Author: Alizee Ali Khan

On Star Wars day, the White House shared a post featuring Donald Trump as the Mandalorian from the popular Disney+ series. It placed him next to Baby Yoda/Grogu alongside an American flag. Literally nobody asked for this crossover. And yet, here we are. The post captioned with: “In a galaxy that demands strength — America stands ready. This is the way. May the 4th be with you.” Clean references to Star Wars. But what makes the entire post awkward is the timing. The post comes as Disney launches a massive PR campaign around the first Star Wars movie in seven…

Gasoline, a story deeply set during the punk rock era of the 1990s, directed by James Merendino, with principal photography beginning this August. The feature project represents the filmmaker’s poignant return to the sub-culture that he brought to mainstream audiences almost 30 years ago. A young singer, broke and clinging to sobriety, convinces his teenage brothers to take the family van and spend their summer performing dysfunctional shows across America. That is the messy, road-weary premise of Gasoline. Though the story is based on true events with the band Eight Buck Experiment. Evan O’Meara, the band’s founder, produces the inde…

YouTube has just made its AI-powered likeness detection tool available to the entire entertainment industry. The platform says the technology is now open to celebrities, talent agencies, and management firms. They can identify AI-generated videos that feature fake versions of their faces. They can then take action against them. Here’s how it works: a celeb, creator or public figure, or, more likely, someone on their team, opts in to the program and uploads their likeness to the system. They don’t even have to have a public-facing YouTube channel. The system then scours YouTube and flags potential clones for that celeb’s…

A new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey dropped Monday night and it does not disappoint. Universal released the latest look at the Greek epic from Homer. It features Matt Damon’s Odysseus doing battle with the Cyclops. It also shows Robert Pattinson’s villainous Antinous trying to take the throne of Ithaca. The trailer debuted on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, on which the full cast list was also confirmed. Damon stars as Odysseus, with Tom Holland as his son Telemachus. Anne Hathaway plays his wife Penelope. Charlize Theron appears as the nymph Calypso. Pattinson plays the conniving suitor Antinous,…

Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios will open world sales before the Cannes market on Critterz, an AI generated animated family film. Described as “human-led but AI-assisted,” it is being positioned as among the first mainstream commercial family films. It will incorporate AI across all of its production pipeline. The feature is an all length adaptation of a 2023 viral short of the same name, which was among the first films to use OpenAI’s creative tools. Chad Nelson, a creative strategist at OpenAI, initially drew the film’s characters with OpenAI’s DALL-E image generator. This happened before the project expanded into a full…

After 16 years, the End the Backlog campaign has successfully driven rape kit reform legislation in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. For Mariska Hargitay, the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actress turned longtime activist, it’s a milestone she’s worked toward since 2010. Maine is the 50th and final state to commit to the reform. Governor Janet Mills’ enacted budget (LD2212) commits $267,000 in annual funding to establish a statewide rape kit inventory and tracking system. Joyful Heart Foundation Hargitay, best known for playing Captain Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, founded the Joyful…

Curry Barker isn’t just here to put another coat of blood on a fifty-year-old franchise. The filmmaker wants to dig deeper, and he’s already being upfront about where his focus will land. Barker, a YouTube comedian and filmmaker announced as the writer and director of the upcoming A24 reimagining, explained his interest. He is drawn to the unsettling dynamics within the family that raised Leatherface. Speaking to Total Film, he didn’t hold back on where he plans to take things. “I want to lean into the uncomfortability of the family, I want to lean into the rawness of what’s going…

More than 15 years after directing the original Thor, Kenneth Branagh has admitted he “would love to finish my relationship with that character.” He already has a specific vision in mind. But in a conversation with Business Insiders this week, Branagh said he has “a couple of ideas, more in the territory of James Mangold’s brilliant Logan.” That’s a pretty stark departure from a franchise that has leaned heavily on comedy and spectacle since his 2011 original. “I would love to see Chris Hemsworth and the others have their own individual final story that takes Thor into a glorious twilight,” he…

Dave Franco is now officially on board to star opposite Sophie Wilde in the alien invasion thriller Soon You Will Be Gone And Possibly Eaten. The news arrived as Cannes Market was arriving, and sent a definite jolt of urgency through one of the more interesting genre films in play. Franco will play opposite Wilde, with the film adapted from a short story by Nick Antosca. Egor Abramenko, who helmed Sputnik, will direct. Writing is from Luke Piotrowski and Ben Collins, who also wrote Hellraiser and the Night House. Franco and Wilde play Rob and Sabile, a young, soon-to-be-married couple…

Netflix has unveiled the first look at The Last House, a sci-fi survival thriller formerly known as 11817, directed by Louis Leterrier. Starring Greta Lee and Wagner Moura, the film is officially set to hit Netflix globally on August 7, 2026. The Last House follows a family of four suddenly sealed inside their home with no way out. They are forced to work together to survive against dwindling resources. They also face a mysterious, looming threat keeping them trapped. Lee and Moura play the parents at the center of that fight. Early on, Past Lives star Lee and Kingsley Ben-Adir…