| | | | | | What's news: The TV ratings for the Trump-hosted Kennedy Center Honors hit an all-time low for the event. More artists are cancelling scheduled performances at the Kennedy Center. George Clooney is now a French citizen. Idris Elba is now a knight of the realm. And the LAPD has blocked the release of any medical records connected to the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner. — Abid Rahman
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Tyler Perry's Legal Troubles May Just Be Starting ►"There may be more coming." The first lawsuit against Tyler Perry accusing him of leveraging his power in Hollywood to sexually assault aspiring male actors in his orbit was filed in June. Another lawsuit was filed Dec. 26, with the billionaire entertainment mogul characterizing claims from both of the accusers as a shakedown. But Perry's legal troubles may just be beginning, writes THR's Winston Cho. The story.
—Bienvenue! George Clooney, his wife Amal, and their two children have been granted French citizenship, according to an official decree in France’s government gazette, the Journal Officiel, published over the weekend. In an interview with French radio earlier this month, Clooney praised French privacy laws that protect his family from paparazzi. “Here, they don’t take photos of kids. There aren’t any paparazzi hidden at the school gates. That’s number one for us,” he told RTL Radio. The story.
—Arise Sir Idris. Hollywood A-listers Idris Elba and Cynthia Erivo have been named in King Charles III’s New Year’s honors list, an annual tradition that recognizes people for their contributions to U.K. public life. Hackney-born Arsenal fan Elba was knighted for his services to young people after he and his wife, Sabrina, founded the Elba Hope Foundation to target issues such as knife crime, education and poverty. Stockwell's own Erivo was named a Member of the British Empire, or MBE, for services to music and drama. The story. |
Fox News Vets Duke It Out Amidst MAGA Meltdown ►Let them fight. Right-wing talking heads like Megyn Kelly and Mark Levin once reserved their sharpest slings for liberals, immigrants, and Joe Biden. But suddenly they’re dropping their biggest bombs on each other. Kelly, a former Fox News anchor and NBC host, has been engaged in an increasingly ugly social-media shoot out with her former Fox News colleague Mark Levin. The two pundits have been feuding since a Turning Point convention in mid-December, when Ben Shapiro's keynote speech attacking right-wing conspiracists like Tucker Carlson triggered a mini meltdown in MAGA-world. Levin has denounced his former colleague as a “degenerate” and “laughingstock,” and Kelly dismissed Levin as an "irrelevant, bitter man." The story.
—Big beautiful ratings. The TV ratings for the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors, hosted by Donald Trump, hit an all-time low, with the telecast averaging 3.01m viewers, according to Nielsen Live + Same Day Panel + Big Data. Last year’s show averaged 4.1m viewers, per Nielsen, meaning the 2025 honors dropped 26 percent in viewership year-on-year. This year’s ceremony saw Trump host, and the likes of Sylvester Stallone, Kiss, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Crawford and George Strait honored. The story.
—Banana republic latest. The Kennedy Center is ending the year with a new round of artists saying they are canceling scheduled performances after Trump's name was added to the facility, prompting the institution’s president to accuse the performers of making their decisions because of politics. The Cookers, a jazz supergroup, announced their withdrawal from “A Jazz New Year’s Eve” on their website. Doug Varone and Dancers, a dance group based in New York, said in an Instagram post late Monday they would pull out of a performance slated for April. The story. |
Isiah Whitlock Jr. 1954 - 2025 ►"A brilliant actor and even better person." Isiah Whitlock Jr., the actor who portrayed the iconic State Senator Clayton “Clay” Davis on HBO’s The Wire, has died. He was 71. Whitlock appeared in several projects helmed by Spike Lee, including 25th Hour, She Hate Me, Red Hook Summer, Chi-Raq, BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods. Whitlock most recently appeared on Netflix’s Emmy-nominated series The Residence, which starred Uzo Aduba. But it was the role of Clay Davis, a venal, smooth talking Baltimore politician with the catchphrase "sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit," that secured Whitlock pop culture notoriety. The obituary. |
Rob Reiner in 'All in the Family': A Boundary-Pushing Legacy ►"Mike might have gotten the better of the arguments, but Archie got the better lines." In a special piece for THR, Thomas Doherty, a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University, reflects on the late Rob Reiner's role in the classic comedy All in the Family. Thomas writes that creator Norman Lear didn’t want just to hold a mirror up to society, he wanted to shatter perspective and inspire progressive change, with Reiner as the straight man to that vision. The story.
—"I can finally put my grief into words." Princess Bride actor Cary Elwes paid tribute to director Rob Reiner who, along with his wife, Michele Reiner, died in shocking circumstances earlier this month. Taking to Instagram, Elwes shared footage from the set of the 1987 film in which he starred and Reiner directed and shared his most personal thoughts on the filmmaker. "I was already a fan of his work so meeting him in person was a dream come true," Elwes wrote. "As we began spending more time together I knew this was someone I wanted in my life. I also knew that by casting me as Westley he was giving me the keys to the castle.” The story.
—The latest. A court order sought by the Los Angeles Police Department has blocked the release of any medical records connected to the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office said it received the court order at 10:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve “to place a security hold” on any medical reports as the LAPD continues its homicide investigation. The story.
—"The Rob Reiner thing is not funny." Joe Rogan wasn’t too pleased with Donald Trump's controversial post attacking Rob Reiner after his tragic death. During a recent episode of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring comedian Shane Gillis, Rogan criticized the president’s remarks, saying someone should’ve taken Trump’s “fucking phone” away from him. “When you see it with no empathy, that’s when it’s hard to like," Rogan said. "Listen, there’s no justification for what he did that makes any sense in a compassionate society. It’s no different than people that were celebrating when Charlie Kirk got shot. It’s the same kind of thing.” The story. |
Films Directed by Women Drop to 7-Year Low in 2025 ►Everything's going backwards. Representation for women in the director’s chair dipped to a seven-year low in 2025, according to the annual study from USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Looking at the top 100 grossing films of the year, the report notes that only 9 women worked as directors on these movies, representing 8.1 percent of all directors on these films. This is a drop from 2024’s 13.4 percent and is the lowest since 2018’s 4.5 percent. The report.
—🏆 ICYMI. 🏆 The Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild has revealed the nominations for its 2026 awards. Frankenstein, One Battle After Another, Sinners, Weapons and Wicked: For Good lead the film nominees with three nods apiece. All of those films, apart from Weapons, were listed on the Oscars’ shortlist for the makeup and hairstyling category. On the TV side, Dancing With the Stars and Saturday Night Live scored four nominations each, including the SNL 50th Anniversary Special. Monster: The Ed Gein Story, Stranger Things and Abbott Elementary each received three nominations. Best contemporary make-up in a TV series, limited or movie for TV, has six nominations due to a tie in voting. The nominees.
—The ultimate ex-wife guy. James Cameron waded into the heated debate around the ending of Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite, defending his friend, former spouse and frequent collaborator. The legendary filmmaker tells THR's James Hibberd that he had dinner with Bigelow just a few weeks ago and they discussed the ending. “I said to her, ‘I utterly defend that ending,'” he says. "It’s really the only possible ending. You don’t get to the end of [the classic short story] The Lady or the Tiger? and know what’s behind which door." Warning: Spoilers! The story.
—📅 Dated! 📅 Tron: Ares is spinning toward its streaming debut. Disney announced Tuesday that director Joachim Rønning’s sci-fi feature is set to begin streaming Jan. 7 on Disney+. The latest installment in the Tron franchise hit theaters on Oct. 10 and starred Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges. The story. |
Hollywood Reacts to Chevy Chase Doc ►"Keep my name out of your mouth." Yvette Nicole Brown is speaking out ahead of the release of CNN’s doc on Chevy Chase, I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not (review below), which reopens old wounds from the set of NBC’s Community involving allegations of racist slurs and harassment. Brown, who starred as Shirley Bennett on the comedy, posted a statement on Instagram that appeared to address the documentary, though she never referenced it by name. No one in the Community cast agreed to participate in the doc, which details the events that led to Chase’s firing from the show in 2012, midway through its fourth season. The story.
—"He’s so rotten." Terry Sweeney broke ground as Saturday Night Live‘s first out gay castmember during that program’s 1985-86 season. Now Sweeney, 75, is breaking his silence on a decades-long feud with Chevy Chase after Chase proposed Sweeney appear in an SNL sketch mocking the AIDS epidemic. The ignominious chapter is one of several revisited in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not. The story. |
Film Review: 'I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not' ►"A complicated, unresolved portrait." THR's Daniel Fienberg reviews Marina Zenovich's I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not. The iconic comedy star is an active, if evasive, onscreen participant in this feature-length documentary look at his roller-coaster career from CNN Films. The review.
In other news...
—Netflix releases intense Stranger Things series finale trailer
—Avengers: Doomsday teaser shows Thor praying for strength to fight Doctor Doom
—Shrinking S3 trailer reveals first footage of Michael J. Fox’s acting return
—Tatiana Schlossberg, daughter of Caroline Kennedy, dies at 35
What else we're reading...
—Lanre Bakare looks at how anime went from an underground art form to now propping up slumped box office sales and is used by Japan to build soft power abroad [Guardian]
—Kathy Griffin reveals she hit the apps after her painful divorce, and accidentally fell in love with a 23-year-old [The Cut]
—Will Tavlin tries to understand who the arthouse streamer Mubi is really aimed at, especially since it started expanding [Vulture]
—Alan Sepinwall writes that if Netflix completes its takeover of WB, "it must not just absorb HBO; it must embrace the HBO approach" [NYT]
—Nora Benavidez counted all of the Trump administration's censorship attempts and reveals her rather concerning findings [NYT]
Today...
...in 2014, A24 released J. C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year in theaters. The period crime drama starred Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Alessandro Nivola, and Albert Brooks and was a huge hit with critics. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Anthony Hopkins (🏴88), Ben Kingsley (82), Hunter Schafer (27), Gong Li (60), Joey McIntyre (53), Taylor Hackford (81), Nicholas Sparks (60), James Remar (72), Claire Lautier (56), Evie Templeton (17), Tim Matheson (78), Bebe Neuwirth (67), Elaine Cassidy (46), Ricky Whittle (46), Susan Wokoma (38), Denée Benton (34), Nadia Parkes (30), Jane Badler (72), Michael McDonald (61), Brian Howe (68), Vernon Wells (80), So Joo-yeon (32), Chandra West (55), Gerry Dee (57), Steve Byers (46), Kenny Morrison (51), Beverley Elliott (65), Barbara Carrera (80), Siw Malmkvist (89), Lara Silva (36), Aditi Sudhir Pohankar (31), Rebecca Rigg (58), Juliet Donenfeld (16), Adam Rifkin (59), Brianna Knickerbocker (43), Marta Hazas (48) |
| Meyer Gottlieb, the Holocaust survivor who helped relaunch Samuel Goldwyn Films, where he produced features including Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and the 2013 remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, has died. He was 86. The obituary. |
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