Michael Showalter Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on demand, vintage and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This biweekly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe intimacy of psychiatry was made for drama. The most renowned TV series of the modern era was, at first, centered on its antihero’s talk-therapy sessions — exploring both what was troubling Tony Soprano and the ways in which his monstrousness, seen at close range, compelled and seduced the professional trying to help him.“The Shrink Next Door,” directed by Michael Showalter and Jesse Peretz and written by Georgia Pritchett, reverses the manipulation.

EXCLUSIVE: Lionsgate bought a whopper of a spec package in Wayland. In competition, Lionsgate took the spec script by Simon Kinberg off the table with a progress to production commitment to make the movie. Jessica Chastain will produce, and her The Eyes of Tammy Faye helmer Michael Showalter will direct. Production is eyed for next year.

Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd hit the red carpet with Kathryn Hahn and Casey Wilson at the premiere of The Shrink Next Door held at The Morgan Library on Thursday night (October 28) in New York City.

EXCLUSIVE: Two-time Oscar- and three-time Emmy winner Sally Field has signed with Anonymous Content.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorProduction designer Laura Fox, who transformed the Four Seasons Maui into an uneasy pineapple-bedecked paradise for HBO’s “The White Lotus” faced some similar challenges when creating the world of Tammy Faye Bakker for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”Neither director Michael Showalter, nor producer-actress Jessica Chastain, who plays the title character, wanted to make fun of the flamboyant televangelist, yet parts of her life were undeniably over-the-top, such as her

Clayton Davis The Oscars love an unrecognizable actor — prosthetics, weight gain (or loss) and other total transformations to better embody a character or real-life figure.

has something going for it that Searchlight Pictures’ Summer of Soul did not — a minimum 45-day exclusive theatrical window now that Hollywood appear to be is in the midst of a pivot to encourage moviegoing. Eyes, directed by Michael Showalter, opens on 425 screens, expanding to another 400 next weekend.

We’re definitely going to be seeing Jessica Chastain on the awards trail next year for The Eyes of Tammy Faye and her campaign just began!

Clayton Davis Oscars voters have always loved seeing actors whose startling physical transformations come after countless hours in the makeup chair.After Renée Zellweger (“Judy”), Marion Cotillard (“La Vie en Rose”) and Charlize Theron (“Monster”) won Oscars for their impressively-altered looks, Jessica Chastain could be on a similar path for her role as the media-loving televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker in Michael Showalter’s “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” Following a world bow at the Toronto

According to the basic tenets of Christian scripture, all god’s creatures are worthy of judgment-free love. And while the hypocrisy of those words is rarely interrogated in “The Eyes Of Tammy Faye” — the bible belt preachers and communities presented in the film often fail to practice what they preach and are never forced to examine their own accumulation of wealth — these parts of the bible are really not the film’s concern.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIn “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain play Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, the self-styled Christian TV personalities who did more than anyone else to mold televangelism into a game-changing, culture-shaking, credit-card-maxing industry/cult/diversion.

EXCLUSIVE: Two-time Oscar winner Sally Field has been added to the cast of Spoiler Alert, Focus Features’ feature film adaptation of journalist Michael Ausiello’s bestselling memoir, a tragicomic love story. She joins Jim Parsons and Ben Aldridge in the pic, which is being directed by Michael Showalter.

Jessica Chastain wants to do right by evangelist Tammy Faye Messner.

Search Party continues to build its stacked Season 5 cast as Kathy Griffin joins the HBO Max dark comedy in a recurring role, Deadline has confirmed.

Jeff Goldblum joins the absurd world of Search Party in a recurring role for the HBO Max series’ fifth season.

Jessica Chastain, an actress long-reputed for her versatility, may have made her most stunning transformation yet. In “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” Chastain goes deeply incognito as the titular singing pioneer of post-’60s televangelism.

The Season 3 finale of HBO Max’s Alia Shawkat-fronted dramedy Search Party came with a major sigh of relief and the unexpected kidnapping that brings it all full circle for Dory Sief.

Joe Otterson TV ReporterMichael Showalter and Jordana Mollick of Semi-Formal Productions have signed a two-year first-look deal at HBO Max.Showalter is a co-creator and executive producer on the critically-acclaimed series “Search Party,” which moved over to HBO Max from TBS for its third season. The fourth season of the series debuted on Jan.

Michael Showalter (The Big Sick) is expanding his relationship with HBO Max. Showalter and Jordana Mollick’s Semi-Formal Productions has signed a two-year first look deal with the WarnerMedia streaming platform. Showalter was previously based at Annapurna TV.

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Showalter (The Big Sick) is set to direct multiple episodes of Hulu’s limited drama series The Dropout based on ABC News/ABC Radio’s podcast about the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes. Showalter also will executive produce the series, from Disney Television Studios’ 20th Television and Searchlight, along with his Semi-Formal Productions producing partner Jordana Mollick.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage will now hit theaters a week later than previously announced, on September 24.

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Max has opted not to proceed with Vegas High, its coming-of-age period drama pilot from writer Sarah-Raquel Jimenez, director Gillian Robespierre and Michael Showalter’s Semi-Formal Prods.

EXCLUSIVE: Sarayu Blue (I Feel Bad) has booked a recurring role opposite Paul Rudd in Apple limited series The Shrink Next Door, based on the hit podcast by Wondery and Bloomberg Media. The series hails from director Michael Showalter (The Big Sick, The Lovebirds), writer Georgia Pritchett (Succession, Veep), Civic Center Media and MRC Television.

Created by “Fort Tilden” writer/directors Charles Rogers, Sarah-Violet Bliss, and filmmaker Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick“), the series “Search Party” has become one of the sharpest, unpredictable, and insightful shows on television about identity, denial, and self-actualization—not something you’d likely expect from a would-be millennial comedy on TBS.

How soon is now, is now, and the neon painted landscape strokes to the club beat. That night was more than a sweaty crowded dance floor your friends dragged you to—criminally packed bodies bumping, tossed together—searching for one another.

Kumail Nanjiani teams with Issa Rae and re-teams with his The Big Sick director for a madcap black comedy, now streaming on a Netflix near you.

Foreigner premiered a new performance of their classic hit "I Want To Know What Love Is" on Friday (May 22) to celebrate the release of Netflix's new rom-com The Lovebirds.

Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae are a quarreling couple out to solve a murder, but the first movie directed by Michael Showalter since "The Big Sick" is a crime comedy that aims lower than it thinks.

One plus one can occasionally equal too much.

By Dave McNary

Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani, the stars of Paramount’s upcoming comedy “The Lovebirds,” will not attend the film’s world premiere at the SXSW film festival next week, insiders told Variety.

By Anthony D'Alessandro

Anchorman co-stars Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd are set to reunite for limited TV series The Shrink Next Door.

By Denise Petski

By Denise Petski