George Clooney, Annette Bening to star in upcoming film ‘In Love’
George Clooney attends the U.K. premiere of ‘The Boys In The Boat’ at Curzon Cinema Mayfair on December 3, 2023, in London, England. (Neil P. Mockford/Getty Images)
George Clooney has found his next project.
The actor will star alongside Annette Bening in the upcoming film In Love. Oscar nominee Paul Weitz will direct the stars from a script based on Amy Bloom‘s New York Times bestseller, In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss.
The film studio Anton announced the project on its official Instagram on Thursday, where it described the upcoming film as “an illuminating modern love story.”
“A profound, emotionally honest, and uplifting celebration of life and love,” the post’s caption described the upcoming film.
The post also included a graphic with a quote from Weitz about the project.
“Amy’s memoir is a contemporary fable of love, wit and existential stakes,” Weitz said.
Bloom’s memoir follows how she lost her husband to Alzheimer’s, and how the pair made the decision to travel to Switzerland to end his life. It also details Bloom’s struggle to continue on living as a widow. The memoir was named TIME magazine’s #1 best nonfiction book and was included on the outlet’s 100 must-read books list.
Jimmy Kimmel and Cleto Escobedo III on the ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ set. (Richard Cartwright/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
Jimmy Kimmel opened his show Tuesday night with a heartfelt monologue dedicated to his longtime best friend and bandleader Cleto Escobedo III, who died Tuesday morning at age 59.
“We’ve been on the air for almost 23 years, and I’ve had to do some hard monologues along the way, but this one’s the hardest,” Kimmel said while holding back tears. “Early this morning we lost someone very special, who was much too young to go, and I’d like to tell you about him.”
“He would call me. He’d send me notes all the time, big stuff, little stuff, whatever, telling me, ‘Oh, this was so funny. I love this. I’m proud of you. I’m so happy that we get to be together all the time.’ He would tell me how lucky he was. He was just a great older brother. No baggage, all love,” he continued. “There’s no one in my life I felt more comfortable with.”
“Always cherish your friends,” Kimmel added. “We’re not here forever.”
Escobedo, who went by Junior, was the saxophonist and leader of the Jimmy Kimmel Live! house band, Cleto and the Cletones, alongside his father, Cleto Escobedo II, an accomplished sax player who had previously put his own career with the band Los Blues on pause in 1966 when his son was born, in order to be close to home and raise a family.
Kimmel also regaled Tuesday’s audience about his lifelong friendship with the younger Escobedo, which began in 1977 in the Las Vegas suburbs, where his family had relocated from Brooklyn. According to Kimmel, Escobedo and his family lived “across the street and two houses over.”
After the two boys met, they became fast friends, Kimmel said.
“Not just regular friends either. We became like 24/7, ‘Mom, please, let me sleep over, please’ kind of friends,” Kimmel said. “One summer, I slept over at the Escobedo house 33 nights in a row … we were never bored. We were always up to something.”
From playing baseball and dressing up as cowboys to boxing, attempts at body building, and navigating puberty and girls, the pair were inseparable and later went on to be best man at each other’s weddings, Kimmel said.
That bond extended decades, and eventually, amid Escobedo’s own successful career playing sax on tour with Paula Abdul, recording studio albums and more, Kimmel had the opportunity to make his best friend his right-hand man in late night TV.
“In September 2002, I got a talk show out of nowhere — when you do a show like this you need a desk, you need an announcer, you need a Guillermo, and you need a band. And of course, I wanted Cleto to lead my band,” Kimmel said. “The idea that anyone other than him would lead the band was terrifying. It had to be him.”
Kimmel said he set up an audition for Escobedo and his father with ABC executive Lloyd Braun.
“Cleto and his dad played ‘Pick up the Pieces’ by Average White Band. And Lloyd saw it, saw the father and son together, he said, ‘I love it.’ And he just got up and left. And we’ve been working together every day for almost 23 years,” Kimmel said.
He continued, “We had our own language that almost no one else understood. We didn’t have to say anything. We’d sit here at rehearsal every day, we’d have to look at each other — and that would be it.”
While Escobedo’s cause of death has not yet been revealed, Kimmel gave a special thank you on Tuesday to a long list of doctors and nurses at UCLA Medical Center “for taking incredibly good care of him.” He also thanked “the team at Sherman Oaks Hospital that initially took him in.”
“I’m grateful for my friends, Cleto’s friends … everyone who checked in on him, everyone who called and visited him, who’ve been helping his family. Everyone here at our show [has] been so supportive,” Kimmel said, giving a shout-out to his family and Escobedo’s family, “who all did their best to be strong during these awful few months.”
“Mostly, I want to thank Cleto’s parents, Cleto and Sylvia, for making him and for sharing him with me and with all of us, and for treating me like their own son, always,” he added, before announcing Tuesday’s guest — one of Escobedo’s favorite people — Eddie Murphy.
Kimmel said Tuesday that he planned to “take the next couple nights off,” but that he had wanted “to be here tonight to tell you about my friend.”
Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson in ‘Stranger Things’ season 5. (Netflix)
The runtimes for the final episodes of Stranger Things have been revealed.
After it was falsely reported by several viral social media posts and a Puck News article from Oct. 6 that every single episode of the fifth and final season would run longer than 90 minutes, Stranger Things co-creator Ross Duffer took to Instagram on Monday to clear up the rumors.
“ACTUAL runtimes,” he captioned a video showing off the first four episode titles and their respective lengths.
The season 5 premiere, titled “The Crawl,” will run for one hour and eight minutes. Only the first part of episode 2’s title has been revealed; so far, we know it begins with “The Vanishing of …” and that the episode is 54 minutes long. Finally, episode 3 is called “The Turnbow Trap,” and will run for one hour and six minutes, while episode 4 is called “Sorcerer,” and lasts for one hour and 23 minutes.
Netflix is releasing season 5 in three different drops. The first four episodes arrive on Nov. 26, just ahead of Thanksgiving, while the following three episodes will debut on Dec. 25. The series finale of Stranger Things premieres on Dec. 31.
Returning for the final season are stars Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer and Joe Keery.
The Hawkins crew all work together to defeat the villainous Vecna and save their hometown once and for all in season 5.
“As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before,” according to the season’s official synopsis. “To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time.”
Jeremy Allen White appears on ‘Good Morning America,’ Oct. 14, 2025. (ABC News)
Jeremy Allen White is opening up about playing “The Boss” in front of The Boss.
White joined Good Morning America Tuesday to discuss his upcoming role in the Bruce Springsteen biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, his relationship with his co-star Jeremy Strong, playing the guitar and more.
White said that at first, seeing Springsteen on set made it difficult to portray him.
“I think at first, like any job, you get to set, you’re feeling a little insecure, you’re trying to figure things out,” White recalled. “It was hard when I’m looking at the man across the way, and I know I’m not him, because I’m looking at him.”
The actor added that Springsteen’s presence on set soon became a benefit.
“He kept showing up, and it became more and more normal. And then I feel like it was necessary,” White said. “His presence was giving us all a lot of permission and making sure that we were staying on the honest path.”
White also discussed his relationship with Strong, who plays Springsteen’s manager and friend Jon Landau.
“I love Jeremy Strong so much. I’ve been an admirer of his for a very long time,” White said, adding that he had long desired to work alongside the Succession star. “He is so thorough in his approach. I just trusted him so quickly and immediately.”
White said Strong understood and empathized with the task White was taking on.
“I think he also saw that I was trying to portray Bruce Springsteen, and that was a difficult thing to do. There was a lot of pressure. I think Jeremy became this sort of protector, and caregiver for me during the process of making the movie,” White said, likening the relationship to the real-life Landau and Springsteen.
White also discussed learning guitar for the film, sharing that he had never picked up a guitar prior to preparing for the movie. He said he learned to play on an instrument Springsteen gave him personally.
White also recalled sharing his excitement for learning guitar with his instructor, who he said responded, “We don’t have time to learn how to play the guitar. I’m going to teach you how to play these five Bruce Springsteen songs and that’s it.”
“So I feel still very ill-equipped,” he added.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere hits theaters Oct. 24.
