Adam B.Vary-Senior Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments, including the ending, of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” currently playing in theaters. When director James Mangold started writing “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” with screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, he didn’t know how the movie was going to end. Mangold inherited the film from director Steven Spielberg, who had been developing the project for three years with screenwriter David Koepp. When Mangold took over, he and the Butterworth started effectively from scratch, crafting a story in which Harrison Ford’s titular archeologist and Nazi puncher contends with his own age and irrelevance while chasing after the Antikythera, a mysterious device with the power to find fissures in time, created by the ancient Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments, including the final scene, in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” currently playing in theaters. When Lucasfilm announced in 2016 that Steven Spielberg was making a fifth “Indiana Jones” movie with Harrison Ford, fans naturally wondered how much of a role Karen Allen’s Marian Ravenwood — Indy’s spitfire equal from 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and the love of his life — would play in the new film. The last time audiences saw Marian, she was getting married to Indy at the end of 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” after she revealed to Indy that they’d had a child together, who Indy meets as teenage greaser Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf). So any follow-up movie would at the very least need to address the fact that Indy is married with a (grown) kid.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses plot developments in Episode 2 of Marvel Studios’ “Secret Invasion,” currently streaming on Disney+. Samuel L. Jackson has played the super spy Nick Fury in 11 movies for Marvel Studios. Sometimes, he’s appeared in only a brief cameo; other times, he’s been the second or third lead in a movie with “Captain” in the title. In every appearance, Jackson exudes preternatural calm and cunning as one of the most formidable, non-superpowered humans in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But it wasn’t until the actor’s first foray as the lead in an MCU project — the Disney+ series “Secret Invasion” — that Marvel has really addressed the fact that Nick Fury is also a Black man who grew up in America.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Evan Peters, star of “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and “Mare of Easttown,” is joining Jared Leto in “Tron: Ares,” the third film in Disney’s extremely long lived cyberspace franchise.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in the series premiere of Marvel Studios’ “Secret Invasion,” currently streaming on Disney+. Since her first appearance as Maria Hill in 2012’s “The Avengers,” Cobie Smulders has popped into the Marvel Cinematic Universe roughly half-dozen times, racing into danger and cheating death as the hyper-competent lieutenant to Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), most recently in 2019’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” So when Marvel started planning the Disney+ series “Secret Invasion” — about how the shape-shifting Skrulls from the 2019’s prequel film “Captain Marvel” have turned against Fury and started infiltrating all levels of human society — it made perfect sense for Maria to show up, too.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Can San Diego Comic-Con catch a break? For two years, the biggest annual fan convention in North America was forced to cancel the five-day gathering due to the COVID-19 pandemic — placing Comic-Con International, the non-profit organization that runs SDCC, under unprecedented financial strain. Last year, SDCC came roaring back with a masked-and-vaccinated convention that was a robust success, with blockbuster Hall H panels for the “Star Trek” TV universe, “House of the Dragon,” “The Walking Dead” and, especially, Marvel Studios. This year’s Comic-Con — which is scheduled to start July 19, less than a month away — is increasingly likely to have none of those panels.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story mentions a few significant plot developments in “The Flash,” currently playing in theaters. In the climax of “The Flash,” Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) watches helplessly as his timeline-hopping escapades cause several other superhero universes to careen into each other and become obliterated in the process. Ironically, Warner Bros. is facing almost an identical dilemma — and the stakes could be nearly as existential. “The Flash” is the second of four mega-budgeted DC adaptations the studio is set to release this year, starting with “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” in March, and followed by “Blue Beetle” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” in August and December. Yet these movies were conceived and greenlit by an executive team that all have departed the studio; in their place, new DC Studios chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran have announced they will reboot the DC franchise in 2025, starting with Gunn’s “Superman: Legacy.”

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Netflix unveiled its first look at the highly anticipated second season of “Heartstopper,” the swoon-worthy high school coming-of-age romance that tracks the budding relationship between Charlie Spring (Joe Locke) and Nick Nelson (Kit Connor). During the streamer’s Tudum fan event on June 17, “Heartstopper” co-stars Corinna Brown and Kizzy Edgell — who play the couple Tara and Darcy on the series — introduced the first scene of Season 2, which picks up the morning after the Season 1 finale. In that episode, Charlie and Nick officially became boyfriends, and Nick came out as bisexual to his mother, Sarah (Olivia Colman).

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer When Carol Kane was approached about joining “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” for its second season, the celebrated 70-year-old actor had to make a confession: She’d never watched a single minute of the venerated franchise. “The science fiction world has not really been attractive to me for some reason,” Kane says. “Now that I’m in it,” she adds with a laugh, “I’m very excited about it. It just wasn’t on my path until now.” Clearly the producers were on to something. Kane’s role on the Paramount+ series fits neatly within her wheelhouse of sublime eccentrics, from her Emmy-winning role on “Taxi” to for-the-ages supporting turns in “The Muppet Movie,” “The Princess Bride,” “Scrooged” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” Here, she plays Pelia, the new chief engineer of the Enterprise and a member of an alien species never before seen on “Star Trek”: Lanthanites, who are extremely long-lived and utterly resemble humans, save for a delightfully inexplicable accent invented out of whole cloth by Kane.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer The first time Jesse Garcia (“Quinceañera,” “Narcos: Mexico”) learned about Richard Montañez — the former Frito-Lay executive who’s said that he invented the wildly successful Flamin’ Hot Cheetos brand when he was working as a janitor for the company — the actor immediately thought, “That would be an awesome movie.” Years later, Eva Longoria cast Garcia to play Montañez for her feature directing debut, “Flamin’ Hot,” which premieres June 9 on Hulu and Disney+. The film, produced by DeVon Franklin (“Breakthrough,” “Miracles From Heaven”), covers Richard’s life from his difficult childhood to his marriage to his high school sweetheart Judy (Annie Gonzalez) to his rise at Frito-Lay. For Garcia, it was an all-too-rare opportunity to depict the real-life story of a Latino family in a mainstream feature film.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments and surprises throughout “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” now playing in theaters. For months, the directors of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” had been working exhaustively on a critical sequence that launches the movie’s second act. For the first time in his life, the animated film’s hero — Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a.k.a. the Spider-Man of Earth-1610 — enters a different dimension: Earth-50101, a.k.a. Mumbattan, a dazzling amalgamation of New York City and Mumbai. Within minutes, Miles and his BFF from 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), encounter that world’s Spider-Man, Pavitr Prabhakar (Karan Soni), an Indian teenager who received his powers not via spider bite, but through magic. The sequence launches them all through the vertiginously vertical metropolis, as they frantically try to stop the film’s villain, the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), from using Mumbattan’s supercollider to increase his dimension-hopping abilities.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments and the post-credits scenes in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” currently playing in theaters. By this point, it’s no secret that Marvel Studios has lost some of its luster in its post-“Avengers: Endgame” era. Between the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s rapid expansion on Disney+ and the exits of stars like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson and the late Chadwick Boseman, the Marvel saga has often felt at once too much and not enough: Sprawl without a center. It’s a problem that “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” is particularly ill-equipped to address. For one, the film is wholly disconnected from everything else that’s happened in the Marvel Cinematic Universe post-“Endgame” — there’s not a whisper of Kang or the multiverse or incursions or Talokan or, hilariously, Thor, even though the Guardians made a special appearance in “Thor: Love and Thunder” last summer. For another, the Guardians themselves — at least, as audiences have grown to know and love them — are also leaving the Marvel Cinematic Universe, between stars Zoe Saldaña and Dave Bautista making clear they’re finished with their respective roles, and writer-director James Gunn departing Marvel to co-run DC Studios with Peter Safran. 

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Marvel Studios’ “Blade” is going back into hibernation. Due to the ongoing writers strike, Marvel has shut down pre-production on the vampire reboot, which is set to star Mahershala Ali as the titular vampire hunter alongside Aaron Pierre, Delroy Lindo and Mia Goth. Production was expected to start in Atlanta within the month for an anticipated Sept. 6, 2024 release. This isn’t the first time Disney has had to delay production on the film. Last October, Disney pushed “Blade” from a 2023 release to 2024 after the original director, Bassam Tariq (“Mogul Mowgli”), left the project two months before filming was set to begin. In November, Yann Demange (“Lovecraft Country”) took over directing duties from a script by Michael Starrbury (“When They See Us”). In April, just weeks before the WGA contract deadline, Nic Pizzolatto (“True Detective”) joined the production, re-writing from Starrbury’s screenplay. He ran out of time to complete his work before the strike began.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer When A.C. Bradley was hired to write on the 2022 Disney+ series “Ms. Marvel,” part of her job entailed going to set every day to help with re-writing scenes on the fly while the show was being filmed. “It was a mixture of everything from wanting to add new characters into the show to needing to change things because of location,” Bradley tells Variety. Just one example: The day the production was set to shoot a chase sequence at Marriott hotel, she helped to add a beat where the chase entered the kitchen because it was nearby. “Why not use what you have?” This kind of scenario is, of course, no longer possible during the ongoing writers strike. “Pens down” means no WGA member can write or change scripts whatsoever, before, during or after production. In many cases, that has meant that showrunners have left their shows entirely, like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” executive producers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay or “Cobra Kai” executive producer Jon Hurwitz. Other writers rooms have shut down in advance of production on their next seasons, like “Abbott Elementary” and “Yellowjackets.”

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” is the latest marquee TV series to move forward with production amid the ongoing WGA strike, but the Amazon Prime Video show will be doing so without the services of executive producers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay. The sweeping fantasy series has 19 days of filming remaining, sources confirm to Variety, but per WGA strike rules, Payne, McKay and any other writer-producers are barred from participating in any writing-based duties during production while the strike continues — including making creative decisions on set. Instead, the show’s non-writing executive producers (like Lindsey Weber), directors (Charlotte Brändström, Sanaa Hamri and Louise Hooper) and crew are overseeing production on the U.K.-based shoot.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in “The Last Generation,” the series finale of “Star Trek: Picard,” currently streaming on Paramount+. The last time the cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” cast performed together on screen — in 2002’s “Star Trek: Nemesis” — ended with a sour one-two punch: the sudden death of Data (Brent Spiner) and the financial failure of the film, which caused Paramount to stop making movies with the cast. Effectively, after a brilliantly successful seven-season run on TV, “The Next Generation” had been canceled from movie theaters. Two decades later, when Terry Matalas was tapped to executive produce the final season of “Star Trek: Picard,” the lifelong “Trek” fan knew that he not only wanted to bring back the full “TNG” cast, but provide them with the send-off they had never received. 

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in “The Last Generation,” the series finale of “Star Trek: Picard,” currently streaming on Paramount+. When Patrick Stewart first met with producers Alex Kurtzman and Akiva Goldsman in 2017 to discuss the possibility of returning to play Jean-Luc Picard again on a new “Star Trek” series, Stewart famously did so as a courtesy to explain that he had absolutely no interest in revisiting the world of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” “I explained to them all those elements of ‘Next Generation’ which belong in ‘Next Generation,’ and why I didn’t want to go near them again,” Stewart told Variety in a January 2020 cover story. When the producers noted that the show could show a much different Picard, one who’d changed over the two decades since the events of the final “TNG” movie, 2002’s “Star Trek: Nemesis,” Stewart became intrigued, and signed on to do three seasons of “Star Trek: Picard” — but without the rest of the “TNG” cast.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot points in the Season 3 finale of “The Mandalorian,” currently streaming on Disney+. It took all eight episodes of Season 3 for “The Mandalorian” to find its way back to itself, which is to say, back to Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his (now officially!) adopted child, Grogu. For most of Season 3, the core relationship of the series — the reason why “The Mandalorian” became an instant global phenomenon — was shunted aside in favor of tracking how Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan Kryze rallied the estranged factions of Mandalorians to take back their devastated homeworld.  Audiences have not responded kindly. Legions of reviews, tweets and YouTube videos vivisected this season of “The Mandalorian” for being “detached,” “unsatisfying,” “sloppy” and “the worst.” What had been a loose and uncomplicated story of Din and Grogu’s ongoing adventures had become instead a sprawling narrative steeped in Mandalorian lore that was brand new (and, even worse, uninteresting) to most people watching. An ironic strength of the show — audiences projecting themselves into Din’s helmet in the absence of Pascal’s deeply expressive face — became a major liability, with episodes in which dozens of helmeted Mandalorians talked to each other in a dry, monosyllabic monotones, with nary a human face to be seen.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Lena Khan (“Flora and Ulysses”) is set to direct the Bollywood comedy “Best of the Best.” The project, formerly titled “For the Culture,” chronicles the highly competitive world of collegiate Bollywood dance competitions. Comedian Hasan Minhaj, best known for his Peabody Award-winning Netflix series “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj,” wrote the project with Prashanth Venkataramanujam to launch their production company, 186K Films. Minhaj will also play a role in the film.  Dan Lin’s Rideback is also producing. Additionally, Khan is attached to direct an adaptation of the classic children’s book “The Cricket in Times Square” — about a cricket from New Jersey named Chester who lands in Manhattan after accidentally getting trapped in a picnic basket — for Spyglass. That project remains in development.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Season 3, Episode 9 of “Star Trek: Picard,” currently streaming on Paramount+. Gates McFadden didn’t know what to expect when she first got on a Zoom call with “Star Trek: Picard” executive producers Terry Matalas and Akiva Goldsman. A few years earlier, Patrick Stewart had taken the cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” — Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Marina Sirtis, Michael Dorn, Brent Spiner and McFadden — to dinner to announce that he was going to star on the spinoff series without them. But for the show’s third and final season, Matalas wanted to bring the full cast back together. 

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Oswald Cobblepot is finally getting his moment in the sun. Warner Bros. Discovery executives have unveiled the first look at “The Penguin,” the spin-off series focusing on Colin Farrell’s titular Gotham City gangster from the 2022 blockbuster film “The Batman.” The preview was part of the company’s presentation on Wednesday of its streaming service, Max, a combination of the HBO Max and Discovery+ services. “The Penguin,” which is currently in production, will run for eight episodes. Spoiler alert for that film: After Paul Dano’s the Riddler kills Carmine Falcone, one of Gotham City’s top mob bosses, he floods the major downtown area in a coordinated terrorist attack — leaving Farrell’s Cobblepot with a city in chaos and a power vacuum within Gotham’s underworld.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer The “Creature Commandos” can speak! The animated series — which is set to premiere in 2024 as the first title in the new DC Universe headed by James Gunn and Peter Safran — unveiled its voice cast featuring David Harbour, Indira Varma, Alan Tudyk, Maria Bakalova, Zoe Chao, Steve Agee and more. Varmawill voice the show’s main protagonist, Bride of Frankenstein, a version of the classic horror character; Frank Grillo will play Rick Flag Sr., the father of Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag, Jr. from 2021’s “The Suicide Squad” (written and directed by Gunn); Harbour will voice Eric Frankenstein, a version of the classic monster and ostensible love interest for the Bride; Chao will voice Nina Mazursky, an amphibious scientist; Gunn will voice G.I. Robot, a military android; and Tudyk will voice Doctor Phosphorus, who is permanently radioactive (and often a Batman villain).

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer The past, present and future of Star Wars was on ample display on Friday at the Star Wars Celebration fan convention, as Lucasfilm unveiled the most robust look yet at the company’s plans for the hallowed franchise. As studio chief Kathleen Kennedy revealed three new feature films and first looks at four upcoming TV series, Lucasfilm made clear it aims to test just how far it can stretch the Star Wars galaxy: creatively, logistically and even historically. Starting with “The Phantom Menace” and concluding with “The Rise of Skywalker,” the previous nine “Star Wars” movies have all taken place within a roughly 70-year timeline, straddling the climactic Battle of Yavin in “A New Hope” that has served as the official fulcrum point for the franchise for six decades. Every live-action and animated spinoff TV series has unfolded within that timeframe, including the shows launched on Disney+: “The Mandalorian,” “The Book of Boba Fett,” “Andor,” “The Bad Batch” and the upcoming shows “Ahsoka” and “Skeleton Crew.” (“Visions,” an animated anthology series launched in 2021, exists outside of Star Wars canon.)

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer The modern superhero movie would not exist without the version of Superman limned by Christopher Reeve in Warner Bros.’ 1978 smash “Superman.” First created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for Action Comics, the Man of Steel became a pop-culture mainstay with the syn- dicated “Adventures of Superman” TV series in the 1950s. But it wasn’t until DC Comics moved into the world of Warner Bros. and Reeve donned the last son of Krypton’s blue-and-red tights for the Richard Donner-directed “Superman” that bringing a comic book superhero to life on the big screen was seen as blockbuster business. And the spoils were considerable: In the moment, “Superman” ranked as WB’s highest-grossing movie ever.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Oscar-winning filmmaker Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) will direct an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed Shakespeare-era novel “Hamnet” for Amblin Partners. Zhao is writing the screenplay with O’Farrell. Amblin Partners, Hera Pictures, Neal Street Productions and Book of Shadows are all backing the project. O’Farrell’s New York Times bestseller reframes the creation of William Shakespeare’s most famous play, “Hamlet,” through the lens of the playwright’s wife Agnes (a variation on Anne Hathaway, the name of Shakespeare’s real wife), as she grieves the death of her only son, 11-year-old Hamnet, to the bubonic plauge. The novel also traces the beginnings of Agnes’ relationship with young Shakespeare — who is never named, known only as the world’s most famous playwright. In 2020, “Hamnet” won the Women’s Prize for fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses an unannounced cameo in the film “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” which is currently playing in theaters. For “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” writer-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley pulled from the expansive trove of creatures and lore created over the 50-year history of the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game. There are paladins and sorcerers, red wizards and owlbears, bards and barbarians — all of them written by Goldstein and Daley and performed by Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Hugh Grant, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis and Daisy Head with the same good-natured pluck that has imbued the countless campaigns waged by the game’s players.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Liv Tyler is returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, 16 years after her last appearance. The actor will appear in 2024’s “Captain America: New World Order,” reprising her role from 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk” as scientist Betty Ross, the daughter of General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. That role was originated by the late William Hurt, who reappeared several times for Marvel Studios, starting with 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War,” in which Ross had become Secretary of State. Harrison Ford is stepping into the role of Thaddeus Ross for “New World Order,” in which the character has become President of the United States.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Victoria Alonso’s work as a producer of the Oscar-nominated feature film “Argentina, 1985” is coming under greater scrutiny as a major factor in Disney’s decision to fire the longtime Marvel Studios executive for cause, according to three sources with knowledge of Alonso’s exit. At issue, according to these sources, was Alonso’s 2018 employment contract with Disney that prohibited her from working on projects for any rival studios. “Argentina, 1985” — which tracks the real-life trials of the country’s final dictatorship — was produced in part by Amazon Studios, which released the film on Prime Video in October. But Alonso, who was born and raised in Argentina, did not alert Disney to her work on “Argentina, 1985” in advance, sources say.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer If you’re going to remake a movie, why not remake one of the most acclaimed movies ever made? Paramount Pictures has preemptively acquired a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic psychological thriller “Vertigo,” as a possible starring vehicle for Robert Downey Jr.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Season 3, Episode 6 of “Star Trek: Picard,” currently streaming on Paramount+. Of the many pleasures of the third season of “Star Trek: Picard,” the greatest has to be watching the cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” finally reunite on screen for the first time since the 2002 feature film “Star Trek: Nemesis.” That movie was a failure critically, commercially and with “Star Trek” fans, many of whom were especially upset that the beloved character of Data (Brent Spiner) was killed off. Except, it turns out, he wasn’t. In Season 1 of “Star Trek: Picard,” fans learned that Data’s android consciousness had been kept alive within an inanimate memory core by Altan Inigo Soong (Spiner), the brother of Data’s original creator, Noonien Soong — until Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) honored Data’s desire to finally perish from existence completely.