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Since 1975 nearly a thousand hosts have graced the stage at Studio 8H at Rockefeller Center for “Saturday Night Live.”

Actors, comedians, musicians and even politicians have taken the stage to make America laugh on Saturday night for 50 seasons. Twenty five of these hosts have been inducted into the “Five Timers Club.” The club was first introduced during Tom Hanks’ 1990 monologue, featuring Steve Martin, Elliott Gould and Paul Simon.

During Martin Short’s December 2024 appearance, several Five Timers Club members popped up on the show to welcome him into the club, including Emma Stone, Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Kristen Wiig and more, to give him the ceremonial robe.

Alec Baldwin has hosted the show 17 times, the most in the series’ history, with Martin, Hanks, Buck Henry and John Goodman following close behind.

As the show celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, we have rounded up every person who has hosted the sketch show.

Kathryn Ferguson uses clips, voiceovers and interview archives to offer a candid and entertaining account of the actor who was at the pinnacle of Hollywood’s golden age

Kathryn Ferguson’s very serviceable and enjoyable documentary about Humphrey Bogart takes us through his extraordinary, almost mythic life story; it uses clips, voiceovers and existing interview archives (including the inevitable and indispensable Dick Cavett) but no new on-camera material.

Bogart was the son of a distinguished New York surgeon and a refined artist, illustrator and suffragette and might easily have become a bland east coast bourgeois professional, were it not for his academic underperformance and love of acting which took him from Broadway to Hollywood. The accident of his rugged looks and unmistakable voice brought him tough-guy roles under the whip of studio boss Jack Warner, and he became the face of heroic masculinity – what Helen Hayes called Bogart’s “plain...

Warning! This article contains Spoilers for Beetlejuice 2 (2024)!The primary conflict for Winona Ryders Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice revolves around her strained relationship with her teenage daughter, Astrid, but one of their biggest points of contention could have easily been resolved by Delia. Over 36 years after the original movie, Ryder, Catherine OHara, and Michael Keaton return in Beetlejuice 2s cast as the Deetz family returns to their haunted Winter River house for the funeral of Lydias father, Charles Deetz. When the movie kicks off, tensions are already high among the Deetz family, with Lydias teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) resenting her and denying her ghost-seeing ability.

Though Lydia built a famous television career around her gift to communicate with ghosts, which originated with the deceased Maitlands in Winter River, Astrid never believed the ability was real until she met Jeremys ghost in Beetlejuice 2. Before developing the ability herself,...

Dick Cavett couldn’t have known in 1978 that Chevy Chase and Bill Murray had recently exchanged blows backstage during a live SNL show. But then again, he might have had an inkling. “In the vapid research that I did on you,” he told Chase, “I found that you had been beaten up a number of times in the past.”

“Yeah, my teeth were knocked out a few times,” Chase admitted, “but they weren’t knocked out in fights a lot.”

So how exactly did Chase lose his teeth multiple times?

“The first time they were knocked out, I was playing polo with my brother,” Chase said. The boys weren’t actually on ponies, but it was polo nonetheless, played with wooden mallets at a 13th birthday party. “It started off to be a friendly little croquet game except with 11- to 13-year-old guys of the caliber of my brother, there’s trouble.

After leaving Saturday Night Live a few episodes into its second season, it didn’t take long for Chevy Chase to return to 30 Rock. He hosted in February during the show’s third year, but it wasn’t a pleasant homecoming.

After receiving a series of smart-ass answers from Chase in October 1978, just a few months after that SNL hosting gig, talk-show host Dick Cavett begged for a straight response. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting you to talk seriously about — what can I call it? — the rumored animosity that your friends on Saturday Night Live are supposed to have felt when you left. They thought maybe you endangered their careers and yours.”

Chase obliged — sorta. “I can talk about that seriously,” he said. “Here?”

Chase said he wasn’t fully dialed in on the rumors as he didn’t get back to New York much.

With the release of Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, it may be a good idea to watch (or re-watch) the original to get ready for the sequel.

Released in 1988, Beetlejuice has been a fan-favorite for generations with more people gravitating to the work of director Tim Burton and the performances from Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and, of course, Michael Keaton as “The Ghost with the Most.”

At a Glance: How to Watch Beetlejuice Online

Stream online Max watch 'beetlejuice' on max

Keep reading below for more details on where to stream Beetlejuice online and when the sequel is expected to be available online.

Where to Stream Beetlejuice Online

Beetlejuice in 4K Ultra HD is available to watch on Max, or to buy digitally on sale for $7.99 (reg. $14.99), or rent for $3.79 on Prime Video. The movie is also available on Apple TV.

watch 'beetlejuice' on Prime...

The Marx Brothers – mustachioed, stogie-smoking ring-leader Groucho, chatty, Italian-accented con man Chico, silent skirt-chaser Harpo and, early on, relatively “normal” matinee idol Zeppo – first got their start as a vaudeville comedy act at the turn of the 20th century. They would go on to conquer the Broadway stage before landing in films when “talkies” took off.

Zeppo would drop out of the act after five films, becoming an engineer and a talent agent. But his older siblings would continue their frenzied verbal and visual hilarity on the big screen until 1949, when the medium of television beckoned and competed for eyeballs. Groucho would host a TV version of his radio game show, “You Bet Your Life,” for 11 seasons on NBC and appeared on Dick Cavett’s TV talk show in the late ‘60s. That is when their Marx Brothers’ anarchistic approach to humor and word-play takedowns of hypocrites and stuffy high-society...

Once upon a time in late night television, it was customary for talk shows to fill up their couches as the evening's episode progressed. The first guest would do their segment and then move down a spot on the adjacent couch, making room for the next guest to yap with Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett or whoever. What with the barnacle presence of sidekick Ed McMahon, Carson's couch could get especially crowded some nights. Sometimes this got tense (like the time Burt Reynolds inexplicably went after "Double Dare" host Mark Summers on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"); sometimes it was chaotic comedy bliss (which is what happens when you ask Carson to rein in the irrepressible duo of Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters); and sometimes it was just plain surreal.

This tradition started to fade out of fashion in the 1980s when "Late Night with David Letterman" introduced its one-guest-at-a-time approach.

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If you are getting excited to see the latest legacy comedy horror sequel film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice which is making a name for itself by earning millions and millions of dollars, and you haven’t watched the original movie. In that case, this article is for you. Directed by the legendary Tim Burton from a screenplay co-written by Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren, the beloved comedy horror film is climbing the streaming charts as people revisit the Burton film before heading out to watch the sequel in theaters.

The 1988 film follows the story of the ghosts of a married couple Adam and Barbara as they continue to live in their home but when new people move into their house they fail to get them to leave. Adam and Barbara reluctantly call upon the miscreant Betelgeuse, so that he can...

Includes Spoilers for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice!

Tim Burtons Beetlejuice 2 brings several original figures back from the dead after 36 years, though there are still some great living and deceased Beetlejuice characters who didn't return. The highly-anticipated sequel to Tim Burtons 1988 horror-comedy classic Beetlejuice has been met with acclaim from critics and audiences, using the original movie as a launch-off point and adding to it faithfully. The Beetlejuice 2 ending is arguably even zanier and more comedic than that of the original, really allowing the whacky horror world to run wild.

The returning cast and characters in Beetlejuice 2 are Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz, and Catherine OHara as Delia Deetz, with Jeffrey Jones' absence being explained by his character's death. Additionally, Beetlejuice 2s cast features Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, Justin Theroux, and Monica Bellucci in new roles. Still, there are several characters missing from Beetlejuice 2 that...

Well, it’s only taken thirty-six years, but we’re finally, Finally getting a sequel to Beetlejuice, with Tim Burton and Michael Keaton returning for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice (read our review here). With the sequel bound to introduce a new generation to the Tim Burton classic, now’s the perfect time to look back at the movie and figure out why it stands the test of time. So, here are 10 Reasons Why Beetlejuice Is Still The Ghost With the Most!

10. A Timeless Tale:

There’s a reason why Beetlejuice still resonates all these decades following its initial release. From the time we mere mortals realize that our time on earth is limited, we become preoccupied with the afterlife. Beetlejuice tackles the theme with unusual aplomb, imagining the afterlife as just another stop in our soul’s journey to its final resting place, with our heroes, Alec Baldwin’s Adam and Geena Davis’s Barbara,...

Warning! This article contains Spoilers for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice!In addition to revealing the fates of a few other surprise characters, Beetlejuice 2 confirms that one of the original movies supporting figures didnt die actually during their 1988 bout with Betelgeuse. Tim Burtons 2024 sequel sees Beetlejuices Deetz family return to Winter River after the tragic death of patriarch Charles, who died being eaten by a shark after his plane crashed into the ocean. At the funeral and wake, Charles wife Delia (Catherine OHara) and daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder) reunite with some familiar faces from the original movie.

Alongside the Deetzes and Michael Keatons Betelgeuse, only one supporting character from the 1988 horror-comedy returns in Beetlejuice 2s cast. This happens to be Little Jane Butterfield, the now grown-up realtor daughter of the Maitlands and Deetzes former realtor, Jane Butterfield. The sequel doesnt bring back the Deetzes friends Otho (actor Glenn Shadix passed away in 2010), Dick Cavetts Bernard,...

The bond between John Lennon and Yoko Ono, mutually inspired artists from very different worlds, is only one of the love stories at the core of director Kevin Macdonald’s vibrant and stirring new documentary. Tracing an eventful year, One to One: John & Yoko is, first and foremost, a portrait of the couple’s love affair with New York City, their newly adopted home. In its mix of remarkable archival material, the film is both tender and galvanizing, summoning up what New York felt like in 1972 (yes, I would know) and offering a fresh slant on a country’s upheaval and a generation’s countercultural awakening.

For Macdonald (One Day in September, The Last King of Scotland), One to One is not only a return to form after his mixed-bag profile of John Galliano, but one of his finest pieces of work. He and co-director/editor Sam Rice-Edwards have conjured...

Deadline’s Crew Call continues its spotlight on the revolutionaries of social media who are impacting the film and TV industry with Gen-z mom vlogger-turned-absurdist online talk show host Bobbi Althoff.

Similar to our previous social media guests — actor/comedic performer Adam Rose and teen K-drama series Alan’s Universe architect and star Alan Chikin Chow — Althoff is burning a trail for herself in the entertainment industry and leading her own burgeoning empire of brand endorsements and more at a time when the film and TV spheres are undergoing contraction and confusion about what consumers crave.

For Althoff, host and creator of The Really Good Podcast, pop culture is still the rage for many; it’s just how you harness it. Her deadpan talk show style, unprepared host styling and fearless demeanor to call guests out on their sh*t has lassoed her 13 million followers across social media, regularly topping the podcast charts,...

Lo, the enduring miracle of the film awards year. Just when things begin to look hopeless—and it was looking pretty bleak a month ago—intriguing, maybe even watchable, prospects suddenly sprout. The movies are like Osiris, that old Egyptian resurrection god: You just can’t keep ‘em down.

As August arrives, more than a few adult viewers, unattuned to the ongoing fantasy-and-animation boom, are now peeking around the corner at Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night Live origins story. The film was scheduled last week by Columbia Pictures for release on Oct. 11—the 49th anniversary of NBC’s first SNL broadcast, back in 1975.

As historical moments go, that may or may not impress the film Academy’s growing body of foreign-based Oscar voters. But for the domestic crowd, especially those in upper age brackets, the birth of an American comedy phenomenon, still alive some five decades later, is compelling.

The Simpsons hasn’t exactly shied away from including references to Woody Allen over the years, such as when Bart and Homer spotted him shooting a Japanese rice cracker commercial, or when he was seen hammering out Chinese fortune cookie messages, or the time he was absolutely torn apart by the comic stylings of McBain.

But while these jokes were obviously intended to demean the Oscar-winning filmmaker/accused sexual predator, the show once came very close to including an innocuous Allen reference at the worst possible time.

The second segment in “Treehouse of Horror III” was the King Kong parody “King Homer,” which ends with an old-timey newspaper spinning into frame bearing the headline “Woman Weds Ape.” Just below it is the headline “Dick Cavett Born,” featuring an image of a fully adult Dick Cavett.

Disney

Which is a funny joke, but if you pause the scene right as the newspaper is spinning,...

As House of the Dragon Season 2 comes to an end on August 4, Max subscribers will be wondering about what’s next. The Warner Bros. Discovery streaming service has a lot to offer in the upcoming month including as many classic and new content comes out on the service. Just like every month there is a lot of content on the way and just like every month, we have sorted out the best movies and TV shows you should invest your time in. So, here are the 7 best movies and TV shows coming to Max in August 2024.

Beetlejuice (August 1)

Beetlejuice is a fantasy comedy horror movie directed by Tim Burton from a screenplay co-written by Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren. The 1988 film follows the story of a ghost married couple Barbara and Adam, who lead a peaceful life but when their house gets sold to new people, they call on the...

Image Source: Paramount Pictures When Forrest Gump arrived in theaters 30 years ago it showed us something we’d never seen before: Using new technology, director Robert Zemeckis had his star, Tom Hanks, interact seamlessly with historical footage of real people and events, including Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon; John Lennon; and talk show host Dick Cavett. When the movie first opened, Hanks told us he was in awe of what those scenes looked like on the screen. (Click on the media bar below to hear Tom Hanks) https://www.hollywoodoutbreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Tom_Hanks_Forrest_Gump.mp3

Forrest Gump is currently streaming on Paramount+ and Pluto and available on DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K, and most digital platforms. .

The post Tom Hanks Dug His Digital ‘Forrest Gump’ Co-Stars appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

1994's Forrest Gump features Tom Hanks' title character meeting many real-life historical figures. Two of the only characters not to appear via archive footage were Elvis Presley and Dick Cavett. Gump also met several Presidents including Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.

Forrest Gump featured Tom Hanks' title character interacting with several well-known historical figures. The 1994 movie, which was based on the 1986 Winston Groom novel of the same name, was directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay by Eric Roth. It was a major sensation in the mid-1990s, becoming the second highest-grossing movie of the year worldwide thanks to a gross of $678.2 million against its $55 million budget. It would then go on to win six Oscars, including Best Picture.

By the time the Forrest Gump ending catches up with the character in the early 1980s, he has the opportunity to meet quite a few real-life historical figures over the course of his adventures.

We can’t get enough of John Mulaney these days.

After winning his third Emmy last year for writing his Netflix stand-up special “Baby J,” where he spoke candidly (and hilariously) about his stint in rehab for addiction, the former “Saturday Night Live” writer has risen from the ashes like a comically witty Phoenix.

In the Emmy race once again this year in multiple categories, most notably for guest comedy actor for his performance in the brilliant episode “Fishes” from FX’s second season of “The Bear” and outstanding talk series for the Netflix live smash “Everybody’s in L.A.”

On this episode of the award-winning Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, Mulaney discusses his experience and perspectives on Los Angeles’ identity, his creative processes, and whether he’ll host the Oscars. Listen below!

Mulaney surprised everyone as the host of the 14th annual Governors Awards, where he killed in the...

There’s a story Alfred Hitchcock always liked to tell about how, when he was five years old, his father dropped him off at the local police station near his home in East London. William Hitchcock left a note for the coppers explaining that his son had been misbehaving. A policeman locked young Alfred in a cell for a few minutes and explained, “This is what we do to naughty boys.”

When Hitchcock recounted that story to Dick Cavett he was in his 70s, but the incident continued to leave a profound mark on the director. He said he was still “terrified of the police” because of that and drew a connection from that to the feelings of guilt and wrong-men-on-the-run paranoia that seeps into so many of his films.

The funny thing is, though, father characters are almost entirely absent from Hitchcock’s work. There are a few: Cedric Hardwicke...

Los Angeles is not the first city fans would associate with comedian John Mulaney. That would be Chicago, his hometown and the backdrop to innumerable childhood anecdotes in his stand-up act, or New York, where he broke out as a writer on “Saturday Night Live” and shot a special at Radio City Music Hall. But L.A. is where Mulaney now lives; it’s also currently home to the second iteration of Netflix Is a Joke, a massive, weeklong comedy festival organized by the streaming service as a show of genre dominance. (Netflix stand-up head Robbie Praw used to run programming at Montreal’s vaunted Just for Laughs event and has essentially created a West Coast version.) And so we have “John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA,” a weeklong special event combining studio segments, pre-taped sketches and man-on-the-street interviews into a sort of pop-up talk show.

“We’re only doing six episodes,...

It’s been more than 30 years since the first Beetlejuice terrified and tickled audiences. Now, Michael Keaton is back as the iconic bio-exorcist in the much-anticipated sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara are coming back to play Lydia and Delia Deetz again. Plus, fans will get to see some new faces in the movie. Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, Justin Theroux, and Monica Bellucci are joining the cast to play brand new characters.

A still from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

But fans will notice the void of two main characters: Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin, who played the Maitlands (Barbara and Adam) in the original movie. However, Davis has an explanation for her and her co-star’s absence.

The Reason Behind Geena Davis’ Absence from the Beetlejuice Sequel Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin in a still from Beetlejuice

Geena Davis explained to Et Online why she’s not in the Beetlejuice sequel.

Directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes, Late Night with the Devil is a supernatural horror film that stars David Dastmalchian in the lead role. In the film, Dastmalchian plays the role of a late-night talk show host and watched several talk shows to prepare for the role, including one that inspired Heath Ledger’s Joker.

David Dastmalchian in Late Night with the Devil

In a recent interview, Dastmalchian spoke about his preparation for the role of a talk show host. The actor revealed that he was recommended an old talk show by the directors, which co-incidentally also inspired Heath Ledger’s turn as Joker. At the same time, Dastmalchian revealed being skeptical about playing a talk show host. Here is everything Dastmalchian has said about his preparation for Late Night with the Devil.

Late Night with the Devil‘s David Dastmalchian Reveals Watching the Talk Show That Inspired Heath Ledger...

David Dastmalchian in Late Night With The Devil Image: Shudder/IFC Films There’s a certain quality that select horror movies can conjure, something with a high degree of difficulty that gets even higher when said horror movie is trying to evoke a very specific time and place. We’ve...

David Dastmalchian in Late Night With The DevilImage: Shudder/IFC Films

There’s a certain quality that select horror movies can conjure, something with a high degree of difficulty that gets even higher when said horror movie is trying to evoke a very specific time and place. We’ve seen...

David Letterman visited Manhattan’s Ed Sullivan Theater last night for the first time since he retired from CBS’ The Late Show eight years ago, chatting comfortably with his successor Stephen Colbert as if he’d never left.

Fittingly, the two late-night heavyweights discussed, among other things, other late-night heavyweights. When Colbert mentioned that he’d become friends with Dick Cavett and occasionally sought his advice, he asked if Letterman ever contacted his own champion, Johnny Carson, in a similar capacity.

After a brief pause, Letterman shook his head no. “Johnny is, was, the Mount Olympus,” he said, “so you didn’t just call Johnny and say, ‘Hey, Johnny, what do you think? Should I do this? What about the color of the socks, are they going to be alright, Johnny? So, no, I was pretty much alone. I was orphaned in the talk show world.”

When the audience responded...

David Fincher is glad his ‘World War Z’ sequel never got off the ground. The ‘Fight Club’ filmmaker, 61, was set to do a follow up to director Marc Foster’s 2013 apocalyptic zombie movie starring Brad Pitt, 59, but said he was relieved it never happened as the plot was too similar to HBO’s hugely popular dystopian thriller ‘The Last of Us’. David told GQ: “Well, it was a little like ‘The Last of Us’. I’m glad that we didn’t do what we were doing, because ‘The Last of Us’ has a lot more real estate to explore the same stuff. “In our title sequence, we were going to use the little parasite… they used it in their title sequence, and in that wonderful opening with the Dick Cavett, David Frost-style talk show.” The original ‘World War Z’ movie was inspired by Max Brooks’ 2006 book of the...

David Fincher, who was set to direct a World War Z sequel before it was canceled by Paramount, is revealing some of the plans he had for the follow-up film.

In an interview with GQ UK, published online Wednesday, the Fight Club filmmaker said the zombie movie would have been a “little like The Last of Us,” the hit HBO series starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey that premiered earlier this year

“I’m glad that we didn’t do what we were doing, because The Last of Us has a lot more real estate to explore the same stuff,” he explained. “In our title sequence, we were going to use the little parasite … they used it in their title sequence, and in that wonderful opening with the Dick Cavett, David Frost-style talk show.”

The 2013 hit film starring Brad Pitt and directed by Marc Forster was an adaptation of...

After "The Last of Us" video game became one of the most acclaimed games of the past decade and was lauded as a game-changer, this year saw its live-action TV adaptation heralded as one of the best video game adaptations, ever. Both are not only fantastic horror stories but gripping dramas with a focus on characters.

The "Last of Us" franchise has become such a game-changing addition to the zombie genre that instead of spawning cheap competitors that cash in on its success, it is actually scaring the competition away. At least one big zombie movie is reportedly no longer happening, in part due to "The Last of Us." Speaking with GQ for the release of "The Killer," David Fincher addressed his long-awaited sequel to "World War Z."

"It was a little like 'The Last of Us,'" Fincher said about his ideas for the canned sequel. "I'm glad...

David Fincher teases his canceled World War Z sequel, describing it as "a little like The Last of Us." The sequel was initially planned after the success of the first World War Z and Fincher was set to direct. Production trouble and China's ban on films featuring zombies were cited as reasons for the sequel's cancelation.

David Fincher teases his canceled World War Z 2 movie plan, describing it as "a little like The Last of Us." The 2013 film, which was directed by Marc Forster based on the book by Max Brooks, starred Brad Pitt as a former Un investigator leading a worldwide search seeking a solution to a sudden zombie apocalypse. World War Z was a big box office success that grossed $540 million, opening the door to a potential sequel that Fincher was slated to direct before being canceled.

In a new interview with GQ, Fincher revealed some of his...

David Fincher is “glad” the long-gestating “World War Z” sequel was ultimately scrapped.

The “Killer” director told GQ UK that the slated “World War Z” sequel would have explored similar themes to hit HBO series “The Last of Us,” which was based off of the video game franchise of the same name.

“Well, it was a little like ‘The Last of Us,'” Fincher said of the follow-up he planned to Marc Forster’s 2013 zombie apocalypse movie. “I’m glad that we didn’t do what we were doing, because ‘The Last of Us’ has a lot more real estate to explore the same stuff.”

Fincher continued, “In our title sequence, we were going to use the little parasite…they used it in their title sequence, and in that wonderful opening with the Dick Cavett, David Frost-style talk show.”

“World War Z” starred Brad Pitt as a U.N.

The 2013 film World War Z isn’t very popular, but it made a lot of money at the box office, pulling in over $540 million worldwide. So of course a sequel was put into development. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director J.A. Bayona worked on the project for a year before stepping away because they couldn’t quite figure out the story, despite having great set pieces in mind. Then the sequel very nearly went into production in 2019 with Fight Club director David Fincher at the helm – but the studio decided it to scrap it over budgetary issues. Now, during an interview with GQ Magazine UK, Fincher revealed that he’s glad his World War Z sequel didn’t get made because it would have been similar to HBO’s TV series adaptation of the video game The Last of Us – and the TV series format allows The Last of Us to...

There was a time when David Fincher was attached to direct a sequel to the zombie epic World War Z, you may recall, but we learned back in 2019 that it was no longer happening. So what happened? And what would Fincher’s take on the material have been like?

Chatting with GQ UK this week, Fincher opens up about the unmade sequel.

“Well, it was a little like The Last of Us,” Fincher explains. “I’m glad that we didn’t do what we were doing, because The Last of Us has a lot more real estate to explore the same stuff.

“In our title sequence, we were going to use the little parasite. They used it in their title sequence, and in that wonderful opening with the Dick Cavett, David Frost-style talk show.”

When asked by GQ UK if his World War Z sequel was going to stick...

David Fincher is opening up about the scrapped World War Z sequel and revealing that it was going to be like HBO’s The Last of Us.

“It was a little like The Last of Us. I’m glad that we didn’t do what we were doing, because The Last of Us has a lot more real estate to explore the same stuff,” Fincher told GQ in an interview. “In our title sequence, we were going to use the little parasite… they used it in their title sequence, and in that wonderful opening with the Dick Cavett, David Frost-style talk show.:

World War Z is a 2013 film directed by Marc Forster with a screenplay from Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard and Damon Lindelof based on the 2006 novel by Max Brooks. The film starred Brad Pitt as a former United Nations investigator looking to find a solution to the zombie apocalypse.

In a new interview with GQ Magazine UK ahead of the release of his latest directorial effort “The Killer,” David Fincher expressed a bit of relief over his “World War Z” sequel never getting off the ground. Why? He revealed the sequel’s storyline was a bit too similar to HBO’s wildly popular, apocalyptic video game adaptation.

“Well, it was a little like ‘The Last of Us,'” Fincher said when the “World War Z” sequel was mentioned. “I’m glad that we didn’t do what we were doing, because ‘The Last of Us’ has a lot more real estate to explore the same stuff. In our title sequence, we were going to use the little parasite … they used it in their title sequence, and in that wonderful opening with the Dick Cavett, David Frost-style talk show.”

The original “World War Z” movie was inspired by Max...

Lauded filmmaker David Fincher nearly made the leap to blockbuster sequel territory with a follow-up to Brad Pitt’s 2013 zombie action thriller “World War Z,” but the director now says he’s glad the project didn’t come together because his take was similar to HBO’s “The Last of Us.”

Fincher boarded and started developing “World War Z 2” in 2017 after the Paramount Pictures film lost director J.A. Bayona, marking a reunion with his “Fight Club” and “Curious Case of Benjamin Button” star Pitt. But in 2019, Paramount canceled the project over budgetary concerns and Fincher moved on to his Netflix film “Mank.”

Speaking with GQ UK, Fincher teased a bit of what he had planned for the zombie sequel, comparing it to HBO’s acclaimed video game adaptation “The Last of Us.”

“It was a little like ‘The Last of Us.’ I’m glad that we didn’t do what we were doing,...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Artists and Models.By rights, Martin and Lewis should have the kind of cultural footprint renders them permanent household names: the status that turns artists into Halloween costumes, as archetypal as cartoon characters and ancient gods. For ten years, from 1946 to 1956, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were a double act, and accurately describing how popular they were sounds like gross exaggeration. They were so big that the only fitting comparisons are to rock stars—and not just any rock stars, but Elvis Presley, or The Beatles. “For ten years after World War II, Dean and I were not only the most successful show-business act in history,” Jerry Lewis wrote with his trademark humility in Dean and Me: A Love Story (1984), “—we were history.” Their live shows were pandemonium. They reportedly made eleven million dollars in 1951 alone.

The first thing to say about Alex Gibney’s “In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon” is that it’s three-and-a-half hours long. Normally I wouldn’t lead with that daunting fact, especially since the film is mostly marvelous: a documentary that every Paul Simon fan on earth should want to see and experience. But will they?

I raise the issue only because “In Restless Dreams” has come into the Toronto Film Festival without a distributor, and let’s just be honest: The 209-minute running time, when you hear about it, doesn’t exactly sound…user-friendly. Gibney, of course, is one of the renaissance masters of contemporary documentary, a filmmaker of staggering skill and eclecticism. On occasion, he sprinkles in a music doc, which is clearly a labor of love for him. If you’ve never seen “Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown,” it’s sensational. And Gibney...

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" remains the best Indiana Jones film partly due to its very real sense of danger. According to John Rhys-Davies, who played Indy's sidekick Sallah, director Steven Spielberg "was making it up as he goes along. The script was endless pages of action description. A lot of the dialogue was (improvised) by Steven; Steven and Harrison [Ford]; or Steven, Harrison and myself." Indeed, one of the most famous scenes in "Raiders" was improvised by Ford, wherein he shoots stuntman Terry Richards' swordsman during the Cairo marketplace scene.

But while the spontaneous nature of filming "Raiders" lent the film an air of excitement and danger, it also made for a literally dangerous shoot, to the extent that Spielberg was amazed Ford's stunt team made it through the production alive. The director has written about his remorse over allowing Ford to perform many of the stunts himself and...

When writing a 97th birthday salute to the great Mel Brooks on Wednesday, I neglected to include my favorite story surrounding Brooks. It involved his most embarrassing moment, which happened in 1966. He recalled the cringeworthy moment in a special with talk show host Dick Cavett in 2011, and it involved the affable game show host Bill Cullen.

“About a hundred years ago, I was on a show called, ‘Eye Guess’,” Brooks recalled, “with a lady named Julia Meade and the host, Bill Cullen. I was doing my usual thing, ad-libbing, having a good time. So, the show is over, and I turned and noticed that Cullen is starting to walk out from behind his podium.”

SEERay Richmond: Happy Birthday, Melvin James Kaminsky! Mel Brooks turns 97

Interrupting the story here, Cullen walked in an exaggerated and jerky fashion as a result of a childhood bout with polio that left him disabled with...

Godard speaks! Again. Quite rightly there’s a lot of hoopla about the world premiere of a 20-minute trailer the late cinema legend Jean-Luc Godard made for a feature film that will never exist: Phoney Wars.

Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux explained Sunday at a special screening of the work that Godard extensively researched trailers as well as films.

The Phoney Wars trailer footage is a series of collages on what appears to be photographic paper, and the topic explored is Charles Plisnier, a Belgian surrealist and poet who was expelled from the Communist party in 1937 for, as Godard puts it, “Trotskyist deviancy.”

The festival noted that the work “will remain as the ultimate gesture of cinema.”

Related: Cannes Film Festival 2023 In Photos

A curiosity, if you will, that will be wheeled out at film seminars in Paris, London and New York, for all of us to wonder what might...

Cannes Film Festival attendees are cordially invited to a free special event — presented by The Hollywood Reporter and Campari — on Saturday, May 20, at 1:30pm Cannes time, in the Campari Lounge of the Palais: a live hourlong recording of THR’s Awards Chatter podcast, followed by a cocktail reception, with the Oscar-winning actress Alicia Vikander.

There is limited space at this event. Anyone wishing to attend must RSVP via this link by 11am on Friday, May 19.

During the podcast recording, the 34-year-old Swede will be interviewed by yours truly about her life, career and the film that brings her to the Croisette this year: Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand, in which she portrays Katherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of King Henry VIII (Jude Law).

Vikander is best known for her performances on film in 2010’s Pure, 2012’s Anna Karenina and A Royal Affair; 2013’s The Fifth Estate, 2014’s Testament of Youth...

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Bee–ah, that was a close one! A massive success upon release, Beetlejuice went through a strange and unusual production that saw multiple rewrites and firings, not to mention the dodging of some seriously questionable casting choices. But through the terrific performances by its cast and creative skirting around a small budget, the movie became one of the best horror-comedies ever, worthy of a sequel that has been in development hell for over three decades.

So let’s open up the handbook for the recently deceased and shake, shake, shake senora because it’s showtime! Let’s to find out…Wtf Happened to this movie?!

Following the massive success of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which pulled in $40 million on a $7 million budget, Tim Burton had his pick of what his next project would be. One thing he knew, it wouldn’t be talking horse movie Hot to Trot.

Photo: 'The Last of Us'

To say that HBO’s newest primetime series ‘The Last of Us’ had a particularly high bar to clear would be an understatement. For starters, the show is a direct adaptation of one of the most critically lauded video games in history. The original 2013 ‘The Last of Us’ game was universally heralded as an unparalleled masterpiece in both game design and writing, and a watershed moment for the potential of mature cinematic storytelling in the medium of video games. The emotional journey that the game’s lead characters Joel and Ellie go on (and thus the gamer alongside them), touched audiences in such a profound and singular way that it is difficult to imagine their story ever being improved by a retelling. Read Next: ‘The Last of Us’: One of the Best Video Games With LGBTQ+ Characters It's also no secret that the history of video game adaptations,...

When something is clearly working, sometimes it’s best to stick with the formula.

Twenty-year-old sensation Jenna Ortega is said to be securing a deal to star in director Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice 2.” The film is being written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the showrunners of the hit Netflix series “Wednesday”—on which Burton is also an executive producer and is one of the key directors. “Wednesday,” a spin-off/sequel to “The Addams Family,” can also be said to share so much Burton DNA that I bet if you poll most people on the street and ask who directed the 1991 version in which Christina Ricci played Wednesday Addams, they’d probably cite him over the actual answer, Barry Sonnenfeld (no diss to Barry!)

Should the deal continue as it is expected to, Ortega will play the daughter to Winona Ryder’s ur-goth girl character Lydia Deetz. It’s...

When you think of actors like Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, you think of their titanic starring roles that came at the peak of their powers. For Davis, it might well be something like the southern melodrama "Jezebel" or 1950's "All About Eve," the movie that revived her career by letting her embrace her age, her pettiness, and her acid tongue. For Bogart, it would be any of his many roles in film noir, a cinematic movement through the '40s and '50s of which he still registers as the face and the voice.

Digging through their respective careers, one can find early roles that show none of what would make the actors legendary. While technically impressive, these performances lack the vitality, electricity, and movie star charisma that both performers would come to master. And in the early '30s, with the industry in tumult and the Great Depression at its most suffocating,...

Raquel Welch died Thursday at 82 and leaves a legacy of a career that spanned more than 50 years. The actor who is known for starring in Fantastic Voyage, One Million Years B.C. and American Family, among many others, appeared in 30 films, 50 TV series and multiple appearances on late-night shows. Scroll through the videos posted below and remember some of Welch’s most notable performances.

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Welch made an appearance alongside Janis Joplin on The Dick Cavett Show in June 1970 where the host points out that people get surprised at how bright she is adding, “Because everyone that is a sex symbol automatically has to be dumb...

The opening scene of HBO's The Last of Us was originally a very different introduction. Far from a typical zombie show, The Last of Us follows two survivors, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), through their journey to meet with a band of revolutionary Fireflies. Spurned on by the hope of curing the world through Ellie's immunity, Joel and Ellie have to navigate a world infected by a rampaging fungus that takes control of the mind of its victims, all while searching for any sign of Joel's long-lost brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna).

In its final cut, the show opens with a talk show scene depicting a scientist explaining the dangers of fungi, and in an interview with HBO's The Last of Us Podcast, co-showrunner Craig Mazin explains that the scene wasn't always in the script.

The infection origin revelation features a crowd looking more scared as the doctor explains...

Dick Cavett can still picture the exact moment and location in New York City when he first met the man who would become one of his most cherished pals. It was 1961 and Cavett, then a 25-year-old writer for Jack Parr on The Tonight Show, met the legendary Groucho Marx after they both attended the funeral for playwright George S. Kaufman.

“He was walking east up 81st Street toward Fifth Avenue flanked by Art Carney on one side and Abe Burrows on the other,” recalls Cavett to Deadline. “And then when they left him, I moved to the corner of Fifth and 81st. And in one of my great inspired uses of the English language, I said the terribly witty ‘I’m a big fan of yours, Groucho.’ And he said, ‘well, if it’s gets any hotter, I could use a big fan.'”

After exchanging a few pleasantries, Marx,...