TV news… 3-point shooting contest… Ryan Reynolds about the strike… Glen Powell’s parents… and The Emmy nominations

 

In streaming news — Netflix has given the green light to yet another dating series. Sneaky Links: Dating After Dark will be hosted by Chloe Veitch, whom you may know from Season One of Too Hot to Handle. Here’s the synopsis posted by Just Jared — “Sneaky Links: Dating After Dark tests a very real phenomenon (a regular late night casual hook up) through a one-of-a-kind dating social experiment. Is your sneaky link ‘the one’ or are they getting in the way of you finding the one?” Look for it next year. Meantime, Descendants: The Rise of Red debuted on Disney+ over the weekend. The latest in the Descendants series quickly became one of its most-viewed original films in its history. According to Deadline, The Rise of Red had 6.7M views in its first three days of streaming.

The WNBA All-Star Game is coming up this Saturday night in Phoenix. You can watch it live on ABC starting at 7:30pm Central. I haven’t seen who will sing the National Anthem, but Pitbull will perform at halftime. On Friday night, the ladies will participate in the 3-Point Contest and the Skills Challenge. A lot of people were expecting the Fever’s Caitlin Clark and Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescu to do the 3-Point contest, but they are not on the list. Those who are partaking are Stefanie Dolson of the Washington Mystics, Allisha Gray of the Atlanta Dream, Jonquel Jones of the New York Liberty, Marina Mabrey of the Connecticut Sun and Kayla McBride of the Minnesota Lynx. As far as the Skills Challenge, the aforementioned Alisha Gray and Marina Mabrey will participate, along with Erica Wheeler of the Indiana Fever and both Brittney Griner and Sophie Cunningham of the Phoenix Mercury.

It took ten years for Ryan Reynolds to get Deadpool made, and when he finally got the green light, the studio didn’t give him a lot of money to make it happen. In fact, the budget was so low, the studio wouldn’t pay for Ryan’s screenwriters to be on set. So Ryan told the New York Times that he took what little salary he had left to pay for Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to be on set with him, setting up what he called “a de facto writers room.” Ryan’s gamble paid off. Deadpool earned $782.8M against a $58M budget, making it the ninth-highest grossing movie of 2016 and breaking several records, including the highest-grossing film in the X-Men series and the highest-grossing R-rated film at the time. Deadpool and Wolverine — the third in the franchise — hits theaters on July 26.

Since 2003’s Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, Glen Powell says his parents Glen Sr. and Cyndy have had cameos in each of his movies. In his recent film Anyone But You, Glen’s parents are the two airline passengers sitting next to him when Sydney Sweeney tries to free her hoodie that got stuck in his armrest. And Glen told Hoda Kotb exactly where to look for his parents in Twisters when it hits theaters on Friday. He said, “There’s a great sequence in the movie, a rodeo sequence and they’re right behind Daisy Edgar-Jones and I. They’re right behind us there. They’ve made it since Spy Kids 3. Literally since Spy Kids 3, I think they’ve been in every one.”

The Emmy Awards will air live on ABC Sunday, Sept. 15, and the nominations were announced yesterday. FX’s Shogun series leads with 25 nominations, but with 23, The Bear set a record for the most nominations ever for a comedy series. But that wasn’t the only record set yesterday. Carol Burnett was nominated for her role in Apple TV’s Palm Royale. At 91, that makes her the oldest actress to receive an Emmy nomination. Ryan Gosling also got his first Emmy nomination for hosting SNL, and Selena Gomez got her first Emmy nomination for acting in Only Murders in the Building. Her series had a total of 21 nominations. True Detective: Night Country followed with 19. The Crown earned 18 nominations in its final season, and Baby Reindeer scored 11. By network, Netflix continued its reign with 107 nominations this year, followed by FX with 93 and HBO with 91.

 

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