| | | | | | What's news: Steve Carell will headline a new HBO comedy series from Bill Lawrence. Vogue's Met Gala livestream had 74m views. Ali Abbasi's young Trump film The Apprentice scored an 8-minute standing ovation in Cannes. Diddy's music streaming numbers have collapsed after a spate of assault claims. — Abid Rahman
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Johansson Slams OpenAI Over Chatbot Voice ►"I was shocked, angered and in disbelief." Scarlett Johansson has slammed OpenAI after the generative artificial intelligence startup used a voice suspiciously resembling her own in its new ChatGPT product. The actor said in a statement released on Monday that she was approached by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman nine months ago to voice its AI system but declined for "personal reasons." She added that she was shocked when she heard the ChatGPT voice option "Sky" which "sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference." The story.
—"As a human rights lawyer, I will never accept that one child’s life has less value than another’s." Amal Clooney is among the group of U.K.-based lawyers who expressed their support for International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan’s decision to request a warrant for the arrest of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders. In a statement shared on the site for the Clooney Foundation for Justice, Clooney wrote that she served on this panel because she believes "in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives." The story.
—"UTA broke its own arbitration agreement." Ahead of an expected appearance at Cannes Lions next month, Michael Kassan has prevailed in his bid to move to arbitration a lawsuit from UTA looking to block him from setting up a new venture after his messy exit from the agency. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kerry Bensinger, in an order issued on Thursday, found that Kassan and UTA “did not exempt from arbitration” a claim that the company filed asserting that he’s barred from competing with MediaLink or from soliciting its employees and clients. The story.
—Collapse. Streaming activity for Sean “Diddy” Combs has dipped significantly since allegations of sexual assault were made against the scandal-plagued mogul. When comparing Combs’ U.S. catalog streams during the first week of December — two weeks after Cassie Ventura sued him — with streams of his catalog during the week ending May 16, there was a 51.8 percent decrease for songs under his stage name Diddy from 2,624,000 streams to 1,265,000 streams, according to Luminate, which tracks music streams and sales. The story.
—New email claim. Fiona Harvey, the woman purported to be the “real-life” Martha from the hit Netflix show Baby Reindeer, reportedly sent the U.K.’s Labour Party leader Keir Starmer 276 emails in less than eight months. According to local reports, Harvey sent emails to Starmer between January and August 2020 in which she called the politician a "stupid little boy" and a "useless barrister." Before his time as a member of British parliament, Starmer worked as a human rights lawyer. The story. |
'Yellowstone' Starts Production on Final S5 Episodes ►Finally. Paramount Network announced Monday that Yellowstone has resumed production. Filming on the Western hit’s fifth and final season episodes has gotten underway in Montana. While start of production was later than previously thought, MTV Entertainment Studios and 101 Studios still expect the drama to return in November, as previously announced last year. There was no update on the show’s cast — or whether star Kevin Costner will make an appearance in the final episodes that are expected to wrap the series. The story.
—Heading to HBO. Steve Carell will lead the cast of an untitled single-camera comedy from Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses (Scrubs). HBO has handed out a straight-to-series order of 10 episodes for the series, which had been the focus of a multiple-platform bidding war. The comedy is set on a college campus and centers on an author’s complicated relationship with his daughter. Lawrence and Tarses will write the first episode. The story.
—Traffic monster. The Met Gala has become a formidable event franchise for Condé Nast's Vogue. Condé Nast says that the Met Gala livestream had 74m views across its owned platforms (i.e. Vogue.com) as well as on YouTube and TikTok, up 30 percent from a year ago. And it had 2.1b total video views in its first seven days across all video content made for the Met Gala, including livestream, replays, clips on its owned-and-operated platforms, social and YouTube, up 73 percent from last year. The story. |
'Super/Man' Set for Special Release ►📅 Mark it down 📅 DC Studios and Fathom Events are partnering to give Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story a special theatrical release. The film, which DC Studios, HBO Documentary Films and CNN Films acquired out of the Sundance Film Festival this year, will debut in cinemas across the U.S. on Sept. 21, 2024. An encore presentation will follow on Sept. 25, the Superman actor’s birthday. The story.
—📅 Dated 📅 Lionsgate announced theatrical release dates for upcoming titles starring Mark Wahlberg, Dave Bautista and Gerard Butler. Wahlberg's Flight Risk, directed by Mel Gibson, hits theaters Oct. 18. Bautista's action-comedy movie The Killer’s Game is set to hit theaters Sept. 13. And Butler's Den of Thieves: Pantera opens on Jan. 10, 2025. The story.
—All in. Lifetime is bolstering its roster of “Ripped From the Headlines” movies for the summer. The cable network will air a pair of true-crime movies in July: Amish Affair is set to premiere on July 6, and Sister Wife Murder will follow a week later. They join a summer lineup that also includes June premieres for The Girl Locked Upstairs: The Tanya Kach Story; Gaslit by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story; Yoga Teacher Killer: The Kaitlin Armstrong Story; Danger in the Dorm; Devil on Campus: The Larry Ray Story; and The Killer Inside: The Ruth Finley Story. The story. |
Cannes Halftime Report Card ►"I could see the jury presenting the best actress prize to [Karla Sofia Gascón]." As the Cannes Film Festival trundles on into its second week, THR's executive editor of awards Scott Feinberg weighs in on the potential awards recognition for The Substance, Emilia Perez, Bird and many other titles that have caused a stir on the Croisette. The analysis.
—8-minutes! One of the most anticipated moments of the 77th Cannes Film Festival finally arrived Monday night with the world premiere of the Donald Trump drama The Apprentice, starring Sebastian Stan as a young version of the real estate mogul in his pre-MAGA days. At the film's end, the festival crowd enthusiastically cheered and clapped, staying on their feet for nearly eight minutes. The story.
—"Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people, they don’t talk about his success rate." Filmmaker Ali Abbasi has responded to the Trump campaign’s threat to sue over his movie The Apprentice. Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Abbasi acknowledged Trump’s likely assumptions around the movie, saying, “If I was him, I would be sitting in New Jersey, Florida or wherever he is now — or New York — and I would be thinking, 'Oh, this crazy Iranian guy and some, like, liberal c**** in Cannes, they gathered, and they did this movie, and it’s fucked up.'" The story.
—3.5-minutes! The Cannes audience gave a respectful embrace to David Cronenberg's chilly drama The Shrouds, the latest from the Canadian king of horror. Cronenberg joined castmembers Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt and Elizabeth Saunders to hit the Croisette for the film’s premiere Monday. The story.
—"I felt I can’t let this die." Cronenberg opened up on putting his film The Shrouds to Netflix executives as a television series, who greenlit writing a first episode before rejecting the director’s project. Cronenberg spoke at Cannes’ press conference for the film on Tuesday, explaining how he envisioned the story working well as a series. He flew to Los Angeles to speak with two Netflix execs who financed the writing of a first episode – which they loved. But after the second, they did not want to go any further. The story. |
Film Review: 'The Apprentice' ►"The art of the heel." THR's chief film critic David Rooney reviews Ali Abbasi's Cannes competition entry The Apprentice. Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova and Martin Donovan star in the Holy Spider filmmaker's detailed chronicle of Donald Trump's rise in the 1970s and ‘80s under the tutelage of cutthroat lawyer Roy Cohn. The review.
—"In dire need of narrative streamlining." David reviews Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One. The director stars alongside Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jena Malone and Luke Wilson in the opener of a quartet of epic films about the settlement of the American West. The review.
—"Equal parts captivating and frustrating." David reviews Sophie Dupuis' Solo. Théodore Pellerin and Félix Maritaud stars in writer-director Dupuis’ melodrama set against the backdrop of the Montreal drag scene. The review. |
Film Review: 'Rumours' ►"The last laugh before it all burns down." THR's Leslie Felperin reviews Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson's Rumours. Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander play clueless world leaders ast the Canadian directors satirize the ineffectual meagerness of global summits and draft resolutions in their Cannes-premiering romp. The review.
—"Grade-C Cronenberg." Leslie reviews David Cronenberg's Cannes competition entry The Shrouds. Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger star in the Canadian auteur's latest Cannes competition entry is about a widower businessman who invents a device that allows him to monitor his dead wife. The review.
—"A bit of a lemon." Leslie reviews Kirill Serebrennikov's Cannes competition entry Limonov: The Ballad. The Cannes regular returns with his first English-language (but heavily Russian-accented) effort, about poet-punk-prisoner-gadfly-neo-Fascist Eduard Limonov starring Ben Whishaw. The review.
—"Everything but the kitchen sink, and not all of it sticks." Leslie reviews Noemie Merlant's The Balconettes. Souheila Yacoub, Sanda Codreanu and Lucas Bravo co-star alongside the director in a movie whose script had collaborative input from Portrait of a Lady on Fire filmmaker Céline Sciamma. The review.
—"Dynamic and eloquent." THR's Sheri Linden reviews Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha's The Falling Sky. Premiering in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, the documentary spends time with the Yanomami people of the northern Amazon as they prepare for a sacred ritual and monitor the incursions of illegal miners. The review.
—"Low-key and gripping." Sheri reviews Constance Tsang's Blue Sun Palace. Tsang’s Queens-set debut feature premiered in Critics’ Week at Cannes and is an intimate dogma-free portrait of Chinese immigrants in working-class New York. The review. |
Film Review: 'The Garfield Movie' ►"Purrfectly mediocre." THR's Frank Scheck reviews Mark Dindal's The Garfield Movie. Chris Pratt voices the tubby toon in an animated feature that also features the voice talents of Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult and Cecily Strong. The review.
—"Take me out to the ball game." THR's Jordan Mintzer reviews Carson Lund's Eephus. Film critic and cinematographer Lund’s debut feature, about a final ball game between a bunch of aging players, premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at Cannes. The review.
—"A riveting debut." Jordan reviews Julien Colonna's The Kingdom. The first feature from Colonna is set in Corsica during a deadly epoch of blood feuds among mobsters and nationalists. The review.
—"Provocative, if not always plausible." Jordan reviews Alain Guiraudie's Misericordia. The latest feature from the director of Stranger by the Lake stars Félix Kysyl as a man who returns to his French village and stirs up plenty of trouble. The review.
—"Coups and conspiracies galore." Jordan reviews Oliver Stone and Rob Wilson's Lula. The filmmaker's latest doc, co-directed with Wilson, features a lengthy interview with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that revisits the Brazilian politician’s rollercoaster of a career. The review.
In other news...
—Dakota Johnson plays the field in trailer for coming-out dramedy Am I OK?
—How Music Got Free: Watch the trailer for the Paramount+ doc
—Shannen Doherty doesn’t regret her absence from Charmed finale
—Best Apple TV+ deals: Here’s how to stream Killers of the Flower Moon, Masters of the Air and more for free
—Fresh fragrances: Luxury scents of the summer
What else we're reading...
—Emily Nussbaum talks to former cast members of Netflix's Love is Blind, who reveal the toxicity and the lack of support behind the scenes at the reality TV hit [New Yorker]
—Elizabeth Paton explains why TikTok users are now blocking celebrities, a trend that began at the Met Gala [NYT]
—Shirley Li reflects on Brandon Lee's The Crow and how the cult classic could point the way forward for the moribund comic-book movie genre [Atlantic]
—Kevin T. Dugan profiles billionaire Barry Silbert the latest main character super villain in the world of crypto [Intelligencer]
—Oliver Darcy reports on Vox launching a subscription program as news publishers race to diversify revenue streams [CNN]
Today...
...in 1980, George Lucas brought to theaters his sequel to Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Da'Vine Joy Randolph (38), Mr. T (72), Hannah Einbinder (29), Fairuza Balk (50), Judge Reinhold (67), Noel Fielding (51), Nick Cassavetes (65), David Ajala (38), Cristina Rodlo (34), Kano (39), Lisa Edelstein (58), Jonathan Hyde (76), Kate Phillips (35), Sarah Ramos (33), Kyle Red Silverstein (22), Brett Tucker (52), Rachelle Goulding (38), Olivia Olson (32), Juliet Cowan (50), Amy Spanger (53), Chase Sui Wonders (28), Olga Sosnovska (52), Kevin Quinn (27), Hutch Dano (32), Jean Kasem (70), Robbie Magasiva (52), Belinda Bromilow (49), Eduardo Verástegui (50), Keith L. Williams (17), Michelle Argyris (36), Seth Morris (54), Lexi Johnson (32), Tim Hill (66), Janice Karman (70) |
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