It’s unclear what O’Brien’s HBO Max show will be like. WarnerMedia stated last November that the comedian’s “Conan Without Borders” shows, where he travels to other countries (those episodes have taken him to locations such as South Korea, Mexico, and Haiti), would continue alongside his upcoming HBO Max series, which suggests that his new show will be something else entirely. Regardless, O’Brien is the latest in a recent string of comedians who have or plan on hosting a comedy show on a streaming service, a relatively new phenomenon for the medium....

The right-wing publication sells Leftist Tears travel mugs and hosts a podcaster who believes doctors who perform gender-affirmation surgeries are “treating kids like Frankenstein’s monster.” However, it might be able to succeed where Dinesh D’Souza, Steve Bannon, and other conservative filmmakers failed: Adapt a red-state approach to movies that sublimates politics into the story rather than turning it into obvious propaganda. Today the site premieres its first original feature, “Shut In,” a thriller from “Disturbia” director DJ Caruso....

Fincher discussed a handful of projects he is working on during a recent interview with Aaron Sorkin on the Director’s Guild of America’s The Director’s Cut podcast. In the interview, Fincher outlined three projects he was working on, including a limited series that will be written by Robert Towne, who wrote the script for the 1974 “Chinatown” film and the first two “Mission Impossible” movies. “I am playing with adapting a French graphic novel about an assassin,” Fincher said on the podcast....

With the opening days of “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” still included in our four-week rolling average of 2021, it falls to 61 percent compared to 2019. October should be better — or to be more precise, it needs to be considerably better. The lack of prime new films since the latest Marvel release is the main alibi for the overall weakness of September, but that changes next week....

Sorkin helped me to figure out how he did it during a Zoom interview for the Writers Guild Foundation. Say ‘yes’ to Steven Spielberg. One Saturday morning 14 years ago, the filmmaker invited Sorkin to come over to his house and told him he wanted to do a movie about the Chicago Seven. First the screenwriter said “yes,” then he immersed himself in finding out all he could about the defendants charged with inciting the 1968 riots outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago....

The title refers to a nickname for Richardsville, a Tar Heel State town that might be fictional in this telling, but is rooted in the combined experiences and fascinations of its two writers and creators: John Hodgman and David Rees. In “Dicktown” (the featured Season 3 presentation of the brilliantly eccentric FXX anthology shorts collection “Cake”), John Hunchman (Hodgman) is the former precocious boy detective still puzzling out amateur-level jobs, while David Purefoy (Rees) is the former bully who’s now his partner in crime-solving....

Adam McKay’s cosmic end-times satire “Don’t Look Up” quickly became the most-viewed original movie on Netflix over the holiday weekend. Endless social media debates over the movie’s quality or scientific accuracy — it’s about a comet on a planet-annihilating collision course toward Earth — aside, viewers who stayed for the comedy’s mid- and post-credits scenes were in for some wild surprises. According to director McKay in a new interview with Variety, the film’s final moments were actually wrought out of the actors’ improv....

On Wednesday, the organization shared that the Board of Governors approved a decision to eliminate the Hanging Episode Rule. The rule, which is still in effect for prospective 2022 Emmy nominees, allowed for series to still premiere episodes after the May 31 eligibility deadline as long as the final episodes were posted on a platform for Academy members to see before that May deadline, and premiered to the general public before nominations-round voting began on June 16....

Here’s what we know about the plot so far, per Disney: “‘Encanto’ tells the tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia, in a magical house, in a vibrant town, in a wondrous, charmed place called an Encanto. The magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family with a unique gift from super strength to the power to heal—every child except one, Mirabel (Beatriz)....

“I don’t think ‘Entourage’ was this vulgar boy-fest that people like to paint it as now,” Ellin said. “When we came out, the New York Times said we were the smartest show on television! If we did reboot the show, it’s not that I would make it any more PC, but I would write it to the best of my abilities to reflect the reality of the world right now....

In a new interview over at The Film Stage, “Bad Trip” star Eric André and producer Jeff Tremaine detailed a gag that didn’t make it into the final cut. “I think the exorcism prank was probably like the best prank on its own,” André said. “It just didn’t fit into the body of the movie.” The details of the excised prank turned out to be quite sick. “We had this prank where we stayed the night in a motel that was haunted....

Erin Strecker is our new Executive Editor, TV and Tony Maglio takes the brand-new role of Executive Editor, Business. Both are based in New York and report to Editor in Chief Dana Harris-Bridson. Strecker leads the TV vertical, directing and expanding our coverage at an essential moment for the medium. She comes to IndieWire from Mashable, where she most recently served as its Entertainment Editor. Prior to that, she worked at Billboard and at Entertainment Weekly....

IndieWire recently caught up with composer Jeff Russo and co-supervising sound editors, Nick Forshager and Tim Boggs — all of whom received Emmy nominations (along with Gonzales) for their work on “East/West” — to discuss how they found a balance in making this unique episode, which was inspired by the Coen Brothers “Barton Fink” as well as the oft-referenced 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz.” Jeff Russo and series creator Noah Hawley have been working together since the 2009 ABC series, “The Unusuals,” and developed a specific way of collaborating where the composer’s music plays a role in shaping the series....

One of those kids was Jude Weng, now a prolific director on beloved TV comedies “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” “The Good Place,” and “Fresh Off the Boat,” making her splashy feature debut with “Finding ‘Ohana.” (The film reached the top spot in Netflix’s top ten the weekend in debuted.) She calls Quan’s casting “total serendipity,” brought about by sheer Hollywood luck. Running into an old friend in an ice cream shop, she was excited to share that she was directing her first film, which she said was “like ‘The Goonies,’ but in Hawaii....

Per The Hollywood Reporter, “Plemons will play Tom White, the lead FBI agent investigating the murders.” The role of Tom White was originally written for Leonardo DiCaprio when the film was being developed for Paramount, the idea being to have DiCaprio star as the traditional good guy of the movie. As THR adds: “Plemons now finds himself in a role that was originally going to be played by DiCaprio before the Oscar-winner segued to a secondary lead....

This is the epiphany Robert (Daniel Zolghadri), the budding cartoonist at the heart of Owen Kline’s debut feature “Funny Pages,” reaches when his art teacher and mentor Mr. Katano (Stephen Adly Guirgis) dies in a freak car accident. After getting arrested for breaking into his high school to steal back Katano’s work, and subsequently rejecting the legal counsel of a family friend in favor of a public defender’s services, Robert informs his frustrated parents (Maria Dizzia and Josh Pais) that he’s dropping out of high school....

The series has already drawn backlash from those who perceive the documentary to be biased. It’s something that Cowperthwaite finds ironic. “What’s interesting is they haven’t seen it yet!” Cowperthwaite told IndieWire last week via Zoom. It’s indicative of a society that still has trouble dealing with imperfection, which is at the heart of Cowperthwaite’s series. Cowperthwaite went on to talk about why FX’s desire to revel in the messiness of her subject made it the perfect place to air the docuseries, the comparisons to the recent Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial, and how she’s prepping for those pesky internet trolls to pop up....

The titles are very different, but Mani has embraced disparate roles from the start. She made her feature debut with a supporting part in an incest drama dedicated to Éric Rohmer, Dan Sallitt’s “The Unspeakable Act.” Two years later, she danced feverishly to great comic effect in The Daniels’ high-energy music video for Lil Jon’s hit “Turn Down for What” (the one where co-director Daniel Kwan played a character whose penis is powerful enough to break glass)....

The suit from Flaa has exposed potential ethical conflicts and instances of self-dealing from among members of the organization, just a week ahead of next Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony. “The dismissal was disappointing,” said one current HFPA member, who like most quoted in the story asked to remain anonymous. “I thought it would shake things up…. We are an archaic organization. I still think the HFPA needs outside pressure to change....

The $40 million picture starring Pierce Brosnan lay fallow for five years until Arclight Films introduced it in 2020 as a new sales title, “The Kings Daughter,” adding Julie Andrews as narrator. Today, it becomes the weekend’s widest release on more than 2,100 screens — via Gravitas Ventures, a company best known its voluminous catalog of VOD releases. An indie VOD distributor supporting a wide theatrical release at a time when even major studios demur might sound like a fairy tale in its own right....