film

Two of the biggest box-office standouts of 2026 so far were not made by established studio directors or built on franchise IP.

“Obsession” and “Backrooms” — horror films from internet-native directors in their 20s — have outperformed far more expensive studio releases.

The breakout success of these films has ignited debate across Hollywood about what made these movies so popular, especially among Gen Z moviegoers who haven’t been flocking to cinemas in recent years. Here’s what to know:

The numbers

”Obsession” was directed by 26-year-old Curry Barker, who got his start on YouTube with sketch comedy and horror shorts. Released May 15 by Focus Features, the film was made for just $750,000 but opened to a staggering $17 million and has improved on its debut every weekend since.

“Obsession” set an all-time horror record for the biggest fourth weekend for a film at the domestic box office, raking in $25.4 million. It now ranks as the year’s fifth most popular film, nearing $200 million domestically and roughly $295 million worldwide — ahead of Pixar’s “Hoppers” ($166 million) and Paramount’s “Scream 7” ($121 million), per Box Office Mojo.

“Backrooms,” from 21-year-old Kane Parsons — known on YouTube as Kane Pixels — drew on an online fascination with liminal spaces, leading audiences through an endless run of nearly indistinguishable rooms.

Released May 29 by A24 (known for such acclaimed films as “Moonlight” and Everything Everywhere All at Once”) on a reported $10-million budget, it opened to $81 million and crossed $100 million in under a week.

Within two and a half weeks, it had outgrossed the entire theatrical runs of horror films “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” “Smile” and “Scream 7.” It sits as 2026’s eighth-highest-grossing film.

Who is watching?

The audiences are young. In recent weeks, nearly 90% of “Backrooms’” viewers were under 35, with more than half under 25. Over “Obsession’s” first few weekends, 75% of the audience was 17 to 34, which is significant at a time when major studios have struggled to consistently get younger viewers to trek to the multiplex.

Why it’s working

Audiences have clearly latched onto the stories, said Jason Blum of Blumhouse–Atomic Monster, who worked on both films.

“There’s been an audience kind of waiting to get back to the movie theaters, and we in Hollywood really have not landed on what would get them back,” he told The Times in an interview this week.

Blum, who upended horror genre with the “Paranormal Activity” franchise, ties the success of “Backrooms” and “Obsession” to a connection to the directors’ origins.

Because the films were made by creators who speak to younger viewers daily on YouTube, he said, that generation “feels like they’re being spoken to.”

David Gross, an analyst at FranchiseRe, framed it as a new pipeline of talent and material. Creators can build large followings very inexpensively, he said, and their stories arrive further developed — which expedites the development and discovery process. He called internet-based storytelling “another additive source for material for movies.” Blum added that the films’ success could make studios more willing to bet on undiscovered directors who “might not have been considered” before.

Rosie Ramirez, chief marketing officer at Galaxy Theatres, said a young first-wave audience tends to generate buzz. More than a month after “Obsession” was released, she said, the Nevada chain’s four California locations are only now seeing a second wave of moviegoers curious about the hype.

Notably, the rise of these two films has unfolded in the shadow of major releases like Disney’s “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” and Mattel’s “Masters of the Universe,” both of which returned underwhelming numbers in their respective opening weekends.

Is it a trend or an anomaly?

Whether this marks a lasting shift or a fluke is unclear. May crossed $1 billion in box office — with “Backrooms” and “Obsession” doing much of the heavy lifting. Despite the improvement, the box office has yet to full return to pre-pandemic levels, with the summer tracking roughly 3.5% behind summer 2019, said Comscore’s Paul Dergarabedian.

And Dergarabedian questioned how the industry could replicate a success that, in his words, was “authentically and organically created” rather than manufactured: “It just happened,” he said.

Ramirez argued the broader summer slate — franchise tentpoles like “Toy Story 5” alongside some original surprises — points to a healthy box office regardless, a reminder that “it doesn’t always have to be the big summer blockbuster.”

What is the angriest acting performance you’ve ever seen?

Maybe it’s Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas.” (“Funny how? Do I amuse you?”) Perhaps it’s James Caan kicking the stuffing out of his ne’er-do-well brother-in-law Carlo in “The Godfather.” John Goodman enforcing the rules of bowling in “The Big Lebowski”? It’s in the conversation.

Did Ben Kingsley in “Gandhi” cross your mind? Probably not.

The 82-year-old Oscar winner thinks it should.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. Don Logan or Mahatma Gandhi? The answer isn’t as plain as you might think.

Not long ago, I spoke with Kingsley just before an Emmy FYC event for “Wonder Man,” the enjoyable new Marvel TV series that finds him revisiting Trevor Slattery, the washed-up, drug-addled actor he first played in 2013’s “Iron Man 3.”

“Wonder Man” follows struggling actor Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), trying to land a big break in Hollywood while keeping his superpowers hidden. Trevor befriends Simon. Initially he has ulterior motives, but soon becomes Simon’s mentor, turning the series into a look at the indignities that actors face while pursuing their profession.

Taking notes while watching the show’s eight episodes, I wrote, “Ben Kingsley’s seething anger is everything.”

You may remember Kingsley’s bullying and badgering and swaggering menace playing the underworld sociopath in Jonathan Glazer’s 2000 crime-thriller “Sexy Beast,” still my favorite Kingsley performance, one that earned him a supporting actor Oscar nomination. (He lost to Jim Broadbent in “Iris.”)

Is that kind of boiling rage as fun to play as it is to watch?

“If the expression of rage or indignation is completely dramatically justified and that expression of indignation is of enormous benefit to the tribe, yes,” Kingsley answers.

Kingsley says Itzhak Stern, Oskar Schindler’s loyal aide and factory manager in “Schindler’s List,” was, “bless him,” all about “contained rage.”

“And a colleague of mine who saw ‘Gandhi’ said, ‘That’s the angriest performance I’ve ever seen on screen,’” Kingsley continues. “That righteous indignation propelled him, and it can be expressed in many ways. Sometimes the safety valve is efficient enough to allow it to come through language and gesture, and sometimes the safety valve can’t hold it.

“That was Don Logan in ‘Sexy Beast.’ No safety valve.”

Let’s circle back to that thought of how rage can help the “tribe.” In “Wonder Man,” Trevor proclaims that “acting is not a job. It’s a calling, the single most consequential thing anyone could ever do with their life.”

“I would broaden the definition and refine it back to its origins,” Kingsley says when I ask if he shares Trevor’s view on acting. “There are images, thoughts and threads that I find nourishing and sustaining, and I treasure them. The tribal storyteller is a very consequential figure in the tribe, and if the mantle of the tribal storyteller falls upon that person’s shoulders, that is the single most consequential thing that person can do in their lives.”

“Trevor expresses it quite differently, and that’s fine,” Kingsley says. “That’s in the script. I honor the lines. But for me personally, as a rather convoluted answer, the tribal storyteller is the hand I hold and the baton I want passed on to me. Maybe it has. I hope I’m worthy, but it’s …” Kingsley widens his eyes and whispers, “Wow.”

“It is the single most consequential thing I can do with my life.”

TOY STORY 5

(PG) 102 minutes

★★★★☆

IT’S more than 30 years since the first Toy Story film changed the way we look at the contents of an old toy box.

And it might seem that after four films — and a pretty dire Buzz Lightyear spin-off in 2022 — that the story of toys could have been packed up and put in the loft for ever.

But, no. There’s always room for another play.

And Woody, Buzz and their motley crew realise there’s a new enemy sucking the imagination out of their beloved children’s minds: Technology.

The film focuses on good old rootin’-tootin’ Cowgirl Jessie (voiced by Joan Cusack), who is favoured by her owner, Bonnie.

The kid loves nothing more than playing games where Jessie and Buzz Lightyear get hitched.

Sadly, the neighbourhood kids don’t want to join in with Bonnie. In fact, they laugh at her suggestions.

When Jessie goes on a mission to persuade them otherwise, she watches as they all sit staring at devices, like little zombies.

“That’s not playing!” she exclaims. “They’re not even looking up.”

In a misguided act of kindness, Bonnie’s parents buy her a Lilypad (Greta Lee) — a kid-friendly tablet that she can use to “connect” with other children. And, as you can imagine, this does the opposite.

Bonnie becomes addicted to the screen, while shunning her toys, losing her imagination and getting cyber-bullied by the girls in her class.

So, it becomes Jessie and the crew’s job to get her away from the screen and the misery it brings. Which, as any parent will know, is a near impossible task.

There is also another story running alongside it involving a shipment of new Buzz Lightyears trying to find their way to a star.

At the same time, Woody has to be brought into the pack as he’s living on the outside with the rebellious Bo Peep.

The brilliant dynamic between competitive pals Woody and Buzz is hugely missed here — as is Randy Newman’s superb theme tune, You’ve Got A Friend In Me.

This time, Taylor Swift’s original song, I Knew It, I Knew You, is played at the credits.

And Jessie’s relentless energy also becomes a little grating.

However, it’s great to see the gang back together on the big screen, and this outing has enough entertainment and imagination to make sure you won’t check your phone throughout.

EFFI O BLAENAU

(15) 90mins

★★★★★

THIS hard-hitting drama is adapted from Gary Owen’s one-woman play Iphigenia In Splott, which transforms his doomed Greek tragedy character into a working-class woman.

Effi (Leisa Gwenllian) has a bleak life, spending her days drinking vodka from a mug with her mates and eating Pot Noodles in a grim house in the Welsh valleys.

Her joy comes from club nights in Llandudno, where she meets handsome soldier Lee (Tom Rhys Harries) and the pair have a passionate one-night stand.

After he ghosts her, Effi discovers she’s pregnant.

But in the poorly maintained hospital in the poverty-stricken area, an NHS maternity care horror story then changes her life forever.

This Welsh-language film is a breathtaking work by director Marc Evans.

It strikes the perfect balance of grit and heart to make the subject matter compelling.

Gwenllian’s performance as the unpredictable and broken Effi is a masterclass in how to make an initially unlikeable character be- come someone you want to throw your arms around and care for.

FAMILIAR TOUCH

(12) 90mins

★★★☆☆

IN her debut feature film, director Sarah Friedland brings to life a moving story about a woman with dementia who is placed in a retirement community.

We meet clever, stylish Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) as she’s making a delicious meal with immaculate precision. Yet at one point, she pops a piece of toast on to the dish-drying rack.

Her son then arrives – whose name she needs a reminder of – and she wonders about his profession and acts as though they may be on a date.

But he is there to take her to an assisted-living home.

Ruth has significant short-term memory loss, though she can still reel off the recipes with precision.

She enters with little protest, apart from telling the carer, in front of her son, that she never wanted children.

Chalfant’s performance is brilliant and has none of the clichés of the elderly.

Ruth is still a sassy, flirty woman who really knows her own mind even though it is betraying her.

This gentle film has a slow pace and the long, silent scenes often ask a lot of the audience – and there’s no rush in unravelling the story.

But its subtle characterisation makes it compelling and somehow uplifting.

Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Jessie will be back at the box office this weekend, delivering what could be the biggest film debut of the year.

Analysts expect the fifth installment of Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story” franchise will pull in at least $150 million in the U.S. and Canada, with some predicting as much as $175 million — either of which would set a franchise record, topping the nearly $121-million opening of 2019’s “Toy Story 4.”

A strong showing for “Toy Story 5” will further fuel a recovery of the box office this year from the post-pandemic doldrums.

Domestic ticket sales are up over last year, and Roth Capital Partners forecasts the second quarter will climb 6.5% to $2.8 billion — a post-pandemic high.

“Toy Story 5” is the first of several family tentpoles this summer, ahead of Universal and Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters” and Disney’s live-action “Moana.”

“Right now we’re on pace for the best opening of the year,” said Daniel Loria, editorial director at Box Office Co. “This is a performer.”

The timing also is fortuitous for Walt Disney Co. at a moment when its other once-reliable franchises such as “Star Wars” and Marvel have faltered. The recent “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” dropped sharply at the domestic box office after its late-May opening, bested by low-budget horror films “Backrooms” and “Obsession.”

“People love these characters from ‘Toy Story,’ ” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore. “It’s just as appealing as ever.”

Indeed, across four films and 30 years, “Toy Story” has grossed more than $3 billion worldwide. It is the most-watched franchise on Disney+, with more than 2 billion hours streamed. Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Jessie have spawned 19 theme park rides, four themed lands, two hotels and roughly $1 billion a year in global retail sales.

The production budget for “Toy Story 5” is about $150 million to $200 million. A crew of about 300 people worked on the film at Pixar’s Emeryville, Calif., headquarters.

For Pixar, the reliance on “Toy Story” reflects a shift away from originals that used to be its lifeblood.

February’s “Hoppers” managed a respectable $372 million worldwide, but the surer money now comes from sequels.

“Inside Out 2” grossed nearly $1.7 billion in 2024, and both “Toy Story 4” and “Toy Story 3” crossed $1 billion globally.

Still, the franchise label is no guarantee: The 2022 spin-off “Lightyear” stalled at $226 million worldwide after straying from the formula, recasting Buzz as an actual sci-fi hero — voiced by Chris Evans rather than Tim Allen — and sidelining Woody and the rest of the gang.

“Toy Story 5” stays closer to home but wades into new territory: the explosion of tech in everyday life. The toys must contend with Lilypad, a tablet that captures the attention of their owner, Bonnie — a premise that grew out of a tech-toy character originally written for “Toy Story 4” and scrapped for time. Disney is betting the underlying tension is universal.

“What parent hasn’t had anxiety over tech versus toys with their kids?” said Andrew Cripps, head of theatrical distribution for Walt Disney Studios.

Disney is betting that this universal concern will drive audiences to the film.

The fifth installment also arrives with an unusually high-wattage assist: Taylor Swift wrote and performed an original song, “I Knew It, I Knew You,” and made a surprise appearance at last week’s premiere, performing it after the credits before joining longtime franchise composer Randy Newman for “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.”

“It means the world to me to be a small part of the universe of these films,” Swift told the crowd.

The expected blockbuster opening for “Toy Story 5” would be a full-circle moment for the long-standing franchise; Pixar animators in 1995 hadn’t even considered the possibility of a sequel while working on the first “Toy Story.”

“There was so much learned on that first film, specifically our iterative process,” Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter said in a phone call last week from Madrid, shortly before the film’s Spain premiere. “A lot of things that we discovered having worked on that film have just continued to inform every movie that we make.”

“Toy Story” revolutionized the movie business as the first computer-animated feature film. But its enduring appeal was in the bonds between the characters, Docter said.

Docter, who supervised animators and helped with character design and writing on the original “Toy Story,” added: “It certainly had some new technology, but it was really up to the story and characters to carry the audience.”

The franchise’s longevity is also due to its ability to capture generations of fans.

“Having parents now that say, ‘I grew up with “Toy Story,” and now I’m showing my kids,’ has been really gratifying,” Docter said.

In this week’s episode of “The De Los Podcast,” hosts Fidel Martinez and Suzy Exposito sat down with actor Xolo Maridueña to chat about his East L.A. upbringing, the importance of Latino representation in his career and a litany of projects he has in the works.

Born and raised in El Sereno, Maridueña was exposed to the arts at a very young age through local community arts hubs Casa 0101 and the Boyle Heights Art Conservatory, where his mother, Carmelita Ramírez-Sánchez, now serves as executive director.

The 25-year-old actor credited his mom, who also previously worked as a radio DJ for decades in L.A., for encouraging him to explore a creative career.

“She was in the music world at a time when that wasn’t really a thing as a Latina woman,” Maridueña said. “She met so many roadblocks and overcame those that when it came time to for her to eventually raise her own family, she understood the want to try something that was outside of what the education system would deem successful. As a Latina, she also instilled these values of remaining curious, questioning certain traditions and the ways our experiences are affected by some systems that are larger than ourselves.”

He also touched on what it was like being the first Latino lead in a live-action superhero film in “Blue Beetle” — and the importance of continued Latino representation in Hollywood.

“It was such a wild ride doing something like ‘Blue Beetle,’ that was the first in a lot of categories… But once the movie came out, it was so heartwarming to see that there were already like 10 other Latino superheroes that were making their debuts on the screen,” Maridueña said. “[Filming the movie] was the first time I had witnessed some much of the crew being Latino, or just being diverse — there were a lot of women and queer folks on that set.”

Having worked on hit series like “Parenthood” and the Netflix phenomenon “Cobra Kai” in addition to his theatrical roles, Maridueña wants to help provide an avenue for fellow Latino artists to succeed.

“I just hope [that] with this body of work, I can help open the door and prop it open for everyone else,” he said.

The conversation with Maridueña wrapped with him discussing the litany of projects he has coming out in the near future, including a leading role in the film “Dog Years” alongside Xochitl Gomez, a part in the Al Pacino-led movie “Killing Castro” and a spot in the upcoming season of Netflix’s live-action adaptation of “One Piece.”

He will also feature alongside Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in the upcoming sequel to the witchy 1998 film “Practical Magic,” which is set for release Sept. 11.

“It’s been a blessing to expand not only the types of people I’ve gotten to work with, but [also] the genres and types of characters I’ve gotten to bring on to the screen,” said Maridueña. “Projects like ‘One Piece’ are so wonderful for the reach and then movies like ‘Dog Years’ and ‘Killing Castro’ are just as fulfilling in the sense that because they get to be smaller productions, the cast and crew have a bit more ownership of what they’re doing.”

The Scream movie series is one of horror’s most successful franchises and has seven films under its belt

A star from the horror film franchise Scream has revealed the surprising amount he still earns from one of the movies.

Back in 1996, the Scream series kicked off with its first instalment. Directed by Wes Craven, the film followed Sidney Prescott and her friends being targeted by a sadistic killer who donned a black cloak and white mask: Ghostface.

Due to the first film’s success, several more movies followed including a sequel in 1997, and a third instalment in 2000. Then, after 11 years Scream 4 was released in 2011.

And more recently, the slasher franchise was brought back in 2022 for a fifth movie and 2023 for a sixth. This year, a seventh film was released which became the highest-grossing film of the series so far.

The satirical whodunnit was a huge hit thanks to a clever script penned by Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven’s direction, while the characters’ awareness and acknowledgement of horror film clichés was uncommon at the time. Scream helped to revive interest in the teen slasher genre.

And this week, a star from Scream 2 revealed his residual pay from the film 29 years after its release. Actor and comedian Craig Shoemaker appeared in the sequel, Scream 2 – which made $172 million at the box office.

Craig played the role of ‘Artsy Teacher’ in the instalment. Taking to his Instagram, he shared a photo of his residuals cheque which revealed he made a total of $34.09.

He captioned the post: “In 1999 | was cast in the role of the film professor in the sequel of the original Scream movie, Scream 2, where I lead a conversation in class about film sequels. The residuals keep rolling in, baby! What should I buy with my 34 bucks?”

The latest Scream movie, Scream 7, was released earlier this year. The film shifted the focus back to the original final girl, Sidney Prescott – played by Neve Campbell and her teenage daughter Tatum, played by Isabel May.

Neve didn’t appear in the sixth Scream film in 2024, which starred Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera as sisters who discover a serious connection to one of the original Ghostface killers, Billy Loomis.

Neve announced she would be stepping away from the 2024 Scream film after a dispute over pay. She said in a statement: “Sadly, I won’t be making the next Scream film. As a woman I have had to work extremely hard in my career to establish my value, especially when it comes to Scream.

“I felt the offer that was presented to me did not equate to the value I have brought to the franchise. It’s been a very difficult decision to move on,” Neve added.

She continued: “To all my Scream fans, I love you. You’ve always been so incredibly supportive to me. I’m forever grateful to you and to what this franchise has given me over the past 25 years.”

TOY STORY 5

(PG) 102 minutes

★★★★☆

IT’S been over 30 years since Disney’s Pixar changed the way we all look at the contents of an old toy box forever, with the creation of 1995’s Toy Story.

And it might seem that after four films – and a pretty dire Buzz Lightyear spin-off in 2022 – that the story of toys might have been packed up and put in the loft forever.

But, no. There’s always room for another play.

And Woody, Buzz and their motley crew realise there’s a new enemy sucking the imagination out of their beloved children’s minds: technology.

This film focuses on rootin’-tootin’ Cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack), who is favoured by her owner, Bonnie.

The kid loves nothing more than playing games where Jessie and Buzz Lightyear get hitched.

Sadly, the neighbourhood kids don’t want to join in with Bonnie. In fact, they laugh at her suggestions.

And when Jessie goes on a mission to persuade them otherwise, she watches as they all sit staring at devices, like little zombies.

“That’s not playing!” she exclaims. “They’re not even looking up.” In a misguided act of kindness, Bonnie’s parents buy her a Lilypad (Greta Lee) – a kid-friendly tablet that she can ‘connect’ with other children on.

And, as you can imagine, this does the opposite – making Bonnie addicted to the screen – while shunning her toys, losing her imagination and becoming gently cyber-bullied by the girls in her class.

So, it becomes Jessie and the crew’s job to get her away from the screen and the misery it brings. Which, as any parent will know, is a near impossible task.

There is also another story running alongside it involving a shipment of new Buzz Lightyears trying to find their way to a star.

Also, Woody has to be brought into the pack as he’s still living on the outside with the rebellious Bo Peep.

These multiple storylines make Toy Story 5 disjointed in places, and while plenty of fresh ideas are shown, it keeps repeating the idea of kids growing out of playing with toys.

The brilliant dynamic between the competitive pals Woody and Buzz is missed – as is Randy Newman’s superb theme tune You’ve Got a Friend in Me (this time Taylor Swift’s original song “I Knew It, I Knew You” is played at the credits).

And Jessie’s relentless energy becomes a little grating.

However, it’s great to see the gang back on the big screen – and it has enough entertainment, imagination and heart to make sure you won’t check your phone throughout.

Toy Story 5 is out on Friday.

A VHS tape of 1993’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” introduced brothers Roy and Arturo Ambriz to the tactile whimsy of stop-motion, an animation technique where physical objects are manipulated and photographed frame by frame to achieve the illusion of life.

Realizing that the characters on screen were figures in real sets shocked the Mexican filmmakers’ young minds and set them on an arduous path to craft their own worlds.

“If there’s something we’ve loved our whole lives it’s toys: collecting them, modifying them, playing with them, creating dioramas for them,” said Roy, 36, from under his dark shades during a recent interview at Netflix Animation Studios in Burbank.

“And for us, the most sublime moments in life are when we’re doing something artistic, whether that’s painting, drawing or sculpting. And stop-motion animation combines all of that.”

The culmination of years of tireless work and financial stress for the Ambriz siblings is the breathtaking period fantasy “I Am Frankelda,” Mexico’s first-ever stop-motion feature, which is now streaming on Netflix.

“Thankfully, no one put it into our heads that it was impossible to do this,” said Arturo, 38. “That’s why we don’t like going around saying that this is extremely difficult, because maybe if young people hear that, they might not want to do stop-motion. Don’t tell them!”

A lavish musical, “I Am Frankelda” follows Francisca Imelda (voiced by Mireya Mendoza), a young aspiring writer living in 19th century Mexico and struggling to publish her stories. Meanwhile, in the Realm of Spooks, an alternative reality that’s home to all of the fictional characters Francisca has written, Herneval (Juan Pablo Monterrubio), a winged prince, must save his parents and his kingdom. The creatures in this world live off of human fear, so they create our nightmares.

Herneval crosses into the human world to bring Francisca with him to the Realm of Spooks, so that she can write new nightmares that actually scare people. Humans have become difficult to terrify. By this point, a frustrated Francisca has decided to change her name to Frankelda (a reference to “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelley, who inspired the character). Frankelda and Herneval sing of the relationship between fiction and reality. One can’t exist without the other.

Frankelda was first introduced as part of the 2021 series “Frankelda’s Book of Spooks,” which HBO Max commissioned. In the show, the heroine shares nightmarish tales alongside Herneval, who appears not as a prince but a sentient book. The film “I Am Frankelda” is a prequel that explains the relationship between these characters.

Last month, “I Am Frankelda” screened at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, where Guillermo del Toro moderated the post-screening Q&A. A longtime mentor of the Ambriz brothers, Del Toro first supported them by donating to a Kickstarter campaign to finance their ambitious 2016 short film inspired by cubist art, “Revoltoso,” about a one-eyed boar living during the Mexican Revolution.

“In that moment, it was incredibly validating to realize that if Guillermo liked what we were doing, then it made sense to keep on doing it,” Roy said.

Two years apart in age, Roy and Arturo both studied filmmaking at the Centro, a university in Mexico City. Yet directing together wasn’t always the plan.

“I said, ‘We have to co-direct,’ because the situation naturally lent itself for me, being the older one, to take on the role of director while Roy would serve as production designer. But at a certain point, I realized that the hierarchy was wrong, and that if we wanted something sustainable for the rest of our lives, it had to be a 50/50 split between us. And I mean, 50/50, Roy!” said Arturo, playfully chastising his younger brother.

“It’s more like 60/40, with me having 60% of the power,” Roy added laughing.

In 2011, not long after graduating, Arturo found himself ridden with anxiety. Over the course of his education, he’d focused on artistic excellence but hadn’t much thought about how to actually make a living out of his and his brother’s shared passion. That’s when he decided they should create their own studio, Cinema Fantasma, so as to have control of the projects they took on. Their productions for hire include the Adult Swim show “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads,” which was produced entirely at their company in Mexico City.

“It’s been very difficult because we are filmmakers by vocation, but we are businesspeople by necessity,” said Arturo. “Developing that side of things has been the hardest part, but both are indispensable.”

To wrap up the “Frankelda” series, HBO Max requested a 30-minute special. Instead of accepting that offer, Roy suggested they use the proposed budget allocated to partially fund a full-length feature film. HBO Max agreed with the caveat that the brothers would have to come up with the rest of the money needed on their own.

To finance “I Am Frankelda,” Roy and Arturo mortgaged two homes. They are losing one of them to pay off their debts, so it helps that their dream of animation is a family affair. Their parents are executive producers on “Frankelda”; Roy’s wife, Ana Coronilla, worked as production designer; and Arturo’s spouse, Irene Melis, as a director of photography.

That “I Am Frankelda” is a musical is due in great part to Roy’s love of musical theater.

“At first, Arturo wasn’t sure, but using my 60% share of the power, I convinced him that it should be a musical,” Roy said. Yet it’s Arturo who wrote the lyrics to musical numbers. Each track starts as a poem that composer Kevin Smithers transformed into songs.

A fantastical stop-motion musical period piece, “I Am Frankelda” is far from an easy sell, and that’s what makes its existence all the more astonishing. The Ambriz brothers’ creative pursuit of the unpopular and the unfeasible has bonded them with Del Toro.

“He is our most important mentor and the person we admire most in the world, and we also share many of the same interests,” Arturo explained. “That’s why when we saw ‘Pan’s Labyrinth,’ it was like when the glass slipper fits Cinderella. It was exactly what we loved: monsters, war, the cruelty of the human spirit, fairies and period settings.”

“Did you just call yourself Cinderella?” Roy interjected with the mischievous smirk typical of a younger brother trying to ruffle some feathers.

“Yes!” Arturo said quietly but without hesitation.

Every time they hear Del Toro speak about his interests, the Ambriz brothers discover a new well of references and “cultural protein,” from authors to painters.

“Guillermo is someone who actively champions the work of others, which I believe is the right way for an artist to be,” Arturo said.

When they finished “I Am Frankelda,” the brothers sent it to Del Toro, eager to hear his thoughts. As soon as he watched it, Del Toro called them.

“We spoke with him for hours, and he told us everything he saw, obviously with great tact, sharing both the good and the not-so-good,” Roy recalled. “But most importantly, he kept telling us that we had created something unprecedented. He insisted that we would pull through, even though we had ended up with a lot of debt.”

The version of “I Am Frankelda” that premiered at film festivals in 2025 is not the same one that will be available on Netflix. Based on Del Toro’s thorough feedback, the filmmakers recut the film and even animated new scenes. They playfully refer to this new cut that audiences will see globally as “The Grandfather Cut,” to honor Del Toro’s influence.

That “I Am Frankelda” was picked for distribution by Netflix is also Del Toro’s doing, the brothers said. It was the veteran director who suggested the film to the streaming company.

“I Am Frankelda” debuted in Mexico last October to an incredible reception, in part thanks to the fandom the characters had amassed via the episodic series.

“We receive fan art and fan fiction every day. People send us photos cosplaying the characters or of their ‘Frankelda’-themed quinceañeras. We’ve even bought bootleg merch at Mexican markets and on Temu or AliExpress too,” Roy said.

“We’ve bought ‘Frankelda’ socks from there that are of terrible quality, but all the more beautiful because of their bad quality,” he added.

“Of course, there are haters, too, but a large segment of the audience really identified with Frankelda as someone who perseveres, as someone who refuses to let her detractors hold her back. It’s been really beautiful watching that fandom grow,” Arturo said.

Another conviction where they align with Del Toro is their disinterest in engaging with artificial intelligence.

“AI is the antithesis of stop-motion. We’re not even remotely interested in it, because we do stop-motion to enjoy the artistic processes,” Roy said. “We created the studio for painting, drawing, sculpting and writing. Whatever happens with AI doesn’t really matter to us.”

Their second feature, “The Ballad of the Phoenix,” a medieval fantasy, is already in the works.

There are more than 100 Emmy categories, and if you scroll through each and every one of them on the Television Academy’s website, you’re probably one of those people who read the terms and conditions on a document before signing your name.

This hasn’t been the greatest year for television, which has had the converse effect of prompting me to sample more shows than ever in a quest to unearth that one hidden gem that merits a place on my mock Emmy ballot. Truth be told, I’m still looking. I’m sure I’ve missed something. And I’m sure you’ll let me know.

In the meantime, here are my picks for the top 15 categories — five each for comedy, drama and limited series — along with a brief line of reasoning for each. And if it’s predictions you’re after, you can find our full BuzzMeter panel’s choices here. Emmy nominations will be announced July 8.

Comedy series

“Abbott Elementary”
“The Bear”
“The Comeback”
“Hacks”
“The Lowdown”
“Margo’s Got Money Troubles”
“The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins”
“Shrinking”

Sterlin Harjo’s “The Lowdown” feels like it’s on the same trajectory as his last series, “Reservation Dogs,” an under-the-radar charmer that grows in estimation as its audience builds. Noir crime stories don’t come more delightful.

Comedy actress

Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary”
Rose Byrne, “Platonic”
Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear”
Elle Fanning, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles”
Lisa Kudrow, “The Comeback”
Jean Smart, “Hacks”

“Platonic” heightened the chaos and conflict in its second season, affording the gifted Byrne additional room to flex her comic chops. How do you sleep on a show starring a newly minted Oscar nominee?

Comedy actor

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, “Wonder Man”
Ethan Hawke, “The Lowdown”
Tracy Morgan, “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins”
Jason Segel, “Shrinking”
Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building”
Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear”

Morgan acting oblivious is one of the funniest things ever.

Comedy supporting actress

Hannah Einbinder, “Hacks”
Janelle James, “Abbott Elementary”
Ashley Padilla, “Saturday Night Live”
Michelle Pfeiffer, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles”
Sheryl Lee Ralph, “Abbott Elementary”
Jeanne Tripplehorn, “The Lowdown”
Jessica Williams, “Shrinking”

The Padilla Pause is one reason I’m watching “Saturday Night Live” again.

Comedy supporting actor

Harrison Ford, “Shrinking”
Marcello Hernández, “Saturday Night Live”
Ben Kingsley, “Wonder Man”
Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “The Bear”
Nick Offerman, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles”
Stephen Root, “Widow’s Bay”
Tyler James Williams, “Abbott Elementary”

Hernández’s charisma and physical comedy is another.

Drama series

“Industry”
“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”
“The Night Manager”
“Paradise”
“The Pitt”
“Pluribus”
“Slow Horses”
“Task”

How many Emmy voters finally caught up on “Industry,” the fast-paced drama about a group of cutthroat Gen Zers? Four seasons in, it’s more addictive than ever.

Drama actress

Caitriona Balfe, “Outlander”
Myha’la, “Industry”
Chase Infiniti, “The Testaments”
Michelle Pfeiffer, “The Madison”
Rhea Seehorn, “Pluribus”
Zendaya, “Euphoria”

Now that “Outlander” is over, it’s time to pour one out for Balfe. Over the course of eight seasons, she hopscotched through time, enduring and overcoming numerous assaults and kidnappings, dealing with grief and trauma and enjoying lots of emotionally grounded sex. Balfe has earned a final reward.

Drama actor

Sterling K. Brown, “Paradise”
Peter Claffey, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”
Tom Hiddleston, “The Night Manager”
Gary Oldman, “Slow Horses”
Mark Ruffalo, “Task”
Noah Wyle, “The Pitt”

Claffey turned bumbling into art.

Drama supporting actress

Isa Briones, “The Pitt”
Taylor Dearden, “The Pitt”
Fiona Dourif, “The Pitt”
Supriya Ganesh, “The Pitt”
Katherine LaNasa, “The Pitt”
Sepideh Moafi, “The Pitt”
Karolina Wydra, “Pluribus”

LaNasa should have bumped herself up to lead. As Whitaker explains to Langdon in Season 2’s penultimate episode, Robby’s the Professor of the ER and LaNasa’s Dana is the Skipper. And the Skipper should be lead.

Drama supporting actor

Patrick Ball, “The Pitt”
Diego Calva, “The Night Manager”
Shawn Hatosy, “The Pitt”
Gerran Howell, “The Pitt”
Ken Leung, “Industry”
Tom Pelphrey, “Task”
Carlos-Manuel Vesga, “Pluribus”

Pelphrey has called his desperate single dad on “Task” the role of a lifetime. No argument here.

Limited series

“Bait”
“Beef”
“DTF St. Louis”
“Death by Lightning”
“Half Man”

I put off watching the finale of the punishing “Half Man” for weeks. Does that mean the show worked?

Limited series/TV movie actress

Sally Field, “Remarkably Bright Creatures”
Camila Morrone, “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen”
Carey Mulligan, “Beef”
Sarah Pidgeon, “Love Story”
Robin Wright, “The Girlfriend”

I like her! Right now (and always), I like her!

Limited series/TV movie actor

Riz Ahmed, “Bait”
Charlie Hunnam, “Monster: The Ed Gein Story”
Matthew Macfadyen, “Death by Lightning”
Mitchell Robertson, “Half Man”
Michael Shannon, “Death by Lightning”

The young actors on “Half Man” — Robertson and Stuart Campbell — outshone their well-known counterparts.

Limited series/TV movie supporting actress

Linda Cardellini, “DTF St. Louis”
Grace Gummer, “Love Story”
Laurie Metcalf, “Monster: The Ed Gein Story”
Cailee Spaeny, “Beef”
Joy Sunday, “DTF St. Louis”
Constance Zimmer, “Love Story”

Both Cardellini and Sunday for “DTF St. Louis”? No way, José, you say? Yes way, I say. All the way!

Limited series/TV movie supporting actor

Jason Bateman, “DTF St. Louis”
Stuart Campbell, “Half Man”
Richard Gadd, “Half Man”
David Harbour, “DTF St. Louis”
Charles Melton, “Beef”
Nick Offerman, “Death by Lightning”

The mutton-chopped Chester A. Arthur joins Ron Swanson’s ’stache in television’s facial hair hall of fame.

Steven Spielberg’s latest sci-fi thriller, “Disclosure Day,” topped the box office this weekend, an encouraging sign for what could be a big summer for theaters.

The film, which stars Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor, brought in $44 million in the U.S. and Canada for a worldwide total of $92.9 million, according to studio estimates. The opening weekend totals beat box office analysts’ expectations of about $40 million to $50 million.

“Disclosure Day” is Spielberg’s latest alien-centric movie that charts a desperate race to show the world the truth about extraterrestrials.

The film, which had a production budget of about $115 million, was also scored by legendary composer and longtime Spielberg collaborator John Williams, who is now 94 years old.

Spielberg described the film in April as “way closer to truth than fiction” during a speech at the CinemaCon trade convention in Las Vegas. The veteran director of 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” 1982’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and 2005’s “War of the Worlds” said at the time that he’s been curious about “what’s going on in the night” since he was a child and “been very fixated on the possibilities.”

Focus Features’ “Obsession” came in second at the box office with a domestic haul of $19 million, a continuation of the film’s strong run in theaters.

“Scary Movie,” “Backrooms” and “Masters of the Universe” rounded out the top five at the box office.

Recent box office performance — particularly with Gen Z hits “Obsession” and A24’s “Backrooms” — along with a slate of upcoming blockbuster franchise installments has buoyed the hopes of exhibitors and studio executives for a strong summer.

Next week, Walt Disney Co. and Pixar will release “Toy Story 5,” while Warner Bros.’ DC Studios has “Supergirl” landing in late June.

Universal Pictures and Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters,” Disney’s live-action “Moana,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” are all slated for July.

That steady cadence of new and different films is key for a healthy box office and a successful summer, said Daniel Loria, editorial director at the Box Office Co.

“We’re seeing that momentum come back on a weekend-by-weekend basis,” he said. “What we needed to get back to a healthy industry post-pandemic is consistency, and that’s the difference here in 2026.”

The war film, which follows a young British soldier’s journey to the D-Day landings, is being praised by viewers as a more authentic and moving portrayal of WWII than Saving Private Ryan — and it’s currently available to stream in the UK

A “moving” and largely forgotten film from the 1970s depicting the D-Day landings is being hailed as “more realistic” than modern representations of the historic battle.

Overlord (1975) charts the experience of Thomas Beddows (Brian Stirner), a young British serviceman from his enlistment into the East Yorkshire Regiment, through initial training and ultimate participation in the Allies’ landmark amphibious invasion of German-held Normandy in June 1944 (codenamed Operation Overlord).

The picture, directed and co-written by Stuart Cooper, blends authentic archive material of the momentous military operation with sequences of Tom reflecting on his own death and the horrors awaiting him.

Screenrant writer Tommy Lethbridge observed that while it lacks the brutal, visceral intensity of the D-Day scenes featured in Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking 1998 picture Saving Private Ryan, Overlord ultimately provides a more “authentic” depiction of the clash between Allied and German troops.

This, he argued, stems from Overlord’s deployment of archival footage, combined with the incorporation of “extensive detail from real soldiers’ diaries, clips from British Army training missions”, and seized German material, all of which grant the work “unrivalled authenticity”.

Fans have flocked to IMDb to lavish praise on the lesser-known war epic, with one saying: “The archival footage which makes up much of the film’s most stunning imagery is meticulously chosen and edited.

“It frequently becomes Tom’s dreams and visions of the War as it unfolds, and for the viewer, it is a vision of what WWII was, seen from both German and British sides.”, reports the Express.

“Cooper so masterfully situates Tom, an everyman, in visions of the surrounding war, that by the end of this surprisingly short, yet incredibly rich film, the magnitude of the toll the war took on the individuals fighting it becomes overwhelmingly moving.”

Another added: “If you watched Saving Private Ryan, go and see this film too. It’s totally different, but it deals with the personal feelings of a private much better, no battle scenes, just the perfect backdrop about a normal soldier going off to war, knowing what will happen.”

A third described it as “not your average war film”, noting: “There’s very little in the way of dramatised battle scenes as it shows one soldier’s path to one of the most important, pivotal battles of all time: his farewells with family, his journey to his unit, his training, his preparation for Overlord.

“No heroics, no jingoism, just the reality of what soldiers go through in becoming soldiers and how they handle the fact that eventually they’ll need to use this training in deadly earnest.”

A fourth viewer said: “It’s a sad tale, one of the forgotten men in a conflict long ago, but its universality still stands strong.”

Overlord, which carries a 15 certificate, is available to buy or rent on both Amazon Prime and Apple TV.

Glenn Close is not going to be ignored this time around, as the eight-time Oscar nominee will finally receive recognition from the academy this fall.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, working up a healthy World Cup fever even if it’s just an excuse to head to Lucky Baldwin’s for a pint or two and watch Cristiano Ronaldo one last time.

But let’s circle back to American football and my digital cover story with “Beef” stars Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton, who watched a Super Bowl together, though they were cheering for different teams.

That Super Bowl in question was Super Bowl LIX, pitting the Philadelphia Eagles against the Kansas City Chiefs. Melton hosted a watch party, and since he considers Kansas home and played football for Kansas State University, you might think he’d be rooting for the Chiefs.

Nope.

“When I was living in Germany, I fell in love with Donovan McNabb,” Melton, an army brat, tells me, name-checking the longtime Eagles quarterback.

Spaeny, it turns out, was the only Chiefs fan at the party. To enter Melton’s home, she had to step on a doormat that was fitted with a red-and-white Chiefs jersey. (“It got real dirty,” Melton says with pride.)

Melton and Spaeny enjoy a relaxed and playful give-and-take, borne from the months they spent preparing to play Austin and Ashley, a Gen-Z couple working at a Montecito country club, dreaming and scheming toward upward mobility in “Beef.”

The most memorable episode they shared found the couple in an overcrowded, ninth-circle-of-hell emergency room with Ashley, uninsured, experiencing severe ovarian torsion. Her concerns are dismissed and she begs for someone to save her.

“Unfortunately, it’s an all-too-common experience,” Spaeny says. “I probably have a conversation once a month with female friends who go to the doctor’s office and are gaslit by the system, just being made to feel like what they’re experiencing isn’t really happening or they’re making it up. It’s scary.”

Still, being “Beef,” the episode has its share of mordant humor, like the scene where a nurse asks Ashley to rate her pain, zero being pain-free and 10 being excruciating.

“Oh, I thought it was like Letterboxd,” Ashley replies, referring to the movie review social platform. “Two-and-a-half stars out of five is average.”

“My whole life I’ve been a six or seven,” Melton says, noting his own personal pain scale. “I’ll have a cold and I’ll be like, ‘Six or seven.’”

“That sounds like you,” Spaeny says.

“I can get pretty dramatic,” Melton says. “It’s really like the end of the world when I’m sick.”

Spaeny deleted her Letterboxd account because she gets anxious about anything online containing reviews.

“It takes two buttons to click on a movie that I’ve been in and see what people say about me,” Spaeny says. “So I forgot my password and left it that way.”

Melton is an enthusiastic adopter and says he has twice shared his four favorite films, a feature where actors, usually on the red carpet, list a quartet of beloved movies. (Here’s one at the “May December” premiere where Melton enthuses over “The Matrix,” “In the Mood for Love,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “Persona.”)

“I saw them at another event and they were like, ‘Charles, so good to see you.’ And I was like, ‘Do you want my four favorite films?’ And they said, ‘No, you’ve already done it enough,’” Melton laughs. “What can I say? I love movies!”

The U.S. Justice Department has cleared the way for Paramount Skydance’s $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery — a major milestone that moves David Ellison closer to his goal.

After a months-long review, Justice Department antitrust regulators on Friday concluded the combination would not violate federal anticompetition laws. Approval had been expected because President Trump — who has friendly ties with Ellison and his father, tech billionaire Larry Ellison — favors the deal.

The government stopped short of asking Paramount to make concessions or divestitures.

Buying Warner Bros. would allow Paramount — Hollywood’s smallest major company — to bulk up with such prestigious properties as HBO, CNN, HGTV and Food Network. Those would be combined with properties Paramount already owns, including CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV.

The deal would put two historic film studios and two prominent news organizations under the same roof. It would give Paramount four streaming services, including HBO Max, and dozens of cable channels.

In its four-page closing statement, the Justice Department emphasized that career antitrust regulators — not political appointees — had performed a rigorous review, sifting through some two million documents the government received from dozens of sources, including third-party organizations.

They conducted meetings and deposed senior-level executives and other witnesses.

“These investigative efforts all led to the same conclusion: the film and television industry is highly dynamic, and the proposed transaction is not likely to harm competition or American consumers,” Justice Department regulators wrote in their summary.

Regulators zeroed in on three potential areas of concern. They looked at whether the merger would give Paramount too much power in the streaming video-on-demand market; the traditional linear television channel space; as well as in “studio development, production, or distribution of films for theatrical release,” the Justice Department said.

Competition in streaming would not be crimped, according to the regulators.

“To the contrary, the combined firm is likely to increase competition by offering consumers a more robust competitive alternative to the larger [streaming] offerings,” they wrote.

The antitrust division also found that theatrical distribution and opportunities for creators, including writers and actors, would not be harmed as long as the combined company maintained current production levels.

Ellison has promised to continue releasing 30 films a year with a combined Warner Bros.-Paramount studio. He also has said he would protect the HBO brand.

The proposed merger is controversial because many in Hollywood fear it will bring thousands of job losses, which was the result of past consolidations, including Walt Disney Co.’s 2019 takeover of Fox entertainment properties. More than 5,000 entertainment industry workers, including Jane Fonda, J.J. Abrams, Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo, have signed an open letter calling for the merger to be blocked.

There’s a political dimension as well. Paramount’s standing with the Trump administration (Paramount+ is set to televise Sunday’s UFC fight spectacle at the White House to celebrate Trump’s birthday as part of the company’s relationship with the UFC) has given left-leaning groups pause.

They worry about collapsing CNN and CBS News into one unit, particularly after all the turmoil that has ensued at CBS News since the Ellison family bought Paramount in August and installed Bari Weiss as CBS News editor in chief.

This month witnessed a dramatic shakeup at the iconic “60 Minutes,” with top executives and three well-known correspondents tossed out.

“We’ve already seen how far Paramount and the Ellison family are willing to go to diminish a once-proud network and news organization like CBS,” Craig Aaron, co-chief executive of the progressive group Free Press, said in a statement. His group fears the Ellisons would “do worse if they get their hands on Warner Bros., HBO, CNN and all the rest.”

Paramount, for its part, said it was grateful for “the Department of Justice’s thorough review of this transaction, as well as the work of the other agencies that have completed their reviews and provided clearance to date.”

“This deal is pro-competitive, resulting in a stronger company better positioned to compete against dominant technology platforms in an industry increasingly defined by intense competition for audiences, talent, technology, and investment,” Paramount said. “We remain focused on completing the transaction as soon as possible and delivering its benefits to consumers, creators, and the entertainment industry as a whole.”

Paramount wants to finalize its purchase by September.

With Friday’s victory, Paramount is staying on that timetable, but regulators in Europe and Britain have opened their own regulatory investigations and are expected to make their own determinations in the coming months.

Separately, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and other state attorneys general have been scrutinizing the proposed merger, and are widely expected to file a lawsuit, perhaps as early as this month, to try to block it.

Paramount applied for Justice Department approval in December — more than two months before it edged out Netflix in the Warner sweepstakes.

In its statement, the Justice Department said it began its review last fall when it was clear Warner Bros. was in play. Regulators said they were familiar with Warner’s businesses, because the division had scrutinized four other mergers involving the company, dating back to the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger in 2001.

Paramount’s deal would mark the third time Warner has changed hands in the last decade. AT&T bought the company in 2018 and then sold it to the smaller Discovery four years later. That deal left Warner Bros. burdened by debt, setting the stage for the Ellison takeover.

Justice Department approval could complicate efforts by Bonta and other state attorneys general to block the deal. Should Bonta or others sue, they would have to convince a judge that the nation’s top antitrust regulators failed to make a proper finding despite their lengthy review.

That may pose a high bar for the state officials, who are facing political pressure to stop the deal.

“State AGs must block this merger,” U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement Friday, adding that the Justice Department’s approval was “terrible news for every American who doesn’t want Trump-aligned billionaires to control what they watch and how much they pay.”

The Justice Department said state attorney general offices had participated in its investigation, which allowed federal and state officials “to share information with each other and for the States to attend and participate in the [antitrust] Division’s depositions.”

Last month, David Ellison appeared before the regulators in a two-hour session.

Paramount’s Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim, who previously served as the nation’s top antitrust regulator during the first Trump administration, also was busy quarterbacking Paramount’s outreach with regulators.

Gene Shalit, the fast-talking funnyman who reviewed films, plays and books for NBC’s “Today” show has died. He was 100.

Shalit’s family confirmed the longtime critic’s death Friday, telling NBC that he “passed away peacefully after 100 years of an amazing life.”

According to a 2010 interview with Guy Ludwig, Shalit’s producer for more than 20 years, Shalit was hired as a contributor at “Today” in 1968. He reviewed books once a month or so, but audiences were so fascinated by his eccentric personality and equally unconventional looks that NBC ramped up the critic’s on-air appearances.

In January 1973, on the same day he was promoted to arts editor, Shalit debuted “Critic’s Corner,” the segment that would ultimately make him a household name. In 2010, Shalit retired as one of the last regular film critics on a major network.

Ludwig referred to Shalit as the “foxy grandpa” of the “Today” show.

Shalit cut his teeth in media as an entertainment columnist for McCall’s magazine, eventually landing the role of senior film critic for Look magazine in 1968 and writing a humor column for Ladies’ Home Journal. His quick wit, punchy puns and unique voice came through even on the page, and NBC took notice.

“No one at NBC had seen him. They’d only read his stuff. So he walked into this executive’s office and the executive took one look at him and said, ‘Mr. Shalit, have you ever thought of radio?’” Ludwig told “Today.”

“They didn’t know how the public would react to someone who looked so different from people who were typically on TV in 1967.”

On “Critics Corner,” Shalit favored humor over the highfalutin. He was an everyman’s critic. Of 1997’s action-thriller “Face/Off,” he said, “Now, ‘Face/Off’ is a literal title, because both of their faces are taken off. Then each face is put onto the other’s head. Even their voices are switched with microchip implants. In other words, this is an entirely reasonable, rational movie!”

“Many critics will give so much of the plot of a movie away that they destroy the movie for the viewer … I just don’t give away the story,” he told the Associated Press in 1993.

During his tenure, he was known to bust up his colleagues, and “Today” anchors ranging from Edwin Newman, Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley to Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, Al Roker and Meredith Vieira.

But not everyone appreciated Shalit’s style. In 1989, a leaked in-house memo from “Today” show co-host Bryant Gumbel to Marty Ryan, the former executive producer of the NBC program, complained that Shalit’s film reviews “are often late and his interviews aren’t very good.”

Eugene Shalit was born March 25, 1926, in New York City and grew up in Morristown, N.J. He launched his elementary school’s first newspaper, “The Spotlight,” and purchased a fedora to seal his fate as a journalist. In Morristown High School he wrote the school newspaper’s humor column “The Broadcaster.” In 1949, he graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Shalit was married to Nancy Lewis for 28 years until her death in 1978 and never remarried. The couple had six children: Peter, Willa, Emily, Amanda, Nevin and Andrew. Emily died from ovarian cancer in 2012.

Obsession is maybe too hard-edged; interest too soft. But from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T” to his new sci-fi thriller “Disclosure Day,” Steven Spielberg has spent nearly the entire length of his career returning to the possibility that we are not alone in the universe. Even “Firelight,” the amateur movie he made as an Arizona teenager in 1964, revolved around extraterrestrial visitors.

That recurring fascination stands out partly because Spielberg has never been a filmmaker who stays in one lane. Across 36 features as a director, he has pivoted between science fiction, war films, historical dramas, adventure movies, thrillers, comedies and even a musical while somehow retaining the same famed Spielbergian sense of emotional wonder that defined his earliest work.

Which makes “Disclosure Day” — opening Friday and built around mysterious transmissions, buried government secrets and the possibility of alien contact — feel less like a detour than a return to one of Spielberg’s oldest creative preoccupations. Speaking about the film in March at SXSW, Spielberg admitted that while he has no special knowledge about extraterrestrial life, he nevertheless has “a very strong, sneaking suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now. And I made a movie about that.”

So with Spielberg once again looking skyward, we decided to revisit the director’s long cinematic relationship with aliens, as figures of astonishment, terror, transcendence and, occasionally, giant crystal skulls from another dimension.

Josh Rottenberg: I don’t really remember a world without Spielberg’s aliens. I was 6 when “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” arrived in 1977, not much older than the little boy played by Cary Guffey who is carried off by visitors from another world after his toys mysteriously come to life. Five years later, I was exactly Elliott’s age when “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” landed in theaters in 1982.

“Close Encounters” made aliens feel weirdly plausible, not just creatures in a “Star Wars” cantina or rubber-suited monsters from old sci-fi movies but something that might turn up in ordinary American life through blinking kitchen appliances, strange lights in the sky and suburban middle-class dads who can’t explain why they suddenly need to drive to Wyoming.

What surprises me now is how hopeful the movie feels. It came out of the post-Watergate ’70s, when distrust of institutions was running high, but Spielberg directed most of that suspicion toward the government, not the alien visitors. Richard Dreyfuss sculpting Devils Tower out of mashed potatoes should seem completely insane — and it kind of is. But Spielberg somehow makes you understand why Dreyfuss’ Roy Neary is willing to walk away from his entire life and family over something he can’t explain.

With “E.T.,” Spielberg scaled that cosmic yearning down to a California cul-de-sac. I recently watched the movie again at Hollywood Forever Cemetery with my wife and younger daughter, who’s in college now. I’d seen it several times since 1982 but not on a big screen, and I was startled by how much of it I still knew by heart: E.T. shuffling through the kitchen drinking cans of Coors, Elliott freeing the frogs in science class, Drew Barrymore introducing the alien to her dolls like he’s a new kid who just moved in next door. Somewhere along the way, “E.T.” became less a movie to me than part of the background texture of childhood itself.

Spielberg turned one of science fiction’s grandest ideas — first contact with alien life — into the story of a boy and his weird little space-faring goblin best friend. Mark, we’re of the same Gen X vintage. Did Spielberg permanently convince you that aliens were basically on our side?

Mark Olsen: I didn’t see “Close Encounters” when it was first in theaters, but I remember any kid with a piano learning those five notes of John Williams’ alien theme music and then the movie becoming a staple rental of the early VHS era.

When I revisited the film for its 2017 re-release — an overwhelming experience in the sorely missed Cinerama Dome, where the movie also played when it first opened — I was struck by how homespun and handmade it felt, grounded in a naturalistic sense of realism. For as much as Spielberg may be fascinated by aliens and whatever could be out there, he always uses them as a way to reconsider what is going on down here: to reconnect with the elemental aspects of humanity and our common bonds.

I’ll be honest and say that “E.T.” is a movie I have always struggled with. I clearly remember seeing the movie when I was young and being very disturbed by the scene when the government arrives and drapes the family’s house in plastic sheets and tubing. I distinctly recall recognizing that the film itself wanted me to feel bad — I didn’t like that. (Perhaps thus was a young critic born.) Spielberg is often so proud of his mechanics, he lets them show, which is why even then I was resistant to moments when he wants the relationship between Elliott and his new friend to truly take flight.

Rottenberg: By 2005 and “War of the Worlds,” the wonderment was gone. Spielberg took H.G. Wells’ downbeat vision of extraterrestrials as exterminators and updated it for post-9/11 America: nightmarish scenes of alien tripods clawing their way up through the pavement, blaring air-raid horns, entire crowds vaporized into clouds of dust.

This time, nobody is trying to communicate through music or empathy. Tom Cruise spends the movie running through New Jersey with two terrified kids while ash drifts through the streets and giant alien war machines scoop humans into dangling metal cages. “E.T.” had turned aliens into plush toys and breakfast cereal. “War of the Worlds” turned them back into the menacing aggressors of 1950s sci-fi films like “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers” and “Invaders From Mars.”

Which made it all the more jarring when, three years later, Spielberg suddenly swerved back toward old-school flying-saucer mythology with 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” shoehorning an extraterrestrial plot into one of his most beloved series. Seeing Cate Blanchett march into a glowing alien chamber to commune with giant crystal skeletons from another dimension, I could understand why some fans reacted like they’d just watched someone spray-paint a UFO on the Ark of the Covenant.

But looking back, the inclusion seems almost inevitable. Spielberg keeps circling back to aliens no matter what genre or franchise he’s working in. Even 2001’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” eventually reveals itself as a kind of inverted first-contact story, with humanity becoming the vanished civilization studied by synthetic descendants of the machines.

Mark, were you able to roll with Indy suddenly colliding with Area 51 mythology, or did Spielberg lose you at that point?

Olsen: There was something so eye-rollingly whatever about the finale of “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” that you couldn’t even really be mad about it. On a storytelling scale of Spielbergian preposterousness, the moment lands somewhere between the Wrath of God sequence in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (totally legit) and the time traveling of “Dial of Destiny” (throws hands in the air).

“War of the Worlds” remains a fascinating film within the director’s space alien canon because it has an anxiety and uncertainty that isn’t often found elsewhere. Even his core interest in creatures, so often a well of amazement and positivity, couldn’t pull him up. Much has been made of the film as a response to the aftermath of 9/11 and Spielberg followed it up with the existential thriller “Munich,” a further exploration of the darker aspects of the national mood, before the year was even up.

This seemed to be a moment of malaise for Spielberg, one he worked his way out of with an unpredictably wide-ranging series of films including “Lincoln,” “Bridge of Spies” and “The Post.” It was as if he were left reeling from cynicism and was trying to reclaim some youthful confidence that he would eventually rediscover with the autobiographical “The Fabelmans.” Josh, do you feel that “Disclosure Day” serves as the final word on Spielberg’s alien interests?

Rottenberg: What makes “Disclosure Day” interesting to me — even though I wasn’t fully sold on it — is that Spielberg is returning to these ideas at a moment when UFO culture has already evolved far beyond him.

Screenwriter David Koepp has cited “Three Days of the Condor” as a touchstone, and for long and often gripping stretches, the movie really does play like a paranoid 1970s conspiracy thriller: cryptic transmissions, shadowy government programs, Josh O’Connor racing to expose buried secrets, Colin Firth strapped into a chair using alien technology to manipulate people from afar.

But while “Close Encounters” arrived at a time when UFOs still occupied this hazy space between science fiction, Cold War anxiety and New Age mysticism, “Disclosure Day” lands in a world where self-described UFO abductees have their own support groups and Congress has held multiple hearings about “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” Meanwhile, earlier this spring, the U.S. government declassified another batch of UFO files and the response was roughly equivalent to a collective shrug.

In recent interviews, Spielberg has said he now considers the circumstantial evidence for UFOs “overwhelming” and no longer views “Disclosure Day” as science fiction at all. In his earlier alien films, extraterrestrials represented mystery and escape. Here they feel more like vaguely benevolent interstellar therapists trying to help humanity get its act together. The film’s climax reaches for the same sense of civilizational awe as the mothership landing in “Close Encounters.” For me it didn’t quite get there.

But maybe that’s partly because it’s harder now to experience these ideas with the same innocence they carried in 1977 or 1982. Rewatching “E.T.” at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, I still wanted to believe that an encounter with an alien intelligence could elevate us. But we’re a long way from Reese’s Pieces and flying bicycles. Mark, did “Disclosure Day” manage to pull you back into Spielberg’s orbit this time?

Olsen: I have to just get it out of the way that as someone from Kansas City, I will be eternally annoyed that Emily Blunt plays a TV weatherperson in KC and Spielberg did not actually shoot there. Having said that, for me the movie is at its best as a chase thriller — a sequence in which O’Connor escapes a remote farmhouse is particularly well-executed.

“Disclosure Day” is first and foremost just a lot of fun, a showcase for Spielberg’s gifts as a filmmaker and his longstanding collaborations with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and composer John Williams. The film is deeply interested in who knows what. There are longtime tightly held secrets being kept from the rest of us for whatever reason. Though the film is framed as a conspiracy thriller, Spielberg’s essential goodheartedness continually peeks out, as if he can only play at being hard-bitten for so long.

Where the film becomes less sure-footed is when it grabs for its bigger meaning, attempting to render something deeper from Spielberg’s longstanding fascination with aliens and what they might have to teach us.

The real disclosure of “Disclosure Day” turns out to be our own inability to listen: how everyone gets so wrapped up in themselves they often miss the larger picture. But the idea that the entire world could latch onto something together feels too far-fetched in our own current fractured news environment. That is likely less the fault of Spielberg and more one of ourselves. His career-spanning interest in aliens always brings him back to trying to better understand us.

After decades spent shaping modern movies without ever taking home a competitive Oscar, actor Glenn Close and director Ridley Scott will finally receive statuettes from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences this fall.

The academy announced Wednesday that Close and Scott will receive honorary Oscars at this year’s Governors Awards alongside pioneering animator Floyd Norman, while producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, co-founders of Killer Films, will receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

The annual Governors Awards, launched in 2009, recognize lifetime achievement and significant contributions to filmmaking and the motion picture industry. The Thalberg Award honors producers whose bodies of work reflect consistently high-quality motion picture production.

Unlike the competitive Oscars handed out during the telecast, the honorary prizes are presented at a separate ceremony attended by film industry figures, academy members and awards season contenders.

Close, 79, one of the most acclaimed actors of her generation, has received eight Oscar nominations over her career, including for “Fatal Attraction,” “Dangerous Liaisons,” “Albert Nobbs” and “The Wife.”

Scott, 88, the architect of “Alien” and “Blade Runner,” whose striking visual style helped define modern blockbuster filmmaking, has scored nominations for directing “Thelma & Louise,” “Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down,” while also earning a best picture nomination for “The Martian.”

Despite their long influence on Hollywood, both have frequently appeared on lists of prominent Oscar nominees never to win a competitive Academy Award.

The 90-year-old Norman, who began working at Disney in the 1950s, became the studio’s first Black animator, contributing to films including “Sleeping Beauty,” “The Jungle Book” and “Robin Hood.” His career has spanned more than six decades.

Vachon and Koffler have been central figures in American independent cinema for decades, backing such films as “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Far From Heaven,” “Carol,” “First Reformed” and “Past Lives,” the last of which earned them their first best picture nomination in 2024.

The honors will be presented Nov. 15 at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Ovation Hollywood during the academy’s 17th Governors Awards ceremony.

Anticipation. Rumors. Anxiously scanning the horizon, hoping that a brilliant force will leave the masses forever changed. Yes, a new Steven Spielberg movie about close encounters with extraterrestrials is landing — and misses the mark.

“Disclosure Day” is a story of truth and feared consequences. A personality-free cybersecurity expert, Daniel (Josh O’Connor), is on the run with evidence of little gray men arriving on our planet to a rude reception. The aliens are kind. Our species is barbaric. Wittily bruising us with that fact, Spielberg opens with a POV of a wrestler kicking the audience in the face. Welcome to Earth.

Elsewhere in America, a weathergirl named Margaret (Emily Blunt) breezes into her Kansas City studio, babbling up until the minute the news camera turns on, a bravura sequence that channels her restlessness, the station’s tempo and the film’s alarm that this ditz has just this morning been stricken with preternatural powers. (The cinematography and editing are by Janusz Kaminski and Sarah Broshar.) Locally, Margaret is known for announcing hailstorms with a sexy shimmy. Suddenly, she’s fluent in Russian, Korean and telepathy. Although she and her boyfriend, Jackson (Wyatt Russell), are a bad match, she’s giving everyone else life advice like an intergalactic Dear Abby.

When Margaret starts spouting alien-ese — spasms of gutteral clicks — on live TV, she and Jackson rush to the hospital for a brain scan followed by several suspicious men who claim to be with the FBI. Russell’s befuddled Jackson is as useless as a traffic cone but Blunt’s Margaret is a gas before the movie makes her go all glassy-eyed and solemn. Yet, the movie is less inspired by why she was chosen or how she feels about it than in dragging us back in time to the moment when it happened, which isn’t that interesting except for its resemblance to a Disney princess having a psychotic break. The CG animals and aliens look stiff, other than a nifty close-up of an eyeball. (Later, I did like how one alien appears to be wearing sportswear.)

Chasing both Daniel and Margaret around the Midwest is a deep-state company called Wardex that wants to steal back the proof in Daniel’s backpack, a heap of hard drives with footage of 70-plus years of extraterrestrial visitations. It’s a treat to see Spielberg enjoying staging this conspiratorial gossip in different film stocks, from the black-and-white noir of 1947 Roswell to the clinical security-camera look of today. Whatever Wardex does on a day-to-day basis is unclear (we just see video screens and lab equipment). But it acts all-powerful, seeming to know more about outer-space tech than its overseers at the Department of Defense.

The script is by David Koepp of the paranoid thriller “Black Bag” and Spielberg’s 2005 version of “War of the Worlds,” yet, this plot strand about private enterprise isn’t science fiction. Last year, in the unrelated UFO documentary “The Age of Disclosure,” current Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted that companies have a stronger institutional memory of “exotic materials” than any presidential administration: “The people in government who know where it came from originally — they’re long gone and their successors have no idea that it was there at all.” To add nationalistic insult to injury, the head of Wardex isn’t even American. He’s a Brit played by Colin Firth.

If anything, “Disclosure Day” isn’t paranoid enough. Clutching a mysterious tool the shape of a mouse coffin, Firth’s villain tracks Daniel’s location by mentally transplanting himself into another person’s body, changing the color of their pupils to his own icy blue. His gadget also makes his targets super sweaty. This laborious alien tactic leads to a few fun scenes but frankly feels old-fashioned when the omnipresent surveillance that Spielberg himself warned about nearly 25 years ago in “Minority Report” is now here with recording devices constantly tracking our faces, voices and movements just so we don’t have to dial phones, fetch sandwiches or talk to human drivers. Although his movie urged us against this 24/7 spyware future, we have since embraced the convenience.

I bring this up because “Disclosure Day’s” driving question is how humanity will react to life-altering information. (Not that the plot has much momentum — too many scenes end with the belief that ducking 10 feet out of view makes you invisible, with an antagonist simply giving up.) Daniel insists on total honesty: “People have a right to know the truth,” he says. His girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) doubts 8 billion people can handle his alien revelations. A Catholic, she’s alarmed that extraterrestrial intelligence could replace the concept of God, naively claiming that “religion holds society together.” Since when?

There’s some wan comedy in an early scene where these new-ish lovers debate the ethics of secrecy while revealing the skeletons they’ve been hiding from each other. Both have pasts you wouldn’t put on a Tinder profile. The script is glancingly empathetic to Jane’s moral turmoil but like Daniel, the film has made up its mind before the movie started. Narratively and logistically, Daniel’s whistleblowing escape limps along with a lack of suspense. Wardex doesn’t even bother to preemptively discredit Daniel in the public’s eye, which, given the two sentences of backstory we know about his character, would be easy.

Nattering in the background are broadcasts about the impending threat of global war at the hands of the United States, Russia and North Korea. Given that scary possibility, the risk that Daniel’s reveal could tip over the world order doesn’t seem that bad. Honestly, I’m dubious of the film’s certainty that folks even have the bandwidth to care about such news, let alone agree on what they’re seeing. The serious journalism Margaret aspires to do is splintering under our distrust of who controls the megaphones. Last month’s infodump of an Armed Forces report listing 209 sightings of unidentified objects was announced with a presidential tweet that “the people can decide for themselves.” I didn’t bother to click. Did you?

Getting information about these space invaders out leaves no time for taking the marvel of their existence in. Decades after Spielberg unveiled his signature shot — a face amazed at wonders we can’t see — he seems wearied by his awareness that today’s moment of revelation would look like a person staring down at their phone. When lens flares continually beam right at the screen, the whole movie feels like enlightenment under duress.

Where are the aliens from and why are they here? Who knows. “Disclosure Day” speeds around frantically, talking constantly and explaining little. Back in 1977, Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was a popcorn masterpiece of withheld information. Its quiet assurance that experts had a handle on flying saucers and a plan to meet them felt comforting. Here, Colman Domingo’s renegade intelligence operative also refuses to tell anyone anything, but all the unspoken beats just feel like plot holes. Mostly, his character builds what looks like a Hollywood set to reveal a truth he already suspects. That’s what Spielberg is doing too, but a film needs a sense of curiosity.

Instead, the wows come from good stagings of ordinary action: a car crash, a gripped crucifix, a hideout crowded with jostling, thrumming musical instruments. There’s a great train-track crossing sequence that’s also a vicious callback to Richard Dreyfuss’ epiphany in “Close Encounters.” Yet, I wanted to see more of the old Spielberg, the one who expressed awe in moments of silence rather than relentless motion.

That Spielberg has come full circle to his lifelong obsession with the sky had me convinced that this might be a secret sequel to “Close Encounters” beyond the droll joke that both Dreyfuss’ Roy and Blunt’s Margaret are shacked up with unsupportive blonds. They do share a universe; you’ll see a glimpse of what could pass for an outtake from Devils Tower, a.k.a. Mashed Potato Mountain, on one of Daniel’s hard drives. Still, I left underwhelmed. I didn’t need Dreyfuss to step off a spaceship gangplank and say, “I’m back.” I just needed “Disclosure Day” to have the same spark of intelligent life.

Bill Cody, the Grand Ole Opry and longtime WSM Radio host who woke up listeners with his velvet voice and country music lore, has died. He was 67.

The Tennessee radio station confirmed Cody’s death on social media on Tuesday, writing, “It is with heavy hearts that we share the passing of our dear friend and beloved WSM voice, Bill Cody.

“A singular presence on WSM-AM Nashville for more than three decades, Bill welcomed listeners each morning on Coffee, Country & Cody with a broad smile, a conversational ease, and an unerring ability to make both artists and audiences feel at home. He joined WSM in 1994 and had Charlie Daniels as his first in-studio guest. He built more than a morning show; he created a gathering place rooted in his deep love for country music and the people behind it.”

In late May, Cody’s daughter Hannah Davis shared that the radio host had been admitted to the intensive care unit with heart and kidney failure. “After weeks of being on a roller coaster of emotions, tests, dialysis, medications, steps forwards and steps backwards, it was determined earlier this week that his only option for survival would be a double transplant, heart and kidney,” she wrote on Facebook. “We need a miracle and we know God is able.”

On Tuesday, she wrote that Cody had died peacefully surrounded by family and “was welcomed into heaven as thunder bellowed outside, and we laughed because we knew it was a band of angels rejoicing.”

With nearly 50 years on the airwaves across syndicated radio, television and film, Cody was honored with a star on the Music City Walk of Fame in the fall of 2024. His credits included the film “American Saturday Night: Live From the Grand Ole Opry,” the television show “Tennessee’s Wild Side” on PBS, “Ray Stevens’ Nashville” on RFD-TV, and GAC TV’s “Master Series.”

In 2008, the beloved Nashville host was inducted into the Country Radio Hall of Fame, and across his career, he earned multiple nominations from the Country Music Assn., the Academy of Country Music and Billboard for his contributions to broadcasting.

Born Trent Clutts on Dec. 16, 1958, in Huntsville, Ala., Cody was inspired to pursue a career in broadcasting during visits to a Kentucky radio station with his dad. His father was a Southern Baptist minister, and his Sunday morning sermons were broadcast on the radio in the afternoons. Cody couldn’t get enough of the goings-on at the station when the two would stop by to drop off cassettes.

In 1971, when the radio host was 17, he was hired as a night deejay at WVLK in Lexington, Ky., but the program director didn’t think “Trent Clutts” had the right ring for radio. Cody named himself after “Buffalo Bill,” one of the most famous showmen of the American Old West, and used the moniker for the rest of his career.

As a teenager, Cody noticed a girl named Rebecca during study hall and, according to Davis, winked at her from across the room. The wink sealed the deal and the two spent more than 50 years as a couple, welcomed three children — Luke, Hannah, and Levi, who died in 2025 — and eventually grandchildren, who called him PoPo. The family lived in Cross Plains, Tenn.

“Like so many of us at the Opry, Bill Cody lived out his dreams on the Opry stage. More times than I could count he and I would look at each other as if to say, ‘Can you believe we get to do this?’” Dan Rogers, executive producer at the Grand Ole Opry, wrote on social media.

“Even better, he made Opry audiences tuned in from around the world feel like they were here too, themselves a part of country music’s most famous show. Then, he’d get up early the next morning and — with that signature smile in his voice — tell everybody about it on his show.

“He was the best of friends to country music and to everyone who was a part of it. We’re sure going to miss him.”

AMC’s plan to launch a new interactive live concert series in theaters is on ice, for now. With a booming box office full of films like “Obsession,” “Backrooms” and “Scary Movie,” the theater chain has postponed the concert project until later this year.

In a statement, AMC said due to the “robust lineup of upcoming films and strong advance ticket sales in the weeks ahead,” it needed to make some programming adjustments. Some of the major upcoming releases for June include Disney’s “Toy Story 5” and Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day.”

Acts like Bebe Rexha, Paris Hilton, Kim Petras and Marren Morris were lined up to test out the new format next week, as a part of the Girls Night Live concert series.

The chain is partnering with live entertainment company Arena One to bring new technology to theaters. This tech would allow artists on a remote stage to see, hear and respond to the theater audience, in effect turning your local cinema into a stadium, the companies said. Fans who already purchased tickets have received refunds.

The series was initially marketed as a new draw to get customers to the theaters, but given the strong box office numbers so far this year, it’s clear the demand for theaters is already growing

Focus Features’ “Obsession” is now nearing $230 million in global box office revenue, according to Box Office Mojo, and is the studio’s highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office.

Similarly, A24’s “Backrooms” is the indie studio’s highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office, with nearly $140 million. It pulled in $100 million at the box office only six days after its initial release.

Most recently, “Scary Movie” topped the box office last weekend with a $105.5-million worldwide debut, ranking among the top five biggest R-rated comedy openings of all time.

AMC said it would announce new dates and additional artists for the interactive concert series in the coming months.

The first film by Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg to be shot partly in the U.S. is, perhaps not surprisingly, a freaky satire of Hollywood. Its take on fame has only grown more accurate in the years since its premiere in 2014. Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska and Robert Pattinson star in a demented tale of family, celebrity, ambition, ego and limousines. Funny and perverse, the film captures the uncanny cocktail of mean-spirited malignancy, self-obsessed delusion and just plain obliviousness that runs rampant around town. Presented by the screening series Mezzanine and the local literary magazine the Big One, the evening will be introduced by the film’s screenwriter, Bruce Wagner, a longtime chronicler of Los Angeles.

“Maps to the Stars” is playing June 14 at Brain Dead Studios. Tickets here.

With the Wayans brothers firmly back in the driver’s seat, horror parody “Scary Movie” muscled its way past He-Man for the top spot at the box office this weekend.

The reboot of the 2000s-era franchise — or “rebootiquel,” as the movie calls itself — brought in $55 million in the U.S. and Canada for a worldwide total of $105.5 million, according to studio estimates. The movie, which had a production budget of $30 million, beat studio expectations and marks the return of the Wayans brothers to “Scary Movie.”

The franchise was developed by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans and Keenen Ivory Wayans. But after 2001’s “Scary Movie 2,” the Wayans got in a pay dispute with former Miramax executives Bob and Harvey Weinstein. The Wayans have said the Weinsteins did not tell them that 2003’s “Scary Movie 3” would be made without them. The franchise then continued with fourth and fifth installments.

After former MGM film executive Jonathan Glickman was named chief executive of Miramax in 2024, he reached out to Marlon Wayans to see if he’d be interested in reviving “Scary Movie.”

“Always dreamt of having this moment again,” Wayans said, while thanking Glickman and executive producer Marc Weinstock during a short speech at the movie’s premiere. “I thank you guys for having the vision to go, there’s only one way to do the next ‘Scary Movie,’ and that’s to bring the Wayans family back.”

Miramax led the production and financing of the film, while Paramount Pictures was the distributor.

Amazon MGM Studios’ “Masters of the Universe” came in second at the domestic box office with $29.3 million, in Mattel Studios’ first film in theaters since the 2023 smash hit “Barbie.” Globally, the movie made $54 million.

The action adventure movie had a production budget of about $170 million and aimed to reintroduce the ‘80s-era action hero “He-Man” to a new audience, while also driving the nostalgia of adults who played with the franchise toys or watched the original film and series. The movie is part of Mattel Inc.’s strategy to continue extending its toy brands into the entertainment arena.

Mattel Chief Executive Ynon Kreiz said last week that “Masters of the Universe” didn’t need to match the success of “Barbie” “to have a meaningful economic impact on the company.”

A24’s runaway hit “Backrooms” came in third at the box office this weekend, continuing its strong performance with a haul of $25.9 million. Focus Features’ “Obsession” ($25.6 million) and another YouTube-native property, “The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act,” ($12.7 million) rounded out the top five at the box office, according to Comscore data.

What was the moment from the season finale of “The Pitt” that finally broke you?

Was it the shot of the day-shift staff watching the Fourth of July fireworks from the hospital roof, the sound of “America the Beautiful” playing in the distance? Maybe it was Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) crying in her car, realizing she can’t work around the seizure disorder that makes her a liability in the ER. Or perhaps it came when Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robinavitch (a.k.a. Dr. Robby) swaddled Baby Jane Doe, telling her that “everything’s gonna be just fine,” because she has “so many wonderful things to see and so many people to love.”

But what opened the floodgates for me, after the last half-hour of the episode left me completely dazed and dumbfounded, was Drs. Santos (Isa Briones) and King (Taylor Dearden) exorcising the day’s demons by belting out Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” at a karaoke bar and demonstrating that primal scream therapy is alive and well three decades into the 21st century.

Which is all to say: “The Pitt” is the only television show I’ve watched that gives me the same feeling I have when I read a great, immersive novel. When the end is near, I’m bereft. I’m Al-Hashimi in her car, wanting to pound the dashboard. I do not want to let these characters go. They’ve given me 15 hours and I still crave more. I would devour a series of short films about odd couple Santos and Whitaker (Gerran Howell) sharing an apartment or a summer spinoff showing Dr. Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) working off-hours as a SWAT medic. Anything to fill the long, “Pitt”-less weeks between seasons.

Instead, I’ll just have to content myself with scrolling through social media, watching fan-made videos of Dr. King self-soothing her way through the day, (this one, set to Vince Guaraldi’s score from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” is the absolute best) and taking in the compilation of the show’s cast asking, “What’s the status on Baby Jane Doe?” in their best Katherine LaNasa Pittsburgh accent.

“The Pitt” won five Emmys from 13 nominations, including best drama series, for its celebrated first season, a 15-episode run that began with Dr. Robby up on the hospital roof talking down Dr. Abbot after an intense shift. The season ended with Dr. Abbot returning the favor after Robby and his staff ground their way through a day that included a mass shooting, a child drowning and a patient assaulting LaNasa’s no-nonsense charge nurse.

How do you follow that?

For a few episodes this new season, it looked like “The Pitt” wasn’t up to the task. We watched the ER staff dealing with a series of bloody, messy (the disimpaction!) medical maladies, an avert-your-eyes spectacle that felt like the writers were trying to one-up themselves and find the worst possible affliction to make viewers double over. Worse, the thrill of discovery that kept us invested throughout the first season, the slow drip of information about the characters, wasn’t quite there. Something was missing, and it wasn’t just Dr. Robby’s motorcycle helmet.

But the luxury of having 15 episodes is that the writers can take their time laying the groundwork for the story they want to tell.

And what a story it was.

Over the course of the season, we watched Dr. Robby disintegrate, his mental health more precarious than ever because he has done nothing to address his apparent PTSD. “You need help,” Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) tells Robby, confronting him in the finale. “Be honest with yourself.”

Robby isn’t the only one struggling, as Dr. Abbot puts it, to “dance through the darkness.” Langdon is back, managing his sobriety. Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) is having panic attacks. Santos is still dealing with self-harm. Dana remains haunted by that Season 1 patient assault and now carries a syringe containing a heavy sedative just in case somebody emerging from that overcrowded waiting room crosses the line again.

“I’ve seen so many people die that I feel like it’s leaching something from my soul,” Robby says. “I’m tired of feeling like I’m drowning every day.”

And there you have it, the subject of Season 2 of “The Pitt.” Medical professionals are gasping for air, and the American healthcare system, with its focus on profit above all else, is failing them and the patients they treat.

Remember Orlando, the patient with severe diabetic ketoacidosis who arrives at the ER after fainting? Orlando had to ration his insulin because he lacked insurance and felt he had to cut corners. He ends up leaving the hospital early, fearing the cost of treatment. Later he returns, having fallen (jumped) from a catwalk at his construction job, fracturing his skull. But good news: He now qualifies for Medicare and Medicaid due to long-term disability.

It’s a tragedy, one of many reasons the season finale shot of the ER staff holding back tears as they watched the Fourth of July fireworks felt like a body blow. “America the Beautiful”? How can that be true when the current administration is seeking $1.5 trillion for defense spending — nearly 50% more than this year — while cutting healthcare and social safety nets? How can that be true when an act known as the “Big, Beautiful Bill” removed funding from an already frayed healthcare system and exacerbated the shortage of care in rural areas of the country?

That one scene, the culmination of hours of careful, patient storytelling, said more about the disconnect between American ideals and America’s reality than anything else I’ve read or watched this year.

Give “The Pitt” all the Emmys. It has more than earned them.