Netflix revives the Spy Kids franchise with a new film from writer-director Robert Rodriguez

Patrick Dempsey is looking sharp in his two grey suits for the second season launch of Diavoli, held at The Space Odeon on Thursday (April 7) in Milan, Italy.

NPR White House Correspondent Scott Detrow, reporting from Ukraine on Tuesday, noted a surprising but familiar slogan scrawled on the side of a damaged tank.

Update (4/7/22): Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to become a Supreme Court Justice on Thursday April 7. The Senate voted in favor of confirming her with a 53-47 majority vote. Her two daughters were seen showing their support for her throughout the confirmation hearings. She will likely be sworn in at the end of June or beginning of July, per CNN. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefWildBrain CPLG, the agency and licensing arm of kids and family entertainment group Wildbrain, is to open three new offices in Singapore, Taipei and Seoul as part of a major expansion into the Asia-Pacific. The licensing team which is part of WildBrain’s existing Shanghai operations will be expanded and renamed WildBrain CPLG China.Maarten Weck, EVP & MD of WildBrain CPLG, will lead the Asia expansion and be responsible for the management and growth of WildBrain CPLG’s team and business in the region.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefJapanese manga and anime fans will get a chance to deepen their obsessions with the Viz Media re-release later this year of volume 1 of “Bleach,” an iconic comic strip. One of the best-selling manga titles of all time, “Bleach” has sold over 120 million copies since its debut in Japan’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, including 2.7 million copies in the U.S. As an anime TV series, it ran to 366 episodes and spawned four feature films.The release of a limited-edition 20th anniversary edition is set for Aug.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefVincent Ngo, top screenwriter and Hollywood script doctor, has set up comedy series “Early Risers” in his native Vietnam. Talent behemoth, Creative Artists Agency (CAA) represents the production company Early Risers Media Group and is handling licensing of the series’ distribution rights.The show, about the lives of American and European expats living and working in Saigon, is set to begin filming under the direction of Zach Merck at the end of this month.

Sam Raimi is on-board with the idea of directing more “Spider-Man” movies.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaHaving chronicled the decline of one influential business with “The Last Blockbuster,” Taylor Morden will instead tell the story of the incredible rise of another in his next feature length documentary.Morden’s new film will examine Build-A-Bear Workshop, charting its growth from startup fad to decades-old experiential retailer. The film is being made with the company’s cooperation and will coincide with Build-A-Bear’s 25th anniversary.

Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey are back on set filming the Enchanted sequel, Disenchanted!

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefKorean-made series have continued to dominate viewership on Netflix, following on from the breakout successes of “Squid Game” and “Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha” in 2021.For ten of the 13 weeks in the first quarter so far this year, Korean shows have held top spot in Netflix’s global non-English series ranking. Romantic comedy “Business Proposal” is currently the top non-English series for the third week in a row (March 28-April 3, 2022), and is Netflix’s third-ranking series of all origins, behind only “Bridgerton” (seasons 1 and season 2) with over 32 million watch hours.“Business Proposal” has played particularly strongly in Asia, ranking as the top series in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam and in second place in India and Sri Lanka in the last week.

Jesse Williams is celebrating the opening night of his Broadway show!

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefCharlotte Gainsbourg-starring “The Passengers of the Night” and Ralph Fiennes- and Jessica Chastain-starring “The Forgiven” are among the first batch of movies revealed by the Sydney Film Festival. The festival is planning an in-person event running 8-19 June, 2022.Australian-produced titles include dance film “Keep Stepping”; “Sissy,” which mixes social media and horror; music title “Six Festivals”; and intimate portrait “The Plains,” which had its premiere in Rotterdam earlier this year.The 22-film advanced lineup also leans heavily on other festival favorites.

Patrick Dempsey and Amy Adams jumped right back into character and were seen kissing while filming the long-awaited sequel to their hit 2007 Disney flick, Enchanted, aptly titled Disenchanted.The 56-year-old actor wrapped his arm around Amy— who is reprising her role as Gisele while he played a cynical lawyer named Robert in the first film— before driving off in an SUV while cameras rolled on set in Manhattan on Tuesday morning.Adams, 47, looked lovely wearing a beautiful white dress with a green and red holly print, and a matching red belt for her role as Gisele, the optimistic princess fromthe Kingdom of Andalasia who previously lived in an animated world before a witch cast a spell and sent her to the real-life land of New York where Robert and his daughter Morgan find Gisele, offer her a place to stay and teach her how to be a city girl. Back in action: Patrick Dempsey and Amy Adams jumped right back into character and were seen kissing while filming the long-awaited sequel to their hit 2007 Disney flick, Enchanted, aptly titled Disenchanted Together again: The 56-year-old actor wrapped his arm around Amy — who is reprising her role as Gisele while he played a cynical lawyer named Robert in the first film — before driving off in an SUV while cameras rolled on set in Manhattan on Tuesday morningAmy's bright auburn tresses were worn parted to the side and in luscious curls, and she added inches to her petite frame with a pair of strappy red heels.Dempsey looked dapper wearing a lightweight puffer jacket on top of a green button-down shirt with khaki slacks for the sidewalk scene with his leading lady.

Six Star Trek: The Next Generation cast members will be boarding Star Trek: Picard for the third and final season of the Paramount+ series. LeVar Burton and Michael Dorn, along with Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner will join Patrick Stewart in the final chapter of Star Trek: Picard. This is the first time Paramount+ has confirmed Picard will be ending with the third season, although stars of the series, including Stewart, have stated as such in interviews over the past couple of months. You can watch the cast announcement below.

Better Call Saul is back for a new and final season 6 this April. Slippin’ Jimmy’s transformation into the Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk is back in the lead role with a memorable ensemble cast after recovering from a heart attack last year) we know from Breaking Bad has almost come full circle.  It may be the beginning of the end, but before that transformation is complete we have a final 13 episodes to enjoy in the series’ sixth and final season, almost two years after season five.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefRoku has picked up a second season of “Cypher,” an FBI-themed crime drama series, for which it was the exclusive North American carrier of the first seven-episode season.In territories outside the U.S. and Canada, the show is represented by Screen Media Ventures, which is launching it at the MipTV market this week.“Cypher” tells the story of an FBI code-breaking specialist who discovers a secret organization’s hit list and must navigate the murky waters of loyalty and betrayal among an underground ring of hackers, assassins, and government agents spanning a global conspiracy.Created by Mohamed Sayed Bisheer and directed by Majdi Smiri, the first season was shot in Los Angeles and produced jointly by Cairo-based Aroma Studios and United Brothers along with Los Angeles-based production companies AZ Films, Thriller Films and Taiwan’s Organic Media Group.

Lots of celebs stepped out out to check out the opening night performance of the Broadway play Take Me Out!

If the last week in our entertainments has shown us anything, it’s that even the most ordered, traditional of ceremonies can be disrupted by an unkind explosion of id, with ramifications splashing like crocodile tears on even the most unexpected of our heroes. Take Me Out, Richard Greenberg’s 2002 play that charts the ramifications when a star baseball player comes out as gay, opens on Broadway tonight in a revival that has the perfect timing of a triple play.

EXCLUSIVE: The Jono McLeod directed documentary My Old School, which made its world premiere at this year’s virtual Sundance Film Festival, has landed with Magnolia Pictures. The specialty cinema label has taken North American rights to the docu which features Alan Cumming. A July 22 theatrical release has been set.

Covid strain has been found in the UK – but boffins say it’s too early to say exactly how transmissible it really is.Top scientists at the UK Health Security Agency warned they were studying the new XE variant.They say it is a mutation of the BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron strains, meaning it is a “recombinant” as it is a combination of two other viral sources.But experts currently don’t know if it is more transmissible than previous strains that have previously wreaked havoc across the UK.There were 637 cases with the XE strain in England as of March 22, the health agency said.It means it would make up just a small fraction of cases reported with the latest data showing almost 70,000 people in England were positive for the virus on April 2.The health agency said initial growth rates showed that XE was not dissimilar from BA.2, according to Wales Online.It added: "As this estimate has not remained consistent as new data have been added, it cannot yet be interpreted as an estimate of growth advantage for the recombinant."Numbers were too small for the XE recombinant to be analysed by region.”Top government boffin Sir Patrick Vallance admitted the next Covid variant could be worse than Omicron.He said it would be a “mistake” to think the more the virus evolves, the less deadly it would become. Stay in the loop with all the latest news from the Daily Star by signing up to one of our free newsletters here. Although Covid cases may have peaked, there will be more hospitalisations and deaths to come from this current wave, Sir Patrick added.He told MPs that despite the vaccination programmes success at preventing deaths, it was not a "credible" strategy to give people booster jabs every four months.But it isn’t all doom and gloom for

On the heels of the success of HBO Max’s post-apocalyptic limited series Station Eleven, created by Patrick Somerville based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Emily St. John Mandel, Somerville and St. John Mandel Mandel are teaming up for series adaptations of Mandel’s most recent book, The Glass Hotel, and her upcoming novel Sea of Tranquility.