By Lucas Villa The film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical In the Heights focuses on the sueñitos, or little dreams, of a Latinx-Caribbean community in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood. After making it out of the Heights to attend Stanford University, Nina Rosario feels out of place in her new environment, so she returns home to reconnect with the community that raised her. As a Dominican-American singer that was born in the Bronx, Leslie Grace is living out her own sueñito by portraying Nina — and making her big-screen debut in the process. “I feel so blessed to be part of this movie,” Grace tells MTV News. “I feel the way that these characters do — that [they] have dreams, that [they] have aspirations, and that [they] are waiting for that moment to reac...
The film is from Universal Studios via its 1440 Productions division, which means it’s likely going to Peacock instead of getting a theatrical release. The Munsters was a 1964 sitcom about a family of friendly monsters who relocated from Transylvania to an American suburb. The show ran for just two seasons along with the similarly premised spooky comedy, The Addams Family. Yet despite their brief runs, both shows cast a rather long shadow over popular culture in the decades since. Addams Family was previously rebooted as a modern-day film (the 1991 hit The Addams Family and then its 1993 sequel Addams Family Values). While The Munsters spawned a few TV movies with the original cast and a 1988 sequel series titled The Munsters Today in which the family awakens decades later. NBC and Pushing...
By Deepa Lakshmin Two girls, one pill — that’s the magic formula for Hulu’s Plan B, director Natalie Morales’s raunchy comedy starring Kuhoo Verma and Victoria Moroles. The premise is simple but sharp: two best friends, united in their clever banter and lack of high-school popularity, embark on a road trip across South Dakota after Sunny (Verma) has sex for the first time at the only party she’s ever thrown. There’s a hiccup with the condom, and soon she’s racing to find emergency contraception in a town where “conscience clause” legislation allows pharmacists to deny medication if it goes against their beliefs. With the clock ticking, Sunny and Lupe (Moroles) set out for the nearest Planned Parenthood; their journey, just like the party the night before, does not go as expected. Ver...
It’s the dawn of a new era for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The first trailer for Chloé Zhao’s Eternals — her first feature film since last year’s Best Picture-winning Nomadland — is here, and it’s full of familiar faces: Gemma Chan, Game of Thrones‘s Richard Madden, Brian Tyree Henry, a swole Kumail Nanjiani, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Lauren Ridloff, Lia McHugh… oh, and Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie, of course. We’ve long known that the cast for this particular Marvel movie is stacked, but seeing that crew standing together on a beach in their mystical, futuristic garb is a whole new experience. The arrival of the film’s first look feels even more momentous given its delayed arrival. First set to arrive in theaters in November 2020, Eternal...
Ben Platt reprises his titular role in the official trailer for the Dear Evan Hansen film, which Universal Pictures unveiled on Tuesday (May 18). The heartwarming clip showcases the Tony-, Grammy- and Emmy-winning actor portraying his Broadway character Evan Hansen, an anxious, lonely high school teenager who writes motivational letters to himself per his therapist’s assignment. His classmate Connor Murphy takes one of the letters, but after he dies by suicide, Connor’s parents find Evan’s note in his pocket and believe it to be his suicide note directed for Evan. Evan begins to bond with Connor’s family and plans his memorial service — where he shines in his eventually viral performance of “You Will Be Found” — while his fabricated frie...
Though many understand awards season as traditionally beginning with the Golden Globes and ending with the Oscars, that doesn’t paint the full picture, especially in a year filled with as many setbacks and scandals as this one. Things really start to heat up with the MTV Movie & Awards, a celebration of the best in television and cinema which kicked off at the Palladium in Los Angeles on Sunday (May 16) with a fully blinged-out red carpet return. The awards are well-known for unexpected categories like Best Kiss and Best Villain in which superhero blockbusters are nominated alongside direct-to-streaming teen rom-coms. As celebrities arrived to the ceremony, the looks were equally as playful. Outer Banks star Chase Stokes went bold in a brilliant red suit, while Lovecraft County...
“Watching that reel reminds of me all the incredibly inspiring collaborators that I’ve been fortunate enough to work with for over three decades.” That’s how Scarlett Johansson addressed her fans, her co-stars, her creative partners, her past crew members, and more as she accepted the Generation Award at the 2021 MTV Movie & TV Awards on Sunday night (May 16). For a performer like ScarJo, who’s been a staple of Hollywood since she was a literal child and has since blazed her own unique cinematic trail in the following years, it felt right. “I never would’ve been able to continue to evolve as an actor for the last 30 years without the support and dedication of so many cast and crew members that make up the nomadic traveling circus family that ar...
Turn up the stage lights and get a glimpse of what life is like in Washington Heights in an exclusive new clip from the upcoming film adaptation of the beloved Lin-Manuel Miranda musical In the Heights. The one-minute exclusive clip, which premiered at the 2021 MTV Movie & TV Awards on Sunday (May 16), centers on Usnavi de la Vega (Anthony Ramos) as he inspires his community to sing and dance along with him in the sizzling summertime anthem “Carnaval Del Barrio.” His relationship with Vanessa (Melissa Barrera) gets a spotlight moment too as the duo dance together to the song’s Latin-infused backbeat. To introduce the clip, Miranda explained that In the Heights is an “extremely personal” film to him because it’s inspired by people and magic of the neighborhood he grew up in. “Washington...
Chadwick Boseman might not have landed an Oscar this year, but the 2021 MTV Movie & TV Awards are giving him the posthumous honor he deserves. The Black Panther star, who died last August at just 43 years old after a long but private battle with cancer, won Best Performance in a Movie on Sunday (May 16) for his role in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. In the film adaptation of the beloved August Wilson play, Boseman plays Levee Green, an overconfident musician who plots to leave Ma Rainey’s band and score his own record deal. The scene-stealing performance was also Boseman’s final film role. “Chadwick’s impact is everlasting, and we are eternally grateful for the ways his presence and his art have changed the wor...
Back to the Future, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, and… To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before! The voters for the MTV Movie & TV Awards have decided the Netflix original film has earned its spot among other classic Hollywood trilogies. They proved it by crowning the third installment, To All the Boys: Always and Forever, as Best Movie during the awards ceremony on Sunday (May 16). The film’s star, Lana Condor, along with To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before author Jenny Han and producer Matt Kaplan, came out onto the stage to accept the Golden Popcorn. “Thank you for all the fans who voted. Thank you, Netflix. Jenny, thank you for trusting us with your books. Without that, we wouldn’t be here,” said Kaplan during his short speech, ...
It was three days before Christmas when the actress Jessica Barden received an Instagram DM from Kelly Oxford, the New York Times best-selling author of When You Find Out the World Is Against You. This wasn’t out of the ordinary — the two had struck up a friendship online about five years ago after Barden discovered Oxford’s writing — but the content of the message certainly was. “Hey, I’ve written a script. It’s about one of the passages in my book,” it read. “We have to film it in Los Angeles in the summer because I have kids. Let me know if you want to do it.” “I was like, this is the most iconic job offer I’ve ever gotten,” Barden says over Zoom from Sydney, Australia. The 28-year-old’s career has included standout performances in the dark comedy The End of the F***ing World and the ed...
Amazing Grace came together from footage shot in 1972 by Pollack of Aretha Franklin’s legendary two-day performance at the Missionary Baptist Church. For years, the movie was held up by demands from the singer herself, even after Elliott got Warner Bros. to release its rights to the footage. Elliott says that before Pollack died, the director helped his efforts to secure a quitclaim deed from WB and never made any rights claim himself. But as Elliott prepared to bring the movie to the Telluride Film Festival in 2015, Tyerman wrote to Elliott about financial compensation for Pollack rights. What rights did Pollack (and his estate) actually have? The director didn’t own copyright to the footage, but in a series of letters and conversations, Tyerman repeatedly represented that Elliott would n...