Elijah Wood ‘Surprised’ by New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movies: I Hope They’re Made With ‘Reverence’ for Tolkien and Not Just to ‘Make a Lot of Money’

The Masked Singer is back!

Zack Sharf Digital News Director With the release of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” comes the end of James Gunn’s tenure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The filmmaker is exiting the MCU after directing three “Guardians” movies and is moving on to his new full-time job as the co-head of DC Studios, where he’s building a new DC Universe across film, television and video games that includes a Superman movie he’s writing and directing. Gunn’s “Guardians” cast members Zoe Saldaña and Dave Bautista have already gone on record saying they’re exiting Marvel along with Gunn following the release of “Guardians Vol. 3.” Chris Pratt, who has headlined the “Guardians” franchise as Star Lord, is a different story. Speaking to Total Film magazine, Pratt said he would continue to play the character as long as Marvel honors what Gunn started.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director After “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” earned some of the worst reviews for a Marvel movie yet (its 47% score on Rotten Tomatoes ties “Eternals” as the lowest-rated MCU title on the aggregation website), it appears the Marvel Cinematic Universe is back on track thanks to “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” First reactions for the trilogy-ending “Guardians” sequel are rolling in and praise the film as the “best Marvel movie in years” and “surprisingly emotional.” Awards Radar editor Joey Magidson called the film “full of heart” and said it brought him “to tears on multiple occasions.” “It’s not what you’re necessarily expecting,” he added, “but it really does land. A perfect ending, too.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Harrison Ford is returning to the “Indiana Jones” franchise in the upcoming “Dial of Destiny,” marking a return to the character he’s now played for 42 years. It’s been 44 years since Sigourney Weaver first played Ellen Ripley in Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” but don’t expect her to pull a Ford/”Dial of Destiny” and return to the role that made her an action movie icon. In a new interview with Total Film magazine, Ripley said her days as Ripley are over. “There are all kinds of younger actors taking this kind of role,” Weaver said. “And there was an ‘Alien’ [film] that I really wanted to do with Neill Blomkamp and we didn’t get to do that, but, you know, that ship has sailed. I’m very happy doing what I’m doing. I put in my time in space!”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Steven Spielberg has seen “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” the fifth installment in the long-running adventure franchise and, notably, the first entry not to be directed by Spielberg himself. “The Wolverine” and “Ford v Ferrari” director James Mangold took over filmmaking duties on “Dial of Destiny.” Anyone worried a Spielberg-less “Indiana Jones” movie might not deliver the goods can now rest easy, as Spielberg himself loved the latest sequel. “I just had that experience two nights ago,” Spielberg said at the Time 100 Summit when asked what it’s like watching an “Indiana Jones” movie he didn’t direct. “Bob Iger had a screening for a lot of the Disney executives and I came to the screening along with the director James Mangold. Everybody loved the movie. It’s really, really a good Indiana Jones film. I’m really proud of what Jim has done with it.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” director James Mangold confirmed in a new interview with Total Film magazine that Harrison Ford spends approximately 25 minutes of the sequel de-aged to appear around the age he was in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The “Dial of Destiny” team previously disclosed that new VFX technology was created for the film in order to de-age Ford, but now fans know it was for an extended act of the movie and not just a simple flashback scene. Mangold called Ford “incredibly gifted and agile,” which made it easy for the actor to “pretend that he was 35” when filming the scenes. “But the technology involved is a whole other thing,” Mangold said. “We had hundreds of hours of footage of him in close-ups, in mediums, in wides, in every kind of lighting, night and day. I could shoot Harrison on a Monday as, you know, a 79-year-old playing a 35-year-old, and I could see dailies by Wednesday with his head already replaced,”

EXCLUSIVE: Waco: The Aftermath has proved to be a streaming win for Showtime.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Harrison Ford confirmed to Total Film magazine that the upcoming “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” will mark his final outing as the globetrotting archeologist, so don’t expect to see Ford pop up in the “Indiana Jones” television series that’s currently in early development at Disney+. “This is the final film in the series, and this is the last time I’ll play the character,” Ford said about his decades-long run as Indiana Jones coming to a definitive end. “I anticipate that it will be the last time that he appears in a film.” Ford added that he is aware of the potential “Indiana Jones” television series but stressed he “will not be involved in that, if it does come to fruition.”

Melanie Lynskey enjoyed starring opposite Kate Winslet in 1994’s Heavenly Creatures — but distance impacted their friendship once the movie wrapped.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Zack Snyder joined Anthony and Joe Russo’s “Pizza Film School” podcast and raved about HBO’s “Euphoria” and Netflix’s “Squid Game,” two shows he cited while discussing how television has become far more adventurous and exciting than film when it comes to storytelling. “I think we’re in a real golden age of TV in the sense that TV shows are much better at showing you something that you’ve never seen before, or catching you off balance or making a turn that you didn’t see coming,” Snyder said (via The Playlist). “They’re way riskier.” “‘Euphoria,’ for instance, I was just watching the show [and] it’s just unbelievable,” Snyder continued. “That show shouldn’t exist; it’s so good. And that’s the kind of thing… I watch that show and go, ‘This movie would never get made; this movie can’t exist.’”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Freddie Highmore’s recent trip to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was a cake walk compared to the time he had to hide in a closet to avoid a television host with a particular set of backstage rules. “The Good Doctor” actor revealed to Kimmel that he was once forced into a “dark broom closet” before a talk show appearance because the unnamed host was against seeing his or her guests before the on-air interview. “I’m trying to avoid saying the name, but this host doesn’t like seeing guests beforehand,” Highmore said (via Entertainment Weekly). “So I was coming backstage with a couple of the producers and they looked up and they saw the host at the end of the corridor and they were really, really scared.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Hugh Jackman has promised fans that his return as Wolverine in the upcoming “Deadpool 3” won’t screw with the previous “X-Men” timeline. In other words, Jackman’s Wolverine character arc from 2000’s “X-Men” to 2017’s “Logan” is safe from whatever will go down in Marvel Cinematic Universe tentpole. Neither Reynolds nor Jackman have disclosed much information about the new Wolverine, but Reynolds recently told ET Canada that it diverges greatly from Jackson’s previous Wolverine. “We’ve wanted to this this for decades…it’s weirdly the perfect time,” Reynold said about teaming up with Jackman. “I never stopped [trying to get him to come back as Wolverine]. I was just pestering him like a gnat over the last many years. I believe in timing, as much as hard work and luck and all those intersections that are supposed to meet. Timing’s the big one. I think he was ready. I think he was excited.”

Lord Of The Rings films in the works.Back in February, it was announced that Warner Bros and New Line had signed a deal to make “multiple” new movies based on J. R. R.

Count actor Elijah Wood among those who are rooting for the new Lord of the Rings movies that are planned.

Seven-time Grammy winner Alanis Morissette has released the new single, “No Return” (Extended Version), a reworked version of Yellowjackets’ main title theme song.  Morissette’s new take on the theme, written by Yellowjackets composers Craig Wedren and Anna Waronker, debuted in the fourth episode of the series’ second season. You can listen to it above.

Meg Davis confirmed to the New York Times. Perry was 84.Perry, who was born as Juliet Marion Hulme, served five years in prison after being convicted of murdering her best friend Pauline Parker’s mother Honorah Rieper alongside Parker when they were just teenagers in 1954. Perry was just 15 years old and Parker was 16 at the time.In 1994, Perry’s past came to light when director Peter Jackson based his film “Heavenly Creatures” on Perry’s story.

reports. She was 84. The British-born Perry was played by Kate Winslet in Peter Jackson's 1994, depicting the infamous Christchurch, New Zealand murder case of 1954.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson announced in March they will be reuniting onscreen after “EDtv” and “True Detective” in a new Apple TV+ comedy from creator David West Read. The 10-episode series will star the actors as fictionalized versions of themselves as they bring their families under the same roof on a Texas ranch. McConaughey recently announced on Kelly Ripa’s “Let’s Talk Off Camera” podcast that the series is titled “Brother From Another Mother.” While the series’ title evokes McConaughey and Harrelson’s real-life friendship over decades, McConaughey let it slip to Ripa that he’s actually questioning whether Harrelson is actually related to him. It all stems from the revelation that McConaughey’s mother knew Harrelson’s father, perhaps intimately.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director One of the biggest announcements to emerge out of Star Wars Celebration was the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey in a new movie that will follow the events of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” which concluded the most recent Skywalker trilogy in 2019. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (“Ms. Marvel”) is directing the still-untitled Rey movie from a script by Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders”). Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said at the fan convention that Ridley’s new “Star Wars” movie will follow Rey as she builds a new Jedi Order, but the executive teased a bit more about the plot in an interview with IGN: “Star Wars” fans will pick up with Rey well over a decade after “The Rise of Skywalker.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Chris Pratt’s Mario voice has been a topic of discussion ever since the first trailer for “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” debuted last October. Some fans claimed it wasn’t Italian enough, while others felt it was too aggressively Brooklyn. In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Pratt revealed that one of his first attempts at the Mario voice got rejected by the film’s directors, Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, because it far too resembled Tony Soprano, the anti-hero mob boss played by James Gandolfini in HBO’s “The Sopranos.” “For a minute, I walked in and they were like, ‘That’s a little New Jersey. You’re doing a Tony Soprano thing,’” Pratt said. “[The voice] was a really exciting and daunting challenge. Talking to these guys, they say, ‘You wanna do the Mario movie?’ I think both [Charlie Day and I] said yes. Didn’t even ask, ‘What’s the deal? What’s the story?’ ‘Yes, I’m in.’ And then we had to really dig in and figure out…are they Italian? Are they American?”