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Exclusive: Euphoria’s Maude Apatow has set the leads for her feature directorial debut, Poetic License, bringing aboard Andrew Barth Feldman (No Hard Feelings), Cooper Hoffman (Saturday Night), Leslie Mann (This Is 40) and Nico Parker (The Last of Us) for the film penned by Raffi Donatich.

Marking the first produced project for Jewelbox Pictures, Apatow’s recently launched production company with longtime collaborator and friend Olivia Rosenbloom, on which we were first to report, Poetic License follows Liz, a former therapist and soon-to-be empty nester, as she becomes the unexpected point of tension between two inseparable best friends and college seniors, Sam and Ari. Liz is forced to reexamine her life as the boys’ friendship unravels in a fierce competition for her affection.

No word on the roles today’s quartet will be playing. Producers include Jewelbox Pictures, Apatow Productions, and Levantine Films.

Perhaps best known for her role...

The latest quarterly report released Wednesday from FilmLA, Los Angeles’ film permitting office, confirmed the pain production crews have been in this year and signaled that it’s only gotten worse.

Shooting days slipped 5 percent over a three-month period from July to September to 5,048, marking the weakest quarter of 2024, and every category of scripted production lags behind five-year averages on both a per-quarter and year-to-date basis. A bright spot came in the feature film production column, which rose by more than 25 percent last quarter to 476 shooting days. FilmLA stressed that an expansion to California’s film and TV tax credit program is needed to curb the downward trajectory and keep productions in the state. It has been both a rallying cry and source of confusion in the industry for years.

One director who has made more than half of his narrative features in the state, Judd Apatow, recently spoke with...

Iris Apatow has signed with Sugar23 for representation following a highly competitive pursuit.

Next up, Apatow stars alongside Douglas Booth and Alison Pill in Young Werther, an adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Classic The Sorrows of Young Werther for director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço, which premiered at TIFF 2024.

Apatow is currently in production on the upcoming women-led survivalist action thriller Ballerina Overdrive. Apatow stars opposite Uma Thurman, Lana Condor, Millicent Simmonds, and Maddie Ziegler in the 87North and Gulfstream Pictures production.

An in-demand young talent, Apatow’s previous film work includes Judd Apatow’s Netflix film, The Bubble, opposite Karen Gillan, Fred Armisen, Keegan-Michael Key, and Leslie Mann; Sausage Party, This Is 40; Funny People; Knocked Up and the short film Vodka, which debuted at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.

On the series side, Apatow can be see starring alongside Rob Lowe and Sian Clifford in Netflix’s...

Judd Apatow directs, Steven Spielberg produces, as Sony moves ahead with Cola Wars, a movie about Coca Cola and Pepsi’s battle.

Just recently, we covered a report which looked at how Judd Apatow, the one-time king of Hollywood comedies, was struggling to get original projects off the ground. It’s been a few years since Apatow’s period as a director and ‘super-producer’, during which he shepherded lots of popular comedies through the studio system.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony has selected Apatow to direct Cola Wars. It’s a drama that will recount the fierce battle between industry titan Coca Cola and upstart Pepsi in the 1980s.

We first learned of the project back in February, along with the claim that Sony had paid more than a million dollars for a pitch. Not the script mind, just the pitch. Jason Shuman and Ben Queen will be drafting the screenplay.

Progress on Cola Wars is bubbling up, as the Sony Pictures feature has attached Judd Apatow to direct with Steven Spielberg to produce, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

Apatow is set to helm the film that is still in its initial stages of development after the studio bought a pitch for the project earlier this year. Cola Wars is set to focus on the battle for soda supremacy that kicked off in the mid-1980s as Pepsi aimed to challenge Coke’s longtime dominance in the soft drink space.

Jason Shuman and Ben Queen are working on the script. Spielberg is producing Cola Wars through his company Amblin Entertainment, with Maia Eyre overseeing the film for Sony.

Shuman co-created the Apple TV+ series Acapulco and served as an executive producer on the HBO show Winning Time. Queen earned credits for his writing work on the animated sequel The Addams Family 2...

Actress Maude Apatow aka ‘Lexi Howard’ in the HBO TV series “Euphoria”, now shooting Season 3, poses for the new Tory Burch “Animal House” campaign, featuring ‘cat’ photography by Walter Schel:

The daughter of filmmaker Judd Apatow and actress Leslie Mann, Apatow began her career as a child actress…

…playing the daughter of her mother's characters in her father's films including…

“Knocked Up” (2007), “Funny People” (2009), and “This Is 40” (2012).

Later film roles include “Assassination Nation” (2018), “The King of Staten Island” (2020), as well as Netflix miniseries “Hollywood” (2020).

Click the images to enlarge…...

Aubrey Plaza has made a name in the industry for playing unconventional and bizarre characters. She gained widespread appreciation for her role as the quirky April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation. Anyone watching the show for the first time would think that Plaza made April her whole personality. But, it is the other way around as the character was entirely designed for her.

Aubrey Plaza as April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation | Credits: NBC

Parks and Recreation, created by the makers of The Office, heavily contributed to Aubrey Plaza’s career. Interestingly, when she first met with the creators of the sitcom, she was even unaware that it was an audition and went there in jean shorts. Plaza shared that she was acting like a weirdo during the entire meeting.

Aubrey Plaza went through the most unconventional audition for Parks and Recreation Aubrey Plaza with Chris Pratt in Parks and Recreation...

Are ballerina dancers Hollywood’s new hotness? With the John Wick spinoff Ballerina, starring Ana de Armas, pirouetting into theaters next year and the latest indie action film Ballerina Overdrive coming from 87North and Gulfstream Pictures, it could be time for me to slip into a tutu and show my sweet moves to some studios heads. While I will likely keep stretching along a long bar, Uma Thurman is joining the cast of Ballerina Overdrive, an upcoming survivalist action film.

Uma Thurman joins Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Millicent Simmonds, Maddie Ziegler, and Avantika. Previously, Lena Headey, Yara Shahidi, and Isabela Merced were supposed to star in Ballerina Overdrive but have since stepped away.

Vicky Jewson directs Ballerina Overdrive from a script by Kate Freund. The plot revolves around a troupe of ballerinas who find themselves fighting for survival as they attempt to escape from a remote inn after their bus...

This article is part of IndieWire’s 2000s Week celebration. Click here for a whole lot more.

Much like the decade that produced them, the movies of the 2000s were shaped in response to such profound and irrevocable change that it’s difficult to assign them a cohesive identity of their own; it can be tempting to think of them as a long suspension bridge between then and now rather than as a well-defined era unto itself. When the sun rose on the start of the new millennium, the vast majority of films were shot and projected on film, superhero movies were still considered an outlandish gamble, middle-class malaise was American cinema’s preoccupying crisis, and James Cameron was the biggest director on the planet. By the time the smoke cleared 10 years later, digital had pushed celluloid to the brink of extinction, Marvel was beginning to exert an iron grip on the multiplex,...

Chris Wilcha has spent decades in the film industry, yet found his career taking unexpected turns. Starting in his twenties as an ambitious documentarian, he made “The Target Shoots First,” a well-received look at his job in music marketing. But making a living as an independent filmmaker was difficult, so commercial work soon followed. Over the years, Wilcha tried starting other documentary projects but rarely finished them.

In “Flipside,” Wilcha revisits this path with reflection and humor. The film centers around a New Jersey record store where he worked as a teen, Flipside Records, that now struggles to stay relevant. Wilcha’s goal was to document the store’s history as it faced an uncertain future. Yet the film becomes much more, exploring Wilcha’s own journey from those early days with high ideals to his current life with a family and career in television commercials.

We learn of unfinished...

Two of the world’s biggest comedy stars shared a crummy apartment before either of them hit it big. “Adam Sandler was my roommate back before he was on Saturday Night Live,” Judd Apatow once told Howard Stern. “We were just starting out as comics. We lived in the valley in North Hollywood together. We were right at the moment where we were trying to figure out how we were going to break through, and it was just so clear that Adam was a 100,000 times funnier than I was.”

Why was Apatow so convinced about Sandler’s comic abilities? One clue was the prank phone calls that the future Happy Gilmore star would make in their apartment. “Sandler had so much energy to make comedy,” remembered Apatow. “He didn’t know what to do with it. It was just coming out of his ears all day long so he was...

Hulu is giving Shark Week a run for its money this July with not one but seven National Geographic specials dropping on the streaming service at the start of the month. From Shark Beach with Anthony Mackie to Baby Sharks in the City, there are plenty of options for fans of these fearsome finned creatures.

Hulu also has a couple of fun offerings for adult animation fans with the full second season of Marvel’s Hit Monkey dropping on July 15 and Futurama returning for its 12th season on July 29th.

There’s not really anything notable in the way of original movies on Hulu this month, but Aliens, Step Brothers, and (500) Days of Summer are just a few of the noteworthy movies joining the library.

Here’s everything that’s coming to (and leaving) Hulu in July.

Hulu New Releases – July 2024

July 1

Attack of the Red Sea Sharks: Special Premiere...

In “Flipside,” documentary filmmaker Chris Wilcha grapples with personal regrets and middle age through the lens of the documentary projects he started but never finished. The 96-minute doc, which premiered last year at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival, looks at those abandoned ideas including one about television writer David Milch and his connection to jazz photographer Herman Leonard; a passion project on the New Jersey record store where Wilcha worked as a teenager and a look at radio host Ira Glass’ attempts to make a musical.

Writer/director Judd Apatow executive produced “Flipside.” Apatow met Wilcha in 2009 when he hired him to make a behind-the-scenes movie about the making of “Funny People.” Wilcha moved his family of four from New York to Los Angeles to work on the project with the idea that he would become a successful documentary filmmaker. But when that career didn’t take off, Wilcha began a lucrative career making commercials.

Image: Oscilloscope Laboratories You don’t have to be of a certain age to appreciate everything Chris Wilcha sets out to do in his new documentary Flipside, but it certainly helps. The way this project speaks to the Gen X experience, especially if you’ve ever thought of yourself as an artist,...

Image: Oscilloscope Laboratories

You don’t have to be of a certain age to appreciate everything Chris Wilcha sets out to do in his new documentary Flipside, but it certainly helps. The way this project speaks to the Gen X experience, especially if you’ve ever thought of yourself as an artist,...

Fifteen years ago, writer/director Judd Apatow hired documentary filmmaker Chris Wilcha to film a behind-the-scenes movie about the making of “Funny People” and changed Wilcha’s life forever when the documentarian moved from New York to Los Angeles to work on the project. After he was done with the shoot, Wilcha had a hard time finding documentary work and ultimately settled into a life of directing commercials, returning to his first love of non-fiction filmmaking only sporadically as he accumulated hard drive after hard drive of footage from unfinished projects. Apatow was stunned to learn what an effect he had had on Wilcha’s life. “I didn’t even know that he moved to L.A. for the job,” Apatow told IndieWire, “and that his mom has been mad at me for decades.”

The unexpected connections between people and the unknown ways in which they affect each other are...

Exclusive: WME has signed Judd Apatow, the prolific hyphenate responsible for a ton of comedy box office and the launch of many stars and filmmakers in that space.

As Deadline exclusively revealed, Apatow ended a 30-year relationship with UTA, and took meetings with the other majors before deciding his next chapter will be with WME. It’s a coup for the agency, which recently signed Kevin Hart and Ben Stiller.

Apatow remains managed by Mosaic’s Jimmy Miller and lawyered by Ziffrin Brittenham. Apatow’s successes in the comedy space range from Freaks and Geeks and the HBO series Girls to films like Talladega Nights, The 40-Year Old Virgin, Trainwreck, the Anchorman films, Bridesmaids, Step Brothers, Superbad, Knocked Up, Begin Again, Funny People, The Big Sick, The King of Staten Island, Bros, Pineapple Express and so many others. Among the star careers empowered by Apatow include Seth Rogen, Lena Dunham,...

Adam Sandler has gone pseudo-serious before, from a mentally agitated toilet plunger salesman in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love” to a depressed comic in Judd Apatow’s “Funny People.” But he’s never been so dour as cosmonaut Jakub Prochazka in Johan Renck’s lonely island of a science-fiction drama, “Spaceman,” where he’s six months into a solitary research mission investigating spectral cloud activity around the planet Jupiter.

Sci-fi cinephiles are certainly familiar with the cinematic wonderments capable of the gas giant, thanks to Stanley Kubrick’s Stargate sequence in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which sends Keir Dullea on an existential trip into Jupiter’s furthest depths. But Renck’s film, written by Colby Day, is too concerned with the far more banal Earthly dramas Jakub has left behind in the form of his wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan), who is preparing to leave him. “Spaceman” is a miserable...

Maude Apatow is a name that has been buzzing around Hollywood in recent years. Despite being only 23 years old, she has already made quite a name for herself as an actress, writer, and producer. But who is Maude Apatow, really? In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at her career, her background, and what makes her such an exceptional talent.

Maude Apatow was born on December 15th, 1997, in Los Banos, California. Her parents are Judd Apatow, a well-known director and producer, and Leslie Mann, a highly respected actress. It’s no surprise that Maude grew up in the entertainment industry, surrounded by talented individuals who helped to foster her creativity and drive.

When Maude was just 8 years old, she made her big-screen debut in her father’s hit film, Knocked Up. From there, she went on to appear in several other movies, including Funny People and This is 40.

Seth Rogen is swapping the film lot for the pottery studio.

The Dumb Money star has been set as a guest judge and executive producer on The Great Canadian Pottery Throw Down on CBC. Schitt’s Creek star Jennifer Robertson has been named host of the CBC and CBC Gem series, which is set to launch in winter 2024.

The series, based on the UK format The Great Pottery Throw Down from Bake Off indie Love Productions, will see 10 amateur potters take on challenges to create beautiful pieces. Each episode will consist of two creative challenges that test their skill and technique, with one eliminated each week.

It was first unveiled in June as part of CBC’s 2023-24 slate announcement, and was filmed this summer at a studio on Vancouver’s Granville Island under the jurisdiction of Actra in Canada. In the U.S., unscripted shows are covered under the SAG-AFTRA Network Television Code Agreement,...

The Road Dog is a comedy-drama film directed by Greg Glienna, who also co-wrote the film with Tony Boswell. The film revolves around an alcoholic standup comedian who gets a new lease on life when he tries to get to know his son, whom he didn’t even know existed. The Road Dog stars Doug Stanhope in the lead role with Khrystyne Haje, Greg Fitzsimmons, and Tim Kazurinsky starring in supporting roles. So, if you liked The Road Dog here are some similar movies you could watch next.

Standing Up, Falling Down (Prime Video & Hulu) Credit – Shout! Studios

Synopsis: A struggling stand-up comedian (Ben Schwartz) moves back home to Long Island with his tail tucked between his legs and strikes up an unlikely friendship with his eccentric dermatologist (Billy Crystal).

Funny People (Hulu & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Universal Pictures

Synopsis: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen and Leslie Mann star in...

It’s the most spookiest time of the year, and you’ll find a smorgasbord of creepy content on the Hulu streaming service in October! Not only has the streamer secured recent theatrical releases like Cobweb and Slotherhouse for you, but Huluween is here again to make sure things go bump in the night.

Huluween highlights this year include the first season of Living for the Dead, which comes from the creators of Netflix’s popular Queer Eye. Join five queer ghost hunters – Alex Le May, Juju Bae, Ken Boggle, Logan Taylor and Roz Hernandez – as they travel to a range of the world’s most haunted locations in an attempt to help the living by healing the dead.

Hulu will also premiere Monster Inside: America’s Most Extreme Haunted House from director Andrew Renzi. The new documentary follows the story of “Navy Veteran turned master of horror” Russ McKamey. His home,...

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for Hulu! Oct. 1 kicks off the streamer’s annual Huluween offerings with dozens of spine-tingling series and films added to the platform, from horror classics like Stephen King’s “It” to new Hulu Originals like “Appendage.”

If you on the squeamish side, Hulu hasn’t forgotten you and will be adding dozens more titles this month and streaming major season premieres the day after they air, including new season of “The Simpsons,” “Bob's Burgers,” and more.

30-Day Free Trial $7.99+ / month hulu.com What are the 5 Best Shows and Movies Coming to Hulu in October 2023? “Appendage” | Monday, Oct. 2

Hulu’s latest original horror film “Appendage” joins the platform on Oct. 2 after its SXSW debut earlier this year. In it, Hannah, a young fashion designer who seems fine on the surface but secretly struggles with debilitating self-doubt begins to see her health decline...

Shabadoo! Adam Sandler has got a new North American tour that is scheduled to launch next month in Vancouver, British Columbia, and wrap up on Dec. 12 in Denver.

The huge 25-city tour has been dubbed “The I Missed You Tour” and will follow his sold-out “Adam Sandler Live” shows from earlier this year. They also promise an as-yet-disclosed special guest.

Ready to see the Sandman Irl?

Sandler, of course, was a “Saturday Night Live” cast member from 1990 to 1995, creating a host of characters that were both whimsical but also a little threatening and gave even the softest scenario some unexpected edge. In the years after “SNL,” he became a huge actor, first starring in some lowbrow comedies like “Billy Madison” and “Happy Gilmore” and then diversifying his portfolio by starring in acclaimed dramas like “Punch-Drunk Love,” “Funny People,” “Uncut Gems” and, most recently, the excellent “Hustle.” He’s also starred...

It’s easy to measure your life in accomplishments, to look at the accumulation of honors and accolades, of personal and professional victories, and to say, “This accumulation represents empirical success.”

It’s harder to measure your life not necessarily in failures but in potentials left unfulfilled, in half-completed tasks or the stashed items left unused, and to say, “Despite or perhaps even because of this, there is still success.”

Chris Wilcha’s new documentary, Flipside, takes on the second challenge to deliver an autobiographical portrait of how a life seemingly of disappointments and failures can be a life well lived. Glimpse Flipside in the wrong moment or from the wrong angle and it can feel a little solipsistic, albeit in a way that will be relatable to many viewers. But taken in totality and with some reflection, it’s a borderline-profound and philosophical expression of satisfaction with everything that is unfinished in life.

If you go by the title, which comes from the name of a New Jersey record store, and you look at the main photo, which pictures the outside of that store, you might think that you know what the documentary “Flipside” is.

But within the first 20 minutes of the film, which opened on Sunday at the Toronto International Film Festival, you will have heard about an aging jazz photographer, the Columbia Record Club, “This American Life” and Judd Apatow’s “Funny People.” And you’ll know that this is not the movie you thought it would be.

Instead, Chris Wilcha’s “Flipside” is a doc assembled out of loose ends and false starts, a jumble that can be maddening until suddenly it’s moving, thanks at least partly to David Bowie. It’s confounding and self-centered but damn it if it doesn’t work.

The opening stretches of the movie...

There is no surprise twist in Chris Wilcha’s Flipside, a documentary making its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. This is not a true-crime doc or a story of unearthed family secrets. (Although there is lots of ephemera excavated after years of quasi-hoarding.) Instead of a twist, though, there is an audience awakening, one that takes a rather standard there-are-places-i-remember doc into surprisingly resonant territory. Ultimately, Flipside is a moving, funny, inventive film that may cause viewers to follow Wilcha’s lead and ask tough questions about their own lives. That is no small feat for a documentarian.

Of course, Wilcha is no novice. His first success, 1999’s The Target Shoots First, brought him rave reviews and modest fame. Wilcha shot it while working at Columbia House Records––yes, the “8 CDs for a penny” mail-order service many remember with great fondness. In Flipside, Wilcha shows the viewer his early-20s self,...

RZA spoke about his Problemista director and castmate Julio Torres in his exclusive uInterview.

RZA spoke about the meaning of the odd film title.

“Well, by the end of the day, we all got a lot of problems,” RZA told uInterview at SXSW in Austin, Texas. “You better try to solve them, you know what I mean. And don’t be that mouse going through that maze and not figuring your way out. Take that.”

He believes that Torres has his problems figured out.

“Julio got it packed down y’all, he got it down,” he said flatly.

RZA stars as the husband of Elizabeth, played by Tilda Swinton, who is an artist who has passed away.

Torres plays Alejandro, the main character, who is an aspiring toy designer who goes on a journey trying to figure out how to stay in the United States when his visa expires. He...

Aubrey Plaza, the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is a top young actress and producer who is enjoying the biggest year of her career — indeed, in late 2022, she starred in and produced John Patton Ford’s acclaimed indie film Emily the Criminal and gave a standout supporting turn on the second season of Mike White’s popular HBO drama series The White Lotus; and in early 2023, she hosted Saturday Night Live, garnering widespread praise.

Since bursting onto the scene about 15 years ago in comedies on screens big and small — most notably on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, on which she played the key supporting part of April Ludgate, an apathetic intern, for seven seasons spanning 2009 through 2015 — Plaza has, in the words of the New York Times, “continually reinvented herself,” and, per the Los Angeles Times, “emerged as a performer of surprising depth and range,...

The Gabrielle Union-starring rom-com The Perfect Find and new seasons of deceptive baking sensation Is It Cake? and The Witcher, marking the beginning of the end of Henry Cavill’s starring run, are some of the much-anticipated titles still set to come to Netflix this month.

In The Perfect Find, Union plays a fashion editor who, after a public breakup and career implosion, starts working for her former rival Darcy Hill (Gina Torres) and catches the eye of a younger videographer (Keith Powers), who happens to be the boss’ son. As a romance blossoms, Union’s character begins to question what she really wants from the next phase of her life. The film, directed by Numa Perrier, is based on Tia Williams’ award-winning novel of the same name and also stars Janet Hubert, D.B. Woodside, Aisha Hinds, La La Anthony and others.

More deceptive desserts are on the menu...

As we creep towards summer, Netflix has a hot new list of fresh content, including the final season of “Never Have I Ever,” the sophomore season of ‘Human Resources” and the highly anticipated sixth season of “Black Mirror.”

Kicking off the start of the month on mega streamer are lots of family-friendly goodies like both “Nanny McPhee” and “Nanny McPhee Returns,” “Kicking and Screaming,” “Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius” and the “Angry Birds Movie.” But the adults won’t be left out of the conversation, as more mature flicks and series like “Jarhead,” “Funny People” and “We’re the Millers” are also hitting the platform this month.

And it wouldn’t be Netflix without its originals. “Take Care of Maya,” “Extraction 2” and the Sarah Snook-led “Run Rabit Run” will land on the site in June. And even if this isn’t enough to get you watching, Netflix will be streaming its Tudum festival on Saturday,...

Once upon a time, "The Fighter" might have starred ... Eminem? Development on the film began in 2003, while Eminem was fresh off his lead role in "8 Mile," which won an Oscar that year for Best Original Song with "Lose Yourself." He had also achieved success the year before with "The Eminem Show," which won the Grammy for Best Rap Album and was the world's bestselling album of 2002. As he racked up the #1 album, song, and movie virtually simultaneously, Hollywood wanted to continue riding that success and working with Eminem. And it seems he was looking to channel his own inner Rocky, too.

In an appearance on the Hollywood Gold podcast in February 2023 (via The Hollywood Reporter), producer Todd Lieberman discussed the film's seven-year road to the big screen. During that time, it would change hands from director Darren Aronofsky to David O. Russell and stars Matt Damon and Brad Pitt...

Netflix gained a new competitor last month (sort of) when HBO Max and Discovery+ combined forces to create the confusingly-named Max. With its list of new releases for June 2023, however, Netflix doesn’t have too much to worry about.

This month is filled with some major Netflix original titles, not the least of which is The Witcher season 3 volume 1 on June 29. Though star Henry Cavill is set to leave the Polish folklore/video game adaptation in season 4, he remains very much entrenched as the titular Witcher in this next go-around. Other big TV hits include Manifest season 4 part 2 (June 2), Big Mouth spinoff Human Resources season 2 (June 9), and animated King Kong series Skull Island (June 22). That’s not even to mention the return of Black Mirror season 6. That still has yet to receive a release date but we have no doubt it will be properly epic once it arrives.

Netflix’s...

One of the most anticipated titles coming to Netflix in June is “Extraction 2,” a sequel to the 2020 action thriller starring Chris Hemsworth. After being presumed dead following a massive battle in Bangladesh, Tyler Rake is back and ready to embark on another dangerous mission The film streams June 16.

Watch the trailer for “Extraction 2”:

The wacky animated film “Nimona” also arrives on the world’s largest streamer next month. The movie follows a shapeshifter sidekick to the villain Lord Blackheart. After his boss gets in trouble with Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin, who is charged with keeping the peace in a futuristic fantasy kingdom, Nimona has to become a new kind of hero for a new kind of fairy tale. The film arrives June 30 on Netflix.

Check out the trailer for “Nimona”:

Premiering in June — on a date to be announced — is the sixth season of the sci-fi dystopian technology anthology series “Black Mirror.

“Good Fortune” has encountered some bad luck. Writer-director Aziz Ansari’s original comic feature, starring himself, Keanu Reeves and Seth Rogen, has shut down production amid the ongoing Writers Guild Association strike. Lionsgate made the call Thursday, and all parties are hoping that production will resume at a later date.

According to sources familiar with the film, who also confirmed the shutdown, the production had been operating according to strike rules, with Ansari directing but not writing any additional material or scenes. Picketers previously interrupted production on May 16 and May 17 while it attempted to shoot in Koreatown. While several films have been delayed due to the strike, most notably Marvel’s “Blade,” Lionsgate’s “Good Fortune” is the first studio theatrical that was halted midfilming.

Ansari is a seven-time Emmy nominee and two-time winner for Netflix’s acclaimed “Master of None,” which he created alongside Alan Yang. Best known for...

Leslie Mann and Iris Apatow turned the 2024 Chanel cruise show into a mother-daughter date night. On May 9, Mann and Apatow attended the fashion brand's latest resortwear presentation in Los Angeles, wearing Chanel outfits and matching red lipstick for the occasion. Standing side by side on the red carpet, the duo looked almost identical in their coordinated ensembles. Like Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson or Reese Witherspoon and Ava Phillippe, Mann and Apatow's lookalike status is worthy of a double take.

As they modeled for the camera, the duo also struck similar poses, highlighting their uncanny resemblance. Even with invisible eyebrows, Apatow was undeniably her mother's doppelgänger. For years, the comparisons have poured in, following the stars across every joint red carpet appearance. Still, time continues to reveal even more striking similarities between the mother-daughter duo, including a shared appreciation for designer fashion, apparently.

In 2022, Mann and Apatow appeared in their most recent film collaboration,...

Lionsgate will release Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut, an original comedy titled “Good Fortune” that will star Ansari alongside Keanu Reeves and Seth Rogen.

Plot details are currently secret, but the film has been greenlit with principal photography beginning next month in Los Angeles. Along with starring in the film and producing it, Ansari will produce alongside Anthony Katagas and Alan Young.

Lionsgate will launch overseas sales at the Cannes Film Festival.

Lionsgate Film Group co-chair Joe Drake remarked: “We have indeed found good fortune with this film. We love the script and believe strongly in Aziz as both a performer and a director. And when you add in Seth and Keanu – two incredible world-class talents — toplining alongside Aziz, this has the potential to be a very special film for us. We moved quickly to land this project once it was available.”

At Lionsgate, the film will be overseen by Brady Fujikawa and Jon Humphrey.

Freaks and Geeks barely lasted one season. But the majority of the Freaks and Geeks cast was a close-knit crew that worked hard. Maybe it was their naivete or youth, but the ensemble cast was really something special to watch.

Jason Segel said the cast constantly worked on their lines. They found ways to improve their characters, even during their time off.

How ‘Freaks and Geeks’ went from a canceled show to a cult following

Freaks and Geeks was a teen dramedy that first aired in 1999. The show followed a pair of siblings as they navigated the social scene of their high school back in the early 1980s.

The show was canceled after only airing 12 episodes. But it drew a tremendous cult following and was the springboard from which many successful actors got their start.

It was created by Paul Feig and produced by Judd Apatow. The latter would go...

While some may be bewildered at the decision to honor a sweatpants-wearing hooligan like Adam Sandler with an award as prestigious as the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, you would be hard-pressed to argue that he didn’t deserve it. The comedian, actor, writer, producer, and musician has more than 80 movies and seven albums under his belt. His work has grossed more than $4 billion — and he is beloved by everyone from your grandma to your nephew. And like every Sandler movie that’s ever been panned by critics and cheered by audiences, the 2023 Mark Twain Prize ceremony at the Kennedy Center in D.C. on Sunday night felt like it might have just been an excuse for a giant reunion for the popular comedian’s goofball-cum-genius friends.

The tenor of the evening felt even less formal than past years’ events and more like the audience was given a six-pack...

Hey, "Jimmy Kimmel Live" fans. Tonight, January 3, 2023 is the big night that Jimmy Kimmel Live finally returns with a brand new episode for its new 2023 season. It had taken a break for the holidays, but the holidays are now over. So, it's time for Jimmy Kimmel Live to get some new content up, and that's exactly what they're going to do. We've got a little preview of what you guys can expect to see in tonight's brand new episode. At some point, Jimmy Kimmel will have a chit chat session with actor Seth Rogen. He's been involved in such productions as Neighbors, The League, 22 Jump Street, Arrested Development, Superbad, The Mindy Project, Funny People, The Boys, Pineapple Express. The list goes on and on. You guys can get his full resume over on IMDb by Clicking Here. Seth is currently the executive producer for the TV series "Invincible." We...

A Lydia Tár-Adam Sandler mash-up? Not quite.

Todd Field said that while he has been in casual talks with Adam Sandler about one day collaborating on a project, odds are it will not be a classic Sandler comedy. Instead, Field pointed to Sandler’s dramatic turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Punch-Drunk Love” as his personal favorite performance from the “Uncut Gems” actor. Anderson wrote the role for Sandler, and he earned a Golden Globe nomination.

“The first film of Adam’s I ever saw was Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Punch Drunk Love,'” Field said during the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast. “It floored me. It really is one of the great screen performances — for me — of all time, and obviously, the stuff he has done with the Safdies is amazing, and as you mentioned, the stuff he did with James L. Brooks and Noah Baumbach. He has an incredible...

Quentin Tarantino has explained how he wrote an Inglorious Basterds role for Adam Sandler.

The 2009 film follows a group of Jewish soldiers on an undercover mission to bring down Hitler and the Nazi government.

Inglourious Basterds starred starred Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent and Eli Roth. Roth played Sgt Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz.

In a new interview on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, as per Collider, on which Judd Apataow was also a guest, Tarantino spoke about the fact he had originally written the part of Donowitz for Sandler.

Tarantino said that he met Apatow when he filmed a cameo for his 2000 film Little Nicky, which also starred Sandler.

Apatow said: “I feel bad because when I did Funny People with Sandler, I wasn’t aware that that was the exact time you were trying to use him for Inglorious Basterds.”

Tarantino said that while he had...

Quentin Tarantino is revealing that he wrote a role specifically for Adam Sandler for Inglorious Basterds but the comedic actor ultimately declined as he was already filming Judd Apatow’s Funny People.

Sgt. Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz that was played by Eli Roth in the 2009 war film was written for Sandler, Tarantino confirmed. The filmmaker made an appearance on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, where Apatow was also a guest, and dropped the fact.

Tarantino said that he had met Apatow during the time he filmed the cameo in Little Nicky, in which Sandler starred in.

“I feel bad because when I did Funny People with Sandler, I wasn’t aware that that was the exact time you were trying to use him for Inglorious Basterds,” Apatow said (via Collider).

Ultimately, despite Tarantino wanting Sandler to be in Inglorious Basterds, he said that Sandler doing Funny People was a better fit

“Obviously,...

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino confirmed a long-standing rumour regarding Adam Sandler and ‘Inglourious Basterds’ during his latest appearance on Bill Maher’s ‘Club Random’ podcast.

Joined by host Maher and co-interviewee Judd Apatow, Tarantino finally went on record saying he wrote the role of Sergeant Donny ‘The Bear Jew’ Donowitz for Sandler, reports Variety.

Apatow had already locked Sandler in to filming ‘Funny People’, which, however, means that Tarantino’s Sandler dream never got realised.

“(Judd and I) met each other through Adam Sandler during the time that I did ‘Little Nicky,'” said Tarantino, referring to his cameo in Sandler’s 2000 comedy.

“I was like hanging out with that crew for a while. We went to a bunch of different things together. But also ‘Freaks and Geeks’ had just went off the air or it was on its way to go off the air and I had missed it, but...

Quentin Tarantino just confirmed the long-time rumour involving his 2009 war-drama “Inglourious Basterds” and Adam Sandler.

During the director’s latest appearance on Bill Maher’s podcast “Club Random”, he admitted that the role of Sergeant Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz was written for Sandler.

However, at the time, Judd Apatow, who also appeared on the podcast as a fellow interviewee, had already gotten Sandler to star in his ’09 comedy-drama “Funny People” a year and a half before the film began production.

Read More: Adam Sandler To Get 2023 Mark Twain Prize

“[Judd and I] met each other through Adam Sandler during the time that I did ‘Little Nicky,’” Tarantino told host Maher, referring to his cameo in the 2000 rom-com which Sandler starred in. “I was like hanging out with that crew for a while. We went to a bunch of different things together. But also ‘Freaks and Geeks’ had just went off the air...

When Quentin Tarantino first announced he was working on a "men on a mission" World War II movie called "Inglorious Bastards" (no one knew he would intentionally misspell the title at the time), the internet went into fan casting overdrive. What would a 2000s version of Robert Aldrich's "The Dirty Dozen" directed by Tarantino look like? Is Bruce Willis in the Lee Marvin role? Robert Forster as Robert Ryan? Some athlete-turned-actor (Mike Tyson?) taking up Jim Brown's mantle?

As we've learned is often the case with Tarantino, the vaguely pitched project never lands anywhere close to fan expectations. Once the two-time Academy Award winner sits down to bang out the screenplay, it takes on a convention-bending life of its own. Tarantino may adore "The Dirty Dozen", but there will be no fan service. You're not going to get what you want.

Nor will Tarantino. At least not when...

Adam Sandler almost cut his teeth as a Nazi hunter in Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning “Inglourious Basterds.”

The “Uncut Gems” star was the muse for the “Basterds” character of Sergeant Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz, as writer-director Tarantino confirmed during Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast with co-host Judd Apatow. However, Sandler was already committed to Apatow’s 2009 film “Funny People” by the time “Inglourious Basterds” went into production.

Tarantino had co-starred opposite Sandler in 2000 comedy “Little Nicky” and was inspired by his time with Sandler on set.

“[Judd and I ] met each other through Adam Sandler during the time that I did ‘Little Nicky,'” Tarantino said (via Variety). “I was like hanging out with that crew for a while. We went to a bunch of different things together. But also ‘Freaks and Geeks’ had just went off the air or it was on its way to go off the air and I had missed it,...

Eli Roth’s Sgt. Donny Donowitz, nicknamed the Bear Jew for notoriously smashing German soldiers in the head with a baseball bat, is a fan-favorite character from Quentin Tarantino‘s sixth film, Inglorious Basterds. However, while Roth’s performance lives in infamy among Tarantino’s rabid fanbase, the director recently revealed he wrote the part of the Bear Jew for Adam Sandler. I understand if you need a moment to let that sink in. I’ll wait.

Are you good? Okay, let’s press on, then. Speaking on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, Tarantino told Maher and his co-interviewee Judd Apatow that he wanted Sandler to play the Bear Jew in his violent Nazi-hunting war film. Unfortunately (in more ways than one), Sandler already signed on to play George Simmons in Apatow’s 2009 comedy Funny People.

“[Judd and I ] met each other through Adam Sandler during the time that I did ‘Little Nicky,...

Quentin Tarantino confirmed a long-standing rumor regarding Adam Sandler and “Inglourious Basterds” during his latest appearance on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast. Joined by host Maher and co-interviewee Judd Apatow, Tarantino finally went on record saying he wrote the role of Sergeant Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz for Sandler. Apatow had already locked Sandler in to filming “Funny People,” however, which means Tarantino’s Sandler dream never got realized.

“[Judd and I ] met each other through Adam Sandler during the time that I did ‘Little Nicky,'” said Tarantino, referring to his cameo in Sandler’s 2000 comedy. “I was like hanging out with that crew for a while. We went to a bunch of different things together. But also ‘Freaks and Geeks’ had just went off the air or it was on its way to go off the air and I had missed it, but that whole ‘Happy Madison’ crowd was like crazy for it.

Adam Sandler treated a delighted Gotham Awards audience Monday night with a rollicking stand-up session, thanking the org for a Performers Tribute after a long career with two guiding principles, “that people in prison need movies too, and TBS needs content to show between all those basketball games.”

He claimed the speech was written by his two teenage daughters, who were upset he hadn’t prepared one. He said he promised them he would, and he did by delivering it in a goofy Southern accent. “Thank you for givin’ our daddy, Mr. Adam Sandler, this prestigious lifetime, all-time prime time achievement tribute award. It means a lot to him, seeing as most of his awards are shaped like popcorn buckets or fake mini-Oscars that say ‘Father of the Year’, which he sadly purchased himself.”

He said his daughters wanted to come to the ceremony but he refused, telling them: “I...