‘Black Panther 2’ Breaks Streaming Record for Marvel Premiere on Disney+

NAACP Image Awards took place on Saturday night, with Queen Latifah hosting the telecast from Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Nominees throughout the categories include Angela Bassett, Will Smith, Jonathan Majors, Mary J. Blige, Quinta Brunson, Viola Davis, Zendaya, Danielle Deadwyler, Letitia Wright and Sterling K. Brown and many more. Latifah opened the show with a robust tribute to Black women, shouting out several luminaries in the audience, including Serena Williams (who received the Jackie Robinson Sports Award), Bassett, and Davis — who Latifah celebrated for being a newly minted EGOT.

Rihanna will officially be heading to the Oscars next month.The singer, having recently performed this year’s NFL Super Bowl halftime show, will be performing her Original Song nominee ‘Lift Me Up’ on the Academy Awards stage.‘Lift Me Up’ was performed and written by Rihanna alongside Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler, Tems, and Ludgwig Goransson, the film’s composer.Last October, Coogler explained how he convinced Rihanna to join the Marvel project, after not releasing new music sincce her 2016 album ‘Anti’.“I can’t take sole credit for that,” Coogler said, per Metro. “We got an incredible composer, Ludwig Goransson, who is also a music producer, he’s got a great reputation.

NAACP Image Awards has officially kicked off its week-long, non-televised celebrations ahead of its annual ceremony this weekend! Jennifer Hudson, Quinta Brunson, Keke Palmer and more have scored wins during the pre-awards festivities, which precede the main ceremony airing Feb. 25 on BET.Hosted by GRAMMY, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress and producer Queen Latifah, Saturday's ceremony will include Janelle Monae, Taye Diggs, Kerry Washington, Jonathan Majors, Zendaya and more presenting awards to their peers, while also highlighting the accomplishments of political leaders and activists.This year's Activist of the Year Award will be presented to Dr. Derrick Lee Foward, president of the Dayton Unit of the NAACP and a vice president of the Ohio NAACP, and the Youth Activist of the Year Award will be presented to Bradley Ross Jackson, the president of the youth council of the Bloomington-Normal NAACP in Bloomington, Indiana.

electric Super Bowl halftime performance earlier this month, Oscar nominee Rihanna will perform at the awards ceremony on March 12.The “Shut Up and Drive” crooner, 35, will sing “Lift Me Up” — the theme from the Marvel film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Thursday.Rihanna — who is pregnant with her second child — wrote the song with Tems, “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler and Ludwig Göransson.The track is nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar. It’s Rihanna’s first Academy Award nomination.The other nominees for Best Original Song are “Applause” from “Tell It Like a Woman” by Diane Warren, “Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick” by Lady Gaga and BloodPop, “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR” by M.M.

The Oscars are getting a big dose of RiRi.

Rihanna is tackling another first! On Thursday, it was announced that the singer will perform her Oscar-nominated single, «Lift Me Up,» from  at the 95th Academy Awards.The nine-time GRAMMY winner earned her first Oscar nomination for the film soundtrack's lead single, which plays during the end credits of the  sequel. The song was penned by singer Tems, Oscar winner Ludwig Göransson, Rihanna and director Ryan Coogler, and serves as a eulogy to Chadwick Boseman, who played King T'Challa, aka Black Panther, and died at the age of 43 after a four-year battle with colon cancer. In the Best Original Song category, the song is up against Diane Warren's «Applause» (Lady Gaga's «Hold My Hand» (NTR and Ram Charan's«Naatu Naatu» (and Son Lux, Mitski and David Byrne's «This Is a Life» (The release of «Lift Me Up» marked the soon-to-be mom of two's first single in six years and the first foray in the next era of Rihanna's iconic career. The single picked up a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song (Motion Picture), but ultimately lost to «Naatu Naatu» from . In October 2022, Coogler opened up to ET about being «forever grateful» for Rihanna's contribution to the emotional track — and for coming out of musical hibernation. «I'll say this, I didn't get [Rihanna] to do anything.

BAFTA Film Awards.The actor, best known for starring in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, performed an original song at the ceremony that name-checked various Best Actress nominees including Angela Bassett, Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh. After the performance was widely mocked online, DeBose deactivated her Twitter account.On her Instagram account, which has remained active, DeBose has responded to various memes about the performance.

Oscar luncheon magnet Tom Cruise, all Emmy and Oscar un-nominated for their work over the past year but represented in the Critics Choice Super Award nominations, honoring horror, superhero, science fiction and action movies and television series.Oscar nominees such as Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Stephanie Hsu (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) and Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) are also repped here, as well as Colin Farrell, nominated twice for two of his other 2022 films, “After Yang” and “The Batman”. (Co-nominee Brendan Fraser managed a nod for the HBO Max series “Doom Patrol as well).

While Hollywood chased pulp-era nostalgia, smaller superhero films centered on Black heroes to relative success. The industry spent the 1990s mistaking the success of Tim Burton’s “Batman,” which often played like a hardboiled post-World War II film noir, for an interest in 1930s and 1940s pulp heroes. Whether this was a willful pursuit of nostalgic super heroics to avoid reckoning with present-tense issues or just a matter of effects technology not yet catching up to the needs of most modern-day superheroes, the post-“Batman” comic book superhero movie was dominated by sequels to Burton’s feature and period piece wannabes.

Queen Latifah has been tapped to host the 54th NAACP Image Awards set to air live Saturday, February 25 at 8 PM on BET.  The show will also simulcast across Paramount Global networks including BET Her, CBS, CMT, Comedy Central, Logo, MTV, MTV2, Paramount Network, Pop TV, Smithsonian, TV Land, and VH1.

The NAACP kicked off the first night of the 54th NAACP Image Awards honoring the likes of Beyoncé, Rihanna and the music of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

76th annual EE British Academy Film Awards were announced live during a ceremony hosted by Richard E. Grant and Alison Hammond at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

A posh evening! The 76th British Academy Film Awards are almost upon Us — and fans can expect Hollywood’s biggest names to turn heads. 

The 29th annual SAG Awards, at which actors honor their peers, is set for 5 p.m. PT/ 8 p.m. ET  Feb. 26. While the ceremony will take place at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, the show will be livestreamed on Netflix’s YouTube channel for all to watch. Variety offers a primer on the kudos and what they portend for other awards.  Film Categories How do the SAG Awards line up with Oscars? Unlike most other kudos bodies, the SAG Awards actually overlap with Academy voters. This is one reason the SAG Awards are often seen as a major precursor to which actors will take home Oscar gold. Last year, the acting categories matched up perfectly between the two shows with all four SAG Award winners taking home Academy Awards. Many point to Jessica Chastain’s lead female actor SAG Award win for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” as a turning point in the race. In 29 years, all four winners have matched perfectly eight times. A three out-of-four matchup is more common, having happened 11 times before.

marked the end of Phase Four in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was not the end of the MCU, or even the Multiverse Saga. In fact, the ever-expanding continues on as it explores the lives familiar characters and introduces new heroes (and major villains) both on film and television, with projects slated through 2025.In 2022, audiences were treated to  as well as  and the sequel in theaters, while , and  all debuted on Disney+.

.During an appearance on on February 13, tried to play coy when host Kelly Evans asked about the sex of his newborn. "I ain't telling, this ain't a birth announcement," he said, adding that he and his wife never planned to officially share the news when posted her “Puppy Bowl 2023” Instagram on February 12. However, one photo from the carousel immediately sparked rumors that the pair had .Still, when Evans asked about how “the little one” is doing, Reynolds seemed to confirm the reports.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever star Angela Bassett has said she is “sorry for” Anthony Hopkins after he spoke negatively about his time acting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Speaking to The New Yorker in 2021, Hopkins criticised the experience of working in front of a green screen, and once wrote “No acting required” on the front of his script for Thor.The Silence Of The Lambs star played Odin in three MCU films: 2011’s Thor, 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, and 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok.“On Thor, you have Chris Hemsworth – who looks like Thor – and a director like Kenneth Branagh, who is so certain of what he wants,” the actor explained.“They put me in armour; they shoved a beard on me. Sit on the throne; shout a bit.

Zack Sharf Anthony Hopkins and Angela Bassett share a somewhat similar space in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Bassett stars in the “Black Panther” films as Queen Ramonda, mother of T’Challa and Shuri and ruler of Wakanda. Hopkins was a fixture of the “Thor” franchise as Odin, Thor’s father and the ruler of Asgard. Both actors play Marvel royalty, but their set experiences couldn’t have been more different. After all, Hopkins infamously wrote “No Acting Required” on his script for the original “Thor.” “I try to apply it to everything I do: no acting required,” Hopkins told The New Yorker in 2021 about acting in Marvel movies. “On ‘Thor,’ you have Chris Hemsworth—who looks like Thor—and a director like Kenneth Branagh, who is so certain of what he wants. They put me in armor; they shoved a beard on me. Sit on the throne; shout a bit. If you’re sitting in front of a green screen, it’s pointless acting it.”

EXCLUSIVE: Blockbuster hits Black Panther and The Woman King have cleared the path for Netflix to succeed with Jada Pinkett Smith-narrated docu-drama African Queens, according to the show’s exec.

Filmmaker and producer Ryan Coogler introduced Angela Bassett at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where she won the Montecito Award for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”For almost 15 minutes, Coogler explained how Bassett was influential to him when he was just a five-year-old boy watching “Boyz n the Hood” with his father in 1991. From that movie to Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” to “What’s Love Got To Do With It” to “Waiting to Exhale” – Coogler said watching Bassett in those movies helped him grow an appreciation for the arts.“I didn’t understand it then, I didn’t know I wanted to be a filmmaker,” Coogler said.