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Captain America: Brave New World is certainly coming at an interesting time. Originally set for 2024, multiple delays have caused the movie to arrive in theaters less than a month after Donald Trump became the 47th President of the United States, and morale among many Americans is at an all-time low. A series of executive orders have been pushed through that threaten the lives of millions of Americans. It certainly makes the prospect of a Red Hulk as President less terrifying. It also makes a Black man like Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson taking on the mantle of Captain America fighting the President of the United...

In September 5, the story of a 1972 news team combines the legacy of earlier journalism films. In 2025, it could hardly be more relevant.

I bloody love a good journalism movie. I’m probably biased, but I’m not sure there’s always a correlation between a person’s job and their film taste; do all bus drivers obsessively watch Paterson and Speed? For our sake, I hope they’re not obsessively watching Speed.

Regardless, there’s little more reassuring in a climate of evaporating media outlets than a movie telling you your profession (albeit the slightly more important-sounding investigative side of it) is worth having around. The Post and (improbably) Spotlight have become go-to comfort movies in my house.

It seems I’m not alone, either – since the golden age of film noir, the intrepid journalist has become a helpful narrative replacement for the kind of chain-smoking private investigator’s we...

Captain America first debuted in Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's "Captain America Comics" #1. Hitting newsstands at the tail end of 1940, the comic's cover page showed its flag-draped hero punching out Adolf Hitler.

Since then, most of Captain America's enduring enemies have been fictional Nazis, from the Red Skull to Baron Zemo. But not all fascists come from Germany. The U.S. has spent the last decade getting that rude awakening over and over, and stubbornly refusing to listen, but it's one that Captain America heard much earlier, and heeded, back in 1974. Yes, Captain America was coated in the grey morals of the real world long before the movies.

The "Secret Empire" storyline ("Captain America" #169-175), written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Sal Buscema, features the titular conspiracy out to discredit Captain America and seize control of the American government. The Secret Empire wear purple and black hooded cloaks,...

When most actors win an Academy Award, it's because they've crafted a fully-realized, nuanced portrayal of a character. They've created a person out of whole cloth, bringing them to life on screen in a way that no one else could've done in quite the same way. Understandably, a lot of Oscar-winning performances take the whole movie to do that. However, things get trickier when we move into the Best Supporting categories. Actors at this level are often working with a limited amount of scenes, trying to get a portrayal across in very small chunks that may not add up to anything close to the amount of time that audiences see their co-stars.

In "Conclave," for example, Isabella Rossellini plays Sister Agnes. She's one of the most senior nuns in Vatican City, and as such, she's given a position of power that winds up influencing the course of the Church's history.

Elizabeth Olsen is joining Julia Roberts in Warner Bros.’ thriller feature Panic Carefully.

Sam Esmail is set to direct from his own script, with the studio landing the package in February following a bidding war and committing to a theatrical release. Esmail will produce with Chad Hamilton for Email Corp., alongside Roberts, Scott Stuber, Marisa Yeres Gill and Lisa Gillan.

Panic Carefully is described as a paranoid thriller reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs and Esmail’s Emmy-winning USA Network series Mr. Robot. Kevin McCormick and Chrystal Li will oversee it for Warner Bros.

Esmail’s most recent feature was the 2023 Netflix thriller Leave the World Behind, in which Roberts starred alongside Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke and Myha’la. Coming up, Esmail is producing A24’s thriller movie Famous, in which Zac Efron and Phoebe Dynevor are starring for director Jody Hill. He was also an executive producer on Starz’s Watergate-focused series Gaslit,...

"WandaVision" threw fans for quite the loop when the series finale revealed that "X-Men" franchise star Evan Peters wasn't actually reprising his role as the speedy mutant Quicksilver, aka Pietro Maximoff. Instead, Peters was playing Ralph Bohner, an innocent citizen of Westview who had been controlled by Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), as a way of manipulating Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) within the television illusion she created to shield herself from the grief and trauma of losing Vision (Paul Bettany) in "Avengers: Infinity War."

But what happened to Ralph after the events of "WandaVision" in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? "Agatha All Along" has revealed that the citizens of Westview are still hanging around the suburb, despite the terrifying incidents that happened there. While they're not forced to play along inside the television framework that Wanda has trapped Agatha in, they do occasionally have to interact with the evil witch in order to keep up appearances.

Running until the final general election results come in, courted and verified, the Deadline ElectionLine podcast spotlights the 2024 campaign and the often blurred lines between politics and entertainment in modern America. Hosted by Deadline political editor Ted Johnson and executive editor Dominic Patten, the podcast features commentary and interviews with top lawmakers and entertainment figures. Now in the home stretch of the almost last 30 days, follow all the campaign news on the ElectionLine hub on Deadline.

“I think that the election of 1960 takes all the events of 2020, and, frankly, of 2024, and sets them on their head,” says Chris Wallace of comparisons between JFK vs then Vice President Richard Nixon then and current Vice President Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump now.

The CNN host joined Deadline’s ElectionLine podcast today to look at White House bids past and present, and discuss his upcoming book Countdown 1960.

Coming out on October 8, the third...

Ron Hale, who starred as Roger Coleridge during the entire 14-year run of Ryan’s Hope and had an even longer stretch as Mike Corbin on another ABC soap opera, General Hospital, has died. He was 78.

Hale, who lived in St. George, South Carolina, died Aug. 27, his family announced.

Hale worked on Ryan’s Hope from 1975-89 and received supporting actor Daytime Emmys in 1979 and ’80. As Coleridge, a doctor from a well-do-do family who often clashed with the Ryan clan, he was married to Delia Reid (Ilene Kristen/Randall Edwards), Maggie Shelby (Cali Timmins) and then Delia again.

Hale then recurred as Corbin, the father of mob boss Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard), on General Hospital from 1995-2010, and he showed up on the G.H. spinoff Port Charles from 1997-2000 as well. (Max Gail played the character from 2018-21.)

Ronald Hale Thigpen was born on Jan. 2, 1946, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended Furman University,...

Julia Roberts will receive an honorary César Award at the upcoming 50th César Awards in Paris.

The Pretty Woman star will be honored at the gala event on Feb. 28, 2025, at the historic Olympia Hall in Paris. The ceremony will be broadcast live on Canal+.

“Julia Roberts is not only a movie star but also a cultural icon whose influence extends far beyond her performances,” the French film academy, which presents the Césars, said in a statement. “Offscreen, she is dedicated to philanthropic causes, serving as an ambassador for Unicef and supporting numerous humanitarian efforts worldwide. An environmental advocate, she has lent her voice to documentaries about protecting the planet and actively campaigns for women’s rights.”

Roberts’ breakthrough as an actress came with Mystic Pizza in 1988, but it was her portrayal of Vivian Ward alongside Richard Gere in 1990’s Pretty Woman that made her a global superstar. She has had...

“It’s gonna be different now. They’ll never lie to us again.”

It seems odd to start at the ending of “Dick,” the 1999 Watergate satire starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams and now celebrating its 25th anniversary. But those final lines, spoken by Dunst’s Betsy to Williams’ Arlene, the teen girl duo whom the movie posits as the real political masterminds behind the Deep Throat informant that helped bring down Richard “Dick” Nixon, hit different when rewatching “Dick” in the current political climate.

“It always got a knowing laugh,” said director Andrew Fleming, speaking to IndieWire during the same week of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life and President Joe Biden announcing he was not seeking reelection, instead endorsing his Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.

“We knew at the time that that was meant to be a joke,” said screenwriter Sheryl Longin, who co-wrote the script with Fleming.

“Eyewitness to History” is set to air on BBC Four at 8:00 Pm on Thursday, August 8, 2024. This special documentary features filmmaker Norma Percy as she revisits her acclaimed 1994 series “Watergate.” The program promises a deep dive into the infamous scandal that changed American politics forever.

Norma Percy reflects on the challenges she faced while creating the original series. She shares insights into her meticulous approach to piecing together the story of the botched break-in that shocked not just America, but the entire world. Viewers will learn about the obstacles she encountered while gaining exclusive access to key figures involved in the scandal, many of whom transitioned from being unknown to becoming household names.

As Percy discusses the lasting impact of the Watergate scandal, she also explores why the story continues to resonate with audiences today. The documentary aims to provide a fresh perspective on a pivotal moment in history, showcasing...

Amazon is adding another actor to its expanding Bosch universe.

John Carroll Lynch has joined the third show in the franchise, centering on LAPD detective Renée Ballard (to be played by Maggie Q). The untitled series, which will stream on Prime Video, follows Ballard as she takes on running the department’s cold case division — an underfunded, all-volunteer unit with a huge case load. The character has appeared in several of Bosch author Michael Connelly’s novels.

Lynch (American Horror Story, Big Sky) will play Thomas Laffont, a retired former partner of Ballard’s who comes back to help her run the the department. He’s a kind, seasoned detective and crack interrogator.

The spinoff — one of two additional shows set in the same world as both Bosch and Bosch: Legacy — will be set up in the season three finale of the latter series, which is likely to premiere later this year.

Few directors reach the sort of stardom where their names are thrown on billboards. A Nolan or a Tarantino or a Peele become brands in and of themselves, while the other 99% bubble quietly under the surface; reliable journeymen, gallantly plugging away at the nuts and bolts of what used to be the mid-budget feature scene. These are the filmmakers who not only set the pace, but who change the very language of a genre too, consistently firing out exciting, crowd-pleasing, attention-grabbing stuff, year after year, decade after decade. Creative puppet masters living behind the scenes; their movies aren’t as stylistically loud, but their generation-spanning oeuvres are just as (if not more) legendary.

Don Siegel, J. Lee Thompson, Mary Lambert, Renny Harlin, Jonathan Demme, Doug Liman, John Frankenheimer – even just picking a handful of names at random gives you a who’s-who of filmmakers responsible for some of the most...

Lana Del Rey closed out the first night of Hangout Music Festival on Friday night by bringing out Jelly Roll for a duet cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”

Taking the stage together, the two delivered a loose and lively rendition of the 1974 Southern anthem, with some ad lib interjections, like when Jelly Roll shouts “We love you Lanita!” For her part, Del Rey changed some lyrics, skipping over the “Southern Man” reference to remind the crowd that Neil Young “squashed that beef into the ground.”

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For the song’s more controversial verse, both Del Rey and Jelly Roll seem to have a gaff on the lyrics, awkwardly missing the timing for the George Wallace lines but sticking the landing to come together in unison for “Watergate does not bother me.” That aside, going into the repeating refrain of the chorus, it...

It’s been less than 12 years since Dan Stevens raised a middle finger to the British aristocracy, quitting “Downton Abbey” as the show neared its Emmy-amassing zenith and setting sail for America with his family. As he admits, he had “absolutely no idea” what was going to happen to him.

“There was no roadmap,” the 41-year-old actor explains with frank honestly about a decision that, at the time, was considered by many to be sheer lunacy. “I left ‘Downton’ with a blank slate. It was just, ‘I think I want to do other things.’ But I didn’t know what that looked like.”

To have an idea of what that currently looks like, anyone need just head to their nearest cinema, where Stevens is going head-to-head against himself in two of the biggest studio releases of the season. In what has become something of a calling card for the Brit...

Political dramas set in the 60s and 70s have taken the world by storm these past few years. From the Oscar-nominated drama Rustin, which Netflix also released, to the numerous Watergate projects, including Gaslit and White House Plumbers. Even Mrs. America, which details the fight to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, fits the bill. If you watched the last one, you’ll come into Shirley knowing at least a bit about what to expect, as Uzo Aduba won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for embodying Shirley Chisholm — a role that Regina King takes on in this film. I wouldn’t be surprised if much-deserved awards buzz is in her future, too.

Did you know that there was a miniseries in the spring of 2022 about the Watergate scandal that starred Oscar winners Julia Roberts and Sean Penn? No? Okay, did you know that there was a miniseries last March about the WeWork scandal starring Oscar winners Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway? No again? Then what about Oscar winner Rachel Weisz playing dual roles in a miniseries from last April? Anyone? Anyone?

Those shows were, respectively, Starz’s Gaslit, Apple’s WeCrashed, and Prime Video’s Dead Ringers. That none of these likely (dead) ring a bell,...

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick are working together again!

The married couple hasn’t acted alongside each other in 20 years, but they just signed on to star in the upcoming movie Connescence, written and directed by The King of Queens creator Michael J. Weithorn.

Keep reading to find out more…

Deadline reports that Kevin will play “Stan Olszewski, a sharp, funny, but chronically underachieving security guard, who breaks up an attempted robbery at the home of Cynthia Rand (Sedgwick), a successful urologist married to brilliant former Watergate prosecutor Warren Rand (Judd Hirsch). From this chance encounter grows a charged and dynamic friendship – first as late-night text sessions filled with humor and intimate revelations, growing into something that shakes the foundation of both their lives.”

The White Lotus actress Brittany O’Grady has also joined the cast.

“We are so excited to work together on screen again for the first time in 20 years in such a funny,...

Exclusive: Husband-and-wife duo Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have landed roles together in a movie for the first time in two decades, with The King of Queens creator Michael J. Weithorn penning and directing Connescence.

Principal photography kicked off this week on the movie from Victoria Hill and Greg Clark’s Fibonacci Films, with Bacon and Sedgwick playing the leads, joined by White Lotus star Brittany O’Grady and Oscar-nominated The Fabelmans actor Judd Hirsch.

Bacon plays Stan Olszewski, a sharp, funny, but chronically underachieving security guard, who breaks up an attempted robbery at the home of Cynthia Rand (Sedgwick), a successful urologist married to brilliant former Watergate prosecutor Warren Rand (Judd Hirsch). From this chance encounter grows a charged and dynamic friendship – first as late-night text sessions filled with humor and intimate revelations, growing into something that shakes the foundation of both their lives.

Bacon and Sedgwick, who married in...

Author Michael Farris Smith has penned a nice handful of best-selling books, from The Hand of Strangers and The Fighter to Desperation Road. The latter, an emotionally rich action thriller, arrives in theaters and on demand this month with Smith as screenwriter. The film version is, overall, an effective southern noir thriller with a plot featuring a compelling thematic triangle: revenge, redemption, and justice.

Desperation Road stars Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy), Willa Fitzgerald (Scream: The TV Series), and Oscar winner Mel Gibson (Braveheart). It takes place in a small Mississippi town where the locals know one another and protecting family is key, no matter how far you go to keep your loved ones safe. Or bring justice to them. Ultimately, this movie is about two lost souls — Fitzgerald plays distraught Maben, a single mother running for her life; and Hedlund is Russell, a man who just got out of jail and must start over.

“I would say ‘Veep’ absolutely put us on a path toward this project,” reflects Peter Huyck on how the Emmy-winning HBO political satire starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus led him and his creative partner Alex Gregory to their subsequent project, the HBO limited series “White House Plumbers.” Together, the duo created, executive produced, and wrote all five episodes of this retelling of Watergate, which was brought to them by David Bernad. He thought there was a “Coen brothers dark comedy” in the material and wanted the “Veep” writers to offer a “new take” on the infamous D.C. scandal. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Gregory points not only to “Veep,” but also to that show’s creator Armando Iannucci and his film “The Death of Stalin” as a major source of inspiration. “That was a horrific episode about a genocidal maniac, and it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen,...

The eligibility window for this year’s Emmys cycle closed May 31. The hanging episode rule has gone the way of Barry Berkman, which means this week’s TV awards contenders to watch are kind of an odd bunch: mostly episodes that aired earlier in the week or currently airing shows whose full seasons won’t be eligible. But you don’t care about that — you just want to know what shows are worth watching.

A nominee in 2022 for Best Short Form Comedy, Drama or Variety Series, the extremely memeable sketch comedy “I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson” returned to Netflix for its highly anticipated third season on May 30, making its six episodes eligible for this year’s awards cycle. The unpredictable series from Robinson and Zach Kanin earned the former the award for Best Short Form Actor in 2022 (the show lost to “Carpool Karaoke: The Series”). There is...

Curated by the IndieWire Crafts team, Craft Considerations is a platform for filmmakers to talk about recent work we believe is worthy of awards consideration. In partnership with HBO, for this edition, we look at how the team behind “White House Plumbers” found a way to marry comedy, history, and the paranoid atmosphere of 1970s political thrillers.

There’s a scene in Episode 4 of “White House Plumbers” where Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson), one of the masterminds behind the Watergate break-in, receives a call from reporter Bob Woodward. It’s the other side of the exact phone call dramatized from Woodward’s perspective in “All the President’s Men” — the 1976 movie about how Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s reporting helped bring down Hunt, his partner-in-crime G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux), and the Nixon White House.

“I like to think of [‘White House Plumbers’] as existing almost in parallel to ‘All the President’s Men,’” said director...

White House Plumbers shouldn’t require a spoiler warning. The HBO miniseries is about the Watergate scandal. But, since it’s told from the perspective of Nixon’s political saboteurs, E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux), the five-episode satirical drama covers a ton of ground that the average person is likely coming upon for the first time.

“There are a lot of people who know Nixon resigned, maybe they’ve heard the word Watergate, maybe they only know ‘gate,’ like they’ve seen this-gate and that-gate. There’s an opportunity here to just let people know what President Nixon did. It’s a story where, maybe it’s been long enough that it’s time to remind people. But now, let’s go one step further,” said David Mandel, who directed all five episodes and is an executive producer alongside the show’s creators and writers,...

“I didn’t think anyone would ever do a Watergate series, so I never thought to ask,” reflects David Mandel about one of the defining moments in American political history. But as it turns out, he recalls, “One day, I found out there was a Watergate series and the next thing I knew I was the director of it.” The Emmy Award-winning executive producer credits his longtime home HBO for backing the series “White House Plumbers” because “only they would make this show about two very dangerous guys in the 1970s who went to work for the President to basically break the law in the name of the law.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

While Mandel says he doesn’t “want anybody sympathizing” with the two criminals who masterminded the infamous Watergate break-ins — E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux) — he does hope the series helps viewers understand them.

The cast of the political thriller miniseries Gaslit boasts two Oscar winners alongside other talented actors with varied film and TV experience. Ranking among the best television adaptations of podcasts, Gaslit takes inspiration from the first season of Slow Burn. The narrative focuses on Martha Mitchell, the real-life socialite whose frank and revealing interviews played a major role in President Richard Nixon’s downfall during the Watergate scandal. Gaslit also incorporates the stories of other chief figures of the era such as White House attorney John Dean, Attorney General John N. Mitchell, and G. Gordon Liddy, the leader of the Democratic National Committee burglary at the Watergate Complex.

Like many other fact-based stories that explore the Watergate scandal, the Gaslit cast largely includes actors playing real-life personalities. Even though Nixon is kept in the shadows, Gaslit puts the spotlight on its central figure as well as the lawyers, FBI agents,...

The recent passing of Harry Belafonte — and the viral proliferation of a clip featuring the iconic singer/actor/activist crooning “Day-o” in front of a boat packed with dancing pigs — was a reminder of how many stars of a certain generation were at their most relaxed and ebullient as participants on The Muppet Show.

Some 44 years after Belafonte did The Muppet Show, the powers that be at Disney and the Muppet Studio continue to go out of their way to find avenues for Muppet programming that inexplicably avoid just doing The Muppet Show for a new generation. There’s a willingness to fritter this priceless brand away on tangential projects that vanish quickly and forgettably instead of bringing the characters and the A-list stars who love them together in one spoof-and-song-driven space.

Disney+’s new effort at Muppet-mining — a third, following Muppets Haunted Mansion and Muppets Now — is The Muppets Mayhem,...

This post contains spoilers for HBO's "White House Plumbers."

Countless pieces of media dedicated to the Watergate scandal have scrutinized the various facets of the infamous series of break-ins (and cover-ups) perpetrated by the Nixon administration. From the taut, thrilling "All the President's Men" to the chaotic satirical comedy "Dick," Watergate has been dramatized in various tints and shades, and the HBO limited series, "White House Plumbers," intends to continue this tradition. The show's attempts at comedy are half-decent — the colorful characters involved in the (repeated) attempted break-in into the National Committee offices are rightfully portrayed as bumbling clowns with massive egos, but the results are uneven, and not as entertaining as it intends to be. However, "White House Plumbers" does excel in capturing the utterly ridiculous chaos of the botched break-ins from the get-go, exposing the continued incompetence of the Plumbers that eventually led to the downfall of President Richard M. Nixon.

For seven seasons, “Veep” painted a portrait of the Washington elite as unflattering as it was accurate. Our nation’s capital, the satire argued, is filled with neither dedicated public servants nor savvy political operators, but bumbling sycophants whose self-importance far outstrips their actual abilities. “White House Plumbers,” the new HBO limited series, extends that argument from fictional characters to actual history. Created by “Veep” writers Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory and directed by David Mandel, the “Seinfeld” alum who ran “Veep” after the departure of Armando Iannucci, “White House Plumbers” charts the awkward bromance of two men who tried and failed to break into the Watergate Hotel. The result is a shotgun marriage of “Step Brothers” and “Slow Burn.”

The latter podcast, which outlined the series of events from the attempted bugging of the DNC in 1972 to the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, was already adapted into a TV show last year.

HBO has launched a companion podcast to its White House Plumbers series, which just premiered tonight. From some of the minds behind Succession and Veep, White House Plumbers tells the story of the Watergate break-in and subsequent scandal like never before. Because it is based on historical events, the series is bound to raise questions; the White House Plumbers Podcast often has answers.

The White House Plumbers Podcast is a five-part series hosted by Olivia Nuzzi, the Washington correspondent for New York Magazine, and featuring a number of guests from the show. The first episode features interview clips from director David Mandel, stars Justin Theroux and Woody Harrelson, and Watergate historian Garrett Graff. Other guests include producer David Bernad, who is also a producer on The White Lotus season 3, and cinematographer Steven Meizler.

More About the White House Plumbers Podcast

The real events of the Watergate scandal are unbelievable; the...

It might not look like it right now, but May will mark a monumental for HBO Max. On May 23, the streaming service will be dropping the HBO from its name and will officially be rebranded as Max, which will include a massive amount of new content that will be available to stream, with many of the new titles coming from under the Discovery umbrella. While we currently don't know the list of titles that will be made available on Max at launch, we do know what's coming to HBO Max in its final days. HBO alumni Woody Harrelson (True Detective) and Justin Theroux (The Leftovers) will be teaming up for the satirical political drama White House Plumbers, which follows E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, the masterminds behind Watergate. The underrated series The Other Two, starring Case Walker, Heléne Yorke, Drew Tarver, and Molly Shannon will be returning for...

When it came to Watergate, it wasn't the crime, it was the coverup. Had Richard Nixon and his men not covered up the White House's involvement in the break-in — and had Nixon not recorded so many conversations — the president might have survived. Indeed, it's strange to look back at the Watergate affair and think that such a small, petty crime — a "third-rate burglary," in Nixon's own words — could bring down a president, especially in this modern age when politicians are wildly, flagrantly corrupt and suffer almost no consequences.

The story of Watergate and its aftermath has been covered frequently in film and TV, most notably in "All the President's Men." Now, HBO's "White House Plumbers" takes us back to the '70s and focuses on the men who made it happen — the men who, through their own ineptitude, helped destroy Richard Nixon, a president they professed to love. Who were these men?...

Most are familiar with the Watergate scandal: several burglars were arrested at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters on June 17, 1972; President Richard Nixon’s administration attempted to cover up its involvement in the break-in; and the political crime ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation.

But who were the masterminds behind the Watergate scandal? Their perspectives are revealed in the upcoming HBO limited series, “White House Plumbers.”

“There’s so many different versions, and the one thing that happens in all these versions is the same scene right at the beginning; you see the guys breaking in with flashlights, and then you hear there was an arrest at the Watergate Hotel, or something like that. And that’s it — you never hear about those guys or see them again,” director David Mandel told Variety at the New York premiere of “White House Plumbers” on Monday night. “This is the story about...

"White House Plumbers", directed by David Mandel, is a new five-episode TV series, following 'Watergate' masterminds, 'E. Howard Hunt' (Woody Harrelson) and 'G. Gordon Liddy' (Justin Theroux), as they accidentally topple Nixon's presidency, airing May 1, 2023 on HBO:

Cast also includesLena Headey ('Dorothy Hunt'), Judy Greer ('Fran Liddy'), Domhnall Gleeson ('John Dean'), Toby Huss ('James McCord'), Ike Barinholtz ('Jeb Magruder'), Kathleen Turner ('Dita Beard'), Kim Coates ('Frank Sturgis'), Yul Vazquez ('Bernard "Macho" Barker'), Alexis Valdés ('Felipe De Diego'), Nelson Ascencio ('Virgilio "Villo" Gonzalez'), Tony Plana ('Eugenio "Muscolito" Martinez')....

...Zoe Levin ('Lisa Hunt'), Liam James ('Saint John Hunt'), Kiernan Shipka ('Kevan Hunt'), Tre Ryder ('David Hunt'), David Krumholtz ('William O. Bittman'), F. Murray Abraham ('Judge Sirica'), Rich Sommer ('Egil "Bud" Krogh') and John Carroll Lynch ('John Mitchell'). 

Click the images to enlarge.

Last year, the Starz limited series “Gaslit” took on Watergate and its complexities. In 2023, it’s HBO‘s turn to deliver its own series about the infamous political scandal, albeit from a slightly different angle.

Read More: The 70 Most Anticipated TV Shows & Mini-Series Of 2023

“White House Plumbers” stars Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux as Watergate “masterminds” E.

Continue reading ‘White House Plumbers’: HBO’s Take On The Watergate Scandal With Woody Harrelson & Justin Theroux Premieres On May 1 at The Playlist.

Watergate comes to TV once more in White House Plumbers. HBO has shared the premiere date and trailer showing Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux (The Leftovers) as the men who would inadvertently kick Richard Nixon out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. “The President is a good man,” G. Gordon Liddy (Theroux) says, sitting next to E. Howard Hunt (Harrelson) and adding, “between you and me, I worry about some of the people with whom he surrounds himself.” Watch the trailer above. White House Plumbers, premiering Monday, May 1 at 9/8c, tells the story of how Nixon’s own political saboteurs and Watergate masterminds, Hunt and Liddy accidentally toppled the presidency they were zealously trying to protect. It’s based in part on public records and the book Integrity by Egil “Bud” Krogh and Matthew Krogh. Egil is played by Rich Sommer (Mad Men) in the series. The trailer for the five-episode limited series shows off the impressive cast,...

Game of Thrones’ Lena Headey is embarking on another epic TV adventure with a starring role in Netflix’s forthcoming Western-themed drama The Abandons, TVLine has confirmed.

The series, which hails from Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, centers on a group of “diverse, outlier families as they pursue their Manifest Destiny in 1850s Oregon, as a corrupt force of wealth and power, coveting their land, tries to force them out,” per the official show description provided by Netflix. “These abandoned souls, the kind of lost souls living on the fringe of society, unite their tribes to form a family and fight back.

Game of Thrones star Lena Headey is headed west — specifically, to the Oregon of the 1850s — for her next TV series.

Headey will star in The Abandons, a western from Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter. The show, which received a straight-to-series order in October 2022, follows a group of outlier families in 1850s Oregon who “pursue their Manifest Destiny [while] a corrupt force of wealth and power, coveting their land, tries to force them out,” per the show’s description.

Headey, who earned five Emmy nominations for her role as Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones, will play Fiona, the head of an adoptive family. The character description reads, “a strong, devout matriarch who, unable to have her own children, took in four orphans to create her own family. Driven by a higher purpose — and a strong-willed Irish temper — her faith and love for her family trump all.”

The Abandons is...

The True Detective boys are getting the band back together.

Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have signed on to team up again in a new comedy series for Apple TV+, TVLine has learned. The untitled scripted comedy is billed as “a heartfelt odd couple love story” that centers on “the strange and beautiful bond” between the two actors. “Matthew and Woody’s friendship is tested when their combined families attempt to live together on Matthew’s ranch in Texas,” per the official synopsis. (From the description, it sounds like McConaughey and Harrelson are playing fictionalized versions of themselves here, but...

Now that the drama is over about whether the Academy would disqualify Andrea Riseborough for her rules-skirting DIY Oscar campaign for To Leslie, we can now return to the question every indie filmmaker wants to know. Just how do you run a DIY Oscar campaign on an indie film that grossed less than $30,000? I don’t know exactly how she did it, but I can tell you how I did it with my recent Watergate thriller/comedy 18½ that grossed about the same (though with slightly different results). In short, the road to getting an Oscar nomination (much less an award) […]

The post How To Run a DIY Oscar Campaign first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Now that the drama is over about whether the Academy would disqualify Andrea Riseborough for her rules-skirting DIY Oscar campaign for To Leslie, we can now return to the question every indie filmmaker wants to know. Just how do you run a DIY Oscar campaign on an indie film that grossed less than $30,000? I don’t know exactly how she did it, but I can tell you how I did it with my recent Watergate thriller/comedy 18½ that grossed about the same (though with slightly different results). In short, the road to getting an Oscar nomination (much less an award) […]

The post How To Run a DIY Oscar Campaign first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

When it comes to telling stories, most filmmakers prefer to let the material do the talking. That was the case for the six Oscar-nominated directors of doc shorts who gathered with TheWrap’s Executive Awards Editor, Steve Pond, as part of TheWrap’s 2022-2023 Awards Season Screening Series: Kartiki Gonsalves (“The Elephant Whisperers”), Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev (“Haulout”), Anne Alvergue (“The Martha Mitchell Effect”), Jay Rosenblatt (“How Do You Measure a Year?”) and Joshua Seftel (“Stranger at the Gate”).

For Gonsalves, whose film focuses on a couple from a small village in southern India who rescues an orphaned elephant, less was more. “I just wanted ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ to let viewers understand both the elephant and the human carers with very little, almost minimal outside interpretation,” she said. “I was really trying to focus on the dignity of both the elephants and the indigenous people who have literally lived...

Woody Harrelson seems generally confused as he prepares to return as host for Saturday Night Live.

The star of HBO’s upcoming White House Plumbers is set to lead the NBC comedy series’ Feb. 25 episode, during which he’ll enter the Five-Timers Club after four previous hosting stints, most recently in September 2019. He’ll be joined by musical guest Jack White, who will similarly mark his fifth time performing on the show.

In a video released Wednesday, Harrelson walks the hallowed halls of Studio 8H while admiring photos of previous hosts on the wall. The actor seems to be mistaken about a few of their names and refers to Matthew McConaughey simply as “my weed guy.”

Later, the host notices featured player Devon Walker, who realizes that Harrelson’s inner monologue is actually coming from a boombox he’s carrying, as the Cheers alum has apparently prerecorded everything he is planning to say.

The second part of this documentary portrait of the tennis star’s rise and fall does fill out the story but it sure takes its time

It is a pleasure, as well as a relief, to be able now to see the second part of Alex Gibney’s documentary about the disgraced German tennis legend who astonished the sports world by winning the Wimbledon men’s singles title in 1985 at just 17, and has wound up in middle age going to prison in the UK for hiding assets after bankruptcy.

Very unfortunately and confusingly, the Berlin film festival showed just the first half of this Apple TV+ documentary (like showing half a movie) – an even more perplexing decision given that the festival showed Charles Ferguson’s Watergate documentary in its four-hour entirety in 2019 and all 252 minutes of Nanette Burstein’s Hillary Clinton documentary in 2020. And what’s more, the film’s...

In the abysmal landscape of short film distribution, documentaries have had the easiest time translating to streaming and internet consumption. Often overlapping with hard-hitting video journalism, documentary shorts appeal to establishment news outlets like The New Yorker and The New York Times, and both outlets have funded numerous short documentaries over the last decade.

In its effort to earn industry clout by wracking up Oscar nominations, Netflix joined the fray, and its two nominations for Best Documentary Short this year are by far the most accessible.

This year’s nominees lean far lighter than in most years, which is somewhat surprising seeing as the terrible news just keeps piling up. Perhaps voters needed a little levity this year, or perhaps filmmakers themselves are seeking out more uplifting stories.

From saving baby elephants in India to a shocking tale of a changed perspective, the films in this category offer more than...

Cindy Williams, who starred in the smash Happy Days spinoff Laverne & Shirley after appearing in two Best Picture Oscar nominees — George Lucas’ American Graffiti and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation — has died. She was 75. Her family told the Associated Press today that the actress died Wednesday after a brief illness.

“The passing of our kind, hilarious mother, Cindy Williams, has brought us insurmountable sadness that could never truly be expressed,” reads the statement from her children, Emily and Zak Hudson, relayed through a spokesperson. “Knowing and loving her has been our joy and privilege. She was one of a kind, beautiful, generous and possessed a brilliant sense of humor and a glittering spirit that everyone loved.”

Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries Related Story Laverne Cox & George Wallace Comedy 'Clean Slate' Produced By Norman Lear Gets Amazon Freevee Series Order Related Story Laverne...

Director Gary Nelson, whose credits include live-action Disney films like "The Black Hole" and the original "Freaky Friday," as well as numerous TV episodes, has died of natural causes at the age of 87. Nelson's son confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter on Friday that Nelson had passed away in his Las Vegas home several months ago, on May 25, 2022, though the news is only just now coming to light.

Nelson was born in Los Angeles on October 6, 1934, and he first came up in Hollywood as an assistant director. Among his earliest credits are the classic James Dean film "Rebel Without a Cause" and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1955 film adaptation of the Broadway musical "Guys and Dolls," both of which were nominated for multiple Academy Awards. He followed this up with further Ad work on two more Oscar-nominated Westerns, "The Searchers" and "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," before crossing over into television.

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This Emmy season was stuffed with true-crime sagas, largely among the limited/anthology series. With that category’s top prize restricted to just five nominees, four of the series noms went to titles that examined high-profile crimes: Hulu’s Dopesick, The Dropout and Pam & Tommy, plus Netflix’s Inventing Anna.

While fraud is at the center of each of these series, the more traditional “true-crime” shows — with murders driving the narratives — were less popular with TV Academy voters. HBO’s The Staircase, about the infamous case in which crime novelist Michael Peterson’s wife was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their North Carolina home, earned nods for lead actors Colin Firth and Toni Collette; FX/Hulu’s Under the Banner of Heaven, about the grisly death of a young mother and her child at the hands of Mormon fundamentalists,...

The Emmy best actress races are becoming increasingly competitive as big-name stars participate in creating shows, reclaiming the power to be leading ladies carrying an increasingly complex narrative. Take Julia Roberts and her role as the Washington socialite turned whistleblower Martha Mitchell in Starz’ limited-series Emmy contender “Gaslit.”

With Mitchell, the actress-producer explores a woman of contradictions: a stylish hostess who tipsily goes over the edge into drug and alcohol abuse; a political player on the arm of Richard Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell (Sean Penn), whose marriage crumbles under the weight of an administration in crisis; and a traumatized wife and mother experiencing Ptsd after repeatedly being roughly thrown under the bus by the powerful white men in the room.

What Roberts and her fellow producers have done here is to take the familiar narrative of the White House burglars first exposed by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,...

This week on TheWrap-Up podcast, TheWrap sits down with “Elvis” director, co-writer and producer Baz Luhrmann to discuss his epic biopic, while TheWrap’s founder and editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman talks about the week’s biggest headlines and stories with podcast guest co-host and TheWrap assistant managing editor for audience Adam Chitwood.

The interview with Baz Luhrmann touches on why he wanted to tell Elvis Presley’s story in the first place. “I took it on not to do a biopic but I always thought Elvis would be this great canvas to explore America, because he’s sort of at the center of everything in the 50s, 60s and 70s,” Luhrmann said.

The “Moulin Rouge!” filmmaker also revealed that the project started to coalesce when he learned more about Elvis’ manager Colonel Tom Parker, played in the film by Tom Hanks, and drew inspiration from “Amadeus” to make him a major part of the story.