Network says role will be recast after Ukraine hit out over casting of Serbian for new season
The makers of hit TV show the White Lotus have dropped actor Miloš Biković from the upcoming series after criticism from Ukraine over the Serbian native’s ties to Russia.
Biković, who was cast for the third season of the award-winning dark comedy just weeks ago, has protested against HBO’s decision as “the triumph of absurdity and the defeat of art”.
Continue reading...‘I will now have the opportunity to finally shed this “Larry David” persona and become the person God intended me to be,’ star says
After almost 25 years playing Larry David, Larry David has announced that his award-winning comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm is ending with the next season.
The Seinfeld co-creator has played a curmudgeonly version of himself in Curb Your Enthusiasm since 2000, making it HBO’s longest-running comedy. Much like Seinfeld, the show draws on the humour in everyday life but the dialogue is mostly improvised around an outline written by David, who plays a semi-retired television writer.
Continue reading...News that the book The Fabulist will be adapted into film comes after congressman was expelled last week
A book about the improbable rise and rapid fall of former congressman George Santos has been optioned by HBO Films, it was reported Saturday, and will be produced under the guidance of Frank Rich, a former New York Times columnist known for executive production credits on Emmy awards-winning Succession and Veep.
HBO reportedly optioned the rights to Mark Chiusano’s The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos, published last week.
Continue reading...Cloud, who portrayed Fezco ‘Fez’ O’Neill in the HBO teen drama, had recently lost his father
The actor Angus Cloud, best known for his role on HBO’s teen drama Euphoria, has died at age 25, his family confirmed to media on Monday.
Cloud’s publicist, Cait Bailey, said Cloud died Monday at his family home in Oakland, California. No cause of death was given.
Continue reading...While many Potterheads celebrated reports of HBO Max show, some feel it would be tainted by JK Rowling’s stance on gender
At Platform 9 3/4 in King’s Cross station, Harry Potter devotees from around the world gathered to take their picture in front of one of the book’s most celebrated locations.
Fans of all ages were enthused by a particular story that took the internet by storm this week – that a long-rumoured Potter TV series could be in the works after reports that a deal was imminent between HBO Max and JK Rowling.
Continue reading...Show portrays adventures of agent who wakes from cryogenic sleep to find himself in modern Spain
Three years after the remains of Francisco Franco were finally removed from the granite chambers of the Valley of the Fallen, another relic of the dictatorial regime is stirring from a long slumber deep inside the monument’s damp and bone-stacked caverns.
Fortunately, the relic in question is not a long-dead falangista but rather a fictional Francoist secret agent whose adventures in contemporary Spain have moved from the pages of three graphic novels to the small screen.
Continue reading...The final episode of the first season of the hit Game of Thrones prequel has landed online days early
The season finale of House of the Dragon has leaked online just two days before it was set to premiere on HBO.
According to an HBO spokesperson, the much-anticipated episode of the hit Game of Thrones prequel appears to have come from a distribution partner in Europe, the Middle East or Africa.
Continue reading...The HBO teen drama’s second season is either a glorious mess or an excessive fantasy of high school. Either way, it’s a record-breaking hit
If you were anywhere near social media this past Sunday night, you probably at least glimpsed the divisive mess that was the second season finale of Euphoria, HBO’s technicolor, gleefully excessive soap on the outsized trials and tribulations of suburban California teens. After a buzzy and acclaimed but modestly watched debut in 2019, the show’s second season has blown up: HBO announced Tuesday that Euphoria, with help from its new streaming home on HBO Max, is now its second most watched show since 2004. It averaged 16.3 million viewers an episode this season, behind only OG HBO juggernaut Game of Thrones, which drew an average of 44.2 million viewers during its final season in 2019.
But perhaps more impressive, and telling, than its 2022 viewing stats is Euphoria’s digital footprint. According to Twitter, the drama is the most tweeted-about show of the (still young) decade, with 34m tweets in the US alone. This is by design: Euphoria, adapted by Sam Levinson from the Israeli show of the same name, is audacious in style, almost pugnaciously provocative in substance, with imitable peacocking fashion and easily memeable cutaways. In other words, catnip for the online crowd.
Continue reading...In its second season, the hit HBO drama on drugged-out and love-crazed teens has finally tipped into too much style over substance
Euphoria, the slick, explicit, high-budget teen drama halfway through its second season on HBO, has from the start been a soap layered in heady seriousness. The show, adapted by Sam Levinson from an Israeli series of the same name and co-produced by Drake, took on a near encyclopedia of Today’s Teen Issues – sex shaming, drug addiction, body insecurity, web personas, revenge porn, pregnancy and abortion, emotional abuse, toxic masculinity, self-harm and depression, and more – with a bracing, revelatory frankness and thick lacquer of gloss (and full-frontal nudity).
By its first season finale in 2019, in which main character Rue (Zendaya, who won an Emmy for the role) nearly dies in a graphic drug overdose, Euphoria had drawn a legion of fans (the finale drew 1.2 million night-of viewers and became HBO’s most second-most tweeted-about series ever, behind Game of Thrones) and managed to balance shock with sensitivity. It established beloved characters – in particular the fragile, alchemical bond between Rue and Jules (Hunter Schafer), a trans character – as well as a distinctive visual palette: saturated color, shimmery beats, high-voltage fantasy, meta narration, a zeitgeist-aiming show with a small hint of irony and a large dollop of excess.
Continue reading...Jane Campion’s Netflix drama and HBO hit triumph as stars distance themselves from Hollywood Foreign Press Association
The Power of the Dog and Succession were the big winners at an unusual, stripped-back Golden Globes.
Traditionally, the ceremony is a glitzy telecast with A-listers in attendance but after a year of controversies surrounding diversity and amoral practices, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association lost its footing in the industry, with publicity firms, studios and celebrities choosing to distance themselves.
Continue reading...An immaculate social satire featuring scabrous character studies, a murder-mystery and a shocking revenge scene
‘Wave like you mean it,” the hotel manager tells his staff as they line up on the beach waiting for the next boatful of guests to arrive at the luxurious White Lotus resort. With that line, Mike White’s immaculate six-part creation is set. On to the beach come the clientele, awed by the beauty of their surroundings but already taking the humans on the shoreline for granted – checking that their needs (wants) have been anticipated, extracting further efforts from those they are sure exist only to serve, and soon demanding (in what in Shane’s case will evolve into a series-long war of attrition with the manager, Armond) apologies and upgrades whenever minor mistakes are made.
The White Lotus had many superficial similarities with previous glossy hits such as Big Little Lies. It looked gorgeous, had an array of affluent white characters living what they considered ordinary and what most would consider easeful, glamorous lives, and a murder-mystery woven in.
Continue reading...In Alex Gibney’s harrowing documentary, the tale of Abu Zubaydah, seen as patient zero for the CIA’s torture programme, is explored with horrifying new details
From “a black site” in Thailand in 2002, CIA officers warned headquarters that their interrogation techniques might result in the death of a prisoner. If that happened, he would be cremated, leaving no trace. But if he survived, could the CIA offer assurance that he would be remain in isolation?
It could. Abu Zubaydah, the agency said in a cable, “will never be placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others” and “should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life”.
Continue reading...Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson discuss ‘where the magic started’ in HBO Max special
The original cast of the Harry Potter series will be reunited 20 years after the first film was released.
An HBO Max special titled Return to Hogwarts will be released on 1 January 2022, the network has said.
Continue reading...The fight for Rogers Communications has riven one of Canada’s richest families – and began with an accidental butt dial
For weeks, Canadians have been gripped by a messy public feud splintering one of the country’s richest families. Kicked off by an accidental pocket dial that revealed an executive-level coup attempt, the battle has pitted mother against son, ensnared Toronto’s mayor and drawn comparisons to the HBO show Succession.
Two separate groups of directors have proclaimed themselves the rightful stewards of Rogers Communications, a sprawling C$30bn telecommunications and entertainment empire with interests in media, professional hockey, basketball, baseball, football and soccer.
Continue reading...Strong’s role as the self-destructive media heir takes commitment – and the actor goes all in
• Plus: inside the Succession writers’ room
Earlier this year, Jeremy Strong left his apartment in Brooklyn, walked across the bridge to Manhattan and headed towards the far west side of the island, where he was filming the third season of the feverishly adored and heavily accoladed HBO series Succession. Strong plays Kendall, the alternately bullied and rebellious son of the vilified, Murdoch-esque media tycoon Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox, and Succession follows the jostling among the patriarch’s four children for his affection and respect, both of which he generally withholds. None of them is as visibly crushed by this as Kendall, who bears more than a slight resemblance to James Murdoch, even down to the dabblings in hip-hop. With every timid step Strong makes on screen, every apologetic dip of his chin when he starts to talk, he captures the pain of a son who knows he has failed to live up to his father’s expectations from the first time he cried. He won an Emmy last year for the role, beating, among others, Cox, in neatly Freudian style.
Strong likes to walk while learning his lines, so on that day in New York as he was walking he was also talking, reciting a speech he would soon be saying to Cox, in which Kendall tries to curry favour with his father, but also to be seen as his own man. “Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a ghost-grey Tesla rolling to a stop, so I looked in it, and there was James Murdoch,” Strong says when we meet in a London hotel. “He looked at me and I looked at him, and there was a flicker between us. Then he was gone. So we had a moment.”
Continue reading...The singer has spoken about about Jagged, premiering at the Toronto film festival, for its ‘reductive take’ on her life
Alanis Morissette has spoken out against a new HBO documentary about her life and its “salacious agenda” as it premieres at the Toronto film festival.
The 47-year-old singer had agreed to be interviewed for the film Jagged but has released a statement to express disappointment in how her story has been told. She said she was interviewed “during a very vulnerable time” during her third postpartum depression amid lockdown.
Continue reading...He was the terrifying stick-up man who loved his gran, shopped in his pyjamas and tenderly kissed his boyfriend. We remember Omar’s great scenes – and pay tribute to Michael K Williams, the actor who brought him to life
Playing stick-up man Omar Little on The Wire, Michael K Williams was tough, frightening and brutal – his face scarred, his smile wide, toting a shotgun and wearing a long trenchcoat. So viewers of David Simon’s intricate TV portrait of Baltimore’s streets, docks, schools and politics felt the rug pulled from under them when they first saw him kiss his boyfriend in episode four of season one.
It was a moment that subverted audience expectations and signalled the complexity, ambition and depth that The Wire – which is often placed at or near the top of lists of the all-time greatest TV shows – was aiming to achieve. This is not a character you’ve seen before, the show seemed to be saying. These aren’t your usual stereotypes and cliches. A similar moment saw Idris Elba’s drug chief Stringer Bell attend a business studies class.
Continue reading...The actor was best known for his role as Omar Little in the HBO series, and also starred in Boardwalk Empire
The actor Michael K Williams, best known for his role as Omar Little in The Wire, has died at the age of 54.
Confirming his death to the Hollywood Reporter, Williams’s representative said that it was “with deep sorrow that the family announces the passing of Emmy-nominated actor Michael Kenneth Williams. They ask for your privacy while grieving this unsurmountable loss.”
Continue reading...For many viewers, the final season ruined years of fandom. Enter HBO with a month of celebrations which they hope will lead to renewed interest in GoT – and its upcoming spinoffs
It’s time to crack open Cersei’s favourite Dornish wine and fill an incongruous takeaway coffee cup to the brim: Game of Thrones is 10 years old. To mark the occasion, HBO has inaugurated the Iron Anniversary, a month-long celebration honouring the grandiose but battle-scarred show based on George RR Martin’s as yet uncompleted cycle of fantasy doorstop novels. In traditional GoT fashion, there are merchandising tie-ins, from figurines to a commemorative IPA. But the main thrust of the Iron Anniversary seems to be the series itself: a ceremonial reminder that all eight seasons and 73 instalments are still available to watch on HBO Max (or Sky Atlantic/Now/Amazon Prime in the UK); the campaign announcements encourage fans to return to their favourite bloodthirsty battle episode or embark on a binge-watch “MaraThrone”.
Related: The battle of the binge: should you watch Game of Thrones in lockdown?
Continue reading...The Oscar-nominated film-maker behind I Am Not Your Negro returns with Exterminate All the Brutes, a dense new HBO docuseries about a horrifying history
Truly, what else was there left to say about race in America after the words of James Baldwin? This is what Raoul Peck found himself contemplating after the success of his 2016 documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, which was nominated for an Academy Award and won an Emmy, a Bafta and a César award. He was confounded and disappointed to realize that some audiences, particularly in Europe, weren’t fully comprehending the work of what he calls “one of the best, if not the best analyst of what racism is”, believing it to be primarily an American concern.
Related: 'We're all part of the story': behind Will Smith's 14th amendment docuseries
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