March 25, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

Mike Marsland/WireImage(LOS ANGELES) — “Half of everything is luck,” Sean Bean’s 006 tells Pierce Brosnan in the opening of his first 007 film Goldeneye. “The other half?” Bond asks.

“Fate.” 

As fate would have it, Brosnan has just been cast as Fate — Dr. Fate — in the DC Comics universe’s next big project, Black Adam, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Variety reports.

With his golden cape and Spartan-like helmet, Kent Nelson/Dr. Fate is a super-strong sorcerer and psychic, and incidentally one of DC’s oldest comic characters, making his first appearance in 1940.

He’s also a member of the Justice Society, which predates the Justice League, and includes Adam, Atom Smasher, Hawkman, and Cyclone.

In addition to Johnson’s ancient, godlike anti-hero Black Adam, Aldis Hodge has already been cast as Hawkman, Noah Centineo will play Atom Smasher, and Quintessa Swindell will play Cyclone.

The Warner Bros. movie was set for a December, 2021 opening, but due to pandemic delays, it won’t start shooting until April, with a possible summer, 2022 release.

Black Adam will be directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who directed Johnson opposite Emily Blunt in Disney’s Jungle Cruise, which was also delayed by the pandemic; its new release date is July 29.

By Stephen Iervolino
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

March 25, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

Photo credit: Vince Valitutti(NEW YORK) — Millie Bobby Brown entered into extremely familiar territory with her latest sci-fi film, Godzilla vs Kong.

Brown tells ABC Audio that starring in Netflix’s Stranger Things and in 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters has allowed her to become sort of a pro when it comes to the monster movie world.

“I’m kind of very used to it at this point,” she says. “I started off in this industry at eight. I was doing a few things here and there. But then I shaved my hair off and I was immediately looking at a tennis ball, pretending it was a monster in Stranger Things. So I’ve been very much exposed to that kind of CGI, special effects kind of thing, and love it.”

While Brown explains that she did step out of her sci-fi genre for her Netflix mystery film Enola Holmes, which she also produced, the actress says coming back to the Godzilla franchise was refreshing and even a bit cathartic. 

“What I like about sci-fi and specifically that CGI element of our tech, and our movies, and TV, is that it really takes you into a different world,” explains Brown, who returns as a teenage Madison Russell. “And especially during this time during the pandemic, it’s been so stressful and scary.”

“So watching something that can take you into a different world — there’s a calming effect to that,” Brown continues. “Things like animations… I love things like that. It helps me just kind of immerse into a different world and feel like I’m not kind of having to deal with my own problems for a second.”

Godzilla vs Kong, also starring Brian Tyree Henry, hits theaters and HBO Max on March 31.

By Candice Williams
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

March 25, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

ABC/Kelsey McNeal(LOS ANGELES) — Scarlett Johansson will say goodbye to the Marvel Cinematic Universe when her final film, Black Widow, premieres in theaters and on Disney+ this summer.

While she will always appreciate her breakout role, playing super spy Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, the 36-year-old actress believes her career was defined by something else — her past mistakes.

Speaking to U.K. magazine The Gentlewoman for its spring/summer issue, the two-time Oscar winner admits she’s “a person” and will sometimes make the wrong decision.

Despite that, when weighing her past controversies, Johansson admits, “I’ve out of it.”

Some past controversies include her support of embattled director Woody Allen or for starring in Ghost in the Shell, where she became a punchline for whitewashing characters.

Says Johansson, “I’m going to have opinions about things, because that’s just who I am.”

“I mean, everyone has a hard time admitting when they’re wrong about stuff, and for all of that to come out publicly, it can be embarrassing,” the actress furthered. “To have the experience of, ‘Wow, I was really off mark there, or I wasn’t looking at the big picture, or I was inconsiderate’… I’m also a person.”

Johansson also expressed that “actors have obligations to have a public role in society” because they are meant to entertain — not drive a political agenda.

“The idea that you’re obligated to because you’re in the public eye is unfair. You didn’t choose to be a politician, you’re an actor,” the Marriage Story star argued. “Of course, whatever you say, whether it’s politically correct or not, any statement you make, or how you live your life, people are obviously going to take issue with it.”

In the end, Johansson allowed, “We judge each other all the time” but maintained, “It’s not normal to be that exposed.”

By Megan Stone
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

March 25, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

ABC(LOS ANGELES) — ABC’s hit sitcom The Goldbergs paid tribute Wednesday night to co-star George Segal, who died Tuesday at 87 following complications from bypass surgery. 

The veteran actor played Albert “Pops” Solomon, the WWII vet and ladies man father of Wendi McLendon-Covey’s Beverly Goldberg, and grandad and pal to Sean Giambrone’s Adam. 

Wednesday night’s episode ended with a photo of a smiling Segal, wearing a baseball shirt decorated with “Pops” on it. A title card read “In Memoriam 1934-2021.”

Segal’s final The Goldbergs episode filmed before his death is set to air April 7. Because he played such an integral role on the 80s-set sitcom, it’s possible his death will be addressed in the show, but that has yet to be confirmed.

In a statement released Wednesday, the show’s “devastated” cast noted of Segal, “He was kind, sweet, beyond talented and funny,” and that the “national treasure” and Oscar-nominated actor “was the true epitome of class and he touched all of our lives so deeply.”

Their tribute said it was “an honor and a privilege to have him as a colleague and friend all of these years.”

By Stephen Iervolino
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

March 25, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

ABC/Randy Holmes(LONDON) — Johnny Depp was handed another legal setback in a U.K. courtroom Thursday morning.

According to The Guardian, a judge denied the actor’s appeal of a ruling against him in his libel case against the tabloid The Sun, which portrayed Depp as a “wife beater” during his rocky marriage to Justice League actress Amber Heard.

After a high-profile case last July, in which Heard and Depp leveled abuse accusations against each other, a judge dismissed Depp’s libel claim, ruling the Sun‘s accusations in an April 2018 story were “substantially true.”

Depp’s appeal centered on the fact that Heard hadn’t donated to charity the $7 million she was granted in a divorce settlement, as she promised to do at the time, and so that “calculated and manipulative lie,” as his attorneys called it, “tipped the scales against Mr. Depp from the very beginning.”

However, The Guardian reports the judge on Thursday dismissed those claims, ruling “We do not accept that there is any ground for believing that the [previous] judge may have been influenced” by claims of the donation to rule in Heard’s favor.

By Stephen Iervolino
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.