Disney Plus
‘Ms. Marvel’ Introduces a New Hero (and a New Actress)
When Iman Vellani watches herself as the title character in “Ms. Marvel,” she cannot help but feel a sense of disbelief. Before this Disney+ series came her way, she was a high school senior with a seemingly impossible dream to be in a Marvel project — now she’s playing one of its powerful costumed champions, […]
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What We Learned About TV During Its Biggest Week
Stocks were plunging and Covid cases were surging. Who’s ready to buy some ads? For the first time in three years, the upfronts — the showcases the media industry throws for advertisers to persuade them to pay for commercial time — took place in person in Manhattan. Over the past few days, thousands of ad […]
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Oscar Isaac Learned to Love Blockbusters Again in ‘Moon Knight’
At this point in its history, Marvel isn’t known for tinkering with its proven superhero formula. And yet “Moon Knight,” the studio’s current Disney+ series, has taken some unexpected chances. Its debut episode introduced Steven Grant, a maladroit museum gift-shop clerk with a dodgy British accent, played by Oscar Isaac. Isaac also plays Marc Spector, […]
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Netflix’s Stumble Could Be a Warning Sign for Streaming Industry
Many entertainment executives, tired of playing catch-up to a Silicon Valley interloper, have been waiting for the comeuppance of Netflix. But this may not have been the way they hoped it would happen. Netflix said this week that it lost more subscribers than it signed up in the first three months of the year, reversing […]
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Disney, Built on Fairy Tales and Fantasy, Confronts the Real World
Since its founding in 1923, Disney has stood alone in Hollywood in one fundamental way: Its family-friendly movies, television shows and theme park rides, at least in theory, have always been aimed at everybody, with potential political and cultural pitfalls zealously avoided. The Disney brand is about wishing on stars and finding true love and […]
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The Old-Timers Are Chasing Netflix
It’s a question that’s almost as old as Netflix: How long can we have the world’s favorite streaming video service with no commercials? For years, when Netflix executives have been asked if the company might someday run ads like conventional TV, their answer was some version of nope. However, people who keep close tabs on […]
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Boba Fett, Intergalactic Man of Mystery
For many viewers, “Star Wars” is synonymous with characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, embodiments of heroism and villainy whose actions have steered the course of this long-running fantasy series. Then there are the “Star Wars” fans whose admiration runs a bit deeper, to the ranks of supporting characters whose intentions are not so […]
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Jeremy Renner Takes Aim at TV in ‘Hawkeye’ and ‘Mayor of Kingstown’
In our own conversation, Renner remarked more than once that going straight from “Hawkeye” (which filmed in New York and Atlanta) to “Mayor of Kingstown” (which was shot in Toronto and in Kingston, Ontario) had been grueling, and that he might not have taken on the workload if he hadn’t been able to bring his […]
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