Dolph Lundgren Is ‘Disappointed’ for ‘Aquaman 2’ Viewers Because a ‘Really Good’ Original Cut Got Axed: ‘I Didn’t See Any Reason’ for Reshooting

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Hayden Panettiere said in a recent interview with The Messenger that filming “Nashville” was “very traumatizing because I felt like I was acting out my own life.” The actor played country pop singer Juliette Barnes on the ABC musical drama, which ran for six seasons and 124 episodes between 2012 and 2018. Panettiere suggested the show’s writers often pulled from her real life while crafting Juliette’s storylines, which was emotionally traumatizing for her as storylines used her real-life struggle with alcoholism. “Straight from the beginning, it was like, I’m dating a football player, [and then] Juliette dates a football player,” Panettiere said.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Succession” Emmy winner Sarah Snook said on a recent episode of BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program that she was too “young and naive” to push back against a film producer who openly berated her for eating cake on set. It was one of two instanced of body shaming that Snook remembered during an interview with The Sunday Times published earlier this month.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director How do you choose between Tom Cruise and Quentin Tarantino? It’s a dilemma Austin Butler faced before his Oscar-nominated performance in “Elvis” turned him into a global star. During an interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast (via People) while promoting his new Apple TV+ series “Masters of the Air,” Butler confirmed reports he was in the running to star opposite Cruise in the blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick.” “I ended up having to choose between going to the screen test for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ or saying yes to Quentin Tarantino,” Butler said.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Whoopi Goldberg is an Oscars legend, having won an Academy Award for “Ghost” and hosted the ceremony four times and served as an Academy board member. So perhaps moviegoers might want to listen to Goldberg when she says there are no such thing as Oscar snubs amid the uproar over Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie missing out on nominations for best director and best actress, respectively, at the 2024 Oscars. “Barbie” earned a total of eight nominations, including best picture, and Gerwig is a nominee for screenwriting and so is Robbie as one of the film’s producers.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Sofia Vergara is taking on her most dramatic role yet in Netflix’s “Griselda,” in which she plays infamous Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco. The show marks a rare opportunity for Vergara to flex her dramatic acting muscles as her career has largely been defined by comedy projects, from playing Gloria Pritchett on ABC’s “Modern Family” (which ran for 11 seasons and garnered Vergara four Emmy nominations) to films like 2015’s “Hot Pursuit” with Reese Witherspoon. “I’m always looking for characters because there’s not much that I can play with this stupid accent,” Vergara recently told the Los Angeles Times, poking fun at herself.

Having already worked with compatriots Baz Luhrmann, James Wan, Kim Farrant, Phillip Noyce, and John Polson (who is directing her in the upcoming “The Last Anniversary” from author Liane Moriarty), Nicole Kidman generally finds a way to work with every notable Aussie filmmaker she can. And now she can add one more to the list: Justin Kurzel, the celebrated indie filmmaker known for “Macbeth,” “Assassin’s Creed,” and “True History of The Kelly Gang,” starring Aussie Russell Crowe.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Will Ferrell touched down at the Sundance Film Festival to world premiere the new documentary “Will & Harper,” which centers on the relationship between the beloved comedian and his best friend Harper Steele as they take a road trip. The two met during their days on “Saturday Night Live,” which Harper wrote for from 1995 to 2008.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Dominic Fike appeared at the Variety Studio presented by Audible while attending the Sundance Film Festival and compared his experiences playing a character struggling with drug addiction on HBO’s “Euphoria” and his new Sundance premiere, “Little Death.” The latter title marks the feature directorial debut of music video helmer Jack Begert, who happens to be one of Fike’s friends. Fike has been open in the past about his real-life addiction struggles, so his proximity to Berget made playing a drug addiction in “Little Death” a bit easier than playing one in “Euphoria.” “I’ve done that before, like acted like a drug addict,” Fike said. “I actually am a pretty big drug addict myself, believe it or not.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Melissa Barrera weighed in on her controversial exit from the “Scream” franchise while attending the Sundance Film Festival for the premiere of her latest horror movie, “Your Monster.” “Honestly, I think I finally am becoming who I’m supposed to be in life, and the last few months have been a big awakening of that,” Barrera told the Associated Press when asked about her “Scream” exit. “I’m just so grateful for everything that’s happened.” Barrera played Sam Carpenter, the daughter of Billy Loomis (played by Skeet Ulrich in the original films), in 2022’s “Scream” and 2023’s “Scream 6,” the latter of which set a franchise box office record with $108 million at the domestic box office.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jodie Foster said at the Variety Studio presented by Audible while at the Sundance Film Festival that the $1.4 billion success of “Barbie” helps prove that Hollywood no longer views women directors as too much of a risk. That wasn’t always the case, as Foster often saw women filmmakers being marginalized during her career ascent in Hollywood. “I’ve had the beauty of being able to be in the business since the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and so on,” Foster said to Variety’s Rebecca Rubin.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Kelly Osbourne earned backlash in 2015 when a comment she made on “The View” was widely slammed as racist. Osbourne was addressing Donald Trump’s policy on immigration at the time alongside hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie Perez when she said, “If you kick every Latino out of this country then who is going to be cleaning your toilets, Donald Trump?” She later acknowledged her “poor choice of words,” but stressed: “I will not apologize for being racist as I am NOT.” The clip of Osbourne saying “If you kick every Latino out of this country” has now reemerged on TikTok and become its own meme, with users spouting their own ridiculous takes on stereotypes.

William Earl administrator Johnny Depp is back in the directors chair — complete with his big signature hats — for the first time in decades. Depp is seen directing the cast of the film “Modi” in first look photos that were released from the set. Al Pacino plays a supporting role as real-life French art collector Maurice Gangnat.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jodie Foster has shocked the “Star Wars” fandom by confirming she was offered the role of Princess Leia in “Star Wars,” which unquestionably would’ve changed the course of her career. The two-time Oscar winner told Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show” that she was already locked into a contract for a Disney movie at the time and didn’t want to break it in order to join a galaxy far, far away. Foster did not reveal what Disney movie, but the timeline suggests it might’ve been “Freaky Friday,” which was released a year before “Star Wars.” “You’ve been in so many iconic roles, and we love what you do,” Fallon said during the show.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Sharon Stone has revealed that she once attempted to pitch a “Barbie” movie to a Hollywood studio during the 1990s and was laughed out of the room. What a difference a couple of decades makes, as Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s “Barbie” opened last year and earned a staggering $1.4 billion to become the top-grossing film of 2023 and the biggest earner in Warner Bros.’ studio history.

Dolph Lundgren has revealed that he’s “disappointed” with the version of Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom that viewers have seen in cinemas.Speaking to ComicBook.com, Lundgren – who stars in the franchise as Nereus, the king of the Atlantean tribe of Xebel, and also the father of Mera (Amber Heard) – said that the original cut and script for the recently released Aquaman sequel was “really good”.Following Amber Heard’s defamation trial against Johnny Depp, the actress’ role in the second Aquaman film was greatly reduced. As a result, Lundgren’s involvement in The Lost Kingdom was also cut down, which he suggests impacted the final cut of the superhero film.“I just realized that it was some kind of corporate decision that they try to limit Amber Heard and then I’m playing with her dad and went along with it,” Lundgren explained to ComicBook.com.Due to Heard’s reduced role, the film was allegedly reworked.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jodie Foster graced the cover of Time magazine in 1991 when she was 28 years old and set to direct her first feature, “Little Man Tate.” She said at the time that “this is not a business that is kind to women” who aspire to be directors, but her tune has changed 32 years later. “Sometimes I read things I said in my 20s and I’m like, really? But that’s a pretty good one,” she recently told Time in 2023 during an interview for her role on HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country.” “When I was young, there were really no American women directors, maybe a few,” she said. “I didn’t think I was allowed to be a director.

French director Maïwenn has been fined $435 (€400) for assaulting a leading French journalist in the lead-up to the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, according to French media reports.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Robert Downey Jr. has long defended his role in “Tropic Thunder,” the 2008 comedy from director Ben Stiller that cast the “Iron Man” star as an egotistical Australian thespian who takes Method acting to an extreme by undergoing “pigmentation alteration” surgery to darken his skin in order to play a Black solider in a war movie.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Robert Downey Jr. appeared on Rob Lowe’s “Literally!” podcast and said that his run as Tony Stark/Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe marked some of the best acting of his career, but “it went a little bit unnoticed because of the genre.” The Oscar nominee played the character for 11 years, exiting the MCU in 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said last month that he won’t be asking Downey Jr. to return to the MCU as to preserve Tony Stark’s emotional ending (“We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way,” he said), but that hasn’t stopped rumors from circulating that Marvel desperately wants Iron Man back to help restore the MCU to its glory days.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Julia Roberts was interviewed for a Vogue UK fashion spread by her “Notting Hill” director Richard Curtin, who asked the Oscar winner if she feels “responsibility to other women” when choosing her movie roles as an A-list star for well over three decades. “Do you ever think, ‘I’m representing something?” Curtis asked Roberts. “I think it would be more to the point that the things I choose not to do are representative of me,” Roberts answered, noting that “my G-rated career” is an example.