News

Judging from the trailers, the upcoming Naked Gun reboot is seemingly going to be chock-full of references to the original movie trilogy, up to and including a brief, photographic cameo from late accused murderer/prank show auteur O.J. Simpson.

But will the new movie include an appearance from the one living celebrity who’s been in every other installment of the Naked Gun series and wasn’t married to Elvis?

As you may remember, early in 1988’s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, Frank returns from his jurisdictionally-questionable trip to Beirut and discovers a crowd of reporters and fans waiting for him at the airport. But after addressing the spectators, Frank is informed that they’re actually there to greet his fellow passenger: “Weird Al” Yankovic.

The cameo came about because Yankovic was a huge fan of Police Squad!. “I still consider that my favorite TV series of all time,...

Post Malone and Swae Lee’s song “Sunflower” has just become the most-streamed song ever in the U.S. The track was part of the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack back in 2018. Now, more than five years later, it has made history.

Luminate, the company that tracks music data, says “Sunflower” has reached 3.96 billion audio and video streams in the U.S., which puts it ahead of “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. That makes it the most-streamed song of all time in the country.

“Sunflower” was first released as a single in October 2018. It later showed up on Post Malone’s album Hollywood’s Bleeding. Right from the start, the song was a hit. It went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed in the top 10 for 33 weeks. At the time, that was one of the longest runs ever in the chart’s top ten.

Related:...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (Peter Browngardt)

Directed by Peter Browngardt, this is a charming affair. Modeled after sci-fi B-movies of the 1950s and starring Looney Tunes legends Porky Pig and Daffy Duck (both voiced by Eric Bauza), The Day the Earth Blew Up starts with a UFO landing. The spacecraft takes off on the roof of Porky and Daffy’s broken-down house (bequeathed to them by surrogate father Farmer Jim) just before crashing. It goes on to infect a local scientist (Fred Tatasciore) with a zombifying goo not long after. Soon enough, the goo is in the mix at the gum factory, where Porky and Daffy have taken jobs in a last-ditch effort to save their beloved home from being demolished.

Exclusive: “We are all about celebrating Canada right now,” TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey explains on a Zoom call with us ahead of his festival’s latest lineup announcement this morning.

“But only in the sense that I’m very focused on how Canadian stories speak to the whole world. There is a thriving culture that I think is somewhat unique to Canadian cinema because it is supported by public bodies. Nearly all Canadian cinema is independent cinema, unlike some countries with big commercial industries.”

Mile End Kicks, the sophomore feature from Toronto native Chandler Levack (I Like Movies), is one of those independently produced titles set to come out of Canada this year, and it was included as a world premiere in this morning’s TIFF announcement. Levack joined us on the call with Bailey.

Written and directed by Levack, the film follows a 24-year-old female music critic who moves...

The scourge of heroin use by Black Americans in cities like New York in the 1970s sparked Richard Nixon’s War of Drugs. The goal was to “associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin” and to “disrupt those communities” by “criminalizing both heavily,” Nixon’s domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman said in 2016.

Legs McNeil uses that quote in his documentary, Pusherman: Frank Lucas & The True Story of American Gangster, distributed by Mvd Entertainment, which arrives on streaming service Tubi today (June 24). “I’d never heard it before,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I thought it was a fantastic quote. It made sense because they would raid you, they’d target you. I was targeted as a kid for going to antiwar demonstrations.”

McNeil’s movie focuses on Frank Lucas, the Harlem dope pusher made famous in Ridley Scott’s 2007 druggy saga American Gangster, which was based on a...

Maggie Sajak proved she’s a multi-talented entertainer.

Maggie, the daughter of legendary Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak, currently serves as the show’s Social Correspondent.

In addition to her work at Sony Pictures Studios and the legal field, the 30-year-old star also serves as Inside Edition’s special correspondent for Super Bowl week.

This week, Maggie arrived at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans to participate in the pre-Super Bowl Lix festivities.

To kick things off on opening night, Maggie interviewed some of the players from the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles on the field.

While she was on the field, Maggie was invited by the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders to learn some dance and cheer moves.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Maggie Sajak (@maggiesajak)

“Hi, everyone! So excited to be hanging out with everyone today to learn some moves,” Maggie told the group.

Exclusive: Thierry Lachkar, the CEO of ITV Studios France, has added Profilage producer Tetra Media Studio to his roster following the departures of Jean-François Boyer and Sébastien Borivent.

Lachkar will oversee the day-to-day at the vet French drama indie, which has a number of scripted labels and was acquired by ITV Studios seven years ago. ITV Studios France COO Céline Roux is simultaneously expanding her responsibilities to cover Tetra.

Le Figaro revealed late last week that Boyer and Borivent are exiting after two decades at the helm of the company responsible for some of France’s biggest TV dramas down the years. The pair resigned in July and Borivent will remain in post until the end of this year to oversee a transition.

Tetra works with the likes of TF1, Prime Video, Netflix, M6, France Télévisions, Canal+ and Arte. Past hits include TF1’s Profilage, which ran for over a decade,...

Continuing its buying spree, ITV has acquired a majority stake in French television production group Tetra Media Studio. Tetra is the French indie behind dramas such as crime series Profilage, which is now in its seventh season, and political thriller Les Hommes de l'Ombre. Overseen by CEO Jean-François Boyer, the company last year produced 161 hours of content across its seven production labels. It primarily produces French drama and its scripted labels include Tetra…...