News

Exclusive: The Whiplash Oscar winner is boarding the David Ayer directed Paramount Pictures production Heart of the Beast opposite Brad Pitt.

It’s the second time that J.K. Simmons as worked with Ayer after the 2005 Christian Bale crime drama Harsh Times, and it’s the third time he’s starred in a Pitt movie after 2001’s The Mexican and the Coen Brothers George Clooney-Frances McDormand 2008 comedy caper Burn After Reading.

Deadline first told you about Heart of the Beast.

Cameron Alexander, who penned the script, will executive produce. The movie follows a former Army Special Forces Soldier and his retired combat dog who battle for survival after a plane crash deep in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness.

Damien Chazelle and Olivia Hamilton are producing under their Wild Chickens Productions banner as part of their first-look deal with the studio. Ayer is producing under his Crave Films banner, with Temple Hill Entertainment,...

Aaron Sorkin has signed a deal with Warner Bros. to write and potentially direct a film about the unlikely father of the Israeli Air Force, Al Schwimmer.

The project is based, in part, on “America’s Greatest Gift to Israel,” an article published in Business Insider and written by David Kushner. Sorkin’s film will be produced by Gotham Group’s Eric Robinson and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein. It is currently in development.

Schwimmer’s story is certainly cinematic — he began his career as an aerospace engineer at Lockheed and, during World War II, worked for Twa and the U.S. Air Transport Command as a flight engineer. In 1948, as Jews were fighting to carve out a homeland for themselves, Schwimmer “masterminded a covert, illegal, international operation that was equal parts ‘Argo’ and ‘Mission: Impossible.’ Working with the Jewish underground paramilitary, the Haganah, Schwimmer led a team of WWII veterans to break...

If you've ever wanted to be able to yell "Luuuucy, I'm home!" to your own "I Love Lucy" box set, then you're in luck. The classic 1950s sitcom that followed real-life spouses Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as their fictional counterparts, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, is coming to home media in a whole new way, courtesy of Paramount. The series was wildly popular during its era and has left its stamp on pop culture ever since — it's honestly hard to find a comedy series that hasn't referenced "I Love Lucy" or been influenced by it in some way. The series is deeply beloved and made a massive impact on television history, and this new box set is sure to delight fans both new and old.

"I Love Lucy" ran for six seasons, starring Ball and Arnaz alongside the Ricardos' neighbors, Ethel and Fred Mertz (played by Vivian Vance and William Frawley...

Television is certainly a vast landscape, filled with thousands of iconic shows, especially when it comes to sitcoms. However, the unarguable crme de la crme of the genre is I Love Lucy. even decades after the show's end. The exploits of Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball), her husband Ricky (Desi Arnaz), and their best friends, Ethel and Fred Mertz (Vivian Vance and William Frawley), are the stuff of legend. The show even inspired something of a franchise, with several follow-up specials and similar series after it ended. But its biggest take-off was made for a much larger screen. Following the success of the show's first season, I Love Lucy: The Movie sought to bring Lucy's adventures to movie theaters. However, even after it was filmed and tested, the picture was shelved for decades before home media finally brought it back to where the franchise began.

Though the series ended nearly seven decades ago, I Love Lucy remains among the greatest sitcoms of all time. Over six seasons and several follow-up specials, the shenanigans of Lucy (Lucille Ball), Ricky (Desi Arnaz), Ethel (Vivian Vance), and Fred (William Frawley) became the stuff of legend. From Lucys constant attempts to get into Rickys show to her antics with Hollywood royalty, I Love Lucy contains more classic episodes than any other show in history. While each season included a variety of fan-favorite episodes, Season 5 contains some of the best thanks to the Ricardos' European excursion. For 17 weeks, the gang toured several countries, where Lucy got into endless scrapes, with an incident in Italy being the most memorable. The episode "Lucy's Italian Movie" features a routine that is not only endlessly funny but nearly deadly. What's more, it wasn't the last time Ball faced peril on set.

The sitcom is, perhaps, the most enduring genre in the history of television. And, while plenty of iconic shows have come and gone over the years, theres no sitcom more lasting or influential as I Love Lucy. Following the exploits of Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) and her best friend, Ethel Mertz (Vivien Vance), as they attempted to hide their scheme of the week from their husbands, Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) and Fred Mertz (William Frawley), the series is often credited with solidifying the format as it brought endless entertainment to viewers for six seasons.

Lucy's hilarious antics on "I Love Lucy" showcase her desire for fame and the struggles of marriage in the 1950s sitcom world. The show's enduring popularity is evident as ABC News named "I Love Lucy" the Best TV Show of All Time in a 2012 survey. Despite outdated gender norms, Lucy and Ethel's strong bond and witty banter highlight important feminist themes in the show.

The best I Love Lucy quotes prove why it is one of the most influential sitcoms in television history. Appearing on CBS, I Love Lucy ran for six seasons, had 180 episodes, won five Emmy Awards, and was the first scripted television program to film in 35mm film in front of a live studio audience. The stars of the show were Lucille Ball (Lucy), her real-life husband Desi Arnaz (Ricky Ricardo), and their two best friends and neighbors, Vivan Vance (Ethel) and William Frawley (Fred).

With...

As Invincible returns for the back half of its second season on Prime Video, the acclaimed animated series upped the ante for its superhero spectacle. These raised physical and emotional stakes also applied to the show's complicated father figure, Nolan Grayson, voiced by Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons. In Season 1, Nolan revealed his superhero persona, Omni-Man, to be an elaborate ruse. He used this facade to disguise his true extraterrestrial mission of conquering Earth on behalf of the Viltrum Empire. This led to a bloody showdown with his son Mark in the first season finale. They reconciled in Season 2, only to be ambushed by the Viltrumites on a faraway planet in retaliation for Nolan's failure to fulfill his mission.

In an exclusive interview with Cbr, Invincible star J.K. Simmons talks about escalating the action and drama in Season 2, reflects on reprising his role as Omni-Man for Mortal Kombat 1, and...

Dan Stevens as Charles Dickens and Christopher Plummer as Ebenezer Scrooge in ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’ (Photo by Kerry Brown / Bleecker Street)

Once again, the holidays – or is it holidaze? – are upon us, bringing with it a flurry of Christmas movies.

You have your endless parade of cartoons, specials, Christmas-themed episodes of your favorite TV shows, bad holiday comedies (1996’s Jingle All the Way and 2007’s Fred Claus come to mind), and Christmas-set horror movies (1984’s Gremlins). Then there’s the cheesy yet feel-good Lifetime and Hallmark films. And how can we forget the 24-hour marathon of 1983’s A Christmas Story (celebrating its 40th anniversary this year), beginning on Christmas Eve and ending on Christmas Day?

If those don’t do it for you, maybe these lists of Christmas movies will.

Classic Christmas Movies

You can’t go wrong with these classics, which can lighten the hearts of even the most ardent cynics.

The one, the only Lucille Ball. Groundbreaking, fearless, timeless, supremely talented… and magical. We salute her today in honor of her birthday, Aug. 6 1911, with a bevy of facts you probably didn’t know about the beloved “I Love Lucy” star. From real-life antics on the set of her iconic sitcom (that grape stomping scene turned into a wrestling match) to superstitions (keep away all pictures of birds!) to a long-kept secret (Lucy had no eyebrows — really!), we go through it all. So sit back and celebrate the icon known as Lucille Ball with this deep-dive into her life.

Photo credit: YouTube

• The grape stomping scene turned into a real wrestling match

“I got into the vat with one, and she had been told that we would have a fight,” Lucy said on “The Dick Cavett Show.” She continued, “I slipped and, in slipping, I hit her accidentally and she took offense,...

Major Crimes, the continuation series of The Closer, ran for an incredible six seasons, totaling over 100 episodes,

While the show didn't receive as much critical acclaim as The Closer and didn't earn any Emmys, the show was a success for TNT.

The ensemble-driven Major Crimes featured many of the same characters and performers as its predecessor, which rarely happens on television.

The show premiered after The Closer's finale, with only a few casting changes, such as Kyra Sedgwick stepping down from her leading role.

What is the cast of Major Crimes doing now? Find out below!

Bonus: Corey Reynolds as David Gabriel from The Closer

Corey Reynolds is one of the few to appear in every episode of The Closer but not transfer to Major Crimes, mainly because his character David Gabriel got moved to the Da's office Bureau of Investigation as their liaison.

He inadvertently became a leak within the department,...

We love this Fritz Lang western even though it’s not particularly good; only in hindsight do we realize that the brilliant director’s intentions may have been compromised. High-key lighting does Marlene Dietrich no favors, but she scores good scenes performing with Arthur Kennedy (revenged crazed cowpoke) and Mel Ferrer (tranquilized gunslinger). Lang fans will be impressed by the gaudy, over-bright restored Technicolor, and we can always blame Howard Hughes.

Rancho Notorious

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1952 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Available at Amazon.com / General site Wac-Amazon / Street Date January 10, 2023 / 21.99

Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer, Lloyd Gough, William Frawley, Jack Elam, George Reeves, Frank Ferguson, Dan Seymour, John Doucette, Dick Elliott, Russell Johnson, Charlita.

Cinematography: Hal Mohr

Production Designer: Wiard Ihnen

Dietrich’s wardrobe designed by: Don Loper

Editorial Supervisor: Otto Ludwig

Original Music: Emil Newman

Written by Daniel Taradash, Silvia Richards

Produced by Howard Welsch

Directed...

The Television Critics Association (TCA) has announced the winners of the organization’s 38th Annual TCA Awards, recognizing the best television offerings from the 2021-2022 season.

ABC’s first-year public school sitcom Abbott Elementary made the grade as the night’s top winner with four victories. The series took home some of the TCA’s highest honors, including Individual Achievement In Comedy for series creator, producer, writer, and star, Quinta Brunson; as well as Outstanding Achievement In Comedy, Outstanding New Program, and the Program Of The Year Award.

Other winners include This Is Us star Mandy Moore, who earned the award for Individual Achievement In Drama after being snubbed by the Emmys; acclaimed Disney+ rock doc The Beatles: Get Back, which won the Outstanding Achievement In News And Information Award; CBS’ globe-hopping The Amazing Race, which shared Outstanding Achievement In Reality Programming with HBO Max’s glam Legendary; the surreal...

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars and Emmys ceremonies from film awards editor Clayton Davis. Following history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar and Emmy predictions are updated regularly with the current year's list of contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long: Draft, Pre-Season, Regular Season and Post Season. The eligibility calendar and dates of awards will determine how long each phase lasts and is subject to change.

To see all the latest predictions, of all the categories, in one place, visit The Oscars Collective

Visit each category, per the individual awards show from The Oscars Hub

Revisit the prediction archive of the 2021 season The Archive

Link to television awards is atTHE Emmys Hub

2022 Oscars Predictions:

Best Supporting Actor

Updated: March 24, 2022

Awards Prediction Commentary:

Troy Kotsur, supporting actor nominee for “Coda,” is...

When Daniel Kaluuya won the 2021 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Fred Hampton in “Judas and the Black Messiah,” he became the 77th performer to be honored for a portrayal of a real person. There has been at least one such case across the four acting categories in 19 of the last 20 years, with the 2017 quartet being the last to all win for playing fictional characters. This year, there are nine nominees with the potential to continue the trend, including two whose real-life counterparts are still living.

In Oscar history, it is most common for a win of this kind to come in the Best Actor category. In the nine decades since George Arliss prevailed here for playing Benjamin Disraeli in “Disraeli” (1930), 27 more lead male champs have followed, and they now account for 30% of all victories in the category. The six who have triumphed in the last decade alone...

Everybody in the industry seems to like and admire J.K. Simmons, and why wouldn’t they? He’s talented, versatile, dependable and affable. The fan club includes Aaron Sorkin, writer-director of Amazon’s “Being the Ricardos,” for which Simmons is Oscar-nominated as supporting actor.

Sorkin’s last seven screenplays have centered on real people, but he tells Variety he doesn’t picture the person, or any actor, when writing. “But in the case of William Frawley, there was only one actor I wanted. Frawley and J.K. is the closest I’ve come to writing a part for an actor.”

Sorkin’s appreciation began 30 years ago, when his “A Few Good Men” was a big Broadway hit. In a dual phone interview, Sorkin relates, “J.K. understudied the Colonel, which Jack Nicholson played in the movie. I heard J.K. was going on so I went to see, and he...

Everything old is new again, or at least worthy of deeper exploration. Consider two of this year’s biggest awards contenders, one at the Oscars and the other at the Emmys, thanks to a pair of backward-looking examinations of some of pop culture’s biggest modern obsessions: The Beatles and “I Love Lucy.” On the surface, “The Beatles: Get Back,” Peter Jackson’s six-hour saga of bedraggled young Beatles on deadline in 1969, and “Being the Ricardos,” Aaron Sorkin’s take on the comic mastermind Lucille Ball as she works in the mid-1950s alongside her great enabler Desi Arnaz might not sound simpatico, but both offer compelling explorations of creation.

The first is a 2022 documentary Emmy contender, while the second has given three Oscar winners a second shot at a gold statue. Almost as a reward for taking on the role of a wildly gifted comedienne, Nicole Kidman also scored a Golden Globe Drama win,...

Joining Deadline as part of the Amazon Studios presentation at Contenders Film: The Nominees event were two of the stars of Aaron Sorkin’s funny, moving and cleverly constructed story of the relationship of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in Being the Ricardos, which all takes place in a week during the course of a taping of an episode of I Love Lucy.

There are momentous events in that week, including Lucy’s real-life pregnancy being revealed, an accusation that she had Communist ties when blazing headlines appeared, and also a tabloid story claiming Desi was having an affair. All these things happened, but not in the space of seven days; Sorkin felt it was best for dramatic purposes to combine them. It certainly worked, as witnessed by three Oscar nominations for Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem in the lead acting categories, and J.K. Simmons for his role as William Frawley...

J.K. Simmons just earned his second Oscar nomination, for his performance as sitcom actor William Frawley in “Being the Ricardos.” Simmons won for his first Oscar bid, for the 2014 film “Whiplash.”

The actor spoke with Gold Derby editor Christopher Rosen in December about what he knew about Frawley before taking the part, working alongside such actors as Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem and Nina Arianda and what he would tell skeptical fans of “I Love Lucy” about the film. Watch the exclusive chat above read the complete transcript below.

SEEJavier Bardem interview: ‘Being the Ricardos’

Gold Derby: J.K., congratulations on the performance in the film. What was your awareness level of William Frawley before taking this part?

J.K. Simmons: Well, as the only cast member who was actually born during the original run of “I Love Lucy,” I was, I think, more familiar than a lot of them. And...

This year’s Supporting Actor field includes a veteran Oscar-winner going up against a batch of newbies. That may or may not prove an advantage, as all the first-time nominees are featured players in Best Picture contenders, while J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash’) stars in Aaron Sorkin’s delightful “Being the Ricardos” (Amazon), which landed a PGA nomination but missed the Best Picture cut. Clearly the Academy actors appreciated this surprising look behind the scenes during one intense week of the “I Love Lucy” TV show. Simmons seems born to play curmudgeon William Frawley, who despite his penchant for day-drinking, delivers his jokes on cue opposite Lucille Ball (nominated Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (nominated Javier Bardem).

Seeking their first Oscar acting mentions: Critics Choice and BAFTA nominees Kodi Smit-McPhee and Jesse Plemons both landed nominations for their roles in Jane Campion’s festival hit “The Power of the Dog” (Netflix). Smit-McPhee plays Peter,...

This year’s Supporting Actor field includes a veteran Oscar-winner going up against a batch of newbies. That may or may not prove an advantage, as all the first-time nominees are featured players in Best Picture contenders, while J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash’) stars in Aaron Sorkin’s delightful “Being the Ricardos” (Amazon), which landed a PGA nomination but missed the Best Picture cut. Clearly the Academy actors appreciated this surprising look behind the scenes during one intense week of the “I Love Lucy” TV show. Simmons seems born to play curmudgeon William Frawley, who despite his penchant for day-drinking, delivers his jokes on cue opposite Lucille Ball (nominated Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (nominated Javier Bardem).

Seeking their first Oscar acting mentions: Critics Choice and BAFTA nominees Kodi Smit-McPhee and Jesse Plemons both landed nominations for their roles in Jane Campion’s festival hit “The Power of the Dog” (Netflix). Smit-McPhee plays Peter,...

Chicago – The nominees for the 94th Academy Awards … taking place on March 27th, 2022 … were announced on February 8th. 23 categories will be up for Oscar, and the favorites will be will be debated as the Awards season plays out. The 94th Academy Awards will be broadcast on ABC-tv.

For the Top Six categories – Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress – I will rank by preference, and will provide a link in the Best Picture category to the original on-air and audio reviews (if available).This is preference only, not a predictor of who will win.The rest of the nominations are listed below the rankings.

12 Noms for ‘The Power of the Dog’ at the 94th Oscars

Photo credit: Netflix

Best Supporting Actress

The supporting categories are often introductory or outlier nominations, and three actresses are nominated for the first time. All the categories ranked in ascending order … Judi Dench...

This year, for the first time since 2010, there were guaranteed to be 10 nominees in the Best Picture Oscar line-up. Those honors went to “Belfast,” “Coda,” “Don’t Look Up,” “Drive My Car,” “Dune,” “King Richard,” “Licorice Pizza,” “Nightmare Alley,” “The Power of the Dog” and “West Side Story.” In our recent poll we asked our readers to name the movie they think just missed out in 11th place, and the results are overwhelming for “tick, tick… Boom!” Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s Netflix film came in with a majority of the votes (51%), far ahead of second-place contender “Being the Ricardos” (30%), directed by Aaron Sorkin for Amazon.

Here are the complete Best Picture Oscar poll results for what missed out:

51% — “tick, tick… Boom!”

30% — “Being the Ricardos”

10% — “The Lost Daughter”

6% — “The Tragedy of Macbeth”

2% — “No Time to Die”

1% — “Encanto”

See 2022 Oscar nominations: Full list of nominees in all 23 categories at the 94th Academy Awards

“tick,...

"Being the Ricardos" is the Oscar-nominated Amazon Original Movie set in the 1950's written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, starring Nicole Kidman as 'Lucille Ball':

"...over the  course of a week during production of the 1950's sitcom "I Love Lucy", 'Lucy' and 'Desi' encounter a crisis that could jeopardize their careers and marriage..."

Cast also includes J. K. Simmons as 'William Frawley', Nina Arianda as 'Vivian Vance', Tony Hale as 'Jess Oppenheimer'...

... and Alia Shawkat as 'Madelyn Pugh'. 

Click the images to enlarge...

When the 2022 Oscars nominations were announced on February 8, 10 movies were sitting pretty in the Best Picture line-up: “Belfast,” “Coda,” “Don’t Look Up,” “Drive My Car,” “Dune,” “King Richard,” “Licorice Pizza,” “Nightmare Alley,” “The Power of the Dog” and “West Side Story.” This is the first time since 2010 that 10 films were guaranteed to make the cut; for the past decade the number of nominees has fluctuated between eight and nine. Of this year’s notable also-rans, which one just missed an Oscar Best Picture nomination for 2022? Vote in our poll below to let us know which one You think was #11 on voters’ ballots.

See 2022 Oscar nominations: Full list of nominees in all 23 categories at the 94th Academy Awards

Based on Gold Derby’s racetrack odds, the snubbed film with the best chance of reaping a Best Picture bid was “tick, tick… Boom!” The Netflix musical was in ninth place in our rankings,...

Netflix’s “The Power of the Dog,” a revisionist Western that uses a careworn genre to examine toxic masculinity, dominated the Academy Awards on Tuesday with 12 nods, the most of any film. It was followed closely behind by “Dune,” a sprawling adaptation of a popular sci-fi novel that was once believed to be unfilmable, which defied naysayers to earn 10 Oscar nominations.

“West Side Story,” Steven Spielberg’s ravishing take on a beloved musical, and “Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age story, each received seven nominations. All four of those films are up for best picture, joining a race that includes “Coda,” “Don’t Look Up,” “Drive My Car,” “King Richard,” “Licorice Pizza” and “Nightmare Alley.”

Read more: Variety’s Awards Circuit Predictions Hub

This year’s celebration of all things movies comes as the film industry itself is in a period of great upheaval and transformation. The Covid-19 pandemic has battered the box office,...

Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash”) was born during the fourth season of “I Love Lucy.” And now 66 years later, he’s portraying actor William Frawley who was Fred Mertz on the classic in Aaron Sorkin’s “Being the Ricardos.” It stars Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball, Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz and Nina Arianda as Vivian Vance. “Weirdly as a young kid, watching it on mom and dad’s old black-and-white TV or maybe when grandma and grandpa had it on TV, I sort of identified with Fred Mertz,” observed Simmons during a recent Deadline Zoom interview with Bardem. “I just thought he was a delightful and amusing guy. And here we are 60 years later, I got to inhabit that guy for a while.”

When the series started in 1951, Frawley had appeared in vaudeville and dozens of movies. “It really wasn’t a giant stretch for Bill to play Fred Mertz,...

Academy Award winner J.K. Simmons, who plays William Frawley in “Being the Ricardos,” faced challenges researching Frawley since he died back in 1966. Frawley rose to prominence in the 1950s as Fred Mertz on “I Love Lucy.”

“I didn’t have any conversations with anybody who actually knew Bill,” Simmons told Joe McGovern as part of TheWrap’s Screening Series. “At first it was frustrating for me, doing my research, trying to find anything about Bill off camera, trying to find any footage of him outside of ‘I Love Lucy’ or obviously his film roles.”

Unable to find individuals who directly knew Frawley, Simmons decided to base his performance on published information, which he found liberating.

“At the end of the day, I found that to be a little bit freeing in a way because all the information I was able to get about Bill was from other people’s perspective,...

J.K. Simmons was reluctant to appear in “Being the Ricardos.” But reading Aaron Sorkin’s script, “I was able to see the gift that Aaron was giving to each of the actors.”

It’s a gift exchange: Simmons is so versatile and talented that he brings gifts to any filmmaker he works with.

Oscar voting runs Jan. 27-Feb. 1. Simmons has been getting some awards buzz, but deserves more: As an actor, he has the blessing/curse of always making it look easy so he’s sometimes taken for granted. But with “Ricardos,” as with everything else, he seems so perfect that you can’t imagine anyone else playing the part. He’s definitely a supporting-actor contender.

Simmons and Sorkin go back to 1990, when the actor was an understudy in the Broadway production of Sorkin’s breakthrough “A Few Good Men.” When Simmons stepped into the role, a producer urged Sorkin to come watch.

Editors note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will be factors in this year’s movie awards race.

I Love Lucy was just about the most famous show in the history of television, but the dramatic behind-the-scenes story stayed off screen, until now. Amazon Studios’ Being the Ricardos incorporates several of the true stories of Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman), Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) and their staff. Only writer-director Aaron Sorkin sets them all in one week.

In Season 2 of I Love Lucy, Ball gets two pieces of troubling news on a Monday: A magazine reports that Arnaz has been seen around town with another woman, and Walter Winchell discovers that Ball had once applied to be a member of the Communist party, sharing that news with his audience.

Ball and Arnaz show up to work to start the episode; Lucy fans will...

J.K. Simmons seemed destined to star in an Aaron Sorkin film and he finally does in Amazon Studios’ “Being the Ricardos.” But the two actually crossed paths years earlier.

“My first Broadway play, I was an understudy replacement in ‘A Few Good Men,’” Simmons tells Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast. Simmons played the role of the Doctor (which is not in the film version) but also had the opportunity to play the role of Col. Nathan Jessup – the role Jack Nicholson made infamous in Rob Reiner’s film version.

“It remains to this day maybe the best role I’ve ever had,” Simmons says. “Television, film, stage. It was an absolute genius piece of writing. And at this point, Aaron was just some kid from Scarsdale who miraculously got a play on Broadway.”

Simmons also appeared on “The West Wing” but it was after Sorkin had left the show. But...

“I Love Lucy” writers Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll Jr. thought the seminal CBS comedy series starring Lucille Ball, her husband Desi Arnaz, William Frawley and Vivian Vance would last three months. When I chatted with the duo, who wrote 181 episodes of the classic, in 2001 for the L.A. Times, Davis recalled watching the premiere Oct. 15, 1951 at the home of series director Marc Daniels. “Emily, his wife, was the camera coordinator. She was a good cook. She had dinner and watched the show.” Ball, Davis noted, “was terribly funny and wonderful. We had hopes for the show. We hoped it would be on for 13 weeks.

How about 71 years and counting?

The series ended in 1957 never below No. 3 in the ratings. It was followed by “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” specials from 1957-60, “I Love Lucy” continued in reruns on CBS on primetime for two more years and ran on the...

Oscar-winning actor J.K. Simmons is once again getting rave reviews for his latest performance, this one coming in Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos. In the film, which focuses on a week in the life of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz during the height of I Love Lucy’s popularity, Simmons plays William Frawley, who played Fred […]

The post Im-Mertz-ed In His Character: How J.K. Simmons Prepped For ‘The Ricardos’ appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

Oscar-winning actor J.K. Simmons has very vivid memories of watching the classic TV sitcom I Love Lucy when he was a child.

“I can’t say I remember the first time I saw it,” he recalls. “But as I’ve said before, I’m the only cast member who was born when I Love Lucy was still on the air, the original series. I think I was born during Season 4 and absolutely grew up on it. It was on my parents’ crappy little black and white TV when I was a preschooler and in elementary school. And of course the show’s never been off the air. So I think everybody, even people who are my kids’ age, have been able to say that they grew up watching I Love Lucy because it’s always been there.”

Decades later, Simmons–who’s also in theaters this month in Spider-Man: No...

For Variety‘s Writers on Writers, Marlo Thomas pens a tribute to “Being the Ricardos” (screenplay by Aaron Sorkin).

There is a wonderful scene in “Being the Ricardos” — Aaron Sorkin’s wrenching chronicle of the pioneering TV comedy series “I Love Lucy” — in which Lucy drags two of her co-stars to the studio at 2 a.m., during a thunderstorm, to re-block a comic moment in a dinner scene that hadn’t gone well in rehearsal. It wasn’t even her bit — it was between her two fellow actors — but she knew it wasn’t good enough, funny enough. And so we watch Lucy push them to rehearse it — position them, instruct them — and they comply, even though their expressions reveal that they think she’s gone mad.

But Lucille Ball knew where the funny was. She could envision it. She could hear it. And she knew what to add to it to make it better.

Following a limited theatrical release and a well-received bow to awards voters,”Being the Ricardos” finally dances its way to Amazon Prime Video subscribers on Tuesday.

While Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem topline the Aaron Sorkin drama, one of the major takeaways in both critical reviews and early audience reaction has been the unexpected potency and drama of Vivian Vance — portrayed by “Goliath” and “Billions” star Nina Arianda.

Vance was best friend to Lucy Ricardo on the formative TV show, portraying the long-suffering neighbor Ethel Mertz. In Sorkin’s telling, though, Vance’s daily struggles were not simply relegated to mounting housework and a curmudgeonly husband.

Arianda’s Vance is a formidable stage and screen star struggling to find her place in the orbit of both Lucys: the searing physical comedian and the steel-toed creative executive running the show.

Warning: Minor spoilers for “Being the Ricardos” ahead.

While Arianda contends...

I Love Lucy remains the single most influential series in television history; there is perhaps not a single sitcom in the medium’s long existence that doesn’t owe some stylistic debt to the program, and its creation and development were groundbreaking in ways that we are still trying to catch up with in 2021. Yet the one thing you won’t really get from Being the Ricardos, writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s look at a week in the life of Lucy creators and stars, and real-life couple, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, is a true sense of what the show was like, and how it was produced and written from week to week.

Oh sure, Being the Ricardos ostensibly takes place during the production of one episode, from the Monday table read of the script to the Friday taping of the show in front of a live audience, but it’s almost incidental to the many,...

Long before he was a prolific performer who has worked with top directors like Damien Chazelle, Jason Reitman, Zack Snyder, Sam Raimi, plus Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, J.K. Simmons served as an understudy for the role of Lt. Col. Nathan Jessup in the original Broadway production of Aaron Sorkin’s “A Few Good Men.”

‘To this day I get goosebumps every time I talk about it,” Simmons tells Gold Derby about the experience. “Aaron, very generously, even though this was a year into the run, came to see me on my opening night. He came backstage after the show and we had this meeting of the minds and hearts and souls. Over the years we had near miss after near miss for one reason or another, not working together again.”

But now, 31 years after that fateful performance, Simmons and Sorkin have finally reconnected thanks to “Being the Ricardos.” Sorkin...

When it comes to Aaron Sorkin screenplays, Tony Award-winning actress Nina Arianda thinks its best to approach his words like notes on sheet music.

“It’s almost similar to if you’re doing an Oscar Wilde play or a Shakespeare play, you have to honor the rhythm of it or it just doesn’t work,” she tells Gold Derby. “You have to honor the ellipses, the commas, because it won’t work otherwise, because it’s musical. Same thing with this. It’s similar to music in the sense where, when you’re singing something, you have to make sure you know where to take a breath or you won’t be able to continue. It’s the same thing energetically with an Aaron Sorkin script is you have to earn your pauses because they’re just as loud as what you’re saying. It’s music. And know your lines.

Though it would take three decades for “Being the Ricardos” writer-director Aaron Sorkin to cast J.K. Simmons in something Sorkin wrote, the filmmaker well remembers when the urge first came to him.

“He was an understudy in my first play ‘A Few Good Men,’ back in 1990,” Sorkin told IndieWire of the now widely esteemed actor, “And I got a call from the stage manager just to alert me that he was going on at a Wednesday matinee, so I ran to the theater. I wanted to catch his performance, understudying the role that Jack Nicholson played in the movie. He just blew the roof off the theater, a full house on Broadway went crazy. And I knew after his first scene, ‘This guy is a star. Keep your eye on him, keep yourself handcuffed to him.'”

Sorkin’s debut stage hit with its indelible “You can’t handle the truth” line,...

If you enter into Being the Ricardos expecting a tell-all scandal-ridden exposé of the beloved couple, you may be summarily disappointed. However, if you approach the film looking for an effectively told story of a couple wherein one party goes to the ends of the earth for the other in an attempt to make the relationship successful and the pain that is caused when that is not reciprocated, then you will be rewarded with one of the more honest and heartbreaking stories delivered by recent cinema.

The narrative of the film centers on one particular week during the production of the seminal sitcom I Love Lucy during which national newspapers are preparing a story that links star Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and the Communist Party. During the five days of production before the actual taping of the show, the film bounces between closed-door meetings and writers’ room discussions and several...

Turning Nicole Kidman into Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem into Desi Arnaz in “Being the Ricardos” wasn’t only about creating a facsimile of the iconic 1950s TV duo.

Rather, director Aaron Sorkin instructed hair department head Teressa Hill and makeup department head Ana Lozano, “We are not taking a photograph; we are painting a picture.” The approach is generating awards buzz for the below-the-line duo.

The film, opening Dec. 10, centers on a week of filming “I Love Lucy,” from table read to shooting an episode. Sorkin also re-creates memorable moments from the series, which ran on CBS from 1951-57, and provides snapshots of the couple’s marriage.

That plotline meant creating numerous looks for the TV stars and their real-life personas: Lucille Ball/ Lucy Ricardo and Desi Arnaz/Desi Ricardo, as well as dual looks for the other cast members (including J.K. Simmons as William Frawley/Fred Mertz and...

Picture, if you will, a Vanity Fair photoshoot with Hollywood favourites Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. A stylist has decided that it would be a blast to have them pose as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz; Nicole with her red hair and Javier with his being Spanish and not Cuban at all but whatever. Suddenly things take a surreal turn, Aaron Sorkin has arrived to direct the shoot and he’s making them speak his trademark staccato dialogue. And before we know it, they’re Being the Ricardos.

On paper Being the Ricardos has a promising premise. The majority of its action takes place amid the claustrophobia of a single, make or break, production week. It bustles from the writer’s room to production offices, bitches about script changes with Alia Shawkat, intrudes into dressing rooms, chain-smokes theatrically in backlot alleyways and loves a good gossip. It couldn’t be...

In retrospect, writer and director Aaron Sorkin’s baffling admission that he doesn’t necessarily think “I Love Lucy” would be considered “funny” today should have caused an even larger fervor than it did. Sorkin certainly isn’t a stranger to comedy, but his interests — snappy dialogue, twists of fate, jokes about celebs — don’t exactly intersect with the enduring charm of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s seminal ’50s-era sitcom. Sorkin and Lucy and Desi? It’s a strange pairing even in theory, and still worse in practice, as “Being the Ricardos” offers up some of the least interesting appraisals of not just Lucy and Desi, but of Sorkin himself, plus his stars Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem.

Typically a razor-sharp writer, Sorkin (who is the sole credited screenwriter of the period drama) seems to trip his way into his ultimate interest here: bolstering the true genius of Ball,...

Aaron Sorkin’s ingeniously structured but weirdly mannered film offers an exhausting peek behind the scenes on I Love Lucy

Aaron Sorkin’s strenuously unrelaxed comedy-drama is inspired by the legendary US TV show I Love Lucy starring real-life married couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz whose surname on the show was “Ricardo”; their programme boldly cast Latino and white together, pioneered the three-camera sitcom, ruled the airwaves in the 1950s and dominated schedules with reruns for decades afterwards. (There’s a gag in Crocodile Dundee about Mick seeing a TV for the first time in years and nodding calmly to see I Love Lucy is still on.)

This movie imagines a stressed Ball dealing with tabloid rumours about her husband’s infidelity and career-endangering rumblings from the reactionary press that she is a Commie, all the while striving with unashamed perfectionism to get a misfiring scene exactly right. Nicole Kidman...

Taking place over the course of one chaotic week during the production of sitcom staple I Love Lucy, Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos spins more plates than it could possibly hope to handle. Its two core ideas are thus: at the same time that Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) is publicly accused of being a communist, a gossip rag has published a cover story proclaiming her husband Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) is sleeping around. Both accusations are denied. Both threaten to derail the professional and personal lives of the couple if they prove to be true, or if they breach further into the public consciousness. With tensions high, the show must go on.

Sorkin, as he’s loved to do from his days on Sports Night through The Newsroom, takes us behind the scenes for this inside-baseball look at the mechanics of making one episode of the iconic program. We watch the actors,...

Being the Ricardos writer-director Aaron Sorkin and stars Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, J.K. Simmons and Nina Arianda joined Deadline’s Contenders Film: New York showcase to discuss the Amazon Studios biopic of sorts about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez, played by Kidman and Bardem, respectively.

For the film, Sorkin chose to compress a series of true events in the lives of the iconic married TV stars into one production week of making I Love Lucy — the Monday table read through Friday audience filming. Those plot points include Ball being accused at the time of being a Communist, a crisis that could have ended the trailblazing couple’s rocketing careers that besides the sitcom including running their own Hollywood studio.

“There were these wonderful points of friction…” Sorkin said about the story’s structure, developed with help from producers Jenna Block and Todd Black. “There are three big events …they didn...

Writer-director Aaron Sorkin said there are three things he hopes audiences walk away with after watching his newest film, “Being the Ricardos,” about the lives of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

“Mostly, I want them to have a good time during the two hours that were asked for their attention, realize that the lives of Lucy and Desi were considerably more complicated than Lucy and Ricky and pay less attention to Twitter,” he told Variety.

Set in the backdrop of 1950s Hollywood, “Being the Ricardos” examines the complex marriage of the beloved “I Love Lucy” co-stars. The entire film spans one week of production on the classic sitcom, specifically when a major story in the press accuses Ball of registering as a member of the Communist Party back in the 1930s.

Sorkin said that he hopes viewers pick up on the similarities between society’s fear of Communism in the...

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars and Emmys ceremonies from film awards editor Clayton Davis. Following history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar and Emmy predictions are updated regularly with the current year's list of contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long: Draft, Pre-Season, Regular Season and Post Season. The eligibility calendar and dates of awards will determine how long each phase lasts and is subject to change.

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2022 Screen Actors Guild Awards Predictions:

Best Performance By A Male Actor In A Leading Role

Updated: Nov 25, 2021

Awards Prediction Commentary: More to come…...

"Being the Ricardos" is the new Amazon Original Movie set in the 1950's written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, starring Nicole Kidman as 'Lucille Ball', in movie theaters December 10, 2021 and streaming December 21, 2021 on Prime Video:

"...over the  course of a week during production of the 1950's sitcom "I Love Lucy", 'Lucy' and 'Desi' encounter a crisis that could jeopardize their careers and marriage..."

Cast also includes J. K. Simmons as 'William Frawley', Nina Arianda as 'Vivian Vance', Tony Hale as 'Jess Oppenheimer'...

... and Alia Shawkat as 'Madelyn Pugh'. 

Click the images to enlarge...