“Hacks” Attack: HBO’s Award-Winning Comedy Drops Trailer Ahead of Season 4 Premiere
The self-destructive but oh-so lovable comedy team are back for season 4.
Max’s Emmy-award winning series Hacks has dropped its official trailer ahead of its April 10 premiere, with Jean Smart’s Deborah and Hannah Einbinder’s Ava finding themselves at a crossroads, and, to Ava’s detriment, no doubt, in each other’s crosshairs as they try to pull off something unprecedented. Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky’s whip-smart comedy enters its fourth season with Deborah and Ava trying to get their late night show off the ground and to make TV history in the process.
“Thunderbolts”: Marvel’s Wild Card Mixes Antiheroes and Indie Talent From A24 & More
Recently, Florence Pugh, one of the stars of Marvel’s upcoming antihero epic Thunderbolts, said the Marvel Cinematic Universe installment was very unlike your average MCU addition. In fact, Pugh told Empire that Thunderbolts feels much more like an indie film.
“It ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes,” Pugh told Empire.
This isn’t just one of the film’s marquee names trying to give her movie an edge at the box office.
SXSW 2025: Dan Farah’s “The Age of Disclosure” Stuns Crowd With Shocking Alien Doc
Festival crowds are notoriously exuberant—it can be hard to get a real read on a film’s potential for broader success or acclaim even if the first time it plays for a crowd at a film festival results in cheers and guffaws. Yet sometimes, for some films, a festival crowd’s excitement is as precise an indicator for a film’s impact as you need. This was the case here in Austin this past Sunday, when director Dan Farah showcased his doc The Age of Disclosure for the first time ever to a crowd.
SXSW 2025: 11 Intriguing Film & TV Premieres Highlight a Big Time Festival Lineup
Hello from Austin!
This year’s SXSW Film & TV Festival is extra star-studded and jam-packed with exciting titles. This is due, in large part, to the fest not coinciding with the Oscars, as it has for the past few years. As always, SXSW is chock-a-block with screenings—an adventurous and inexhaustible attendee has 111 films and 17 series to choose from—and some very big stars and a ton of intriguing filmmakers and TV creators are on hand to showcase their work.
From Wings to Stars: Costume Designer Gersha Phillips on Redesigning Captain America
Gersha Phillips is no stranger to the kind of immediately recognizable costumes that tell a viewer immediately what world she’s in, like the intergalactic looks and Starfleet designs she crafted for the recent Star Trek feature Section 31 and the Star Trek series Discovery and Strange New Worlds. Skewing to the realism side of the closet, Phillips has designed the duds for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 and director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical epic The Woman King.
Dream Team Reunite: Tina Fey & Tracy Morgan to Collaborate Again on NBC Comedy
“Here’s some advice I wish I would’ve got when I was your age. Live every week like it’s Shark Week.”
This was one of the immortal lessons delivered by Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) on Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s 30 Rock, a show now firmly situated in the firmament of great comedy series. Do you have a friend—or friends—who still regularly quote from 30 Rock? Re-watching Fey and Carlock’s consistently hilarious NBC comedy is shocking for two reasons: 1) How absolutely chock-a-block each and every episode is with jokes that land,
From “Elf” to “Blue Bloods”: Veteran Producer Santiago Quiñones on the Unique Advantages of Filming in New York
Santiago Quiñones was a co-executive producer on Blue Bloods, CBS’s long-running police procedural that followed the Reagan family through their dynastic run within the NYPD. Quiñones, a born and bred New Yorker, joined the show assuming that, like previous projects, he might be moving on after a little while for another opportunity. Instead, he stayed for a decade, which kept him home alongside his family as his children grew and his colleagues became extended family members.
“Captain America: Brave New World” Composer Laura Karpman Crews a New Beat for a New Cap
The Academy Award-nominated composer Laura Karpman is now a consistent voice in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She scored Ms. Marvel, The Marvels, and What If? Now she adds Captain America: Brave New World to her impressive resume, which also includes American Fiction and Lovecraft Country.
In the tradition of Captain America movies, a conspiracy is afoot.
“Anora” Completes Its Cinderella Story With Fairy Tale Oscars Night
The 97th Oscars ended up being a true fairy tale story for writer/director Sean Baker’s Anora, with Baker capping an already magical night after winning Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Director—in which he gave a rousing acceptance speech defending the unparalleled experience of the theater experience—by seeing Anora take the top prize, Best Picture. For good measure, Anora‘s Cinderella herself, Mikey Madison,
Brazilian Sociologist & Film Expert Ana Paula Sousa on the Power & Promise of the Oscar-Nominated “I’m Still Here”
One of the most striking scenes in Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here does not depict any of the violence instilled by the military regime that ruled Brazil for over two decades; nor does it show the despair of having a loved one vanish without a trace, while those so obviously responsible unashamedly deny any involvement.
Rather, it is the scene where Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) is being photographed with her children for an article in the national magazine Manchete.
From “Day of the Jackal” to “Captain America: Brave New World”: DP Kramer Morgenthau Breaks Down 70s Thriller Inspiration
Sam Wilson returns in director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World, here to take on twin domestic threats. Sam (Anthony Mackie) and his sidekick (and replacement as the Falcon) Joaquin (Danny Ramirez) have been sent to Mexico to stop Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) from making an illegal sale. Sam and Joaquin recover the items but lose Sidewinder. The pair then head home to train with Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), a former super soldier introduced in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,
Bare-Knuckle Couture: “A Thousand Blows” Costume Designer Maja Meschede’s Knockout Designs
Editor’s note: Spoiler alert! This story discusses plot lines of A Thousand Blows Season 1.
The subtle storytelling of Maja Meschede’s costume designs is hiding in plain sight if you’re able to look away from the simmering drama of A Thousand Blows, a six-part series from Peaky Blinders scribe Steven Knight that follows Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and his brother Alec (Francis Lovehall), two Jamaicans immigrating to London during the late 1800s.
Jon Bernthal Set to Return in a “Punisher” Standalone for Disney+
Jon Bernthal is ready to punish Disney+ (in a good way, folks) with more than just his upcoming role in Daredevil: Born Again.
Bernthal’s inclusion in Marvel’s upcoming Daredevil series was manna from heaven for fans of his take on Frank Castle, the brutal antihero who exploded onto the scene in the second-season premiere of Netflix’s Daredevil, which starred Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock/Daredevil.
The Future of Batman at DC Studios Includes Giving a Surprising Villain His Own Film
When DC Studios co-chiefs Peter Safran and James Gunn delivered an update on their upcoming slate of films and TV shows at a screening room on the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, they were revisiting the location of their first public reveal about their initial slate.
Two years ago, in January 2023, Gunn and Safran sat in the very same spot and updated the press on specifics for their new-look DC Studios.
The Heart of Hell’s Kitchen: New “Daredevil: Born Again” Video Celebrates NYC Setting
“Daredevil is a New York superhero” are the first words we hear at the top of a new look at Daredevil: Born Again, which proudly (as any good New Yorker would) boasts about its Big Apple bonafides.
“You have this picaturesque view of the city; the backgrounds are the backgrounds…there are no green screens,” says executive producer Sana Amanat. “We made New York City a character.”
Another key collaborator in agreement that filming in New York City pays off in ways big and small is Matt Murdock himself,
From Acclaimed Ads to the Andes: Director Dougal Wilson’s Charming Feature Film Debut “Paddington in Peru”
Arguably the world’s most beloved (fictional) British immigrant, Paddington the Talking Bear arrived in London from South America in 2014 by way of the eponymous animated hit movie. Three years later, he returned for a sequel opposite Hugh Grant. This month, PG-rated Paddington in Peru (in theaters) continues the adventure as the marmalade-loving creature, based on Michael Bond’s children’s books and voiced by Ben Whishaw, returns to his native land in search of his beloved Aunt Lucy.
Red Alerts & Cherry Blossom Brawls With “Captain America: Brave New World” Production Designer Ramsey Avery
When Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans) passed the Captain America shield to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the former Falcon sidekick had big boots to fill. The same could be said for production designer Ramsey Avery in developing director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World, which has earned over $200 million worldwide at the time of publishing.
Avery, who touts decades of credits, including being on the art department teams of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
Producer Joseph Patel Explores Sly Stone’s Life & Legacy in “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)”
Prodigiously gifted songwriter/singer/arranger/producer/bandleader/keyboardist/guitarist Sly Stone gets his well-deserved close-up in documentary makers Joseph Patel and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson‘s SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). After earning an Academy Award for Summer of Soul, producer Patel and director QuestLove decided to deep-dive into the life and music of the man whose multi-racial band once thrilled hippies and Black audiences alike with ingenious funk-pop anthems including “I Want to Take You Higher,”
Be Still My Bursting Chest: “Alien: Romulus’s” Oscar-Nominated VFX Team on Finding Fresh Horror for the Franchise
Alien: Romulus Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Barba and FX Designer Alec Gillis bring the past and future together. Set between the events of Ridley Scott’s ferocious opener Alien and James Cameron’s muscular sequel Aliens, Barba, Gillis, and their team fused the tangible, practical horror and decay of the original films with a more modern, rock-and-roll sensibility. The viscerally immersive results earned the film an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.
Electric Shock: How “A Complete Unknown’s” Oscar-Nominated Sound Team Re-Created Bob Dylan Going Electric
In the first part of our conversation with the Oscar-nominated sound team of James Mangold’s music biography A Complete Unknown, they talked about delivering an intensely music-centric film without using playback and differentiating between the soundscapes of 1961 New York, when Bob Dylan (an immaculate portrayal by Timothée Chalamet) first arrives in the city, and four years later towards the end of the film. Now, we continue the discussion with sound mixer Tod A.
