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Before Martin Sheen became the iconic President Josiah Bartlet on The West Wing, the show’s creators wanted to cast legendary actor Sidney Poitier. His potential casting would have been a groundbreaking moment for television, as it would have made him the first Black actor to portray a U.S. president on screen. However, despite the initial interest, the plans with Poitier didn’t happen.

Martin Sheen in a still from The West Wing | Credits: NBC

After considering other actors, the role of Bartlet ultimately went to Martin Sheen, whose performance became one of the most beloved aspects of the show.

How did Martin Sheen land the role of President Bartlet over Sidney Poitier?

When casting for the role of President Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing, producers knew they needed someone who could bring both strength and relatability to the character. The role required an actor who could command...

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Sydney Pollack's 1993 thriller "The Firm" was the first film in a long series of mega-hits to be based on the literary output of John Grisham. Grisham, for those unfamiliar, was a lawyer-turned-writer who authored many supra-best-selling legal thrillers throughout the 1990s, including "The Pelican Brief," "The Client," "The Chamber," "A Time to Kill," and "Runaway Jury." There was a time when no one at an airport was without a Grisham novel in hand. Most of Grisham's books were about a young, upstart lawyer, new to the profession, who uncovers a vast legal conspiracy. To date, Grisham has written about 50 novels and four non-fiction books, and many of his bigger hits have been adapted into equally successful films.

Pollock's "The Firm" was made for $42 million and starred Tom Cruise as Mitch McDeere, a recent law school graduate, who finds...

While there are a lot of Disney characters who easily stand out on their own, there are some iconic Disney duos that show how much fun a pair can be. Disney has always loved exploring friendship in their animated movies and they have done so successfully since the beginning of their run. However, even in their long history, some Disney duos rise above the rest and showcase those truly special pairings that have delivered laughs, heartbreak, and charm to audiences over the years.

Including all the Pixar movies alongside the animated Disney roster, there are a lot of notable pairs to choose from. There are some friends who clearly go back a long way, like Mike and Sully in Monsters Inc. Some start out with a lot of tension only to find common ground, like Moana and Maui. Of course, some Disney duos are just fun to watch sharing the screen,...

Exorcist and Omen-inspired religious fare weren’t uncommon in the horror genre in the 70s and 80s. Hell, they still aren’t. But not many of them were derived of scripts written before either film ever saw the light of day. Nor do they carry the sexual deviance and shower immediately after watching feeling of a Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. Today’s film just might. Perhaps that’s why it’s so rarely spoken of. Or why it is, to this very day, difficult to acquire or even view online. This is the story of what happened to The Unholy. (The 1988 version. Not to be confused with the 2021 Jeffrey Dean Morgan film which has no affiliation.)

The story of The Unholy begins with writer Philip Yordan. Yordan, born in 1914, had been writing for so long, he once housed blacklisted writers in his basement during the McCarthy era. The script sat...

One of the more vaguely defined subcategories of the genre is survival horror, a term that originated from video games. After all, survival is the central goal of any character unlucky enough to find themselves in a horror movie. Survival horror has more to do with the environment than the main antagonistic threat; it features hostile environments and scarce resources.

It’s not just a lethal killer or creature that protagonists must battle, but environmental risks like dehydration, starvation, or exposure. Sometimes, there’s no extraneous threat at all, and death comes in the form of nature itself. Those who want to survive will have to think on their feet, adapting quickly to stave off unforgiving elements.

This week’s streaming picks highlight survival horror movies that see their characters battling against multiple threats in intense bids to outlive, outlast, and of course, ultimately survive.

Here’s where you can stream them this week.

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In this age of superhero movies, we rarely see a blockbuster take over the conversation in pop culture. Yes, I know there is Top Gun: Maverick, Barbie, and Oppenheimer but the true era of blockbusters is long gone and so are the movie stars there were times when blockbusters were all the rage and in this list, we are talking about that time, 1990s. Countless films were released in the 1990s and several of them became blockbusters but now many people don’t even remember them and even if they do they are not talking about them. So, we took it upon ourselves to create a list of the best 10 forgotten blockbusters that were released in the 1990s.

Air Force One (Rent on Prime Video) Box Office: $315.2 Million Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79% Credit – Sony Pictures

Air Force One is...

There was a time when “TV movie” didn’t mean cheesy rom-coms or throwaway thrillers. It meant high-stakes drama, impactful cultural events, and millions of viewers glued to their screens.

Made-for-tv movies were “event television” before that term even existed.

These films took on bold stories, pulled in top-tier talent, and covered issues from nuclear war to domestic violence — sometimes sparking national conversations that kept people talking for weeks.

(ABC/Screenshot)

But as TV evolved, the made-for-tv movie lost its place in the lineup, edged out by reality TV, serialized dramas, and eventually, streaming.

Here’s a look back at the heyday of made-for-tv movies, why they faded, and how they left their mark on today’s TV landscape.

The Golden Age of Made-for-tv Movies

From the 1970s through the ’90s, made-for-tv movies dominated the airwaves.

Networks brought big stories to small screens, delivering gripping dramas that tackled hot-button issues...

Lives of historical figures often get cinematic treatment to tell sweeping tales of real life events, and Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice captures former president Donald Trump in a key moment before the 2024 presidential election. Starring Sebastian Stan as Trump, Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn and Maria Bakalova as Trump’s first wife Ivanka, the film marks the latest in a catalog of films that explore the lives of political people. From United States Presidents to their wives and First Ladies, to Supreme Court Justices to scientists and brilliant minds, nobody is off limits, especially if the stories are triumphant. Others have more tragic endings.

The 2024 Academy Awards showed just how popular a biopic can be amongst voters with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer netting Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. Actors and actresses do almost anything to become the real-life person they portray in a biopic, from working with...

A quarter century after winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted,” Angelina Jolie is hoping to pick up the Best Actress trophy for her performance in “Maria.” In terms of Oscar history, she’d join Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange, Cate Blanchett, and Renée Zellweger, who all won for featured performances before prevailing again for star turns.

Jolie’s role, that of real-life opera singer Maria Callas, has already been proven to be awards-worthy and won Jane Seymour an Emmy nearly four decades ago. This English rose featured in the 1988 TV movie “Onassis: The Richest Man in the World,” opposite Raul Julia as Aristotle Onassis and Anthony Quinn as his father, Socrates. This remains her only Emmy win from five nominations.

Zellweger won Best Actress for her sensitive portrayal of Judy Garland in the 2020 flick “Judy.” Back in 2001, Tammy Blanchard and Judy Davis took home Emmys for their work...

Tim Blake Nelson recalls the extreme nature of working on Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. Nelson is an actor who is best known for his roles in films such as The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, O Brother, Where Art Thou, and The Incredible Hulk, and he played Richard Schell in Lincoln. The Spielberg movie features a leading cast including Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, and Tommy Lee Jones.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Nelson explains how intense working on Lincoln was. According to Nelson, lead actor Day-Lewis managed to "commit not only himself, but the entire production to a work ethic and to esthetic principles in terms of the process." What this means is that "there were never any anachronisms on set," affecting everything from how people dressed to what they were allowed to bring on set. Check out the full explanation from Nelson...

Midway boasts a stellar ensemble cast with Hollywood legends like Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda leading the charge. Despite lukewarm reviews, the film was a box office success, grossing $66.4 million against a $4 million budget. Some up-and-coming actors, like Erik Estrada and Tom Selleck, had small roles in Midway before becoming big stars in the future.

Although it was met with mostly negative reviews from critics upon its release, 1976s Midway is surprisingly one of the most star-studded war movies of all time. Directed by Jack Smight, best known for helming Airport 1975, Midway dramatizes the Battle of Midway, which marked a major turning point in the Pacific Theater of Operations in the Second World War. It wasnt the first (or last) movie to chronicle the game-changing Battle of Midway the most recent one arrived in 2019 but it is one of the ones with the most famous actors in its cast.

When it was first released,...

Fly Me to the Moon is a historical romantic comedy-drama film directed by Greg Berlanti from a screenplay by Rose Gilroy. The 2024 film follows a romantic entanglement between a marketing executive and a NASA official, as he prepares for the Apollo 11 moon landing while she is given the task of filming a fake moon landing in case the real mission fails. Fly Me to the Moon stars Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in the lead roles with Woody Harrelson, Anna Garcia, Ray Romano, Jim Rash, Nick Dillenburg, Jessie Mueller, Noah Robbins, and Bill Barrett starring in supporting roles. If you loved the fake moon landing aspect of Fly Me to the Moon, here are some similar movies you can check out next.

Moonwalkers (Starz & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Alchemy

Moonwalkers is a crime comedy film directed by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet from a screenplay by Dean Craig. Based on the Apollo Moon landing hoax,...

George A. Romero and Stephen King: a match made in horror movie heaven. It was probably inevitable that Stephen King would break into the movies, and the master of horror finally had his first screenplay produced in the form of Romero's "Creepshow," one of the best horror anthology movies ever made. King had penned scripts before (for instance: he wrote a draft of the screenplay for "The Shining" that Stanley Kubrick rejected), but "Creepshow" was the first original King script to make it to the screen. King and Romero originally met when Romero was being courted to direct the TV adaptation of King's vampire novel "Salem's Lot," and while Romero ultimately didn't direct the miniseries (those duties ultimately fell to "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" filmmaker Tobe Hooper), he and King became friends. Eventually, the two decided to make a movie together, with King penning the script and Romero directing.

In 1955, NBC sitcom star Robert Cummings made history as the first performer ever nominated in two Primetime Emmy categories at once. By winning for his work in the special “Twelve Angry Men” while also competing as the lead of the series “My Hero,” he laid the groundwork for 60 other male actors who have since earned double or even triple shots at Emmy glory. Scroll through our chronological photo gallery to find out who else belongs to this special group.

Beginning with Hal Holbrook in the 1970s, seven men have concurrently contended for two acting Emmys at multiple points in their careers. The one with the most list entries is Jon Hamm, who was simultaneously nominated for Best Drama Actor and Best Comedy Guest Actor on four different occasions between 2009 and 2015.

The only male actor to have ever won two Emmys in a single year is James Earl Jones, who was...

In 1955, NBC sitcom star Robert Cummings made history as the first performer ever nominated in two Primetime Emmy categories at once. By winning for his work in the special “Twelve Angry Men” while also competing as the lead of the series “My Hero,” he laid the groundwork for 60 other male actors who have since earned double or even triple shots at Emmy glory. Scroll through our chronological photo gallery to find out who else belongs to this special group.

Beginning with Hal Holbrook in the 1970s, seven men have concurrently contended for two acting Emmys at multiple points in their careers. The one with the most list entries is Jon Hamm, who was simultaneously nominated for Best Drama Actor and Best Comedy Guest Actor on four different occasions between 2009 and 2015.

The only male actor to have ever won two Emmys in a single year is James Earl Jones, who was...

Conspiracy thriller films have a way of sticking with our minds maybe it’s because they show that the authorities are hiding something and we know that actually might be true or maybe it’s just thrilling to uncover a large conspiracy even in a fictional world. We thought of compiling a list of the best and most thrilling conspiracy movies and we have only included the films that are entertaining and have a large conspiracy in their story. So, here are the 10 best conspiracy thriller movies you shouldn’t miss out on.

All the President’s Men (Rent on Prime Video)

All the President’s Men is a biographical political thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula from a screenplay by William Goldman. Based on a 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by authors Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the 1976 film is set during the 1972 elections and it follows the story...

When Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” was released in the fall of 2012, one of the nagging complaints — for an otherwise heralded film — related to its ending. Namely, it had too many.

Roger Ebert, in his four-star review, succinctly implied the picture should’ve wrapped before President Lincoln’s assassination. Samuel L. Jackson felt similarly, though he didn’t mince words about it. While it would be a stretch to say the contentious closing scenes chronicling Lincoln’s murder cost the film any of its Oscars — including losses in Best Editing, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture — it’s exactly the type of first-thought quibble voters would use as an excuse for choosing their preferred nominee.

Though plenty of pundits backed the chosen ending and “Lincoln’s” sweeping acclaim and staggering box office spoke to its overall appreciation ($275 million for a 150-minute period drama? Martin Scorsese would kill a flower moon...

As far as conspiracy theories go, very few have had as much of a life as the notion that NASA faked the Apollo moon landing. In some ways, one can understand why people felt this way, as it was one of the most critical events in human history, and the only witness was a TV camera. Back then, people distrusted anything they couldn’t see with their own eyes. In the seventies, conspiracy theories started to get famous, especially as far as the government went, with this the era of Watergate. People no longer trusted authority, and into this fraught environment came Capricorn One, a sci-fi-tinged conspiracy thriller that was one of the most popular films of 1977 but has since been largely forgotten – save for a small cult of devoted fans.

The film is directed by Best Movie You Never Saw favorite Peter Hyams, who also made Outland, 2010, Running Scared,...

Soon after Bill Bradley takes the stage in Rolling Along: An American Story, there’s a realization that this is not a traditional political documentary of talking heads, archival clips and fleeting reflections.

The project instead is a “performative autobiography,” as Bradley, the former NBA champion, U.S. senator and presidential candidate, calls it.

During the 90-minute, one-man show, Bradley talks, in poetic terms at times, about reaching the heights of fame and suffering stinging losses. He recounts a life growing up in Crystal City, Mo, becoming a star athlete in high school, attending Princeton and then playing the New York Knicks. He speaks of how the teamwork skills helped open his eyes to the world and led to his political career, culminating in his 2000 bid for the presidency. He was defeated by then-Vice President Al Gore in his quest for the Democratic nomination. “I went from thinking of myself...

On June 17, 1972, thieves acting on behalf of Richard Nixon's presidential campaign broke into the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC, the location of the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The group was looking for papers and secrets that would have given Nixon an unfair advantage in the election. Nixon was bafflingly still elected during this kerfuffle and served as president for two more years before enough details about the break-in emerged to warrant his infamous resignation from office. The many, many details of the Watergate scandal have been recorded in innumerable books, documentaries, and Hollywood dramas in the ensuing decades, and Watergate shows are being made to this day; the miniseries "Gaslit" aired in 2022 and "White House Plumbers" in 2023.

The Watergate scandal represented a loss of American innocence for many. It was positive proof that the Republican party was openly corrupt. The scandal was bad enough, but then Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon of all his recorded,...

October has arrived, and Amazon Prime Video is not lacking in great new movies to stream this month. The bulk of the James Bond library is available to stream on Prime Video starting on Oct. 1, so pick your favorite era and play your marathon accordingly. There’s also a bona fide new release hitting just in time for Spooky Season – the 1980s-set time travel horror film “Totally Killer,” starring “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” lead Kiernan Shipka. And the Nicolas Cage Dracula film “Renfield” also hits Prime Video this month.

Whether you’re looking for scares, thrills or a classic rom-com, we’ve got you covered. Check out our picks for the best new movies on Amazon Prime Video in October 2023 below.

The James Bond Franchise Eon

Ok so this is more than one film, but if you’re a James Bond fan you can now stream a slew of entries...

Into The Wild Into The Wild, Netflix, streaming now

The true story of Christopher John McCandless is brought to the screen by Sean Penn in this heartfelt drama with a poetic streak. The central role of MCandless, arguably marks a high spot in the career of Emile Hirsch. The story unfolds both from the perspective of McCandless, who gave everything he owned to Oxfam and went to look for America with tragic consequences, and his sister (Jena Malone), heard in voiceover offering the perspective of his family. Penn gets a bit too clever with the camera tricks in places, but the idealistic McCandless but he’s embodied with intelligence by Hirsch and the natural landscape is also shown in all its rugged beauty. There’s also a beautiful cameo from Hal Holbrook as a lonely pensioner who finds his life changed by his encounter with this youngster with a lust for life.

The Creepshow 2 episode of The Black Sheep was Written and Narrated by Andrew Hatfield, Edited by Brandon Nally, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

Its hard for a sequel to be better than the original – no, hey! Don’t close the article and please hold all hate in the comments until the end. I’m not saying Creepshow 2 (watch it Here) is better than the first movie, that’s just silly. Ok, so it’s hard for sequels to eclipse their previous iteration. Godfather II is always the answer to that but there are other things that you can prefer. Some people prefer the breakneck action of Aliens to the slasher in space of Alien. Others may enjoy Friday the 13th Part 2 with its higher violence (although it does have the same body count) and introduction to Jason to part 1’s mommy revenge story.

A meeting of two great masters of horror, Creepshow blends George A. Romero’s macabre brand of satire with Stephen King’s darkly moral vision of the world. The anthology film doesn’t blossom out from the nihilism that marks Romero and King’s more famous works, but from audience-friendly parody and their shared love of the infamous publisher EC Comics, one of the earliest targets and casualties of the Comics Code Authority. Comic-book aesthetics dominate the film, from vivid splashes of color to animated effects like frames divided into panels and page-flip transitions between segments. With Creepshow, Romero and King stepped far enough outside their creative comfort zones to find fruitful common ground in the film’s five stories, and without one artist’s personality outweighing the other’s.

Creepshow’s five stories are linked by a through line of sardonic moralism, a sense of reckoning redolent of Flannery O’Connor’s anti-fables.

Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut (Warner Bros.); Magnolia (New Line Cinema); Mission: Impossible (Paramount Pictures; Top Gun (Paramount Pictures)Image: Getty Images; New Line Cinema; Paramount Pictures; Paramount Pictures

No one has made a better case to be Hollywood’s most enduring movie star over the past four decades than Tom Cruise.

Although far from the first horror anthology, Creepshow quickly established itself as the quintessential one. After several stalled attempts to work together, George A. Romero and Stephen King — two undisputed masters in their respective fields, each in their prime — finally collaborated in 1982. With both creators having grown up on EC horror comics of the 1950s like Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear, it made sense that an homage to those works would bring the two titans of terror together.

Creepshow packs five tales (three originals and two adapted from existing King short stories) plus a wraparound that bookends the film in two hours flat. The Halloween-set framing story finds a disparaging father lambasting his son for reading horror comics before throwing away the latest issue of Creepshow. Beckoned by the silent host known as The Creep, the tales within the discarded comic serve as the anthology’s segments.

Long before Andrew Lincoln was cast as Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead, there was a time when fans wondered if Ryan Reynolds could possibly fill that role. The Walking Dead is unquestionably AMC's biggest hit, but long before even a pilot for the show was ordered, there was talk of it premiering on HBO. During this time, fans wondered which actor could be chosen to play the human survivors' leader Rick Grimes. The role ended up going to a relative unknown in Andrew Lincoln, then best known as Mark from Love, Actually. Beforehand, fans were thinking of bigger names to play their favorite character.

The Walking Dead Deluxe #63 by Robert Kirkman, Dave McCaig, and Charlie Adlard reprints the original 63rd issue of The Walking Dead from 2009, complete with old fan mail. One of these fans sent in their own fan-casting for Rick: Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds at the time...

"The most fun you'll ever have being scared" will come to undead life in 4K on June 27th when Scream Factory releases their 4K Uhd / Blu-ray Collector's Edition of George A. Romero and Stephen King's Creepshow, and we have a look at the full list of special features ahead of its release:

Press Release: In Creepshow, masters of the macabre – writer Stephen King and director George A. Romero – conjure up five shocking yarns, each a virtuoso exercise in the ghouls-and-gags style of classic '50s horror comics. On June 27, 2023, Scream Factory™ will release Creepshow Collector’s Edition in a 4K Uhd™+ Blu-ray™ combo pack. Available for the first time being released in 4K Uhd™ format, this highly anticipated release features a new 4K scan (2023) from the original camera negative in Dolby Vision and comes loaded with special bonus content. The collector’s edition includes limited-edition collectible slipcover packaging with...

Maple Syrup Massacre is an editorial series where Joe Lipsett dissects the themes, conventions and contributions of new and classic Canadian horror films. Spoilers follow…

In the first two entries of this series – on Adam MacDonald’s Backcountry and Grant Harvey’s Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning – we spent a fair amount of time talking about the Canadian relationship to wilderness.

The outdoors – whether it be woods, open plains, mountain ranges, or desert valleys – has a mythic quality in Western and horror films. For Canadians, the wilderness is a massive part of our identity: the country has a relatively small population in a massive geographical region of 9M square kilometers.

For reference, that’s 3.9 people per square kilometer, compared to the US’s 35.3. So yeah, we’re a fairly small population in a giant geographical area.

In Australia, the vast majority of the population hugs the coast in order to...

William Hopper, the actor who played the stalwart private detective Paul Drake on the hit 1957 legal drama "Perry Mason," was a notoriously prolific smoker, often seen with a cigarette hanging from his lips on camera. In 1970, Hopper suffered a stroke and succumbed to smoking-related health issues a month later. He was 55 years old. 

As Paul Drake, Hopper was a cynic, a more grizzled presence built to balance Perry Mason's serious intellect. He was the Dr. McCoy to Perry Mason's Spock. For those unfamiliar with the series, "Perry Mason" was about a Los Angeles defense lawyer, played brilliantly by Raymond Burr, who was always careful to investigate the clients he was hired to defend. Typically, innocent people came to Mason, and he was always curious about the details of their case. Mason would always face off against the L.A. District Attorney Hamilton Burger (William Talman), who never won a case against him.

Have you heard the one about the Mma fighter who helped mastermind the biggest heist in British history? Pat Kondelis did. Then the multiple Emmy winner turned the Lee Murray story into a captivating four-part documentary for Showtime. Catching Lightning, premiering April 9,is by turns sly, brutal, and quite funny, a very British crime story with a very dangerous man at its center. You might enter its cage wondering if it really needs to be four hours long, but chances are you’ll end up hanging on every bizarre turn and detail.

April is here, and if you’re looking for some great new movies to stream, we’ve got you covered. This month there’s a slew of new releases and newly streaming library titles across Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock and Paramount+, and we’ve thumbed through all the new selections to single out the best of the best. Whether you’re looking to catch up on some recent new releases that are now streaming (like “Bros”) or want to know whether that new documentary (“Judy Blume Forever”) or Netflix original (“Chupa”) is worth watching, we guarantee you’ll find something worthwhile to watch in our curated selection.

Check out the best new movies to stream in April 2023 below.

Also Read:

Here’s What’s New on Netflix in April 2023 “The Bourne Identity” and “The Bourne Supremacy” Universal Pictures

Netflix – April 1

The “Bourne” trilogy still stands as one...

George A. Romero is one of my favorite filmmakers, so of course his 1982 Stephen King collaboration Creepshow (watch it Here) is one of my favorite films… and I’m glad to hear that Scream Factory is set to give the classic anthology movie a 4K Uhd release on June 27th. Copies are available for pre-order on the Scream Factory website, and there are multiple options to choose from. You can buy the 4K Uhd copy of the movie on its own, in a bundle with exclusive posters, an exclusive slipcover, and a prism sticker, in another bundle that adds an enamel pin set into the mix, or in another bundle that adds on some lobby cards. There are limited numbers of these bundles available, so head over to Scream Factory Asap to get yours.

Directed by Romero from a screenplay by King, Creepshow has the following synopsis: Writer Stephen King and director George Romero.

Sharon Acker, who racked up dozens of TV appearances in the 1970s and 1980s, has died at 87 years old. The actor died in her hometown of Toronto on March 16, nearly three decades after retiring from her acting career, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Acker got her start in the mid-1950s, appearing, for example, in a 1956 CBC production of Anne of Green Gables. That same year, she joined the Stratford Shakespeare Festival company and teamed up with future Star Trek star William Shatner for a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. In another Shakespeare adaptation, she costarred with Sean Connery in a 1961 CBC production of Macbeth. She made her mark in American cinema in 1967 with a role as Lee Marvin’s onscreen wife in the cult crime flick Point Blank. In 1970, she and Hal Holbrook graced the cover of TV Guide Magazine in promotion of their NBCpolitical drama The Bold Ones: The Senator.

Sharon Acker, the Canadian actress who portrayed Lee Marvin’s unfaithful wife in the 1967 neo-noir classic Point Blank and the right-hand woman Della Street opposite Monte Markham on a rebooted Perry Mason in the 1970s, has died. She was 87.

Acker died March 16 in a retirement home in her native Toronto, her daughter Kim Everest, a casting director, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Star Trek fans know Acker for her January 1969 turn as Odona, a desperate woman from an overpopulated planet, on the third-season episode “The Mark of Gideon.”

She also starred on a 1976-77 CBS adaptation of Executive Suite, playing the wife of Mitchell Ryan‘s Dan Walling. (Acker and Ryan assumed the parts performed by William Holden and June Allyson in the 1954 MGM film directed by Robert Wise.)

In John Boorman’s Point Blank, Acker’s character takes up with John Vernon’s Mal Reese after he shoots Walker (Marvin...

Erle Stanley Gardner’s brilliant and savvy criminal defense attorney Perry Mason has been on the case since 1933’s “The Case of the Velvet Claws.” The attorney describes himself in that first novel as a “lawyer who has specialized in trial work, and in a lot of criminal work…I’m a specialist on getting people out of trouble.”

Inspired by the famed Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Earl Rogers who only lost three of his 77 murder trials, Mason was featured in 82 novels and four short stories, six Warner Bros. murder mystery movies, a long-running radio series, the beloved 1957-66 CBS series starring Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale as his true-blue assistant Della Street, movies and a 1973-74 series with Monte Markham. Matthew Rhys (“The Americans” ) plays the latest incarnation in HBO’s stylish “Perry Mason” series, currently in its second season.

Set during the Great Depression, the HBO drama has a real “Chinatown” feel,...

John Jakes, the celebrated author known for his historical North and South trilogy that sold 10 million copies and became three ABC miniseries in the 1980s and ’90s, has died. He was 90.

Jakes died Saturday in Sarasota, Florida, his lawyer and literary agent Frank R. Curtis announced.

Jakes, who during his career wrote more than 80 books, which sold more than 120 million copies worldwide, earned $25 when his first short story was published by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction when he was 18.

He spent 17 years as an advertising copywriter and creative director before he broke through at age 42 with the 1974 publication of The Bastard, the first of eight paperbacks under the umbrella known as The Kent Family Chronicles. Those books, which depicted American history through the lives of a fictional clan, were written to capitalize on the U.S. bicentennial celebrations that peaked in 1976.

In 1975, with the publication of Vols. II,...

John Jakes, the bestselling author of historical novels whose books The Bastard and North And South were adapted into highly rated TV movies and miniseries in the 1970s and ’80s, died Saturday at a hospice facility in Sarasota, Florida. He was 90.

His death was announced by his lawyer and literary agent Frank R. Curtis.

Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries Related Story Rolly Crump Dies: Legendary Disneyland Designer Was 93 Related Story Bud Grant Dies: Hall Of Fame Minnesota Vikings Coach Led Team To Four Super Bowls, Was 95

Born on March 31, 1932, in Chicago, Jakes published his first short story at 18, earning $25, and would go on to author more than 80 books in his lifetime that sold more than 120 million copies worldwide.

His breakthrough came in 1974 with the publication of The Bastard, the first in what would become an eight-volume series known as The Kent Family Chronicles. Roughly coinciding with America’s Bicentennial,...

Throughout 2022, we will continue to update this In Memoriam photo gallery with notable celebrity deaths from film, television, theater and music. The first major entertainment figures to be honored in the 2022 gallery are beloved TV legend Betty White (who actually died on the final day of 2021), legendary actress and seven-time Tony winner Angela Lansbury, Oscar-winning actors Louise Fletcher, Sidney Poitier and William Hurt, Oscar-nominated director Peter Bogdanovich, Oscar nominee James Caan, Oscar/Emmy/Grammy winner Marilyn Bergman, actor/comedian Bob Saget, Emmy and Tony winner Robert Morse, Emmy winner Kirstie Alley, Emmy winner Ray Liotta, Emmy winner Leslie Jordan, Grammy winner Olivia Newton-John, Country Music Hall of Fame member Loretta Lynn and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Jerry Lee Lewis, Ronnie Spector, Christine McVie and Taylor Hawkins.

In the previous year of 2021, our gallery featured talk show host Larry King, Emmy and Tony winner Hal Holbrook, Oscar and Emmy winner Cloris Leachman,...

Last week, we unveiled the premiere episode of The Manson Brothers Show, which is hosted by the writers/stars of the horror comedy The Manson Brothers Midnight Zombie Massacre – Chris Margetis (Stone Manson) and Mike Carey (Skull Manson). In the first episodes, Margetis and Carey discussed tortilla soup, Iron Maiden, the wrestling word of the week, and the 1976 classic The Omen. Now they’re back to talk about John Carpenter’s 1980 film The Fog (watch it Here), and you can find out what they think of the movie – as well as other assorted topics – by watching the video embedded above!

Here’s some information on The Manson Brothers Show: At long last, The Manson Brothers (Stone and Skull Manson) bring their lunacy to The Arrow in the Head Show YouTube Channel! The brothers discuss all manner of topics ranging from bad ass movies, bad ass music, and bad ass women,...

A couple months ago, we looked into the making of horror anthology Creepshow 2 with an episode of our Wtf Happened to This Horror Movie? video series. Now with the new episode of Wtf Happened to This Horror Movie?, we have circled back around to the first entry in the franchise. If you’re interested in finding out what went into the making of the 1982 George A. Romero / Stephen King classic Creepshow (watch it Here), check out the video embedded above!

Directed by Romero from a screenplay by King, Creepshow has the following synopsis:

Writer Stephen King and director George Romero. Like Dr. Frankenstein and his monster or Dracula and his blood-sucking harem, this is a team to be reckoned with. King’s works – Carrie, Cujo, The Shining, Salem’s Lot, Misery and many others – make him a legend of the silver scream. And the same holds true for Romero, whose...

Britain is a pretty spooky place. Not only is it one of the most densely haunted countries in the world, but each region is also thick with its own myths and legends. There is nothing quite as eerie as the English countryside, something I feel so nostalgic for now that I live abroad. I especially miss the lonely lanes, empty fields, and deserted beaches of my home county Suffolk, which also inspired some of the most famous ghost stories of M.R. James.

Suffolk was witchcraft country back in the day and the wicked Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, plied his trade there. A merman was once caught in the waters near Orford and was held for interrogation at the castle, while up the coast in Blythburgh, the demon dog Black Shuck burst into the church and frazzled a few of the congregation with his fiery breath.

My favorite tale when I...

Today feels like a good day to revisit a horror classic, doesn’t it? Thankfully, we have a new episode of the Revisited video series to help us look back at a great one from director John Carpenter: the 1980 film The Fog (watch it Here). Check it out in the embed above!

Directed by Carpenter from a screenplay he wrote with Debra Hill, The Fog has the following synopsis:

Strange things begin to occurs as a tiny California coastal town prepares to commemorate its centenary. Inanimate objects spring eerily to life; Rev. Malone stumbles upon a dark secret about the town’s founding; radio announcer Stevie witnesses a mystical fire; and hitchhiker Elizabeth discovers the mutilated corpse of a fisherman. Then a mysterious iridescent fog descends upon the village, and more people start to die.

The film stars Hal Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, John Houseman,...

Louise Fletcher, who won the best actress Oscar for her indelible performance as Nurse Ratched in Milos Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” died Friday at her home in France, according to a rep. She was 88.

The classic film, based on Ken Kesey’s novel and exploring the repressive tendency of authority through the story of the patients and staff of a psych ward, won five Oscars in 1976, including best picture and best actor for Jack Nicholson.

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was the first film in more than four decades to sweep the major categories of best picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay. It was nominated for an additional four Oscars and was also a substantial box office hit.

In the American Film Institute TV special “AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Heroes & Villains,” Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched was named the fifth-greatest villain in film history — and second-greatest villainess,...

Even amid rising interest rates, Hollywood’s real estate up-and-comers agree that business is good. Five emerging agents on the scene — Kati Cattaneo, Jacob Greene, Marco Salari, Kevin Stewart and Caroline Wolf — notice that although inventory may be lacking, demand for well-made homes in Los Angeles is unwavering.

“Los Angeles will always be one of the best and most desirable places to live in the world,” says Coldwell Banker’s Salari, 26. “Even with the interest rates and threat of recession, this market is strong with many buyers needing homes.”

This year, Salari closed on a deal for a Santa Monica property that got 22 offers, all over asking. His clients were the prevailing buyers, which Salari calls a “hard-fought win.” Salari, a former Italian basketball player, also struck deals with Favorite Daughter co-founder Erin Foster and actress-screenwriter couple Katey Sagal and Kurt Sutter. (Note: All information on celebrity clients and transactions is from public records,...

Scream Factory brought John Carpenter‘s The Fog to 4K Ultra HD this week, and today we’ve got a first-look at Neca‘s Stevie Wayne action figure that’s headed our way soon.

As a reminder, multiple versions of the release were being offered up by Scream Factory, including a SteelBook version, sets that include vinyl records, and even a Stevie Wayne action figure from Neca that was available as part of special release packages or on its own. The figure is shipping later this year, separate from everything else that went out this week.

This limited edition 8” action figure by Neca was authorized and approved by Adrienne Barbeau, and Neca notes that it will begin shipping to customers in December 2022.

Check out your first look at the upcoming Neca action figure below!

“When the fog rolls in … the terror begins! This moody horror classic from master of terror...

Not all Stephen King movies are created equal. King's massive catalog of frights has made for exciting film adaptations ever since Brian de Palma gave us "Carrie" in 1976. However, "The Shining" might be best remembered for King's criticisms of the film. Those who remember 1979's "Salem's Lot" miniseries might have found themselves asking, "Why is the vampire blue?" Does 2017's "It" really have a scarier Pennywise the Dancing Clown than the 1990 remake?

The most successful King adaptations tend to stray from the source material, which isn't always a bad thing. King is a master storyteller, but his gifts don't automatically translate to the screen. In fact, creative license often makes the movies based on his work — "Carrie" and "The Shining" in particular — better than they would have been had they followed the text faithfully.

Because the adaptation process is imperfect, some King movies succeed where others fail. Others get lost in limbo,...

The “made for television movie” began in the 1960s. In fact, one of the most famous TV movies Don Siegel’s 1964 version of “The Killers” featuring Ronald Reagan in his last film role as a ruthless villain, ended up being released theatrically because it was considered too violent for television.

But the genre came of age in the 1970s.

Some of these movies that aired on the three broadcast networks were sheer shlock and others were pilots for prospective TV series. But it was also an embarrassment of riches. Who could forget the beloved 1971 ABC biopic “Brian’s Song,” starring James Caan and Billy Dee Williams, which was nominated for 11 Emmys and won five including outstanding single program (drama or comedy). The four-hankie weepie was so popular it was released theatrically.

Also briefly released theatrically was Steven Spielberg’s pulsating 1971 classic “Duel” starring Dennis Weaver which aired on ABC. Considered one...

In 2021, “WandaVision” star Paul Bettany made history as the first man to be Emmy-nominated for a lead performance on a Marvel TV series, thus laying the groundwork for 2022 hopefuls Tom Hiddleston (“Loki”), Oscar Isaac (“Moon Knight”) and Jeremy Renner (“Hawkeye”). Although he lost the last Best TV Movie/Limited Series Actor race to Ewan McGregor (“Halston”), he may now get an immediate second shot at the same prize based on his work on “A Very British Scandal.” Luckily for him, there is ample precedent for back-to-back bids in this category.

The first man recognized twice in a row for TV movie and/or limited series roles was Mickey Rooney. His example has been followed by 16 others, beginning with George C. Scott. Next came Hal Holbrook and Laurence Olivier, the latter of whom then became the category’s first three-time consecutive nominee with his 1975 bid for “Love Among the Ruins.”

SEEClaire...

Guy Ritchie is going Zero to Hero and will direct the live-action “Hercules” movie at Disney, an individual with knowledge of the project told TheWrap.

Ritchie previously directed Disney’s live-action “Aladdin,” the 2019 blockbusters that surpassed 1 billion at the global box office. The “Hercules” live-action movie has “Avengers” directors Anthony and Joe Russo producing the film through their Agbo banner.

Dave Callaham (“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) wrote the first draft of the script adapting the animated “Hercules” film, and Disney is now looking for writers for the project.

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‘Wonder Man’ Series in the Works at Disney+ With Andrew Guest as Head Writer

The original animated movie from 1997 shows Hercules, the son of the God Zeus, growing up on Earth as a human but gifted with superhuman strength as he falls in love with the human Megara, as he works with a Satyr named Phil...