A staple of the PlayStation lineup since 2002, the irreverent series of action platformers about a humanoid space lion (or “Lombax”) and his robot sidekick has often been used as an inviting welcome mat to a new generation of console or handheld gaming. In other words, Ratchet and Clank have become the closest thing that Sony has to its own Mario and Luigi: a family-friendly team of mascots whose old-school adventures can be tweaked to showcase fresh technology....

The mystery-of-the-week series stars “Russian Doll” Emmy nominee Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a private investigator in the vein of James Garner in “The Rockford Files.” With a powerful ability to determine when someone is lying, no matter how airtight their alibi is, Charlie travels across America in her yellow ‘69 Plymouth Barracuda, stumbling upon bizarre crimes to solve along the way. “I only know if something is a lie,” Lyonne tells guest star Adrian Brody in the teaser for the series, which can be watched below....

When J.D. Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” was released in 2016, the story seemed like fitting material for famously wholesome director Ron Howard to adapt. The book told an inspirational story of Vance’s journey from a poverty-stricken childhood in rural Ohio to attending Yale. It was an only-in-America story that briefly made Vance the toast of some in liberal America, though plenty of critics cited the book for dangerous rhetoric and misguided conclusions....

The prequel story to William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” play is reimagined with the first set of star-crossed lovers to meet a heartbreaking end, as reimagined by novelist Rebecca Serle in the 2010 YA book “When You Were Mine.” Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the duo behind adaptations for “The Fault in Our Stars,” “The Disaster Artist,” and the upcoming series “Daisy Jones and the Six,” penned the screenplay for the Hulu film “Rosaline” based on Serle’s novel....

According to “My Best Friend’s Wedding” director P.J. Hogan, the 1997 rom-com would have looked very different had Julia Roberts and Russell Crowe connected during the audition process. “I don’t know what went wrong,” Hogan said in an excerpt of Scott Meslow’s book “From Hollywood With Love,” as reported by Vulture. “It was one of the worst table reads I’ve ever experienced.” Hogan, who had been pushing for Crowe to play Roberts’ love interest, added that megastar Roberts had casting approval....

The hundreds gathered focused on mourning Hutchins, but many also connected the tragedy to broader conversations around crew safety and the familiar financial pressures that lead productions to make sometimes dangerous cost-saving decisions. Among those who spoke was ASC President Stephen Lighthill, who taught the 42-year-old Hutchins at the American Film Institute. “I thank her for being a really brilliant student who came to AFI already a mother. When we interview at AFI, we’re looking to bring in a person, not just a technician, not just an artist, but a person who will really contribute and will bring unique experience,” he said....

“There was this debate of what do we do?” Baron Cohen said. “Do we go ahead with this scene? What happens if he has coronavirus? We concluded that it was worth the risk.” Giuliani attended the fake “Borat 2” interview thinking he was participating in a real documentary titled “Keeping America Alive.” The crew told Giuliani the documentary was about Trump’s efforts to defeat the pandemic, and the “Borat 2” team even cooked up a sizzle real to make the fake project seem more real (the sizzle’s tagline read: “Where Trump saw an invisible enemy, the Democrats saw an invisible friend”)....

“In Arkansas, I posed as an ultimate fighter at a cage match and challenged anyone in the audience to take me on,” Cohen writes. “When my fake ex-boyfriend volunteered, we engaged in some heavy petting, triggering a near riot. The crowd—including some recently paroled prisoners with swastika tattoos—erupted in homophobic slurs and started hurling metal chairs at us. Had I not ducked into a trapdoor and out an escape tunnel, I think the crowd would have beaten me senseless....

“I think this has been the hardest year in living memory for most people,” Baron Cohen said. “Jeanise is this incredible figure in the movie. She helps Tutar find her own beauty and helps her stand up for herself and value her independence as a woman. I heard they were doing a crowdfunding for her afterwards. I called her up and I wanted to help in some way. I said, ‘What’s important to you?...

The Wrap reported that SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher called intimacy coordinators an “essential on-set resource for cast and crew alike” on productions. The announcement comes approximately one month since SAG-AFTRA released a registry and pre-registry of accredited intimacy coordinators for film and TV productions to use in love scenes and sequences featuring nudity. “The role of intimacy coordinators greatly improves safety and well-being on sets and in productions requiring intimate scenes,” Fran Drescher stated....

Now in an interview with The Guardian, Hayek reflected on how Weinstein’s bullying disrupted her career far more than his unwanted sexual advances. The two worked together during the development, filming, and release of Hayek’s passion project “Frida,” the 2002 Julie Taymor–directed biographical drama about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. The film earned Hayek an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. “This is an interesting conversation because, if you really look at my [New York Times] piece, you’ll see that I really focused on the bullying [rather than the sexual harassment], and I do think women got it worse [from him],” Hayek told The Guardian....

It starts with color swirls and a heart-stirring Ariel Marx score that sounds like it could be the overture of a musical; it ends with a rush of blood to the head. In between, it’s sustained by its performances. Not just the go-for-broke performances from two of the most inherently watchable young actors of their time, but also those of their characters, both of whom are so trapped by their parts in life that their kinky role-playing sessions together have become a lifeline that neither one of them may be able to live without....

On paper, the single location and dialogue-driven scenario readymade for the stage. Yet writer and director Sarah Polley, with her first feature in a decade, has transformed Toews’ novel into an absorbing ensemble piece informed as much by the power of the close-ups of the women as it is by their debate. Polley made the successful transition from celebrated actress to filmmaker years ago, having garnered an Oscar nomination for her 2006 directorial debut “Away from Her,” but that movie and 2012 romantic drama “Take This Waltz” were both two-handers....

“We asked our agents if our auditions could be scheduled one right after the other, so that one of us could audition for Cheddar, with the other reading the Rabbit part, and then we’d switch,” Rogen said. “We had a sleepover at my apartment the night before the auditions so we could rehearse and then carpooled to the audition together.” It turns out attempting to play a Detroit rapper did not fit Rogen like a glove....

A spokesperson for Searchlight Pictures said in a statement (via THR): “David Zindel, the son of Paul Zindel, author of ‘Let Me Hear You Whisper,’ acknowledges, based on confidential information obtained during the litigation process, that his claims of plagiarism are unfounded. He acknowledges Guillermo del Toro as the true creator of ‘The Shape of Water.’ Any similarity between the two works is coincidental.” The lawsuit was originally rejected by U....

The first album of music for the show was released in advance of its premiere, full of conceptual ideas for the series and almost as gift and a signal of faith to fans of the source material. “I wanted it so [that listeners] that knew the books were able to listen to this as its own identity and feel connected to it,” Balfe told IndieWire. “I was subtly joining Facebook Groups and following the discussion about the shows....

“The challenge for me was to convey the feeling of seeing live dance,” Coppola told The New York Times. “A lot of dance is filmed in a very flat, standard way. But getting close up, which is thrilling in rehearsal, doesn’t always translate onto film either. I had to move the camera much more than I am used to, and try to give the feel of experiencing a live performance from different vantage points....

The “Spider-Man” offshoot (and second sequel to “Venom”) was lackluster in theaters compared to expectations (it did $73 million domestic/$163 million worldwide). But with an $80 million production cost, it still has a shot of making a profit from post-theatrical returns. Of note is that again Sony, despite the quick burnout of “Morbius” in theaters, went with a 45 days+ window. That is less of a wait than “Uncharted” or “Spider-Man: No Way Home” ($5....

That it took 25 years for Warner Bros. to cook up a sequel is perhaps the only surprising wrinkle in an otherwise depressing tale about what the stewards of classic characters really think about the value of art in a content-mad world. Some of that waiting time between films has to be owed to the necessity of casting a new star on par with Michael Jordan to lead it, and Warner Bros....

“Morbius,” just reduced to $5.99, “Uncharted” at the same price though not new, and the quickly lowered “Father Stu” all got the placement, with the first two sharing #1 positions. Sony has normally had somewhat extended windows for its top films like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Uncharted,” then doing well on more expensive PVOD transactions for extended periods. “Morbius” and “Father Stu” both had more standard 45-day PVOD releases, and “Stu” an expedited reduced price play....