In brief: ‘Love Island: All Stars’ gets Peacock premiere date and more
The Producers Guild of America announced its nominees for the PGA Awards, which reward both film and TV projects. The films vying for the top prize of the Darryl F. Zanuck award for outstanding producer of theatrical motion pictures are Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, SentimentalValue, Sinners, Train Dreams and Weapons. This year’s winners will be awarded on Feb. 28 …
We now know who will star alongside Christopher Briney in the upcoming Amazon MGM Studios film ClashingThrough the Snow. Deadline reports that Landman and 1923‘s Michelle Randolph will play the female lead opposite Briney in the movie, which is being described as Planes, Trains and Automobiles for a new generation …
I got a text! It says that Love Island: All Stars will return to Peacock to premiere its third season on Jan. 14. This spinoff series features fan-favorite U.K. Islanders as they spend their days in a South African villa attempting to find love and hoping not to get dumped from the Island. Maya Jama returns as host for the series’ third season …
We have never, ever been happier. Euphoria season 3 is set to premiere on HBO and HBO Max on April 3, 2026. The network made the announcement by sharing a graphic featuring Zendaya in costume as Rue to its Instagram. “Let’s ride. April 2026. #Euphoria,” the caption reads …
More episodes of Your Friends & Neighbors are headed to Apple TV in the spring. The streaming service has revealed that season 2 of the Jon Hamm-starring drama series from creator Jonathan Tropper will premiere on April 3, 2026. A new episode of the show will drop weekly each Friday through June 5. Season 2 finds Hamm’s Andrew Cooper doubling down on his life as a suburban thief. James Marsden joins the cast that also stars Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn …
New seasons of Boston Blue and Sheriff Country are in the works. CBS has renewed the two broadcast series for sophomore seasons. They’ll both air during the 2026-27 TV season. Boston Blue is a spinoff of the network’s series Blue Bloods, while Sheriff Country is an offshoot of the drama series Fire Country …
The two-part documentary, which was directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, arrives to HBO on Thursday. Apatow told ABC Audio that Brooks needed a bit of convincing before he agreed to become the subject of another retrospective.
“There had been other pieces made about him in the past, and I wanted to do something more personal. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about that,” Apatow said. “My main pitch was, ‘But Mel, you get to hang out with me,’ you know, like, ‘We get to talk and when else are we going to have a reason to talk for 10 hours?’ And he’s like, ‘OK, I’ll do it.'”
Bonfiglio said that Brooks’ style of comedy in movies like Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein became a brand unto itself.
“The Mel Brooks brand is big, laugh-out-loud funny, going for the huge, huge laughs, no-holds-barred, kind of busted all open kind of humor. Not a lot of subtlety, but always so funny,” Bonfiglio said.
Apatow said that the daring nature of Brooks’ comedy is not something that could be replicated today.
“He certainly was as daring as you can be,” Apatow said. “What’s most impressive is that at a time when people weren’t making much work like that, he decided to plant his flag and make a movie that mocked racism in a way that was such a strong point of view that even today people are like, ‘Whoa, did you see that?’ I mean, it certainly doesn’t seem tamer as the years pass. And I think the lesson of it is still very, very important, unfortunately.”
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.”
