Category: Entertainment

Former Bachelor star Joey Graziadei and Jenna Johnson were crowned the winners of Dancing with the Stars season 33, taking home the Len Goodman Mirrorball trophy during the finale Nov. 26 on ABC. Graziadei was the first Bachelor star ever to win the competition.

Olympic rugby player Ilona Maher and Alan Bersten came in second. Actress Chandler Kinney and Brandon Armstrong followed in third place, while Olympic gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik and Rylee Arnold came in fourth place. Retired NFL star Danny Amendola and Witney Carson placed fifth.

“It means everything,” Graziadei said of winning the Mirrorball. “This experience has been unbelievable, honestly. Everyone from the beginning. Ilona, you have been amazing this season. I love you. All the finalists, the judges, thank you for bearing with us. I tried my best, I promise. Thank you.”

During the finale, the five final pairs each performed a redemption dance and a freestyle dance. In the redemption round, the finalists each performed a dance assigned by the judges. Each finalist got creative during the freestyle round and performed epic dance routines that showed off their personalities.

The night also had a performance from the upcoming dance pros who will be joining the DWTS LIVE 2025 Tour, which kicks off Jan. 7 in Richmond, Virginia, and is set to wrap in Hollywood, California, in April.

Season 32 winners Xochitl Gomez and Val Chmerkovskiy returned to the ballroom with an impressive performance to Chappell Roan‘s “Pink Pony Club,” while Derek Hough also performed an Argentine tango.

Other contestants from the past season performed, too. Family Matters star Reginald VelJohnson did a sweet dance number to the show’s theme song with Emma Slater. Also performing were model Brooks Nader and Gleb Savchenko, and former Bachelorette Jenn Tran and Sasha Farber.

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Disney+ has moved the premiere date for Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: Skeleton Crew up a day. The series will now premiere with two episodes on Dec. 2. According to the official synopsis, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew “follows the journey of four kids who make a mysterious discovery on their seemingly safe home planet, then get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy. Finding their way home—and meeting unlikely allies and enemies—will be a greater adventure than they ever imagined.” Lucasfilm is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News …

Writer/director Jim Abrahams, best known for his work with brothers Jerry and David Zucker on such comedy classics as Airplane!, Police Squad! and The Naked Gun films, died Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Santa Monica, his son Joseph tells The Hollywood Reporter. Abrahams’ other credits with the Zucker brothers include 1977’s Kentucky Fried Movie, 1984’s Top Secret! starring Val Kilmer and 1986’s Ruthless People, featuring Bette Midler and Danny DeVito. On his own, Abrahams directed Big Business, starring Midler and Lily Tomlin, in 1988, as well as co-writing and helming the 1981 comedy Hot Shots! and its 1993 sequel, both starring Charlie Sheen …

Deadline reports Prime Video has greenlit the thriller drama series Silent River, starring and executive produced by John Krasinski and Matthew Rhys. Per the outlet, Silent River is “told through the lens of two men (played by Krasinski and Rhys) whose lives are far more connected than they realize” and explores “the cracks of small-town America in the wake of discovering a serial killer among them.” Krasinski will also reportedly direct the pilot, along with some additional episodes …

CBS has announced The Talk will air its final week of live shows Dec. 16-Dec. 20. Along the way, hosts Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Natalie Morales, Jerry O’Connell and Sheryl Underwood will welcome “an array of guests and big holiday giveaways” worth more than $2.5 million. Since its premiere in 2010, The Talk has earned 11 Daytime Emmy Award nominations, including for Outstanding Talk Show and Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host …

Rosa Salazar, best known for playing the titular character in Alita: Battle Angel, has been tapped for a leading role in the CBS pilot Einstein, opposite Criminal Minds alum Matthew Gray Gubler, according to Variety. Gubler plays the great grandson of Albert Einstein, a tenured professor whose “bad boy antics land him in trouble with the law and he is pressed into service helping a local police detective (Salazar) solve her most puzzling cases.” Salazar will next be seen playing Rachel Leighton aka Diamondback in the upcoming Marvel film Captain America: Brave New World …

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Fans of the 2016 Disney animated film Moana can revisit their favorite characters with the new sequel, Moana 2, which is in theaters Wednesday. The film picks up three years after the original film, with Moana, voiced by Auliʻi Cravalho, setting out on a new journey with the demigod Maui, voiced by Dwayne Johnson.

Taking on the challenge of following up such a successful film are directors Jason Hand, David Derrick Jr. and Dana Ledoux Miller, who discussed their approach to the sequel with ABC Audio.

Derrick says one of the most important things in making this movie was “finding that universal connection that people have with Moana,” explaining, “I think when we came back to tell her story, it was just coming back with an old friend.” 

“I think Moana’s superpower is her empathy, and I think that’s an incredible characteristic, and it leads and guides all of her decisions,” Hand adds. “So we used that when we were making the sequel.” 

Hand also says it was important to maintain the relationships from the first movie: “Moana and Maui together is like magic. To see both Auliʻi and Dwayne come back into the booth and recreate that, that’s something … we definitely needed to have again.”

And Ledoux Miller says they didn’t really concern themselves with picking up specific elements from the original film.  

“It was really about how can we tell the best story for Moana,” she says. “It was really about pushing Moana to become a better leader and to help her grow up.” 

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t parts of the film that should feel familiar to fans of the original. 

“We’re fans of the first film,” she says, “so having Easter eggs and callbacks just kind of came naturally to us.” 

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

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Vanderpump Rules is officially returning for season 12, but it is going to look a little different.

Bravo announced the renewal news on Tuesday, also confirming that the new season of the show will be a reboot of sorts. An entire new cast will make up the servers, hosts and bartenders, with Lisa Vanderpump returning to oversee it all.

According to a press release, season 12 will be made up of a new group of “close-knit SUR-vers who are as complicatedly involved with one another as their iconic predecessors.” While it will look different, the release promises “plenty of drama, situationships and frenemies.”

Vanderpump commented on the new changes, saying, “[T]he last 12 years of filming have been an extraordinary run full of laughter, tears and everything in between.”

She thanked the former cast for all they have brought to the show.

“I can’t thank enough those who have shared their lives. How I love you all. In the restaurant business, one shift always gives way to another. Cheers to the next generation of Vanderpump Rules,” Vanderpump said.

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Timothée Chalamet does his own singing and guitar playing in the upcoming Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown, and apparently he had to learn a lot of the Dylan catalog to be ready for the film.

In a new featurette shared by Entertainment Weekly, producer Fred Berger shares just how extensive Chalamet’s preparation was for the role.

“There are 40 songs in the movie that he performs,” Berger says. “On guitar, on harmonica, and singing live take after take after take.”

The clip features behind-the-scenes footage of Chalamet performing as Dylan, set to his take on the Dylan classic “Like A Rolling Stone.”

“It was important for me to sing and play live,” Chalamet says. “Because if I can actually do it, why should there be an element of artifice here? And I’m proud that we took that leap.”

His co-star Elle Fanning said she had “goose bumps,” watching Chalamet at work, noting, “You can see how much love, and how hard he’s worked and how much he cares about getting this right.” 

The clip also features footage of Boyd Holbrook performing as Johnny Cash, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Ed Norton and Pete Seeger.

“It’s a movie about music that is unadorned and authentic,” the film’s director, James Mangold, adds. “You could feel the thing working for everyone.”

A Complete Unknown hits theaters Dec. 25.

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Selma Blair is sharing an update on her health following new advances in multiple sclerosis treatment.

Blair walked the red carpet at Elle‘s Women in Hollywood 2024 event without a walking cane or service dog. According to Variety, Blair credited her improving health “to a bone marrow treatment and changes in medications.”

“I’m back at work and doing things so I will have things to announce,” Blair said, adding that she had never thought she’d feel well enough to work again or “get to feel this grounded.”

Blair first opened up publicly in October 2018, revealing she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, also known as MS, which according to the National Institutes of Health is a chronic disease that impacts the nervous system and causes the immune system to attack healthy cells. People with MS often experience unsteady movements, pain, mental and physical fatigue, vision problems, cognitive issues, mood changes and other symptoms.

In 2019, Blair shared with her Instagram followers that she was undergoing a hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, or HSCT, a treatment that has long been used to treat cancers of the blood and bone marrow that is now being used in some patients with MS, like Blair, to try to “reboot” their immune system.

Blair also recently attended the 2024 Media Access Awards, presenting Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease, with the Norman Lear–Geri Jewell Lifetime Achievement Award.

Blair called her fellow actor a hero and a friend who helped her find the determination and strength to carry on with her life after receiving the “life-altering” diagnosis of MS.

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Ariana Grande turned a Wicked screening into a family affair.

The star of the production took to Instagram on Monday to share that she flew to her hometown theater in Boca Raton, Florida, to see her new film with her grandmother, Marjorie “Nonna” Grande.

Ari posted a video of her grandmother taking in the movie which hit theaters on Friday, Nov. 22. The video shows her grandmother watching the film’s rendition of the song “Popular,” smiling and clapping at the song’s conclusion.

“Flew to Boca for a day to watch with Nonna,” she wrote on her Instagram Story. “At the movie theater I grew up going to every weekend, Cinemark 20 in Boca,” she continued, tagging Ethan Slater and her brother Frankie Grande.

In another photo, Ariana wrote, “Thrilled to report that when the sugar glider had her drum solo nonna exclaimed loudly ‘oh i LOVE that,'” tagging director Jon M. Chu.

Ari plays Glinda alongside Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba in the new film adaption of the Broadway classic.

In March, at the age of 98, Marjorie Grande became the oldest living person to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 chart since the chart’s inception in August 1958, thanks to her feature on Grande’s song “ordinary things.”

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Sterling K. Brown has been tapped to star in the upcoming live-action Voltron movie opposite Henry Cavill, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Rita Ora, 9-1-1‘s John Kim and newcomer Daniel Quinn-Toye also star. Voltron is based on the TV franchise that followed the titular giant robot made up of robotic lions, piloted by a team of young heroes. Plot details are being kept under wraps, though director Rawson Marshall Thurber told fans at VoltCon that the film will introduce an entirely new generation of pilots, per THR …

Ryan Reynolds’ production company has signed on to produce the classic cartoon superhero Mighty Mouse for the big screen, according to Variety. Writer Matt Lieberman, who worked with Reynolds on the 2021 fantasy adventure Free Guy, has been hired to write the script. Mighty Mouse made his first appearance in the 1942 short film The Mouse of Tomorrow and went on to appear in dozens more shorts, as well as a Saturday morning TV cartoon …

Netflix has dropped the official trailer for The Six Triple Eight, Tyler Perry‘s WWII drama based on the real-life story of Maj. Charity Adams — played by Kerry Washington — who led the titular battalion of Black female soldiers, deployed to Europe after combat training and tasked with sorting a massive backlog of letters and packages sent between millions of the country’s fighting men and their loved ones back home. Oprah Winfrey, Susan Sarandon, Dean Norris and Sam Waterston also star in the film, premiering Dec. 20 …

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Andrea Arnold’s coming-of-age drama Bird, available to watch in theaters now, follows a young girl living with her father and half-brother in northern Kent.

The movie, which stars Franz Rogowski and Barry Keoghan, was not sold to its actors on a script, but instead a concept. To convey the film, Arnold sent Rogowski an album and a few images, and told him some stories, he told ABC Audio.

He remembers listening to the music Arnold sent him as he drove through the U.K.

“I had these songs, and I was driving my van and the sun was rising,” Rogowski said. “Her invitation was so physical. The way she introduced her world and the character to me was not based on a story or on drama or, you know, the big five emotions that humans go through on a daily basis … her invitation was only based on images and music and her childhood memories. And that was very interesting.”

Keoghan said he respects Arnold for her bravery in making a film like Bird.

“I think she makes movies really close to the heart and this one especially,” Keoghan said. “She’s a genius. And I’m glad that I got to be part of this because I just got to find a lot, selfishly, about myself as well during it and during the journey of it. And there was no better person to be there with me doing it … Andrea, she basically took my hand and, you know, guided me through it.”

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Ringo Starr appears to have confirmed the rumors that Saltburn star Barry Keoghan is going to play him in Sam Mendes’ upcoming Beatles movies.

Back in February, Mendes announced plans to make four separate Beatles movies, one for each member — Ringo, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison — and almost immediately speculation began as to who’ll play the Fab Four, with Keoghan’s name mentioned for Ringo.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, the 84-year-old Ringo appeared to let it slip that the rumor is true.

When asked how he feels about Keoghan playing him, Ringo shared, “Well, I think it’s great. I believe he’s somewhere taking drum lessons, and I hope not too many.”

So far there’s been no official announcement about the casting.

Mendes’ films will be made by Sony Pictures, and will mark the first time Apple Corps Ltd. and The Beatles have granted a studio the rights to the life stories of band members and their legendary catalog of music. Each film will be told from the point of view of one of the band members.

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