This Sunday, 25 To Life, a documentary by Mike Brown, will have its world premiere as part of the America Black Film Festival. The film focuses on the compelling true story of William Brawner, who contracted the HIV/AIDS virus from a blood transfusion as a toddler, following his hospitalization for severe burns. Fearing that his diagnosis would alienate him from his peers, Brawner's mother, grandmother and aunt came together to keep his HIV/AIDS status a secret and instead worked to give him the best life possible. However, without any strong male figures in his life, Brawner soon delved into risky behaviors including unsafe sex - that is, until a doctor warned him that he might have less than two years left to live. We Got This Covered is pleased to exclusively premiere a short clip from the film, in which Brawner recounts when he first learned that he had HIV.
After nailing hilarious supporting roles in The Hangover franchise and on NBC's Community, Ken Jeong is finally getting his time to shine as the lead actor in upcoming comedy International Incident, which Steve Carell is currently in negotiations to produce through his Carousel Productions banner.
Today, Showtime confirmed that it had given a pilot order to Roadies, a rock comedy series from Jerry Maguire filmmaker Cameron Crowe, My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman and Star Trek director J.J. Abrams. Crowe, whose experience working as a music journalist for Rolling Stone and directing The Union and Pearl Jam Twenty partially inspired the show, will both script and direct the pilot.
After spending a long while in development, NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton is finally moving forward now that it's cast its three stars. O’Shea Jackson Jr. stars as Ice Cube (the actor is Cube's son in real life). Corey Hawkins will take on the part of Dr. Dre. Finally, Jason Mitchell has been tasked with bringing Eazy-E to life.
Ahead of the world premiere of Transformers: Age of Extinction, which brings new faces like Mark Wahlberg, Jack Reynor and Nicola Peltz to the blockbuster franchise, Paramount has announced the tentpoles that it is positioning for release in 2016 - including Transformers 5. Along with that fivequel, which was a near certainty before even Age of Extinction was announced (Wahlberg recently noted in an interview that he'd signed on for three films), Paramount also unveiled a slew of reboots and sequels, including Beverly Hills Cop, Ben Hur, GI Joe 3, Hansel and Gretel 2, Paranormal Activity 5 and Star Trek 3.
In an extremely smart move from Universal, the next Bourne movie (which we're calling Bourne 5 until an official title is announced) has been bumped from August 14th, 2015, to July 15th, 2016. Justin Lin (Fast & Furious 6) is still set to direct the movie, in which Jeremy Renner will reprise his lead role as enhanced secret agent Aaron Cross.
Hollywood has been planning an adaptation of Philip Roth's seminal American Pastoral for some time now, though whether any film could ever capture the spirit and complexity of the novel is still up for debate (I'm firmly in the "leave it alone" camp). Regardless, The Giver director Phillip Noyce is going to do his best to deliver a satisfying American Pastoral adaptation, and he recently revealed that he's already locked Ewan McGregor into place for a starring role.
I'm really excited for The Knick, a historical medical drama starring Clive Owen and directed by Steven Soderbergh, which Cinemax will be unveiling in August. This is the same network we jokingly call Skinemax, and which features action-packed, nudity-heavy series like Strike Back, Hunted and Banshee. However, The Knick definitely looks like a promising new start for the network in a new trailer for the series.
I recently discovered the hilarious British comedy series The Inbetweeners on Netflix and spent a few weeks savoring all 18 episodes and the equally side-splitting Inbetweeners Movie. Though a lot of the humor is pretty low-brow, the four dirty-minded teenagers at its center are all terrifically funny - which is why I was thrilled to find out today that The Inbetweeners 2 is on its way.
The jury's still out on whether Battle: Los Angeles director Jonathan Liebesman and Transformers helmer Michael Bay (a producer here) were the right team to revitalize Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but Paramount's extensive marketing campaign for the film has certainly done its best to familiarize audiences with Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello. We haven't seen so much of the film's villain, the Shredder (William Fichtner), but that's changing today thanks to TMNT Fansite.
