Everyone who’s ever played an online game with voice chat has probably experienced something that made them never want to do so again. Toxicity in online games, especially in shooters and other competitive genres, can feel as ingrained and immutable as bad weather. Companies keep saying they’re working hard on fixing…
Universal Pictures invites you back to the land of Oz for the new feature adaptation of the long-running popular musical Wicked. Universal has now unveiled the extra lengthy three-and-a-half minute trailer. Wicked is the untold story of the witches of Oz. The film stars Emmy, Grammy and Tony-winning powerhouse Cynthia Erivo (Harriet, Broadway’s The Color Purple) as Elphaba, a young woman, misunderstood because of her unusual green skin, who has yet to discover her true power, and Grammy-winning, multi-platinum recording artist and global superstar Ariana Grande as Glinda, a popular young woman, gilded by privilege and ambition, who has yet to discover her true heart.
The two meet as students at Shiz University in the fantastical Land of Oz and forge an unlikely but profound friendship. Following an encounter with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches a crossroads and their lives take very different paths. Glinda’s unflinching desire for popularity sees her seduced by power, while Elphaba’s determination to remain true to herself, and to those around her, will have unexpected and shocking consequences on her future. Their extraordinary adventures in Oz will ultimately see them fulfill their destinies as Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.
The film also stars Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh as Shiz University’s regal headmistress Madame Morrible; Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton, Fellow Travelers) as Fiyero, a roguish and carefree prince; Tony nominee Ethan Slater (Broadway’s Spongebob Squarepants, Fosse/Verdon) as Boq, an altruistic Munchkin student; Marissa Bode in her feature-film debut as Nessarose, Elphaba’s favored sister; and pop culture icon Jeff Goldblum as the legendary Wizard of Oz.
The cast of characters includes Pfannee and ShenShen, two conniving compatriots of Glinda played by Emmy nominee Bowen Yang (Saturday Night Live) and Bronwyn James (Harlots); a new character created for the film, Miss Coddle, played by Tony nominee Keala Settle (The Greatest Showman) and four-time Emmy winner Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) as the voice of Dr. Dillamond.
Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights), Wicked is the first chapter of a two-part immersive, cultural celebration. Wicked Part Two is scheduled to arrive in theaters on November 26, 2025.
This first chapter will be flying into theaters this year on November 27.
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Earlier this week, we saw some set photos from the upcoming The Last of Us season two that gave us a look at Bella Ramsey’s new get-up as protagonist Ellie. HBO apparently thought that wasn’t enough, and has now released the first official images from the second season showing both Ramsey and Joel actor Pedro Pascal…
Earlier this week, we saw some set photos from the upcoming The Last of Us season two that gave us a look at Bella Ramsey’s new get-up as protagonist Ellie. HBO apparently thought that wasn’t enough, and has now released the first official images from the second season showing both Ramsey and Joel actor Pedro Pascal…
King Charles III, the current monarch of the United Kingdom, unveiled a new portrait of himself on Tuesday, May 14. The portrait, painted by British artist Jonathan Yeo, marks the first official portrait of the king since his coronation one year ago. In the reveal video of the portrait, Charles pulls back a shroud…
King Charles III, the current monarch of the United Kingdom, unveiled a new portrait of himself on Tuesday, May 14. The portrait, painted by British artist Jonathan Yeo, marks the first official portrait of the king since his coronation one year ago. In the reveal video of the portrait, Charles pulls back a shroud…
Once known as Dune: The Sisterhood, the Max streaming series Dune: Prophecy, which serves as a prequel to the Dune feature films directed by Denis Villeneuve, started filming in November of 2022, then underwent quite a shake-up in 2023 when the director of the first two episodes, Johan Renck (who executive produced and directed all five episodes of the HBO limited series Chernobyl) decided to leave the project over creative issues, then Shirley Henderson (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) – who had been cast as one of the show’s lead characters – followed him out the door. Everything has been worked out since then, with Dune: Prophecy on track for a fall 2024 premiere. To start building the hype, Max just unveiled a teaser trailer for the show, and you can check it out in the embed above!
The loss of the director and lead cast member were just part of a series of speedbumps Dune: Prophecy hit since it was announced. First, the show lost showrunner Jon Spaihts (co-writer of the first Dune film) – and when he stepped away from the show it was said that he would be focusing on working on the screenplay for Dune: Part 2 with Villeneuve instead. The Hollywood Reporter’s sources also informed them that Spaihts had turned in one script and a revised outline for Dune: Prophecy, and the producers at Legendary weren’t happy with his work. So the decision was made that he was better off sticking with the features. Spaihts was replaced by Diane Ademu-John and Alison Schapker… and then Ademu-John stepped down as well, leaving Schapker as the sole showrunner. Villeneuve had been planning to direct the first two episodes of the series, but had to pass the helm over to Renck because the shooting schedule overlapped with his Dune: Part Two schedule.
Anna Foerster (Lou) signed on to direct multiple episodes when Renck dropped out. Olivia Williams (The Crown) took over the role Henderson vacated.
Dune: Prophecy will be told through the eyes of a mysterious order of women known as the Bene Gesserit. Given extraordinary abilities by their mastery of the body and the mind, the Bene Gesserit expertly weave through the feudal politics and intrigue of The Imperium, pursuing plans of their own that will ultimately lead them to the enigmatic planet Arrakis, known to its inhabitants as Dune.
The six-episode series is set 10,000 years prior to the events of Dune and follows the Harkonnen Sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind, and establish the fabled sect known as the Bene Gesserit.
The cast includes Emily Watson (Punch Drunk Love), Shalom Brune-Franklin (The Tourist), Sarah-Sofie Boussnina (The Colony), Faoileann Cunningham (The Northman), Aoife Hinds (Normal People), Chloe Lea (Foundation), Mark Strong (1917), Jade Anouka (His Dark Materials), Chris Mason (Broadchurch), and Travis Fimmel (Raised by Wolves).
Indira Varma (Obi-Wan) was on board to play a character called Empress Natalya, described as “a formidable royal who united thousands of worlds in her marriage to Emperor Corrino”. When Renck and Henderson left and the show went on hiatus, Varma ran into scheduling issues. Empress Natalya is now played by Jodhi May (The Witcher).
Watson and Williams play Valya Harkonnen and Tula Harkonnen. “Together, these women have risen to power in the Sisterhood, a secret organization of women who will ascend to become the Bene Gesserit.” Variety just announced that Jessica Barden of The End of the F—ing World is in the cast as well, playing a younger version of the Valya Harkonnen character.
Brune-Franklin is playing Mikaela, “a strong-willed Fremen woman who serves the royal family while longing for a home planet she’s never known.” Boussnina’s character is Princess Ynez, “an independent young princess dealing with the pressures of her responsibility as heir to the Golden Lion Throne.” Cunningham takes on the role of Sister Jen, “a fierce, unpredictable acolyte in training at the Sisterhood School who rarely reveals her emotional core.” Hinds is Sister Emeline, “a zealous acolyte descended from a long line of martyrs, who carries fervent religion to her training at the Sisterhood.” Lea portrays Lila, “the youngest acolyte at the Sisterhood School with a deep empathy beyond her years.” Fimmel’s character is Desmond Hart, “a charismatic soldier with an enigmatic past who seeks to gain the Emperor’s trust at the expense of the Sisterhood.” Strong plays Emperor Javicco Corrino, “a man from a great line of war-time Emperors, who is called upon to govern the Imperium and manage a fragile peace.” Anouka’s character is Sister Theodosia, “a talented and ambitious acolyte at the Sisterhood who harbors a dangerous secret about her past.” And Mason plays Keiran Atreides, “a Swordmaster to a Great House whose ambition to live up to his family name is disrupted when he forms an unexpected connection to a member of the royal family.”
Villeneuve, Spaihts, and Ademu-John remain on board Dune: Prophecy as executive producers. An HBO Max and Legendary Television co-production, the show is also being executive produced by Schapker, Scott Z. Burns, Mark Friedman, Matthew King, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt, and Kim Herbert. Kevin J. Anderson co-produces.
Are you interested in Dune: Prophecy? What did you think of the teaser trailer? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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What exactly is BASEketball anyway? If you’re a child of a certain era, you know exactly what it is. If not, well, let me explain. In the late nineties, the hottest comic duo was no doubt Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Together, they had charted a unique path to stardom. Two University Of Colorado grads, the two had their beginnings in the early nineties when they made a micro-budget indie called Cannibal: The Musical, which, despite failing to get into the Sundance Film Festival, became kind of a calling card for them. It got them a unique job directing a corporate film about Universal Pictures for Seagrams, who were acquiring the company, thanks to the patronage of David Zucker, one of the directors behind The Naked Gun, Top Secret and Airplane, who was a fan of their movie. They parlayed their success into a low-budget comedy called Orgazmo, which starred Parker as a pornographic superhero, which was a hit at TIFF and was acquired for a million dollars by October Films, who were not able to release it widely when it got slapped with an NC-17.
Around this time, they produced a short film called The Spirit of Christmas, which introduced the world to the South Park gang and happened to come along in the early days of the internet, meaning it was one of the first shorts to go viral. Indeed, I remember taking hours to download one of the earliest versions of Quicktime and watching the highly pixelated short over and over. It led to them getting a deal to produce a little show you might have heard of, and the rest is history.
Yet, there’s a forgotten chapter in the saga of Matt and Trey. Between South Park’s early success and their big-screen hit, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, which gave them legit critical respectability, the pair starred in a movie for their old patron David Zucker – BASEketball. It remains the only project the two have ever acted in that they didn’t write, direct or produce themselves, and it was a major box office flop that’s become unfairly obscure over the years. But, if you grew up in the late nineties and liked South Park, chances are you saw it when it hit video – and probably more than once. You see, once upon a time, we had a place called video stores, where people would come in, rent these things called video tapes, watch them, and then return them the next day. Or, well, that was the hope of anyone, as having worked at a video store, this movie, along with Half Baked and Mallrats, was one of the most MIA titles ever, as the stoners who rented it often forgot to return it, or couldn’t find it when we called them to ask where it was.
So what’s the deal with BASEketball, and what does the title even mean? Well, obviously, it’s about a sport that’s a mix of baseball and basketball, albeit with a liberal amount of humiliation worked in and very little physical prowess needed. It was actually a game Zucker himself invented and played with his friends and that he once tried to turn into a TV series. Indeed, a BASEketball pilot starring Chris Rock exists, but it’s never surfaced
It was originally designed as a Chris Farley comedy before Zucker got the idea to cast his young proteges in the leads. Indeed, Orgazmo was becoming a cult hit, and South Park got Matt and Trey on magazine covers, giving them a pretty hefty dose of fame. Neither man had any illusions about it lasting, so they took on the film thinking South Park would be cancelled by the time they started filming. Twenty-six years later, it’s still on the air. As such, they filmed this movie during the day and made new South Park episodes at night, and indeed Matt and Trey never starred in a live-action movie again. However, punishing schedules would become a mainstay for the duo, with them making movies like Team America and a Broadway play, The Book of Mormon, while still producing their show. Both would be major hits, which this was not.
So, as opposed to their more ambitious work on their own, BASEketball was never intended to be much more than a standard racy comedy, but it’s worth saying that the film is pretty funny. Many of the jokes fall flat, but Matt and Trey do a great job delivering the insults and one-liners they use to psych out players, with their friend Dian Bashar playing the butt of many of their jokes, Squeak. A movie like BASEketball is likely too rude ever to get made now, but all the most inappropriate jokes from the movie still make me laugh. Matt and Trey have an innocence about them, but it’s worth noting that whenever they’re not onscreen, the movie isn’t all that funny. Luckily, they’re on-screen a lot. Another appealing thing about the film is that it co-starred two of the biggest sex symbols of the nineties, and no, I’m not talking about Robert Vaughn and Ernest Borgnine. Jenny McCarthy and Yasmeen Bleeth co-star and look incredible, with McCarthy a rising star on MTV (and in Playboy) at the time, and Bleeth being in the middle of her run on Baywatch. And yeah, old pros Vaughn and Borgnine class it up a bit, but I’m not sure whose idea it was to have Borgnine do a striptease to Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy.” That scene could have maybe gone to McCarthy, right? Anyone?
Reviews for BASEketball were pretty poor, but if you were a teen at the time and rented the tape, you probably dug it as much as I did. Considering how popular a title it’s been for Universal, you’d think it would have gotten a big re-release with extras at some point, but I suppose it’s a movie Matt and Trey want to leave in the rearview mirror, as one can’t say they’re aren’t keeping busy, that’s for sure. But, if you want some lewd and crude laughs, give it a watch
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After multiple attempts at kick-starting new trilogies of films have failed, the live-action Terminator film series is, understandably, taking a bit of a break… but the franchise is set to continue with an eight-episode anime series called Terminator Zero, which is coming our way from Japanese animation studio Production IG and the Netflix streaming service. Terminator Zero is set to start streaming on August 29th – and to start building the hype, a batch of first look images have arrived online today. You can check them out right here in this article.
August 29th was chosen for the release date because the Terminator films told us that the Judgment Day event occurred on August 29, 1997. Coincidentally, that was also the day Marc Randolph and Reed Hasting launched Netflix as an online DVD rental service.
Mattson Tomlin, who worked on the screenplays for The Batman and its upcoming sequel, is writer and showrunner on this series, which has the following synopsis: 2022: A future war has raged for decades between the few human survivors and an endless army of machines. 1997: The AI known as Skynet gained self-awareness and began its war against humanity.
Caught between the future and this past is a soldier sent back in time to change the fate of humanity. She arrives in 1997 to protect a scientist named Malcolm Lee who works to launch a new AI system designed to compete with Skynet’s impending attack on humanity. As Malcolm navigates the moral complexities of his creation, he is hunted by an unrelenting assassin from the future which forever alters the fate of his three children.
Terminator Zero is directed by Masashi Kudō, who is best known for working on the anime series Bleach. Tomlin serves as executive producer alongside David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Don Granger of Skydance.
Are you interested in watching a Terminator anime series? Take a look at the Terminator Zero images, then let us know what you think of them – and the overall idea of this show – by leaving a comment below.
I don’t watch much animation, but I’ll probably give this show a chance.
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Street Fighter 6 has a huge roster of martial artists, each with different fighting styles and training methods. Each comes from a different discipline, which means they all have different body types, from Zangief’s hulking bodybuilder frame to E. Honda’s heavier sumo build. As such, developer Capcom decided to…