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"It's something I wanted to protect about the show," says season two's new showrunner Tony Tost about leaning further into Natasha Lyonne's weekly adventures. The fifth episode of Poker Face season two brings Natasha Lyonne‘s Charlie Cale to the dugout of a minor league baseball team, where she investigates suspected foul play in the death of a player who was killed by a fast ball to the head from a faulty old pitching machine. Tony Tost, who took over as showrunner for the second season, wrote the episode, “Hometown Hero,” and says it was a world that creator Rian Johnson wanted to play in for the Peacock murder-mystery’s return. The episode also solidifies Poker Face as a true week-to-week offering. After resolving the lingering plot from season one in the third episode (the first three episodes released together at launch), the fourth episode took Charlie down...

Nicole Kassell chats with THR about working on the first two episodes of the Netflix series and rethinking the sirens myth. Perhaps the sirens came calling for director Nicole Kassell. Before signing on to direct the first two episodes of Netflix’s limited series Sirens, Kassell recalls, ”I read that script, and it just knocked my socks off.” The script was Molly Smith Metzler’s story that follows Devon (played by Meghann Fahy), who ventures to a lavish island to confront her younger sister Simone (Milly Alcock) and ask her to come back home to Buffalo to help with their ailing father (Bill Camp). However, Devon is caught off-guard when she realizes her sister is no longer the woman she once knew and now works for socialite Michaela “Kiki” Kell (Julianne Moore), who not only reigns supreme on the island and its...

Margaret Atwood, creator Bruce Miller, Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Ann Dowd and 20-plus producers, castmembers and execs reveal how a classic novel became the Emmy-winning emblem of anti-Trump resistance. The Handmaid’s Tale is ending. But to borrow a quote from Margaret Atwood, the end is not the end. And the Hulu series wasn’t the beginning of The Handmaid’s Tale, either. Back in 1985, Atwood published her best-selling novel of the same name, a near-future dystopian tale about a totalitarian regime, the Republic of Gilead, overthrowing the U.S. government and stripping women of their rights amid a global fertility crisis. The story was told from the point of view of a woman who is renamed Offred after she’s captured, separated from her daughter and forced to be a “handmaid” in Gilead (fertile surrogates for the elite ruling class). Related Stories TV Streaming Ratings: 'You' Final Season Hits...

The Nielsen streaming charts once again said “Hello, You.” The Netflix thriller starring Penn Badgley returned to the rankings at No. 1 with the release of You’s fifth and final season on April 24. The show gathered 1.67 billion minutes of viewing for the week of April 21-27, a little below the 1.73 billion minutes for the opening of season four in February 2023. You had a comfortable lead over the week’s second-place title, Netflix’s Ransom Canyon (1.29 billion minutes). Star Wars series Andor hit a series high with the debut of its second season, clocking 721 million minutes of watch time on Disney+. Its previous high was 674 million minutes for the week of its season one finale in November 2022. Nielsen says about 65 percent of Andor’s total time (about 469 million minutes) was for the three episodes that premiered April 22, meaning the remaining...

There’s a common sentiment in the Mission: Impossible franchise that accomplishing each movie is just as difficult as the mission on the screen. And Hayley Atwell now knows that firsthand after shooting 2023’s Dead Reckoning and this week’s The Final Reckoning in close succession. Between the pandemic’s impact on the former and the double strikes’ effect on the latter, nothing came easy for Team Mission, as they traveled around the world in order to capture cinema’s most jaw-dropping action sequences in the most breathtaking settings. In Christopher “McQ” McQuarrie’s possible final chapter, Atwell’s world-class thief character, Grace, is now a full-fledged member of the Impossible Missions Force. With the evil AI known as the Entity on the brink of achieving global nuclear annihilation, Grace and co. must journey to the Arctic’s Bering Sea (Svalbard in reality) for an extended second-act sequence, as well as South...

Marvel Studios’ marquee team of heroes need a bit more time to reassemble. Avengers: Doomsday is pushing back its release date in theaters from May 1, 2026 to Dec. 18, 2026, while Avengers: Secret Wars will now open Dec. 17, 2027 instead of May 7, 2027. Disney, however, isn’t giving up the coveted start-of-summer-slot in 2026 and has set 20th Century’s The Devil Wears Prada 2 to take Doomsday‘s date and open May 1. During a nearly five-and-a-half hour livestream in late March, Marvel Studios began unveiling its cast for Avengers: Doomsday, revealing a mix of Marvel Cinematic Universe mainstays as well as actors from 20th Century Fox’s now-defunct X-Men universe and upcoming stars of Fantastic Four: First Steps. Notable names missing from the roll call included Tom Holland (Spider-Man) and Chris Evans (Captain America), the latter of whom is expected to appear in at least one of the two-part movies. Related Stories Movies 'Lilo & Stitch'...

If there was a theme coming out of May’s upfronts, it’s that everyone — from long-standing broadcast networks to new(ish) streaming players — wants a piece of the televised sports business. NBC is going all in on its new NBA contract next season, Netflix and YouTube will have exclusive NFL games, and there is seemingly a sports documentary for every corner of fandom. While live sports are top of mind for everyone and the NFL (still and seemingly forever) rules broadcast ratings, viewers also spent a ton of time in the 2024-25 season with dramas, comedies and unscripted series. Several first-year shows became hits this season (hello, Matlock, High Potential and Adolescence), while returning veterans proved their worth in big ways (looking at you, Reacher). Related Stories TV Streaming Ratings: 'You' Final Season Hits No. 1 Movies Alan Ritchson, Jerry Bruckheimer, 'Minecraft' Writers in Talks to Land Hot Adventure Package at Skydance (Exclusive)   With...

Kate Mara attends the premiere of 'Friendship' during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 8, 2024. Leon Bennett/Getty Images Kate Mara was unacquainted with Tim Robinson’s brand of comedy when filmmaker Andrew DeYoung offered her the chance to star opposite the maestro of cringe in Friendship. Mara plays Tami Waterman, a loving mother, self-employed florist and cancer survivor who’s dangerously close to becoming Craig Waterman’s (Robinson) walkaway wife. Tami hasn’t been given the attentiveness she deserves from her tone-deaf husband, and the issue is magnified when Craig forms a fast friendship with their new local weatherman neighbor, Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd).   Craig ultimately jeopardizes his new relationship, first by going too far during a casual boxing match, and then eating a bar of soap as a form of self-punishment in front of Austin and his other friends. This is the kind of...