. The house also had a room dedicated to “Crazy Train,” where dead bodies sat along a train car while his famous song played in the background. 

Also in the Lower Lot was the “Stranger Things 5” haunted house, where guests traveled past Castle Byers and into the Upside Down. Vecna frequently lunged out from hidden corners and windows while a Demogorgon nearby battled Karen Wheeler in her blood-soaked kitchen. 

“Sinners,” meanwhile, transports guests into the world of Ryan Coogler’s Oscar-winning film in the Upper Lot. Opening with a performance by Sammie, the haunted house recreates Club Juke, where characters including Mary, Annie and Pearline run rampant. 

Also on the Upper Lot was an area dedicated to Fortnite, which drew significant crowds along the walkway as guests stopped to take in the scares and pose in front of the game’s signature Battle Bus. 

Halloween Horror Nights runs on select nights until Nov. 1.

“Wheel of Fortune” announcer Jim Thornton has been fired from the game show, producer Sony Pictures TV confirmed. “Following a thorough investigation, Jim Thornton’s employment with ‘Wheel of Fortune’ has been terminated, effective immediately,” the studio said in a statement.

According to insiders, Thornton won’t be heard on the show when it returns for a new season on September 14, as an interim announcer has revoiced all of Thornton’s parts on the shows. No permanent replacement has been announced.

Thornton’s firing came just hours after TMZ posted photos of what were allegedly him on an American Airlines plane with his laptop opened on “disturbing chat room” that appeared to be “images and texts that made it appear it was a chat room for pedophiles.” The up-close photos of the laptop’s screen showed lewd conversations about minors.

The alleged incident took place in May, when according to TMZ, a passenger informed a flight attendant about the chat screen on Thornton’s laptop. Authorities were waiting to question Thornton when his flight landed at LAX, and after they spoke to the Thornton he was given permission to leave.

Neither Thornton nor his lawyer have publicly addressed the allegations; an attorney who said they represented the announcer, Allison Hart, told TMZ that Thornton had “become active in suicide-prevention advocacy since losing a close family member to suicide two years ago and he has spent time visiting chat rooms offering support to individuals suffering from suicidal ideation.”

On Tuesday, Sony Pictures TV said that “we have recently been made aware of allegations concerning Jim Thornton. He has been suspended from ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and we are recasting while we conduct a thorough investigation.” 

The announcer joined “Wheel” in 2010 after the death of the show’s previous announcer, Charlie O’Donnell, and has also worked as a substitute announcer on “The Price Is Right.” He’s also been the voice of “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune” on ABC.

Thornton’s other credits include “Celebrity Deathmatch,” where he voiced Johnny Gomez, and as an announcer on “The Cleveland Show” and “Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” He’s also been heard on several video games and appeared as a commercial narrator in the 2001 animated film “Monsters, Inc.” He also voiced the 2011 Oscar-nominated short animated film “Let’s Pollute.”

Thornton has been a local media presence in Los Angeles for decades, having previously worked as an afternoon anchor on KNX 1070 Newsradio, which he first joined in 1985 as a traffic reporter with Metro Traffic. He also provided traffic reports on KCBS-TV.

His other broadcast credits include Westwood One Radio Networks, and he was the voice of L.A.’s KCOP-TV for four years. He has received an Edward R. Murrow award, Golden Mike awards and an Emmy. 

George Clooney has said he doesn’t trust the government to regulate AI.

“I don’t know that you want government to be regulating this either, because I sit and watch when Zuckerberg is testifying in front of, you know, a 94-year-old Chuck Grassley, and they’re like, ‘Well, how do you turn that computer on?’” he joked, before adding, “These are not the people that you want to entrust the holy grail with.”

Clooney, who was speaking at a Venice Film Festival symposium hosted by CAA and Finch & Partners, joined the panel on the future of creativity alongside diverse figures including artist Kennedy Yanko, filmmaker Giuseppe Tornator, clergyman Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça and National Gallery of Art president Darren Walker.

The actor said AI was dangerous because it could make people doubt about real things, as well as invent things that don’t exist. “It’s not just that you’ll see lies,” he said. “It also makes you question things that really do exist. It also that sort of world of fake news — suddenly you’re able to take things that really happened and say, ‘Well, that didn’t happen either.”

“You’ll have people who deny the Holocaust, and that will have the same weight in AI as facts.”

Clooney also talked about how his wife Amal Clooney, a prominent human rights lawyer, has come across laws that were invented by AI. They “will hallucinate and make up fake cases, and lawyers who don’t check it will quote those cases, or judges will quote those cases,” he warned.

“I think that’s some of the danger in all of this, is that we’re looking at something going, ‘We’re not sure where this is going to end, and we’re not sure who’s fully in charge,” he said, adding that these AI tools are owned by “richest people in the world.”

The risks presented by deep fakes could also lead to real-life consequences aside from disinformation. “That’s a joke for people, but what happens when you see a video of Putin saying he’s launched the first nuclear strike in the United States? And how do you discern it?”

Talking about his hopes for the next presidential election and for potential candidates, Clooney said, “We’re all very excited by this young senator from Georgia named Jon Ossoff. We’re all excited about Jimmy [J.B.] Pritzker. I’m from Kentucky, I like Andy Beshear as a governor.”

“We need young voices in there that are coming up with some new ideas and some new thoughts,” he added.

Clooney also stressed the “need to have a check and balance — We’re not supposed to agree. That’s the whole idea of democracy.”

Prime Video’s “The Boys of Tommen” has added Jonathan Forbes, Cobhan O’brien, Harvey Moloney, Tristan Heanue and Lewis Brophy to its cast.

Forbes (“Catastrophe,” “The Rainmaker”) joins as Johnny Kavanagh’s father John Senior, O’brien (“Foundation”) and Moloney (“Krimi”) as Shannon Lynch’s younger brothers Tadhg and Ollie, Heanue (“Clean Sweep”) as Aoife Molloy’s father Tony Molloy and Brophy (“The Virtues,” “King) as Podge.

The adaptation of Chloe Walsh’s “Boys of Tommen” previously announced Nancy Surridge would be playing Shannon while Conor Sánchez is Johnny Kavanagh and James O’Donoghue plays Joey Lynch.

Sophie McGibbon also stars as Aoife Molloy, Amelia May as Claire Biggs, John Hewson as Gerard Gibson, Indy Lewis as Lizzie Young, Alex Dunne as Hugh Biggs, Dixie Egerickx as Katie Wilmot and Jamie Schneider as Patrick Feely.

Daisy Jacob joins as Bella Wilkinson, Jonathan Heed as Cormac Ryan, Cathal Ó Síocháin as Ronan McGarry and James Craven as Pierce O’Neill.

The YA series follows a forbidden romance at Tommen College, a prestigious private school in Ballylaggin, Ireland where tar rugby player Johnny Kavanagh and shy new girl Shannon Lynch are both harboring secrets: Johnny a devastating injury and Shannon a troubled homelife.

“Through their secret and highly charged connection, the two teens from opposite worlds battle against the odds and find a way to save each other,” reads the synopsis.

Poppy Cogan (“A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder”) is adapting the first season, which will be based on the first two novels in the book series, “Binding 13″ and “Keeping 13.” Brendan Canty (“Christy”) directs Wiip is producing the series in association with Amazon MGM Studios.

Cogan exec produces alongside Walsh, Wiip’s Paul Lee, Hope Hartman and Sean Flanagan, Temple Hill’s Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, James Seidman and Annika Patton and Drama Republic’s Greg Brenman and Deena Butt. Carla Stronge is casting director. Ingrid Goodwin serves as Series Producer.

Forbes is repped by 42 Management and Production. Moloney is repped by SRL Talent Management.

Iranian director Mohsen Gharaei, who is at the Venice Film Festival with well-received drama “Falling House,” is set to shoot a new film titled “Centrifugal Force” that will capture “the impossible choices facing a generation of Iranians today,” as the synopsis puts it.

“Falling House,” which world-premiered on Wed. in Venice’s Orizzonti sidebar, follows a modest family on the outskirts of Tehran who faces the imminent destruction of their home as part of a vast redevelopment project. Rashid, the patriarchal father and a prison guard, attempts to contain family rebellion while being accused of corruption.

“Centrifugal Force,” which will be shot in an undisclosed location outside Iran in Farsi and English with still unspecified Iranian and international actors, will be “a deeply human story about what happens when the home you love is no longer a place you can return to,” Gharaei said in his directors’ statement.

“After finishing my latest film, I found myself on an unexpected journey from one geography to another,” Gharaei, who is now living as an exile outside Iran, added. “But migration is not simply a matter of moving from one place to another; it is a moment when a person is suddenly pushed out of the center of their own life. The journey becomes most painful when departure is not a choice, when all familiar paths close, one by one, and suddenly you have to leave a home that you still love.”

“Centrifugal Force” will be the story of a family that has remained in Iran for years, not entirely out of contentment, but out of the hope that somehow it might still be possible to build a life with all its contradictions. They have held onto staying and created a sense of order for themselves within a system they believed to be stable. But in a geography like Iran, where the line between simply surviving and truly living can shift without notice, no sense of order is ever completely safe,” Gharaei went on to note.

“With forced migration, the family enters a world governed by a different set of rules, where things no longer work as they used to. What appears from the outside to be a form of escape can, from within, feel like a kind of collapse. Distance from home makes the distance between family members visible. It reopens old wounds. Crisis challenges the image they have of one another. It is as if migration does not only change their physical location; it also displaces their understanding of home, family, and even self,” he continued.

“This is where centrifugal force takes shape, drawing people away from a point to which they have been deeply attached, without necessarily knowing what lies ahead. Within this deracination, the family is as weightless as hay, easily pulled away from the center. And the further they move from it, the more they are confronted with the question of what truly connected them in the first place: geography, memory, habit, or something else for which they have no name.”

Just like “Falling House,” “Centrifugal Force” is being produced by exiled Iranian producer Milad Khosrav, who now runs his Seven Springs Pictures company out of Istanbul in tandem with
Oscar-winning producer Odessa Rae (“Navalny,” “The Voice of Hind Rajab”). They are shopping the project at the Venice market, knowns as Venice Production Bridge.

At the start of her eponymous reality show “Earle Meets World,” the influencer Alix Earle promises that while “there’s a whole other side” of the creator economy “people don’t get to see,” her viewers are “gonna see everything in this show.” I hope for Earle’s sake she isn’t telling the truth, because if “Earle Meets World” really does contain the full scope of the TikTok star’s jet-setting lifestyle, it’s one of strikingly limited range. Rather than reveal Earle’s hidden depths or shed light on the nature of her viral appeal, the Netflix series goes to show that 30-second clips don’t easily expand into 40-minute episodes.

“Earle Meets World” is packaged as a family affair in the vein of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” with Earle’s “dadager” TJ as the Kris Jenner figure. (Individual Earles will hereby be referred to by their first names to avoid confusion.) But where the Kardashians, for all their shallowness and shameless consumerism, have a certain quotable star quality (“Kim, there’s people that are dying!”), the Earles lack a similar spark. Alix blew up while still a college student at the University of Miami, and her signature — besides a blonde, blue-eyed beauty — is a bland neutrality that lends itself to endorsing all manner of products. She’s not particularly funny, opinionated or inventive; she’s just a wealthier and more conventionally attractive version of the average consumer. But the same relatability that makes Earle a dependable brand ambassador also makes her everyday life almost painfully boring to watch, with the few juicy nuggets either overhyped, downplayed or both.

Content creation is a collective enterprise for the Earles. Alix’s younger sister Ashtin has followed her into the influencing game, while their stepmother Ashley came by fame the old-fashioned way: a tabloid scandal, as the call girl once linked to New York governor Eliot Spitzer. But Ashley, too, has taken to social media, and she’s hoping her own kids (Alix and Ashtin’s half siblings) will do the same. Some of the queasiest scenes in “Earle Meets World” involve a tweenager filming her own “outfit of the day” videos, her child’s voice aping the inflections of her older sisters. There’s no time to be a kid or cultivate your own interests when there’s clout to be chased.

Against an interchangeable backdrop of major cities that each fade into a blur — Paris for Fashion Week; Nashville for a product launch; Coachella for partying — the Earles navigate the intersection of work and home. Ashtin feels TJ doesn’t take her career as seriously as her sister’s. Alix has to fire the childhood best friend she hired to handle her Snapchat account. Alix is furious at Ashtin for “spoiling” the launch of her skincare line Reale Actives by using an unlabeled bottle in a post about her makeup routine. 

These conflicts are too far from the broader human experience to engender much sympathy, yet too petty to take on a sheen of aspirational glamor. Nor are they negotiated with any Housewife-ian flair for drama. The Earles often sound like wooden actors reading from a prefabricated script, possibly because they are; a polite conversation between TJ and his ex-wife’s boyfriend about an inappropriate remark proves conflict resolution and compelling TV can be mutually exclusive. The few moments of piercing insight, like both Alix’s recent ex and Ashtin pointing out that they can’t trust her not to record and share candid conversations, pass by so quickly and with so little comment that they seem accidental. 

The 25-year-old Alix spends the eight-episode season coping with her first serious breakup after splitting from NFL player Braxton Berrios, whom she dated for nearly three years. In the premiere, she (implausibly) rents a U-Haul to pick up the last of her things from his apartment; in the finale, a cliffhanger that strongly suggests a predetermined Season 2 hinges on a phone call between the former partners. I wish Earle all the best in navigating this romantic crossroads, but as a master narrative, her endless waffling over whether to text Berrios and unconvincing attempts to play coy over a rumored fling with Tom Brady are stultifying stuff. Even well-intentioned storylines like Alix and Ashtin getting tested for a BRCA mutation after their mother Alisa’s brush with breast cancer are more admirable than entertaining.

But the most telling flaw in “Earle Meets World” is the show’s handling of Alix’s only real frisson of controversy: her public rift with “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper, who signed Alix to her Unwell Network before the business relationship ended last year. Alix agonizes over whether to publicly share her side of the story, and strongly implies she plans to use “Earle Meets World” as a platform to do so. Yet she never does, saying only that she feels “betrayed” by Cooper as a potential mentor and drafting an allegation-free text branding her onetime partner “toxic.” (Her decision to take the high road and not hit “send” is somewhat negated by reading the message aloud on camera.) Anyone hoping for a real explanation of the feud, rather than vague aspersions and childish mud-slinging, will come away sorely disappointed.

The Earles repeatedly and casually conflate the failed podcast partnership with Alix’s 2023 appearance on “Call Her Daddy,” in which she detailed TJ’s infidelity, how Ashley’s infamy affected her as a child and other bits of dirty laundry. These disclosures apparently reopened some wounds and aggravated tensions in Alix and Ashley’s relationship, a development they’re far more specific about — and certainly seem more resentful of — than the details of a podcasting contract. (Earle was, of course, an adult when she chose to open up, but it’s easier to blame a family outsider like Cooper for pressing her.) Much of “Earle Meets World” is dedicated to performing a repaired stepmother-stepdaughter relationship, emphasizing how much the pair have moved past the days when Alix was putting toothpaste in Ashley’s shoes. “Earle Meets World” wants to fast-forward to the happy ending, even if the path to get there is the real story.

As depicted in the show, the triumphant resolution to the Earle-Cooper drama is Alix posting a TikTok where she jokingly claims she took a break from social media because she was busy learning to pole dance. The move is anticlimactic, flat and about as fun to watch Alix talk through as it is to hear someone recount a dream; canned music does most of the work to make a glorified GIF seem like savvy crisis PR. But it is, in fairness, an accurate reflection of “Earle Meets World.” If that doesn’t sound riveting to you, feel free not to engage.

All eight episodes of “Earle Meets World” are now streaming on Netflix.

Philippine studio Viva Communications has acquired the rights to remake Indonesian film “2nd Miracle in Cell No. 7,” marking the first time an Indonesian film will be officially remade for the Philippine market.

The adaptation is set to premiere Dec. 25 as part of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF).

The original “Miracle in Cell No. 7” debuted in South Korea in 2013 and became a hit that spawned remakes in several countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines. Indonesia’s Falcon Pictures later went a step further, producing “2nd Miracle in Cell No. 7,” an original sequel continuing the story beyond what the film’s Korean creators had made.

Viva Communications is now adapting that Indonesian sequel for Philippine audiences. The remake is currently in production and will be a major entry in this year’s MMFF, a festival the studio is using to draw audiences back into Philippine theaters over the holiday season.

“With ‘2nd Miracle in Cell No. 7,’ Viva Communications continues its proud tradition of creating moving, high-quality cinema that resonates across generations and brings entire families together in theaters,” said Vincent Del Rosario, CEO of Viva Communications, Inc.. “Our participation in this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival underscores Viva’s unwavering commitment to the festival’s enduring success and to the revitalization of the theatrical experience. We believe deeply in the magic of the communal cinema experience for Filipino audiences, and we remain dedicated to championing the continuous growth, elevate the artistry, and drive the global development of the Philippine motion picture industry.”

The franchise’s expansion has also been welcomed by Next Entertainment World, which originally held the rights to “Miracle in Cell No. 7,” along with its international sales arm, Contents Panda.

“‘Miracle in Cell No. 7’ has grown beyond a remake into a shared story that keeps evolving across Southeast Asia – we’re proud to see the Indonesian chapter now inspiring the Philippines,” said Danny Lee, president of Contents Panda.

For Falcon Pictures, the studio behind the sequel, the deal signals a growing regional profile for the Indonesian film industry.

“When we decided to produce ‘2nd Miracle in Cell No. 7,’ we took a bold creative leap to expand a beloved universe with an original Indonesian story, something that had never been done with this IP before,” said Frederica, producer at Falcon Pictures. “To see our sequel now being embraced and remade by the Philippines is a tremendous honor. It is a historic first for Indonesian cinema and proves that our deeply emotional, locally crafted stories have a universal heartbeat that can resonate far beyond our borders.”