February 26, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) — While the last entry, Terminator: Dark Fate, all but terminated the franchise’s future at the box office, Netflix is hoping to re-energize the property with an anime-style series. 

The streaming giant and Skydance Productions, which currently owns the rights to the series, are teaming up with Project Power writer Mattson Tomlin and Japan’s Production I.G. for the series, notes The Hollywood Reporter. 

Tomlin’s action flick Project Power, which starred Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, was a hit for Netflix; Tomlin also co-wrote the upcoming The Batman, which will star Robert Pattinson as the Caped Crusader.

Writer-director James Cameron unleashed Terminator on the world in 1984. The film starred a bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the movie became a smash, propelling the onscreen killing machine into one of the biggest box office draws in history.

It was followed by the series’ most successful entry, 1991’s blockbuster Terminator: Judgment Day.

All told, there have been six movies in the franchise, and one small-screen adaptation, 2008’s The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

In a statement, Netflix’s VP of Japan and anime, John Derderian, said, “Terminator is one of the most iconic sci-fi stories ever created–and has only grown more relevant to our world over time. The new animated series will explore this universe in a way that has never been done before.”

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

February 26, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

Takashi Seida/Hulu(LOS ANGELES) — Andra Day transforms into the late great jazz singer Billie Holiday in the Lee Daniels-directed Hulu film The United States vs Billie Holiday.

While becoming the tormented songstress was no simple feat, Day tells ABC Audio that there were some aspects in making the film that did come easy.

“I will say the shooting, and the character — definitely not easy,” she says. “What was easy was the chemistry between Lee and myself and my cast. [It was] wonderfully collaborative.”

“And I think when [Lee] has that love and that respect for his artists that we are creating together — it’s just brilliance,” Day notes. “And I think that makes the best leaders. So that was a very easy energy and realm to play in.”

A thankful Daniels nods to her response, adding that there was much more he’d love to explore when it came to Holiday’s tumultuous life.

“It’s not really a biopic, it’s just a moment in time,” Daniels explains. “But if it were her biopic, we would have talked, really talked, about her affairs with Tallulah Bankhead and other women. We would have really delved into her being queer.”

“I would have talked about her very complicated relationship with her mother,” he continues. “I would have delved into more of her relationship with Lester [Young]. It was a very powerful relationship she had.”

However, Daniels says that due to time constraints, there was a lot left “on the cutting room floor that [will end up] in the director’s cut.”

“Where we see her stealing, because she was a thief. We see her beating men’s behinds. We see her kicking a**,” he reveals. “She’s a gangster. So more of her gangster… just more Billie.”

The United States vs Billie Holiday is now available on Hulu.

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

February 26, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

PALACE LEE / Barcroft Media via Getty Images(NEW YORK) — (NOTE LANGUAGE) — While we can’t blame you for losing track of time nowadays, even considering the pandemic and everything that was 2020, it might be hard to imagine that Charlie Sheen’s infamous meltdown was 10 years ago. 

A decade ago this month, Sheen was the highest paid actor on TV, with his CBS hit Two and a Half Men, until the gig and his personal life imploded — at times live on TV and streaming on his own short-lived video channel. 

The actor went on a tear against the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre, gave a frenetic series of interviews where he entered the words #winning and “Tiger Blood” into our pop culture lexicon, and then was fired. 

And then there was that disastrous Violent Torpedo of Truth stage tour. 

“I was getting loaded and my brain wasn’t working right,” Sheen recalls to Yahoo! Entertainment.

“People have [said to] me, ‘Hey, man, that was so cool, that was so fun to watch…” My thought…is, ‘Oh, yeah, great. I’m so glad that I traded early retirement for a f–king hashtag.'”

He says, “There was 55 different ways for me to handle that situation, and I chose number 56. …And it was desperately juvenile.” 

He explains, “I…needed someone to reach out to and say, ‘Hey, man…How can we help?’ And instead they showed up in droves with…all types of fanfare and celebration of…what I think was a very public display of a mental health moment.”

In 2015, the actor revealed he’d been HIV positive around the time of the meltdown, and in 2017 he told Good Morning America he was enrolled in an FDA study for an experimental HIV treatment. 

Now, however, he’s on the comeback trail, with a new show in development, he tells Yahoo!.

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

February 26, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

L-R: Joe, Anthony Russo, Tom Holland/Apple TV+(NEW YORK) — Directors Joe and Anthony Russo have directed four blockbusters for Marvel Studios, including the biggest movie of all time, Avengers: Endgame.

But after that, they got back to their modest-budget beginnings with their new film Cherry. And while the movie is quite different from their blockbuster Marvel movies, it has a common thread: Its star is their onscreen Spider-Man, Tom Holland. 

The movie is based on Nico Walker’s 2018 novel about a young man who drops out of college and joins the Army after suffering a broken heart. He’s eventually reunited with his true love, but his combat PTSD leads both of their lives to spiral into drug addiction and crime.

Anthony Russo tells ABC Audio, “The book…is difficult and dark” — so casting Holland was the key.

“Tom is so likable, so charismatic, such a good actor, he’s the kind of person that…you’re going to forgive for making complicated choices, that you’re going to keep rooting for,” he adds. “And that’s really what this movie needed.”

He notes, “[Y]ou have to make it compulsively watchable and enjoyable, even though you’re taking people to really difficult places.” 

Joe Russo says Cherry is a more “personal…intimate” project for them, because their family — and their hometown of Cleveland, Ohio — has been scarred by opioid addiction.  And despite a reported budget of just 10 million bucks, vs. the $350 million-plus it took to bring Endgame to the screen, the pair relished the freedom Cherry afforded them.

“There’s certainly less volume of information coming at you on a movie of this scale versus a Marvel film,” Joe says. “[On a] Marvel film…you’re perhaps running three to four units all at the same time…the writers are running [rewrites] until midnight every night…[it’s] just a different sort of level of intensity.”  

Cherry comes to theaters today, and debuts on AppleTV+ on March 12.

Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC Audio.

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

February 26, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

ABC/Jenny Anderson(NEW YORK) — ABC News correspondent Linsey Davis has been busy lately. She was recently promoted to anchoring World News Tonight on Sundays, making her only the second Black woman to anchor any major network newscast, after the “fearless, trailblazing” ABC News veteran Carol Simpson.  On top of that, Davis has just published her third children’s book. 

With a laugh, the bestselling author of The World Is Awake and One Big Heart tells ABC Audio she never intended to write a series of books. That said, her latest, Stay This Way Forever, is something special. 

“I’ve been calling it a love letter from parents to children,” says Davis, whose son Ayden is now seven.

“You know, as a parent…there are those moments where you just wish you could kind of press the pause button…really savoring and just kind of freezing in time,” she explains. “Because you never know when is the last time they’re going to reach up to hold your hand, or fall asleep in your lap. And that kind of just fun, playful joy that that kids have in such a unique way.”

Beginning with her first book, Davis said she’s worked tirelessly with artist Lucy Fleming to capture a world that can help children of all racial backgrounds see themselves.

“We wanted to make sure that, while whimsical and while abstract a little bit, that kids would actually see…what they really look like reflected in the illustrations…really trying to capture the essence of our variety in the variations between us,” she notes.

As for her day job, a “really grateful” Davis said of her anchoring WNT, “I’ve been talking about a famous quote from Shirley Chisholm, the first black congresswoman, who had said, ‘If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.'”

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