Ice Cube Says He’s Not ‘Part Of The Club,’ Promises Podcast Tour Will Shake Things Up

Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers for”Joy Ride”The new comedy “Joy Ride” may be filled with many raunchy, R-rated scenes, but one emotional arc towards the end of the film includes a cameo that will make viewers grab their tissues.In the film, Audrey (Ashley Park) travels to China to close a business deal. Her best friend Lolo (Sherry Colaa) encourages Audrey to contact her birth mother while there.

South Korea is known globally for its web series, movies and K-pop, with content including Squid Game and Parasite and groups like BTS and Blackpink becoming household names internationally. But there is another Korean cultural export – webtoons and their associated IP – that is starting to have an impact, not just in Korea, but around the world. 

“Joy Ride” star Ashley Park recently spoke about her beginnings and her big break with People.

LE SSERAFIM have surprised fans with an English version of their hit song ‘Eve, Psyche & the Bluebeard’s Wife’.The new version of the track swaps out the original’s Korean verses for brand-new English lyrics. “Tell me what you waiting for / Cause I know what you wanna do / Picture perfect criminal,” they sing on the new first verse.The new version of ‘Eve, Psyche & the Bluebeard’s Wife’ was hinted at by LE SSERAFIM member Huh Yunjin on Instagram yesterday (July 6).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Bucheon film festival’s Network of Asian Fantastic Films project market wrapped up three days of meetings and pitching sessions on Monday with a prize ceremony that disbursed cash, post-production support and invitations to related genre film events. “The Passport,” a Tamil- and English-language Malaysian project about an Indian rockstar who is forced to confront cultural expectations and her interactions with an imaginary friend, won the headline Bucheon Award for director Ananth Subramanian and producer Bel Choo Mun. It was both a popular choice among other NAFF participants and the unanimous decision of the jury. The numerical winner was “Please Bear With Me,” which saw director Gabriela Serrano and producer Gale Osorio from the Philippines collect three prizes. The project is a sci-fi and social issues mash-up about a call center operative who gets paid in dream-time and uses it to relive her glory days as a pop star. A clearly-surprised Serrano used her second visit to the stage to explain the film’s origins as a deep frustration with seeing Filipina women stuck at the bottom of society and yet apologizing for their ambitions.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Pixar animation film “Elemental” expanded at the South Korean box office in its third weekend of release and easily bested new release title “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” “Elemental” earned $5.27 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the box office tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). That represented a 38% increase on its previous weekend performance and was the best of its three weekends so far. It also increased its market share to 39%, also its strongest market position, despite only adding a handful of additional screens. After 19 days on release, “Elemental” has amassed $16.9 million from 2.25 million spectators.

Fall Out Boy‘s Pete Wentz has discussed the band’s updated version of Billy Joel‘s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ and why it doesn’t reference COVID.This week, the band shared a new and updated version of the iconic hit, featuring lyrics from between its original release in 1989 and the present day.In the original track, the lyrics included: “Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray / South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio / Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television / North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.”These have been swapped out in the Fall Out Boy version for: “Captain Planet, Arab Spring, LA riots, Rodney King, deep fakes, earthquakes, Iceland volcano, Oklahoma City bomb, Kurt Cobain, Pokémon, Tiger Woods, MySpace, Monsanto GMOs.”Now, Wentz has shared his explanations on the lyrics, and reasoning behind one big omission. “Dude, honestly, this idea has been brewing for so long,” Wentz told Zane Lowe on Apple Music. “I’ve been trying to get somebody to do this for so long because it just seems so perfect.

The National Association of Theatre Owners VP & Chief Communications Officer Patrick Corcoran is departing after 24-plus years.

is opening its doors for season 2!As filming gets underway for the new season of the popular Korean survival drama later this year, Netflix is gearing up for the anticipated nine-episode follow-up to the breakout 2021 season.After being crowned its most-watched series ever with 1.6 billion total hours watched during its opening month, Netflix co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos revealed in January 2022 that «the universe has begun.» A season 2 greenlight was made official by Netflix in June 2022, nine months after the series premiered, with creator/writer/director Hwang Dong-hyuk back to oversee the entire thing. follows ordinary people forced to enter a secret competition, where they could either win a massive cash prize or lose their life.

Fall Out Boy have released an updated version of Billy Joel’s song ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ in order to, I don’t know, highlight how lists are still a thing, or something.Joel’s original song was released as a single in 1989 and listed 118 people and events from politics, culture, science and sport that had proven notable between 1949, the year when Joel was born, and the year of the track’s release.So, your first verse goes like this: “Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray, South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio, Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television, North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe, Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom, Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye, Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new queen, Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye”.Anyway, it’s now 34 years since Joel released the song. So, to mark this, erm, milestone, Fall Out Boy have recorded a new version, listing significant things that have happened since 1989.

Fall Out Boy have released an updated version of Billy Joel‘s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ with headlines from the past 30 years.Joel’s 1989 Number one hit, ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, includes brief references to 118 significant political, cultural and scientific events between the years of Joel’s birth in 1949 and the song’s release in 1989.Today (June 28), Fall Out Boy shared a modernised version of the track, replacing the original lyrics with standout events from where the song left off in 1989 to 2023.“I thought about this song a lot when I was younger. All these important people and events – some that disappeared into the sands of time –others that changed the world forever,” shared the band on Twitter.“So much has happened in the span of the last 34 years – we felt like a little system update might be fun.

Ampere Analysis  presented Tuesday at Spain’s Conecta Fiction.  Ampere’s popularity score is a propriety metric based not on viewership but on the tracking of internet search volume received by a title each month as well as other metrics, Ampere’s Alice Thorpe clarified at the presentation.  The fandom base of Korean series and Japanese anime are concentrated in teen and YA demographics, which are also most avid Internet users. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Pixar animation “Elemental” rose to the top of the South Korean box office over the latest weekend. It overtook “The Roundup: No Way Out” and kept new release “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” at bay, in third place. Released a week earlier, “Elemental” rose from second place to first and grew its revenue by 19% in its second frame. According to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council, “Elemental” earned $3.86 million between Friday and Sunday for a 12-day cumulative of $9.47 million. “The Roundup: No Way Out,” which had dominated the sector for the previous three weekends, slipped to second position. It earned $3.34 million over the weekend, a 34% week-on-week decline. Since releasing on May 31, it has amassed $73.2 million, from 9.67 million ticket sales, by far the biggest haul of any film released this calendar year.

The viability of South Korea’s KBS is under threat due to government plans to alter its funding mechanism, according a public service media advocacy group.

EXCLUSIVE: Korean multi-hyphenate powerhouse Don Lee (aka Ma Dong-seok) is set to star in and produce an English-language feature adaptation of New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Sansbury Smith’s dystopian sci-fi novel series Hell Divers. The film will draw from the first three books in the series whose first installment was published by Blackstone in 2016; there are 10 books in total. 

During a three-day visit to Seoul, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the streamer is fairly compensating producers and nurturing new talent, after calls from some local lawmakers and industry figures for more profit-sharing with creators. 

committed to invest US$2.5billion on new South Korean TV shows and films.“[Korean content] is very often unpredictable and catches the American audience by surprise,” Sarandos said at the event, per Variety. “I think what’s brilliant is to see film, unscripted and series all grow according to the interests of our Korean audience.”He added that “great stories can come from anywhere and be loved anywhere [and] nowhere has this proven more true than here in Korea”, per Yonhap News Agency.Over the past two years, Netflix has released a number of hit Korean series and films, from the global phenomenon Squid Game, to the thrilling revenge series The Glory, to the reality TV series Single’s Inferno.Sarandos added that 60 per cent of all Netflix subscribers have watched at least one Korean title, while viewership of Korean content is up sixfold over the past half decade.During the event, the Netflix co-CEO also spoke about how the company is looking to use its US$2.5billion investment plan to “grow the industry” in Korea.

Naman Ramachandran Paramount+ and Tving‘s Korean series “Bargain” has won the critics’ choice award at the Serien Camp Festival in Cologne. In April, “Bargain” became the first-ever Korean series to win best screenplay at the Canneseries Festival in France. The series stars actors Jun Jong-seo (“Money Heist: Korea”) and Jin Seon-kyu (“Extreme Job”) and is an adaptation of director Lee Chung-hyun’s 2015 short film of the same name. Director Jun Woo-sung, who was part of the production team of the short, picked up the story and developed it into a six-part series. “Bargain” revolves around a group of strangers who gather at a remote motel with ulterior motives – seeking to bargain. Unlike the original film, the series follows the characters after an unexpected earthquake traps them inside the building. With no one to trust, they must find a way to survive.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean blockbuster “The Roundup: No Way Out” suffered a 50% week-on-week decline, but it was still strong enough to see a pair of Hollywood newcomers. The third part of the Don Lee-starring Roundup franchise, “No Way Out” earned $5.16 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council. It accounted for a 42% share of the market and attracted 650,000 additional spectators.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Netflix’s controversial reality competition show based on its smash South Korean drama “Squid Game” will finally debut in November, and the streamer offered up a very brief glimpse of reality show “Squid Game: The Challenge” on Saturday during its global, virtual Tudum fan event from Brazil. “The world’s most notorious game becomes reality,” the teaser clip says, before showing contestants exiting their rooms and heading to the game of “Red Light Green Light” — featuring the giant, killer doll that in the scripted “Squid Game” swivels its head around and fires gunshots to eliminate players who were moving. The unscripted game show, which was first announced in June 2022, was shot across two studios in the U.K. and produced by Studio Lambert and The Garden. Like the series, 456 contestants were cast (in this case, from around the world) to compete in various challenges based on the Korean children’s games featured on the show, as well as new games. The winner receives a $4.56 million cash prize.