Tag: HollywoodReporter

Prime Video is teasing the first look at the upcoming new original series, Carrie, based on Stephen King’s classic debut novel.

The series, which marks the first time the story has been adapted for television, is reimagined by showrunner Mike Flanagan (Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House).

Carrie will premiere exclusively on Prime Video this fall in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide.

The series will be comprised of eight episodes, expanding on King’s original story about a high school girl with telekinetic powers by “deepening its characters and tensions” and chronicling a “deeply human story about kindness versus cruelty, and whether we’re witnessing the making of a hero, a monster, or something far more complicated.”

Summer Howell stars as the series’ title character Carrie White.

The show synopsis reads: “Misfit high‑schooler Carrie White (Howell) has spent her life hidden away inside the walls of her home with her fiercely protective mother, Margaret (Samantha Sloyan). After her father’s sudden, untimely death thrusts her into the unforgiving ecosystem of public high school, Carrie is forced to navigate a viral bullying scandal that tears through her community, the relentless pressure and casual cruelty of the social‑media age, and the awakening of mysterious telekinetic powers that rise alongside her adolescence.”

Sloyan (The Pitt) stars as Margaret White, Siena Agudong (Resident Evil) as Sue Snell, Alison Thornton (Fire Country) as Chris Hargensen, Joel Oulette (My Life with the Walter Boys) as Tommy Ross, Josie Tota (The Buccaneers) as Tina, Arthur Conti (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) as Billy, Thalia Dudek (The Running Man) as Emaline, Amber Midthunder (Prey) as Miss Desjardin, and Matthew Lillard (Man of Tomorrow) as Principal Grayle.

In addition to being the showrunner, Flanagan also writes and exec produces the series. He also directs four episodes.

King serves as executive producer on the series from Amazon MGM Studios production.

The author’s debut novel was published in 1974, spent 14 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into more than 35 languages.

Brian De Palma’s 1976 film adaptation of Carrie, which starred Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, earned an Academy Award nomination for best actress for Spacek and best supporting actress for Laurie. This year marks the film’s 50th anniversary.

A coalition of state attorneys general have sued Paramount to stop its $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, a sweeping legal challenge to a merger that threatens to reshape Hollywood amid the absence of the Trump administration’s intervention in big deals.

In a much-anticipated lawsuit filed in California federal court on Monday, the states allege that the acquisition will substantially throttle competition in wide-release and top-grossing theatrical distribution and cable licensing in violation of antitrust laws. They argue that the merger will combine two of the two five studios in Hollywood, leading to higher prices, fewer movies in theaters and a reduction in the variety and quality of content.

The states allege a violation of the Clayton Act, an antitrust law accounting for potential monopolies. They’ve asked Paramount not to close the deal until the case is decided. If not, they say they’ll file a temporary restraining order. The coalition is comprised of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington.

“The unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.,” said California Attorney General Bonta in a statement. “California’s film and entertainment industry touches the lives of Americans daily — it comes into the living rooms of families, has a starring role in many young people’s first dates, and is a point of immense pride and employment for Californians up and down our state.”

The lawsuit, which may stretch on for years, marks another effort by state attorneys general to oppose major mergers as the government embraces a more lenient view on consolidation, particularly in media and entertainment. The Justice Department in June signed off on Paramount’s bid to purchase Warner, finding that the merger will increase competition in the markets for streaming, linear TV and the development, production or distribution of films for theatrical release. The green light doesn’t require any divestitures, behavioral remedies or concessions.

The approval and absence of concessions have magnified speculation of Trump putting his thumb on the scales for Paramount CEO David Ellison’s plans to assemble a media conglomerate. His father, Oracle scion Larry Ellison, has leveraged a symbiotic relationship with Trump, who has been critical of most mainstream coverage, to aid that effort. A merger between Paramount and Warner will bring CNN under the family’s control.

At the forefront of Paramount’s multipronged defense: tech giants like Netflix, Amazon and Google cornering Hollywood such that the only way to compete is through consolidation. Paramount chief Makan Delrahim has repeatedly pointed to “tech monopolies” threatening consumers, talent and labor across the industry.

So far, antitrust enforcers in China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Serbia and North Macedonia have found that the deal doesn’t violate antitrust laws. Regulators probing foreign investments from Gulf sovereign wealth funds in Germany, Italy, France, Romani, Slovenia, Belgium, Czechia, New Zealand and Spain have also approved the merger.

Paramount awaits regulatory approvals from the Federal Communications Commission, U.K. antitrust regulators and the European Commission, which is expected to sign off on the merger ahead of an upcoming deadline to open an in-depth probe.

Another obstacle is posed by consumers who’ve sued to block the deal. In a lawsuit filed in April, Paramount subscribers alleged that the acquisition will substantially reduce competition in streaming, news and theatrical distribution. The merger will consolidate “Paramount’s ability and incentive to raise prices, reduce output, narrow slates, reduce quality, and worsen consumer-facing terms, including through control of distribution, exclusivity, windowing, and licensing,” stated the complaint.

If the deal is consummated, the combined company would have the third largest streaming platform behind Netflix and Disney and control roughly 24 percent of theatrical distribution, per the lawsuit.

To curry favor for the merger and quell concerns, David Ellison has pledged to release at least 30 movies a year theatrically with minimum 45-day theatrical windows and operate Paramount and Warner Bros. as independent studios. The former commitment has drawn criticism from some in the industry who are skeptical the company can maintain that output. A major concern is the estimated $79 billion in debt the combined company would carry if the deal is completed, with only $3 billion in annual free cash flow.

From Kenzie’s “Clam Slams” to Zach and Bryce’s bromance, here are some of the most viral moments from the latest season of the hit Peacock reality series.

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup nears its end, Major League Soccer is using the global event to try and turbocharge its future, launching what the league says is the largest coordinated marketing campaign in its 33-year history.

The effort features the somewhat audacious tagline “Thanks World, We’ll Take It From Here,” while leaning into the star power of its owners and top athletes, including Inter Miami megastar Lionel Messi, LAFC star Son Heung-Min, Inter Miami owner David Beckham, Austin FC owner Matthew McConaughey, LAFC owner Magic Johnson and Philadelphia Union owner Kevin Durant.

“The FIFA World Cup is going to bring millions of new fans into the game, and our job is to make sure their soccer journey doesn’t end when the tournament does,” Radhika Duggal, the CMO of MLS, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “This campaign is about showing people that there’s a club, a community, and a story waiting for them every week in MLS. We’re meeting fans through culture, music, and entertainment, making it easy to discover the league, whether that’s on Apple TV or at their local stadium. MLS has never been more ambitious or more connected to the moments shaping culture, and we’re excited to welcome a whole new generation of fans.”

The campaign will kick off during Fox‘s coverage of the World Cup semifinals and final this week, and will continue via Apple TV and other linear, streaming, digital, social, and out-of-home platforms.

The campaign will also include elements from all 30 MLS clubs, with 22 of them offering “first match on us” promotions with free tickets. And it will include an Amazon Music Original cover of the Tribe Called Quest song “Can I Kick It?” — created exclusively for MLS. Produced by legendary producer DJ Premier and featuring new vocals and lyrics from breakout artist Samara Cyn.

“At a defining moment for soccer in North America, MLS is turning global excitement into lasting engagement and connection,” said Camilo Durana, executive VP & chief business officer of MLS. “As the World Cup inspires new fans, our clubs and communities are ready to welcome them as the season resumes and the next chapter of their soccer journey begins with MLS.”

MLS is betting big that enormous interest in the World Cup can translate into invigorated interest in its league, particularly if fans follow, say, Messi or Son. The World Cup has been a ratings bonanza for both Fox and Telemundo, garnering NFL-like numbers for games featuring the U.S. team, and Mexico-England’s blockbuster battle last week drawing more than 44 million people between the two networks and their streaming platforms.

MLS, of course, used the 1994 World Cup (the last one to be played in the U.S.) to launch, but the interest in this one is off-the-charts, and it is hoping that it can be just the thing to kickstart the sport as something that can be viewed as on par with the top leagues in a sports-obsessed country.

Tom Cruise is known to be a student of film, the rare movie star who likes to speak at length about camera lenses and the crafts behind filmmaking. But one secret to his success? Getting directors to read to him aloud so he can better understand their visions.

He says he’s done this with multiple directors, including Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the filmmaker behind Cruise’s upcoming prestige play Digger.

“Alejandro took several days during which he was just reading the script to me and I’m listening to everything that’s in his mind, so that I can understand that, and then I know how to contribute to it, and bring that collaboration together,” Cruise said at a recent trailer event launch for Digger on the Warner Bros. lot.

During the event, he said multiple times that Digger is the culmination of his 40-year career, and it seems that will be the selling point in the coming months as promotion ramps up in preparation for release and an eventual awards campaign.

Indeed, the project is both a departure from his recent history and a return to form for the actor, who has spent the past decade almost exclusively in the world of franchise filmmaking. His $1.49 billion box office grossing Top Gun: Maverick “saved Hollywood’s ass” (to quote Spielberg), while his Mission: Impossible pushed the boundaries of action filmmaking and generated countless headlines for Cruise’s commitment to doing his own stunts.

Digger unveiled its first trailer to the world Monday, with Cruise almost unrecognizable under makeup and prosthetics. It’s the type of film Warner Bros. hopes will remind the world that in addition to being one of the last remaining movie stars, Cruis is also an Oscar-level performer who has been nominated for acting three times (1989’s Born on the Fourth of July, 1996’s Jerry Maguire and 2000’s Magnolia, in addition to a nom for producing Top Gun: Maverick).

A few days before the trailer hit online, Cruise assembled a group of journalists to the Warner Bros. lot for a moderated Q&A and meet and greet (complete with a giant shovel that he scaled for a photo-op).

Thank you for spending the day with me and sharing in our mutual love of cinematic storytelling on the legendary Warner Brothers Lot. pic.twitter.com/ufQGBs0wYQ

— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) July 12, 2026

Cruise revealed that he was an instant fan of Iñárritu’s 2000 film Amores perros, inviting people to his home to screen it, even though the two would not meet for a few years later.

Iñárritu was not available to join Cruise for the Warners event, but he sent a video from London, where he is finishing Digger. He said that after 2015’s The Revenant (for which he won the second of his back-to-back directing Oscars), he had the idea for Digger, and spent years developing the movie, before approaching Cruise around seven years ago.

It’s Cruise’s first character actor style role since he wore prosthetics to play studio exec Les Grossman in the comedy Tropic Thunder.

“The transformation he went through was astonishing. ‘Alejandro, it took me 40 years to become this character,’ he told me once. And I think we both know what it means to carry an entire career into a single moment like this. We both knew that throughout our journeys, we had never done anything even close to this,” said the filmmaker in the video sent to the event.

Cruise re-iterated that the film is unlike anything that he’s made before.

“I have never had something that could challenge me in this way and neither has Alejandro when we went in, ever. And when you see this film, it’s totally original,” said Cruise.

Audiences will find out for themselves on Oct. 2.

John Mulaney made history in Chicago.

The comedian became the first comedian to ever perform at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, on Saturday night. And the hometown hero did it in front of a sold-out crowd by bringing some of his famous friends along for the monumental night.

“How did this happen?” asked a bearded David Letterman as he took center stage to wild cheers and applause. “What, are the Beatles here tonight, ladies and gentlemen? This makes that Taylor Swift wedding look like a student film.”

Letterman wasn’t the only surprise Mulaney had in his back pocket for the Mister Whatever tour stop. He invited Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy as an opener, and the 89-year-old played a short set while audience members took their seats. Guy is currently on tour himself with stops this month in Toronto, New York, Michigan, Kansas and Missouri.

Richard Kind, Mulaney’s longtime good friend and sidekick on the Netflix live variety talk show Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney, acted as the night’s emcee and appeared on stage with a “Mayor” sash. Kind welcomed Mulaney’s pal and former Saturday Night Live colleague Fred Armisen, who performed a comedy set that featured some musical numbers.

Then came Letterman who had the task of welcoming Mulaney to the stage. The two had spent some quality time together recently as Mulaney appeared as a guest at Letterman’s May show at Hollywood’s Montalban Theatre as part of the Netflix is a Joke Festival. Before that, Letterman had also appeared on Mulaney’s Everybody’s Live.

Mulaney delivered a well-received and lengthy set — he “blew the non-existent roof off Wrigley Field,” praised Slash Film’s Ethan Anderton — that featured anecdotes about his life with wife Olivia Munn and their two children, Malcolm and Mei, and the beauty of their family.

For months ahead of the performance, Mulaney had been teasing the stop. “I’m very unabashedly excited about it,” he told Jimmy Kimmel during a stop on his late night talk show. He also joked to Jenna Bush Hager and guest host Matt Rogers during a Today show stop that “if the wind is right in Wrigleyville,” the sound from the show will carry to surrounding streets. And per a video shared on TikTok, he was right.

When it was all said and done, Mulaney seemed floored by the scene. “Every Chicago thing in me tells me to stop bowing, but I’m going to enjoy the moment,” he said as he closed the show. “Thank you very much for being with us tonight. Another round of applause please for Fred Armisen, Buddy Guy, Richard Kind and Ball State’s David Letterman. Words can’t describe how cool this is.”

Mulaney’s Mister Whatever tour rolls on through 2027. See below.

Sam Neill, the amiable and adventurous leading man who emerged from New Zealand to make his mark in such films as Jurassic Park, The Piano, Dead Calm, In the Mouth of Madness and so much more, has died. He was 78.

The news was shared in a post on Neill’s official Instagram account.

“It is with immense sadness that the whānau of Sam Neill share the news of his passing on Monday 13th July, in Sydney Australia,” the post read. “Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life. The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free. They would like to express their deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for their incredible care. More details will be shared later, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you respect their privacy as they navigate this immeasurable loss.”

Neill revealed in March 2023 that he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma a year earlier.

“I’m not in any way frightened of dying. That doesn’t worry me. It’s never worried me from the beginning,” he told the TV news magazine Australian Story in October 2023. “But I would be annoyed, because there are things I still want to do.”

Early in his career, the boundary-breaking Neill starred in Sleeping Dogs (1977), one of the first New Zealand films to play internationally; in the Australian period drama My Brilliant Career (1979), opposite Judy Davis; and as Damien in the third Omen film, The Final Conflict (1981), filmed in the U.K.

Neill also played a Russian officer in John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October (1990); a captain of a doomed spaceship in Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon (1997); the father of Scarlett Johansson’s character in Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer (1998); and the patriarch of a family with a robot (Robin Williams) in Chris Columbus’ Bicentennial Man (1999).

On television, he portrayed a real-life spy on the 1983 ITV series Reilly: Ace of Spies; the King Arthur magician Merlin in Hallmark miniseries that aired in 1998 and 2006; Cardinal Thomas Wolsey on Showtime’s The Tudors in 2007; the corrupt police inspector Chester Campbell on the BBC’s Peaky Blinders in 2013-14; and a husband whose wife goes missing in Peacock’s Apples Never Fall in 2024.

After starring alongside Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane in the psychological thriller Dead Calm (1989), directed by Australian Phillip Noyce, Neill had quite the year in 1993 with his turns as the cynical paleontologist Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg‘s Jurassic Park and as the cold, cruel frontiersman Alisdair Stewart in The Piano, directed by New Zealander Jane Campion.

And in John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness (1994) — one of his many horror films — Neill played the insurance man John Trent, whose investigation leads him into an insane asylum.

The versatile Neill portrayed heroes and villains with equal aplomb, sparkled in art house and tentpoles alike and had a knack for exploring the shades of gray in his characters. “I’d like to think I’m able to suggest ambiguities and complexities in the people I play, because I think all of us have hidden aspects or contradictory qualities,” he once said.

Nigel John Dermot Neill was born on Sept. 14, 1947, on the kitchen table in the family home in Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, where his father, Dermot, a third-generation New Zealander, was stationed with the Royal Irish Fusiliers as a member of the British Army. His mother, Priscilla, was English.

They moved in 1955 to New Zealand, where his family had a wine and spirits merchant business, and he attended boarding school at Medbury School and Christ’s College in Christchurch. He started calling himself Sam — he liked Westerns, and “Western people were called things like Sam,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This? — and had a stuttering problem.

He got interested in acting while attending the University of Canterbury, then earned a degree in English literature at Victoria University. After graduation, Neill toured for a year doing Shakespeare with the Players’ Drama Quartet and spent six years as a director of shorts and documentaries with the New Zealand National Film Unit.

“The informal agreement there was that you’d make one film for the post office or the railways or the banana company and you’d make one for yourself,” he said in a 2009 interview. “I wanted to make a film about skiing — I love skiing — but I had to dress it up and say that it would be really good for tourism.”

Neill also did a bit of acting, and after he was spotted playing a priest in the short film Ashes (1975), he was cast in the lead as a man on the run from a totalitarian government in Sleeping Dogs (1977), directed by Roger Donaldson. The thriller, the first color film made in New Zealand, helped kickstart the country’s “cinema of unease” movement.

He said he fell in love with Australia while he was portraying Davis’ complicated love interest in Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career (1979), which screened in competition in Cannes and made him realize that he could make a living doing what he loved to do. Around this time, he also recurred as Ben Dawson on the Nine Network period soap opera The Sullivans.

Recommended by James Mason, Neill got to play Damien — the antichrist is now a grown-up U.S. ambassador — in The Final Conflict. Two years later, he was the dashing Russian adventurer turned British secret agent Sidney Reilly on Reilly: Ace of Spies, and he earned a Golden Globe nomination for that.

He would become a favorite in Sweden after starring as the villain Brian de Bois-Guilbert on a 1982 TV adaptation of Ivanhoe that airs on New Year’s Day every year in the country, then starred alongside Meryl Streep for Aussie director Fred Schepisi in Plenty (1985) and Evil Angels (1988), the latter about one of the most controversial legal cases in Australian history.

Neill auditioned for James Bond in The Living Daylights (1987) but said he really didn’t want the part, he explained in a 2021 interview.

“I felt so awkward all that day when we made that thing. It went on and on and on,” he said. “I’m so relieved they offered it to someone else. You really don’t want to be the Bond that no one likes. That’s a fate worse than death.” (Timothy Dalton would play 007 for the first time in that film.)

Neill described Dr. Grant in a 2001 interview as a man who has “tremendous ambivalence. He knows Jurassic Park is a horrible place to be and knows there’s nothing more dangerous than a dinosaur that is not behind bars. But because he lives and breathes dinosaurs, he finds them completely compelling.”

He would return as Grant in Joe Johnston’s Jurassic World III (2001) and Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World Dominion (2022).

He wrote in his memoir that The Piano, winner of the Palme d’Or and three Oscars, was a “lonely” job because Holly Hunter, who portrayed Ada, the wife his character abuses, “was of necessity remote” (not surprising since Alisdair cuts off her finger in the movie). “Happily,” he added, “Jane is a very caring director for her cast and was always there to hug me when I was at my lowest.”

Neill also did lots of work (2002’s Dirty Deeds, 2008’s Dean Spanley, TV’s Old School, etc.) alongside his “brother from another mother,” Aussie actor Bryan Brown.

His film résumé also included Possession (1981), Death in Brunswick (1990), Carpenter’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), Country Life (1994), Restoration (1995), Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997), The Dish (2000), The Zookeeper (2001), Perfect Strangers (2003), Skin (2008), Daybreakers (2009), The Hunter (2011), Taika Waititi‘s Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) and, as a stage actor playing Odin, Thor Ragnarok (2017) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022).

In 1983, Neill bought some acreage in central Otago in New Zealand — this was “always the land of my dreams; this was where we came for holidays when I was a kid,” he said in 2020 — and launched his Two Paddocks vineyard.

“I don’t expect people to take me seriously, but I’m determined that they respect my wine,” he told the London Times in 2014. “A few weeks ago it won a trophy and two gold medals in London. I call that the ‘up yours’ factor.”

He also was a comforting, entertaining presence during the pandemic, when he posted videos of him singing and playing the ukulele on Twitter.

Survivors include his children, Andrew, Tim and Elena, and six grandchildren.

After a long relationship with New Zealand actress Lisa Harrow (they met on The Final Conflict), he was married to Japanese makeup artist Noriko Watanabe (they met on Dead Calm) from 1989 until their 2017 divorce. More recently, he dated Laura Tingle, a political journalist for Australia’s ABC network.

In 2022, a writer for the Sydney Morning Telegraph noted that Neill is the least “celebrity” celebrity there is.

“I do hope I’m not a celebrity because … I think it’s two different jobs,” he said. “You can be an actor — hopefully a very good actor — but it’s another job to be a celebrity, and that’s one you can sign up for or not. And I never signed up for that. I’ve avoided that like the plague.

“The winemaking thing is absolutely half my life and has been immensely rewarding, and it’s very different from everything else that I do. I’m sort of … half-farmer, half-thespian, if you like.”