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Ever since James Gunn was announced as head of the new DC Universe, given the task of rebranding the entire comic book-based world, there have been consistent calls by fans to have Alan Ritchson play Batman. The star of Amazon Prime’s Reacher series, Ritchson has become a favorite of the DC fandom thanks to his physicality. Even Ritchson himself has consistently shown his interest in essaying the superhero, stating time and again that he would be up for the opportunity no matter what.

Alan Ritchson as the protagonist in his Reacher series | Credit: Amazon Prime Video

In a recent interview, the actor again responded to the rumors of him playing the Dark Knight, claiming he doesn’t even need a paycheck to be on board.

Alan Ritchson addresses Batman casting rumors again! Alan Ritchson in his Wired’s Autocomplete Interview | Credit: YouTube

Alan Ritchson is one of the most...

Bill Murray has often randomly shown up in unexpected places, be it a wedding, a house party or a baffling Super Bowl commercial. This past weekend, Murray surprised the internet by bringing his confused uncle energy to the Joe Rogan Experience studio, despite having no idea who the hell Joe Rogan is.

Since Rogan is obviously a controversial figure to say the least, and Murray has a history of allegedly abusive behavior, some comedy fans may treat this podcast as if it were the VHS tape from The Ring. But the two hour and twenty minute interview may have been worth it for the moment in which Rogan tells Murray that he’s a “giant fan” only for Murray to respond, “I’ve never heard your show,” and then reveal that he had to ask a staff member to actually point out which guy Joe Rogan was.

Murray also confessed that he never saw NewsRadio,...

Bill Murray slammed Bob Woodward’s 1986 book “Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi” as “completely inaccurate” to the point that he began to wonder if “they framed Nixon” during an interview with Joe Rogan published on Saturday.

In comments that begin around the 1:15 mark, Murray said that the alleged inaccuracies in the book had him half-convinced “they framed Nixon.” He said he read “five pages of ‘Wired'” and “all of a sudden, I went, ‘Oh my God, if this is what he writes about my friend that I’ve known, you know, for half my adult life, which is completely inaccurate, talking to the people of the outer, outer circle, getting the story — what the hell could they have done to Nixon?'”

Murry continued in this vein and added, “I just felt like if he did this to my friend like this, and...

More than 40 years later, Bill Murray has a bone to pick with Bob Woodward over his literary treatment of friend and collaborator John Belushi.

Following Belushi’s death at age 33 in 1982, Murray called out Woodward’s 1984 biography Wired as “completely inaccurate”

“If he did this to Belushi, what he did to Nixon is probably soiled for me too. I can’t take it,” he said on The Joe Rogan Experience. “You could have two sources and everything like that, but the two sources that he had, if he had them for the Wired book, were so far outside the inner circle that it was criminal, cruel.”

Murray added, “Belushi made people’s careers possible. Mine would be one of them. There’s a lot of people that slept on John Belushi’s couch. There’s a lot of people that stayed for free at his house until they made it in New York.

Bill Murray is coming to the defense of his long-time friend and fellow SNL alum John Belushi.

During a recent appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Murray slammed journalist Bob Woodward for his portrayal of Belushi in his 1984 biography “Wired,” which chronicled the life and career of “The Blues Brothers” star. Murray called Woodward’s take on Belushi “completely inaccurate,” and suspects his sources were pulled from “the outer, outer circle” of people that knew him.

“If he did this to Belushi, what he did to Nixon is probably soiled for me too. I can’t take it,” Murray said. “You could have two sources and everything like that, but the two sources that he had, if he had them for the ‘Wired’ book, were so far outside the inner circle that it was criminal, cruel.”

Murray suspects that Woodward’s takedown may have been motivated by jealousy. He pointed...

When Spike Jonze’s “Her” debuted in theaters in 2013, Siri was just 2 years old and Alexa was barely in the womb. Less than a third of relationships started on the internet, and dating apps were still on the fringes. The term “artificial intelligence” rarely made it outside of tech circles.

Back then, Jonze’s bizarro vision of the future, in which people fell in love with “operating systems” — handheld portals of infinite knowledge and companionship — seemed so far away. In 2025, the year in which the film is widely accepted to take place, that future has arrived.

“Her,” which won Jonze the Oscar for best original screenplay, stars Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly, a man with a hipster ’stache who is reeling from a divorce. To salve his loneliness, he purchases an AI chatbot, Samantha, voiced with an extra dash of sultry by Scarlett Johansson.

Theodore works as a professional letter writer,...

As the end of the 20th century came to a close, traditional 2D animation seemed to be dying along with it. But while Disney Renaissance films are often remembered by nostalgic Millennials as the last great ride of hand-drawn animation, their grand, sweeping scale was actually made possible by blending old-school techniques with brand new technology. In the ballroom scene from 1991's "Beauty and the Beast," a hand-drawn Belle and Beast waltz against the spinning backdrop of a CG-animated ballroom; the heart-stopping stampede in 1994's "The Lion King" has a traditionally-animated Simba fleeing from computer-animated wildebeest.

The balance soon tipped over in favor of the completely CG animation that dominates today. But somewhere between the release of "Toy Story" and "Shrek," a British studio called Aardman Animations ambitiously embarked on its first feature film: a poultry-themed spin on "The Great Escape" called "Chicken Run." With a final tally of $227.7 million at the global box office,...

If the atmosphere seems spiced with something other than pumpkin extract this month, don’t worry. That’s just the creamy mouth-feel (sorry!) of awards season, which is once again upon us in full-force. Look no further than this month’s Don’t-Miss Indies, full of auteur-driven storytelling from tip to tail, including plenty of Film Independent Spirit Award alumni. Want to receive screeners and vote for this season’s Spirit Award winners? Go ahead!

Fingernails

When You Can Watch: Now

Where You Can Watch: Theaters (limited), Apple TV+

Director: Christos Nikou

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White

Why We’re Excited: Film Independent Spirit Award winners Buckley (Robert Altman Award co-recipient for last year’s Women Talking) and Ahmed (Best Male Lead for 2020’s Sound of Metal) stars as Anna and Amir—two colleagues who work at the “Love Institute”, which has supposedly developed a test to...

Exclusive: Citizen Ashe producer Steven Cantor and journalist David Kushner are diving further into the podcasting world.

The duo have launched podcast company Faceplant and have debuted their first audio series – Crime Waves: Cold Truth.

Faceplant has been established to launch character-driven serial podcast that are deeply reported with “stranger than fiction” stories.

Crime Waves: Cold Truth, which is produced in association with QCode, is a true-crime series about the murder of cold fusion scientist Eugene Mallove. It launches today.

No Smiling, the nascent podcast company from Sean Cannon, who was behind series including Striped: The Story of the White Stripes, Boyd Holbrook, Evan Mascagni and Heather Schoering, is also producing.

Kushner has written for publications including Rolling Stone, Wired, Outside and Vanity Fair with many of his stories in development for film and TV. He was behind the story that became A24’s Zola, while Peacock docuseries The Battle...

Dr. Eugene Mallove believed that a new form of world-changing free energy — cold fusion — was just around the corner. Even when his work was pushed to the fringes, he dreamed of a brighter future. But before Dr. Mallove could usher in that future, he was found dead in the driveway of his childhood home. Everyone had their own ideas of who killed him, and investigators were looking in all the wrong places.

From Qcode and Faceplant, in association with No Smiling, Crime Waves: Cold Truth is a story about one man's quest to expose the truth, the lengths he would go to save the world, and how his dream caught up with him.

Hosted by award-winning journalist and author David Kushner, Cold Truth is an 8-part series and the first show to be released under the Crime Waves true crime anthology. It tells the true story of the life, violent death,...

Robert Downey Jr. spilled some tea on the tattoo he shares with his fellow original Avengers.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is massive now. However, at the start it centered around his Iron Man, Chris Evans‘ Captain America, Jeremy Renner‘s Hawkeye, Scarlett Johansson‘s Black Widow, Mark Ruffalo‘s Hulk and Chris Hemsworth‘s Thor.

If you were unaware, five of the six members of the core cast decided to get a group tattoo after the release of Avengers: Infinity War in 2018. The movie was one of the final ones that they all appeared in together, and the tattoo commemorates their bond.

During a segment on Wired earlier this year, Robert opened up about the tattoo, revealing some additional details. For instance, he confirmed which member of the cast opted out of getting inked and which was seemingly hesitant. He even revealed who was brave enough to go first.

Following...

Eugenio Derbez is fantastic in the real-life role of Sergio Juarez, a teacher from Jose Urbina Lopez Elementary in Matamoros, Mexico who aims to defy the school system in honor of learning. Written and directed by Christopher Zalla and based on the 2013 Wired article, “A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses,” the

The post Eugenio Derbez Talks “Radical” and the Importance of Teachers appeared first on Manny the Movie Guy.

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The bows are out in the first trailer for Marvel’s upcoming “Hawkeye” series for Disney Plus, which sees Jeremy Renner reprise his role as master archer Clint Barton alongside the new addition Hailee Steinfeld as beloved comic book character Kate Bishop. But before you binge the new series, which comes out Nov. 24, you’ll want to make sure to read the acclaimed comic series of which it’s presumably based.

While series writer Jonathan Igla has been mum on official adaptation inspirations, there are enough similarities between the trailer and the beloved comic to make the assumption that plenty of plot fodder has been pulled from this exceedingly witty comic, anyone else spot the exploding,...

A series adaptation of Charlie Jane Anders’ “Victories Greater Than Death” is in development at Amazon from Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society, Variety has learned.

No writer is currently attached to the project. Jordan and Elizabeth Raposo will executive produce for Outlier, with Jane Anders, Dan Halstead, and Nate Miller also executive producing.

In the series, high schooler Tina is hiding a deep secret: she’s the keeper of an interplanetary beacon that will activate someday soon, calling her home as the clone of an alien charged with saving the galaxy. But, for as much as she feels destined to fulfill her mission, she first has to grapple with the complications with the humans in her life. As Tina prepares to take on her journey with a group of teenage girls, they must grapple with learning to trust themselves and each other.

Outlier Society is currently under an overall...

New Delhi, March 23 (Ians) With deep and exclusive reporting, across hundreds of interviews, New York Times Silicon Valley journalist Cade Metz relates the modern history of artificial intelligence (AI) in "The Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and the World" (Penguin).

The book brings forth a compelling narrative that does not only put into perspective what AI means to us humans, but also tells a definitive story of how a project confined to the fringes of scientific community became a buzzword for humanity.

Long dismissed as a technology of the distant future, artificial intelligence was a project once consigned to the fringes of the scientific community. Then two researchers changed everything. One was a 64-year-old computer science professor with a back problem so severe he could not drive or fly. The other was a 36-year-old neuroscientist and chess prodigy.

Though they took very different paths,...

Nicole Kidman is set to star in and produce a series adaptation of Janelle Brown’s upcoming novel “Pretty Things,” which is now in development at Amazon Studios.

Kidman will produce for her Blossom Films banner along with Per Saari. Brown will adapt her novel and executive produce. Reed Morano will serve as director and executive producer.

“Pretty Things” follows “two brilliant, damaged women try to survive the greatest game of deceit and destruction they will ever play,” according to Amazon. “When a reluctant grifter befriends a wealthy ‘influencer’ on the shores of Lake Tahoe, her ultimate con devolves into a raw, treacherous game of long-awaited payback.”

Also Read: Here's Everything Coming to Amazon Prime Video in April

Brown’s novel will have its Random House debut on April 21. The New York Times Bestselling author is also behind works like “Watch Me Disappear,” “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything,” and “This Is Where We Live.

Name and focus changes for every section, which are now all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

The ninth Rome Film Festival (Oct 16-25) has revealed a diverse line-up including the Italian premieres for potential awards contenders including David Fincher’s Gone Girl. the world premiere of Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Burhan Qurbani’s We are Young, We are Strong and European premiere of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, Toronto hit Still Alice and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

This year for the first time the award-winners in each section of the programme will be decided by the audience on the basis of votes cast after the screenings.

Each section has changed name and focus for 2014 and are all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

Italian comedies Soap Opera and Andiamo a Quel Paese bookend the line-up.

Full line-up

Cinema D’Oggi

World premiere

• Angely...

Toby Stephens has signed on to star in the upcoming television series Black Sails. The Wired actor will play the lead role in the series, which focuses on the tale of Captain Flint twenty years before the events of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Michael Bay is producing the series - which has been picked up for an eight-episode first season run on the (more)...

Upcoming Starz series Black Sails from producer Michael Bay has cast Toby Stephens as Captain Flint in the pirate-themed adventure. Variety reports that the eight-episode series which only airs some time in 2014, is takes place some 20 years before Treasure Island written from Robert Louis Stevenson. Stephensis a mostly TV experienced actor with roles in Jane Eyre, Cambridge Spies, Wired, Robin Hood and Vexed. Film-wise, he's mostly-known for the role he played as Gustav Graves in James Bond flick Die Another Day. Bay serves as executive producer along with his Platinum Dunes partners Andrew Form and Brad Fuller...

Upcoming Starz series Black Sails from producer Michael Bay has cast Toby Stephens as Captain Flint in the pirate-themed adventure. Variety reports that the eight-episode series which only airs some time in 2014, is takes place some 20 years before Treasure Island written from Robert Louis Stevenson. Stephensis a mostly TV experienced actor with roles in Jane Eyre, Cambridge Spies, Wired, Robin Hood and Vexed. Film-wise, he's mostly-known for the role he played as Gustav Graves in James Bond flick Die Another Day. Bay serves as executive producer along with his Platinum Dunes partners Andrew Form and Brad Fuller...

ITV has commissioned a supernatural drama starring Alex Kingston. The Doctor Who actress and Wired star Jodie Whittaker will lead the cast of The Oaks, which is described as "gripping". The five-part drama, written by Stephen Greenhorn (Glasgow Kiss, Doctor Who), will tell the story of three different families living in the same house over several decades: the 1960s, 1980s and present day. The families are linked by the spirit of a young girl, the daughter of the 1960s family who died in mysterious circumstances. Kingston and Whittaker are joined by cast members including Ashes To Ashes star Dean Andrews, Shelley Conn (Mistresses), Elliot Cowan (The Fixer), Denis Lawson (Criminal Justice), (more)...