Updated every Friday 12:00 PM
June 26 - July 2

APPLE TV
Good news for fellow "Widow's Bay" fans and freaks alike. Apple TV announced a Season 2 renewal for the streamer's acclaimed series, led by Emmy Award-winning star and executive producer Matthew Rhys, which comes from creator and executive producer Katie Dippold and Emmy Award-winning executive producer and director Hiro Murai...

When pioneering producer and filmmaker Kirsty Bell set out to make a film about legendary American musician Eddie Cochran, she didn't want to merely chronicle his brief career. Looking back at the musician's work, who died while touring the U.K. in 1960, aged just 21, Bell felt she needed to "bring him back to life." The result of that mission is "Eddie Cochran: Don't Forget Me," closing this year's Raindance Film Festival.One notable figure in the film is actor Kiefer Sutherland. He was supposed to have played Eddie in a biopic when he was only 18 or 19 years old" The film was cancelled, but Kiefer remained a fan. Joining Sutherland is a roster of major names including Keith Richards, Rod Stewart, John Waters, Roger Daltrey, Cliff Richard and Yungblud...

Eddie Murphy's beloved Donkey from the Shrek franchise is getting his own adventure, presumably involving waffles. Universal Pictures announced Thursday that the studio is set to release Donkey theatrically June 30, 2028. Murphy will return for the DreamWorks Animation feature to voice the character that he has played since the original Shrek hit theaters in 2001. "I've always said I would do Shrek forever," the star said at the time. "Donkey is a great character to play. I love the whole cast. So I was excited when it was like, 'Hey, they're doing another one,' and they want to do a Donkey one, too. I'm totally into it." This is the latest good news for fans of the long-running animation franchise that explores the fairy tale world and is loosely based on William Steig's 1990 picture book, Shrek! Hitting theaters next summer, Shrek 5 sees Zendaya joining the voice cast that includes returnees Mike Myers as the titular misunderstood ogre, Murphy as his best pal Donkey and Cameron Diaz as Princess Fiona...

Hidari' is a samurai action film that blends the explosive energy of anime with the handcrafted aesthetic of stop-motion." In his story of revenge, a young master carpenter is working on the reconstruction of the Edo Castle. But then he gets involved in a ruthless conspiracy and loses his mentor, fiancée and also his right arm.  "He survives and reinvents himself – and transforms all his carpentry skills and tools into weapons." Its director, Masashi Kawamura, said: "Imagine 'John Wick' set in feudal Japan and performed by wooden puppets on steroids." "Our main character was actually designed as a hybrid between Keanu Reeves and Toshiro Mifune. He embodies the exact character we are looking for." The story is inspired by the works of Japanese artist and legendary carpenter Hidari Jingoro, who allegedly lived in the 17th century...

Studio TF1 is making one of its most significant investments in animated features in recent memory, boarding "Yes Chef," an original $25 million family comedy set inside the high-pressure, fur-flying world of a televised pastry competition. "Yes Chef" — "Oui Chef" in French — unfolds in an anthropomorphic animal world around a long-running TV pastry contest hosted by charismatic chef André Lamour. The competition, which has been on the air for 20 years, brings together duos of contestants, including a grandmother sheep and her teenage lamb grandson, deer cousins, twin cat sisters and other animal bakers. Behind the scenes is Jeanne Gazelle, a frazzled producer panicking over declining ratings. With the help of an army of small rabbits operating cameras, lights and the entire studio machinery, she pushes the show toward increasingly spectacular challenges — until the stunts become so outrageous that they barely have anything to do with baking anymore. As the competition spins out of control, the contestants rebel with a cry of "No Chef," taking back the show and returning it to what Zeller describes as the heart of baking: working together, sharing something, and taking pleasure in making and eating a good cake...

Few Hollywood events come with more built-in buzz than the release of a new Christopher Nolan movie. That tends to be the case no matter what the British writer/director releases, but expectations are particularly high for "The Odyssey," Nolan's follow-up to his Oscars-sweeping "Oppenheimer" that seemingly stars half of Hollywood's A-list actors in an adaptation of one of Western literature's most iconic stories. And Universal appears to be so confident in the film's ability to enter the zeitgeist that it is opting not to hold word-of-mouth screenings, in which films are screened in advance for influencers who can spread the word about them, for "The Odyssey. There's a growing sense that influencer reviews are less valuable than they once were, particularly to audiences that are particularly dialed into the film industry and see the positive early reviews as transactional. Either way, early demand for tickets in premium formats suggests that Universal might not have much to worry about...

In the race to purchase advanced tickets for "The Odyssey," which went on sale June 4, ticket-buyers who visited AMC Theaters' website or used its app were immediately sent to a queue, which an individual with knowledge says was the result of a significant surge in activity and was designed to throttle traffic to the site and keep it from crashing. Wait times to just get on to the website — not even to then buy tickets for the movie itself, let alone any other film you might be interested in — were listed at over an hour, with the time continually getting longer. These were for the purchase of IMAX tickets, for which "The Odyssey" will exclusively be shown when it opens in theaters and on 70mm film on July 17. Fandango also experienced a big surge of traffic, but it appears as if other major ticket buying sites and theater websites were operating more or less normally at time of writing. Quick checks of Regal and Cinemark revealed no such problems on their end...

Record-breaking high temperatures across France in late June have sent theatrical admissions soaring as local audiences flock to cinemas, among the few places in the country with air conditioning. Three million admissions or approximately €22.2m ticket sales based on an average price of €7.40, were clocked over the week between June 17 and 23, up 52% compared to the previous week according to figures from Rentrak. That is 54% more than the same week last year when 1.95 million tickets were sold. With many French schools closed due to the heat, Woody and Buzz Lightyear have been taking over babysitting duties as younger audiences have flocked to see Pixar franchise Toy Story 5 (Disney), which sold more than 1 million tickets in its first week in cinemas. The heatwave-driven closures also appeared to give June 24th release Minions & Monsters (Universal) a boost after its Annecy world premiere, with an opening day clocking nearly 174,000 admissions. ..