Zack Sharf Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Aaron Sorkin confirmed during a live recording of “The Town” podcast that he is currently working on some kind of sequel to “The Social Network,” David Fincher’s acclaimed 2010 drama about the creation of Facebook that won Sorkin the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. “Look, yeah, I’ll be writing about this,” Sorkin said about the social media company’s recent years. “I blame Facebook for January 6.” Sorkin would not answer why he blamed Facebook for Trump supporters storming the U.S.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Robert Downey Jr. elated Marvel fans earlier this month when he told Esquire magazine that he would “happily” return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Tony Stark/Iron Man following his Oscar win for best supporting actor in March.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jessica Lange spoke critically of present-day Hollywood during a recent interview with Vulture, saying “there should be a law against it” when the topic came up about Warner Bros. Discovery axing already-shot movies like “Batgirl” and “Coyote vs. Acme” for tax write-off purposes.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Emily Blunt is staunchly opposed to algorithms making any decisions in Hollywood. Ahead of the release of her summer tentpole “The Fall Guy,” the Oscar nominee joined co-star Ryan Gosling for a Vanity Fair Italy cover story in which she expressed frustration over algorithm-driven decision making.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director It’s been well over a year since news first broke that Disney was moving forward with “The Princess Diaries 3.” Anne Hathaway can’t reveal any details, but she did assure fans in a recent V magazine interview that development continues on the long-anticipated sequel, and the intention remains to get it off the ground. “We’re in a good place,” Hathaway said. “That’s all I can say.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Angelina Jolie‘s scrapped “Cleopatra” movie was part romance epic and part “political thriller with assassinations and sex,” according to the movie’s original screenwriter Brian Helgeland. The Oscar-winning actor was set to play the Egyptian queen in a tentpole for Sony Pictures that once courted director David Fincher to helm. It never got off the ground.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Sylvester Stallone revealed on the TMZ special “Arnold & Sly: Rivals, Friends, Icons” (via The Daily Mail) that a near career-ending injury in the lead up to “Rocky II” threatened to end the boxing franchise before its first sequel got off the ground. Stallone was training with bodybuilder Franco Columbu about a month and a half before the “Rocky 2” shoot when he ripped his pec muscle right off the bone. “So, I go down, and it’s maybe only 200 [lbs].

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Brian Helgeland’s illustrious Hollywood career includes winning an Oscar for writing “L.A Confidential,” directing Heath Ledger’s beloved 2001 comedy “A Knight’s Tale” and scripting films such as “Man on Fire” and “Mystic River.” It also could’ve included a “Game of Thrones” spinoff series had HBO moved forward on his pitch, which was titled “Ten Thousand Ships” and centered on Queen Nymeria. “It came out great, but I think they felt the period of my show was too far removed from the pillars of the original,” Helgeland recently told Inverse about his spinoff.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “A Knight’s Tale” director Brian Helgeland revealed in a career retrospective interview with Inverse that his efforts to make a sequel to his 2001 medieval action-comedy classic were apparently thwarted by the Netflix algorithm. “When we finished ‘A Knight’s Tale,’ we were already thinking about making the sequel as a pirate film,” Helgeland said. “The plot revolved around Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell) kidnapping Jocelyn (Shannyn Sossamon) and taking her to Constantinople.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Patrick Warburton has voiced Joe Swanson on “Family Guy” since the show’s first season 25 years ago, but the role has never exactly gotten his family’s seal of approval. During a recent PaleyFest LA event celebrating “Family Guy’s” 25th anniversary (via People magazine), Warburton revealed that his parents hate the Seth MacFarlane-created animated comedy and their disdain for the show went so far that Warburton’s mom once tried to get “Family Guy” canceled. “They hate the show even more today than they did 25 years ago,” Warburton said.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Mad Max” fans know that topping “Fury Road” is most likely an impossible task, but it sounds like the upcoming prequel “Furiosa” has a few action-packed tricks up its sleeve to deliver the goods. Speaking to Total Film magazine, director George Miller’s longtime producing partner Doug Mitchell let it slip that “Furiosa” contains “one 15-minute sequence which took us 78 days to shoot” and required 200 stunt people on set daily.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Giancarlo Esposito appeared on a recent episode of SiriusXM’s “Jim & Sam” show while promoting his new AMC drama series “Parish” and revealed that he was so broke prior to landing his iconic role of Gus Fring on “Breaking Bad” that he once considered arranging his own murder so that his children could have some financial protection courtesy of his life insurance money. The actor considered this around 2008, a year before “Breaking Bad” inextricably changed his career by making him an iconic villain and opening the door for roles in “The Mandalorian,” “The Boys” and more. Asked how he got out of near bankruptcy around 2008, Esposito said, “My way out in my brain was…’Hey, do you get life insurance if someone commits suicide? Do they get the bread?’ My wife had no idea why I was asking this stuff.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jerrod Carmichael appeared on a recent episode of “The Breakfast Club” (via Rolling Stone) and said: “I deeply regret saying anything about Dave Chappelle to the press. I want to say that I’m sorry for that.” Carmichael previously gave interviews to Esquire and GQ in which he criticized Chappelle’s legacy of making jokes about transgender people. Carmichael now noted that his frustration with Chappelle had only to do with the comedian repeatedly making jokes about the same topic and not the morality of the jokes themselves.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “The Sopranos” fans got thrown a curveball in 2021 when Edie Falco revealed for the first time on an Atlantic podcast that she once reunited with James Gandolfini to reprise Tony and Carmela Soprano for a bizarre clip set two years after the events of the series finale, which infamously ended with a cut-to-black that left Tony’s fate in the balance. The purpose of the clip was to help the New York Knicks basketball organization lure LeBron James to the team. Gandolfini and Falco shot the “Sopranos” reunion in 2010 as James was becoming a free agent after his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers expired.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Micheal Douglas went viral last year when he told THR on the “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” red carpet that he would only be interested in returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Hank Pym in a fourth “Ant-Man” movie “as long as I can die.” It turns out that was actually Douglas’ wish for “Quantumania.” Appearing on “The View” (via Entertainment Weekly) to promote his new Apple TV+ historical drama series “Franklin,” Douglas revealed that he actually wanted to be killed off from the MCU in the third “Ant-Man” movie. He even asked for a huge special effects bonanza to help send Hank Pym into the great beyond.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Olivia Williams has given acclaimed performances in “Rushmore,” “The Sixth Sense” and “An Education.” She recently appeared as Camilla Parker Bowles in the final two seasons of Netflix’s popular drama series “The Crown.” But for many people, the British actor will always be Felicity from the Season 4 finale of “Friends.” Williams once called guest starring on the NBC sitcom “harrowing,” and she recently opened up to The Independent about the reasons why it wasn’t the best experience in a recent interview. “Gosh. Well, just as an example, I was taken to the studio in a shared car with a wonderful actress whose character, I think, was called ‘Old Woman’,” Williams said, noting this actor was “distinguished” and “very good” but “at one point, a producer – who shall remain nameless – just yelled at her: ‘You’re not funny!’ And she didn’t come back the next day.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Chris Hemsworth recently revealed to Entertainment Tonight that he tried hard to land a role in a Kevin Costner-directed project only to learn that Costner had cast himself as the character instead. The “Thor” star did not reveal what the movie was, although he described it as something “abstract and interesting …a small story about a man and a woman.” “There was a movie, a script that I’d read and loved and was like, ‘I want to get that,’ and then someone said, ‘Kevin Costner has that [role],’” Hemsworth said. “I’d love [to have] him as a director.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Megan Fox finally weighed in on the “Love Is Blind” controversy that erupted earlier this year when Season 6 cast member Chelsea Blackwell told her eventual fiancé Jimmy Presnell that Fox was her celebrity doppelgänger. Presnell ended up telling Blackwell that wasn’t true, while “Love Is Blind” viewers bombarded social media platforms to roast and mock Blackwell for a comparison many thought wasn’t accurate. “I’ve never had more people text me about something,” Fox told E! News’ “The Rundown.” “I don’t really watch TV very much.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Even Stevens” and “Kim Possible” actor Christy Carlson Romano revealed on “Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown” podcast (via Entertainment Weekly) that she is not going to watch the Investigation Discovery documentary series “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” because “it’s extremely triggering” and “I’ve made a choice for several reasons to opt out of watching that imagery.” She also said that she once turned down the network’s request for her to participate in a similar kind of doc. “Quiet on Set” explores misconduct and abuse allegations behind the scenes at Nickelodeon in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Rebecca Ferguson went viral during her “Dune: Part Two” press tour in late February after she revealed on the “Reign With Josh Smith” podcast that she once had an “idiot” co-star who made her cry on set. The story led to a guessing game across social media platforms where people tried to figure out who exactly Ferguson was talking about, although the actor recently said on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show” that she was “not expecting” that to be the takeaway from her comments. “Number one, yes, I kind of enjoyed the grab,” Ferguson admitted.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director The trailer launch for “Joker: Folie à Deux” was no laughing matter for Warner Bros. The marketing for the studio’s upcoming DC sequel, headlined by Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, got off to a stellar start with 167 million viewers in its first 24 hours. The teaser trailer went online right after it debuted at Warner Bros.’s CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Daniel Radcliffe was treated to an unexpected moment during an appearance on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast alongside his “Merrily We Roll Along” co-stars Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez. Podcast host Josh Horowitz played a clip from his Alan Rickman interview in 2016, which Radcliffe had never seen before. Rickman and Radcliffe were co-stars for a decade in the “Harry Potter” film series.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Dave Bautista and Eric Nam are set to headline the voice cast for the upcoming “Avatar: The Last Airbender” movie in development at Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Studios. The film’s working title is “Aang: The Last Airbender.” The news was announced during Paramount’s slate presentation at CinemaCon. Joining Bautista and Nam in the voice cast are Dionne Quan, Jessica Matten and Roman Zaragoza.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jonathan Nolan appeared on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast to tout his latest television series, Prime Video’s “Fallout,” but the conversation touched on Nolan’s time co-writing Batman movies with his brother, Christopher Nolan. The siblings share screenwriting credit on 2008’s “The Dark Knight” and 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises.” Jonathan admitted that he was pushing for the Riddler to be the primary villain of “Rises” and not Bane, which is what Christopher and David S. Goyer were planning.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Zendaya was already a big star when she was cast as MJ in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starting with 2017’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” By that point in her career she had already amassed a huge following as the star of two Disney Channel hits, “Shake It Up” and “K.C. Undercover,” plus popped up in Beyonce’s “Lemonade” film and was a runner-up on “Dancing With the Stars.” None of that apparently registered for “Spider-Man” producer Amy Pascal. “To be honest with you, neither [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige nor I knew who she was,” Pascal admitted in Vogue magazine as part of its Zendaya cover story.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel‘s longstanding “Fast & Furious” feud came to an official end last year when Johnson shocked fans by popping up as the beloved Luke Hobbs in a “Fast X” mid-credits scene. Diesel had extended an invitation to Johnson in November 2021 to join “Fast X,” but Johnson said the following month that “I would not be returning to the franchise.” That turned out to be a bluff. The duo’s “Fast & Furious” co-star John Cena recently appeared on the “Armchair Expert” podcast (via People) and was asked by host Dax Shepard about the rumors concerning Johnson and Diesel’s on-set tussle.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Zendaya‘s most prolific roles to date in HBO’s “Euphoria,” which won her two Emmys for outstanding lead actress in a drama series, and three of Marvel’s “Spider-Man” films have something in common: High school. But she’s leaving the classroom behind for her new film, Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” which casts Zendaya as a tennis phenom and finds her at one point during the movie playing a mother in her early 30s. “I’m always in a high school somewhere,” Zendaya recently told Vogue magazine about her career thus far.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jackie Chan marked his 70th birthday on April 7 by telling people not to worry about his health after some photos of the acting icon looking old with grey hair circulated online recently and sparked concern among his fans. Chan wrote in an Instagram post that any photo of him looking much older than 70 is just him in character for a new movie. “Not so long ago, a lot of friends saw some recent photos of me on the internet, and they were all concerned about my health,” Chan wrote in the caption.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jonathan Nolan said during a recent interview on the “Armchair Expert” podcast with Dax Shepard that it took some convincing to get his brother, Christopher Nolan, to agree to direct “The Dark Knight.” The filmmaker had already hit a superhero movie slam dunk with “Batman Begins” and was hesitant to make another comic book movie because he didn’t want his career getting pigeonholed. “I worked on ‘Batman Begins’ in this slightly arm’s length capacity, but it was the one comic book my brother ever given me as a kid, ‘Batman: Year One,’ for my 14th birthday, and 10 years later I was on the set working with him,” Jonathan said, remembering thinking “this is nuts.” “Chris was on the fence about making another one,” Jonathan continued, noting that Chris went straight from “Batman Begins” into helming the magician thriller “The Prestige.” “He didn’t want to become a superhero movie director.” Jonathan said that Chris was “very proud” of “Batman Begins,” but “to me, it was like we built this amazing sports car, and I’m like, ‘Let’s take it for a drive.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Steve Burns, who became an icon of children’s television as the host of Nickelodeon‘s “Blue’s Clues” from 1996 to 2002, recently spoke to “Today” and said he watched the viral documentary series “Quiet on Set” in “horror and heartbreak.” The ID Discovery series explores the alleged harassment and abuse that took place at Nickelodeon before and after the turn of the century, which is the same time Burns was the face of “Blue’s Clues.” “I don’t have any particular insight into any of that,” Burns said about the allegations made in the documentary series. “I’m coming to it much the same as anyone else, with horror and heartbreak. It’s just terrible to watch it unfold.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Robert Downey Jr. is not closing the door on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which he kicked off in 2008 with “Iron Man” and headlined for 11 years through 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.” Iron Man met his demise in that tentpole, but that has never stopped rumors from circulating that Marvel is trying to bring Downey back into the fold, especially now that the MCU has hit a box office rough patch with 2023 flops such as “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels.” Certainly, Downey’s return as Iron Man could restore Marvel to its blockbuster glory days. Speaking to Esquire magazine after his Oscar win for “Oppenheimer” last month, Downey was asked if he would ever return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe now that he is officially an Academy Award winner.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Michael J. Fox‘s retirement from acting might not be permanent. The actor recently told Entertainment Tonight that he’d be open to returning to the profession bearing the right role.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Carla Gugino recently told BuzzFeed that her beloved role in Robert Rodriguez’s 2001 family action film “Spy Kids” was “physically totally impossible.” The actor was 27 years old when she filmed the movie and played Ingrid Cortes, the mother of two spies. By Gugino’s math, the character didn’t add up. “It is so funny because I was 27,” Gugino recounted.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Anna Paquin stepped onto a red carpet for the first time in well over a year to promote her latest movie, “A Bit of Light,” directed by her husband and “True Bood” co-star Stephen Moyer. The Oscar winner used a cane at the event to help her walk and disclosed to People that she’s had a “difficult” two years dealing with an undisclosed health issue that left her with mobility issues. “It hasn’t been easy,” Paquin told the publication of needing a cane to walk.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Christian Bale is Frankenstein’s monster in a first look at Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride.” The director, who is teaming up with Warner Bros. for the period film, shared images on Instagram from a recent camera test for the movie. Bale’s monster makes his debut alongside Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter” Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley as the eponymous bride.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Danny McBride has a bone to pick with movie theaters. With the popularization of theaters that now serve dinner and drinks in the middle of a movie (see Alama Drafthouse locations, for example), the “Eastbound & Down” and “Pineapple Express” comedian recently told GQ magazine that he is staunchly against the trend. “I hate it, I can’t stand it,” McBride said while addressing the theaters-that-serves-dinner trend.