‘SNL’s’ Colin Jost to host Pop Culture ‘Jeopardy!’
Saturday Night Live Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost has been tapped to host Amazon Prime’s Pop Culture Jeopardy!, set to begin production in August.
Similar to traditional Jeopardy!, the spin-off, billed as “the first Jeopardy! series created exclusively for a major streaming service,” will employ an answer-question format, but with a focus on categories such as music, film, TV, stage and sports, according to Variety. Additionally, contestants will play in teams of three in a tournament-style event.
“What is: I’m excited,” Jost quipped in response to the announcement in a statement obtained by the outlet.
Jost joined SNL back in 2005 and has co-anchored the sketch show’s Weekend Update segment since 2014. He’s also appeared in the films How to Be Single, Coming 2 America and Tom and Jerry.
If you’ve never heard of Skibidi Toilet, there’s a good chance you don’t have anyone under the age of 15 living in your house, but the viral sensation has just attracted one of the biggest blockbuster producers in Hollywood.
Variety says Michael Bay is developing a film and a TV franchise around the property, which began in 2023, when a 23-year-old from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia named Alexey Gerasimov uploaded to YouTube an 11-second video of an animated head singing from a toilet.
Those humble beginnings have turned into nearly 80 mini films, with hundreds of millions of views the world over, and games, detailing a war between the toilet head folks and cyborgs known as Cameraheads.
The trade says Bay and Paramount Pictures president Adam Goodman are collaborating on the project.
Ryan Seacrest and Vanna White are excited and gearing up to work alongside each other on Wheel of Fortune.
“I mean, it’s Wheel of Fortune. How could you not be happy?” Seacrest told ABC News’ Ginger Zee in an interview that aired Tuesday on Good Morning America.
White added, “It’s energetic, it’s positive, it’s fun. I’m so excited.”
It was announced in June 2023 that Seacrest would take over Pat Sajak‘s decadeslong role as co-host of the iconic show. Seacrest begins his new role as the co-host of “Wheel of Fortune” this fall for the show’s 42nd season.
Seacrest opened up about his experience working with White, who has been co-hosting the show with Sajak since 1982.
“I mean, it’s out of body,” Ryan tells GMA. “It’s out of body for me, you know, to have watched Vanna, and watched this show and Pat, and what they’ve built with audiences across this country. And what this show means to people in their living rooms every night, and their families, and generations of people who have watched this show, it is a very special thing that just doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
As part of his preparation to take the reins from Sajak, Seacrest said he has “watched endless episodes of Pat and Vanna on Wheel of Fortune.”
“We have played mock Wheel of Fortune games in many cities across America, depending on where I am, on conference tables, in meeting rooms,” he shared. “We’ve had makeshift wheels and makeshift contestants for months, just to sort of get the gameplay down, and the time and the pacing down. And hopefully it all pays off.”
In an appearance opposite his costar Hugh Jackman on First We Feast’s Hot Ones show, Reynolds revealed his initial plan was to “hide” Deadpool & Wolverine inside an “intentionally bad” movie.
“The original idea with this movie was to shoot a fake movie called Alpha Cop, that was intentionally bad,” said Reynolds, adding he even had a poster made for the phony film, with the tagline, “Two cops, one brain, all b****.”
“It was about two guys that were sharing one brain and together they make the ultimate cop,” Ryan said.
Reynolds and Jackman would have starred in Alpha Cop, having filmed the real movie “in secret,” the actor-producer says.
He explained, “Like 10 people in America would go to see this movie on opening weekend and five minutes into the movie the Marvel logo would flip up and it would actually be Deadpool & Wolverine.”
But the very high stakes bait and switch had a very real danger, so the plan was scrapped. “The problem is that if you managed to get down to the last minute and [the cover] got blown, it would just be heartbreaking,” Ryan said.
While it’s unknown what Alpha Cop would have made in sneaks, the real movie has already set box office records.
Deadpool & Wolverine made $38.5 million from previews on Thursday alone: That’s the best-ever sneak preview showing for an R-rated film and the eighth highest sneak preview performance ever, adjusted for inflation.
For the record, it missed #7 on the list, Avengers: Infinity War, by only 1 million bucks.
According to the website The Numbers, Avengers: Endgame set the all-time record with$60 million before it actually opened.
Marvel Studios is owned by ABC News’ parent company Disney.