Dominic Sessa to star as Anthony Bourdain in biopic for A24
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images
Dominic Sessa will star as Anthony Bourdain in a new biopic about the late chef’s life.
A24 confirmed the casting news for the upcoming film, which will be called Tony, by reposting a post from Variety about the casting news on the social platform X.
Antonio Banderas will also appear in the movie, though his role is being kept under wraps. The film will take place in 1976 and cover the life-changing experiences Bourdain had working and living in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Bourdain enrolled in culinary school in 1978, two years after the film is set. He was the executive chef of Brasserie Les Halles in New York City and penned the 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Bourdain also received a posthumous Emmy for his work on the unscripted series’ No Reservations and Parts Unknown. He died in Strasbourg, France, in 2018 at age 61.
Matt Johnson is set to direct the biopic from a script written by Todd Barrels and Lou Howe. The project begins shooting in May.
Bourdain’s estate rep Kimberly Witherspoon serves as an executive producer on the film.
Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in a scene from the movie, ‘It Ends With Us.’ Sony Pictures
The ongoing legal dispute between It Ends With Us co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni escalated Tuesday over Lively’s decision to withdraw claims of emotional distress from her lawsuit.
Lively will not be able to refile the claims — included in the lawsuit she originally filed against Baldoni in late December — back into the lawsuit in the future, according to a ruling issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman.
Liman also ruled that Lively does not have to provide her medical records to the court following the withdrawal of the claims of emotional distress.
“The parties shall stipulate to whether the dismissal is with or without prejudice, or Lively shall renew her request by formal motion,” Liman wrote in his ruling. “For avoidance of doubt, if the claims are not dismissed, the Court will preclude Lively from offering any evidence of emotional distress.”
In her original lawsuit, Lively claimed she experienced “severe emotional distress” after Baldoni and key stakeholders in It Ends With Us allegedly sexually harassed her and allegedly attempted, along with Baldoni’s production company, Wayfarer Studios, to orchestrate a smear campaign against her.
On Monday, lawyers for Baldoni and Wayfarer filed a motion to compel Lively to provide her medical and mental health care records, in order to prove she experienced distress, according to court filings seen by ABC News. Baldoni’s lawyers asked for the emotional distress claims to be dismissed with prejudice so they cannot be refiled at a later time.
“By alleging that she suffered physical and emotional injuries, Ms. Lively has placed her physical and mental condition at issue and, in turn, must produce relevant information and documents,” the court filings state.
Lively’s legal team responded with a letter to the judge Monday asking for the motion to be dropped, calling it a “public relations stunt.”
Lively’s lawyers, Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb, told ABC News in a statement Tuesday, after the judge’s ruling, that the actress will “continue to pursue emotional distress damages through other claims in her lawsuit.”
“The court denied Wayfarer’s motion. He told the parties to continue their discussions about the technicalities of how 2 of the 15 claims will be voluntarily dismissed. Ms. Lively has offered to dismiss those claims because they are no longer necessary, and she will continue to pursue emotional distress damages through other claims in her lawsuit, including sexual harassment and retaliation,” Hudson and Gottlieb said. “In addition, the Baldoni-Wayfarer strategy of filing retaliatory claims has exposed them to expansive damages under California law. This is exactly where both parties were before the Baldoni-Wayfarer Parties rushed to file this utterly pointless motion to compel, all searching for yet another press moment.”
Baldoni’s legal team had no additional comment on the judge’s ruling when reached by ABC News.
Lively and Baldoni’s legal feud began after Lively filed a complaint against Baldoni with the California Civil Rights Department in December, accusing him of sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us, which he also directed.
Baldoni denied the allegations at the time in a statement issued through his attorney BryanFreedman, who called Lively’s actions “shameful” and the allegations “serious and categorically false.”
Freedman claimed that Lively’s complaint was “another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation which was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film.”
Lively and Baldoni subsequently launched dueling lawsuits against each other, with Lively’s lawsuit reiterating the allegations outlined in her earlier California Civil Rights Department complaint.
Baldoni filed a civil lawsuit against Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, the couple’s publicist Leslie Sloane and Sloane’s public relations company, Vision PR, in January this year, alleging, among other things, extortion and defamation.
Baldoni accused Lively of having “robbed” him and Wayfarer Studios LLC of control of It Ends with Us, which he also directed, as well as destroying Baldoni’s “personal and professional reputations and livelihood.” He accused Sloane of having gone “so far as to propagate malicious stories portraying Baldoni as a sexual predator” and Reynolds of using the term to describe Baldoni in a call with Baldoni’s agent. The suit claims Reynolds told Baldoni’s rep to “drop” him as a client.
Lively’s lawyers responded with a statement calling the lawsuit “another chapter in the abuser playbook.”
Lively and Baldoni are due to appear in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on March 9, 2026, with Liman overseeing the case.
Ahead of their court date, Lively filed an amended version of her lawsuit against Baldoni in February.
In March, Reynolds filed a motion to dismiss Baldoni’s complaint against him. Lively also filed a motion to dismiss Baldoni’s countersuit against her.
Tom Cruise shows off more of his signature stunts in the official trailer for Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.
The new trailer for the upcoming Paramount Pictures film finds Cruise reprising his role as IMF agent Ethan Hunt. This time around, Ethan again faces off against the form of artificial intelligence known as The Entity.
He first faced this enemy in the 2023 film Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning. Now, Ethan has the necessary key to destroy his AI foe, but he must assemble his team to find the code to destroy the technology once and for all.
Cruise hangs off the side of an airplane and swims deep underwater as part of the new footage shown in the trailer. His missions and death-defying stunts of the past are also referenced as Ethan is put in handcuffs and taken in for questioning.
“Smart people on every side are close to panicking,” Ethan says in the trailer, before a montage of his past flashes quickly across the screen.
Christopher McQuarrie directed the eighth film in the Mission: Impossible franchise from a script he wrote along with ErikJendresen.
“I need you to trust me. One last time,” Cruise’s Ethan Hunt says at the end of the trailer.
Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett and Rolf Saxon all return to star in the film, while Hannah Waddingham, Nick Offerman, Lucy Tulugarjuk, Katy O’Brian, Tramell Tillman and Stephen Oyoung join the franchise.
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning arrives in theaters on May 23.
The new movie Hurry Up Tomorrow, in theaters now,stars chart-topping pop singer Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye and features a lot of his music. But according to the movie’s director, you don’t need to be a fan of The Weeknd or his many hits to enjoy the psychological thriller.
Director Trey Edward Shults told ABC Audio at the movie’s New York premiere, “If you’re not a Weeknd fan, I think it’s a great movie regardless. It’s a singular, unique experience.”
“My goal with everything is to try to make something I haven’t seen before, because the movies that have blown me away in my life … were movies that I felt like, ‘Whoa, I’ve never seen something like that. What did I just experience? I loved it, but that was different,'” he explains. “And that’s what we tried to do with this.”
Shults said that even though the movie is about a singer named Abel, and was inspired by an incident from The Weeknd’s real life, he “tried to make it work in a way where you can take a ride with it.”
And while you’re on that ride, Shults notes, “New genres come up along the way. Hopefully it surprises you. It’s a compelling experience. But also, if you want to look deeper, there’s a whole richer thing going on, and you can have some great conversations with a friend after it.”
If you are a Weeknd fan, Shults says there are “so many connections” to the singer’s body of work. However, he insists, “You do not need to be one to enjoy it.”
Hurry Up Tomorrow debuted in the box office top 10 after its release on May 16. Weeknd’s companion album of the same name debuted at #1 when it was released in January.
