Category: news

NME

A new series Dope Girls has been developed by the BBC – described as the “spiritual successor” to Peaky Blinders. 

• READ MORE: How the Peaky Blinders finale sets up a movie and TV spin-offs

Dope Girls is new crime series about a female gangster in Soho’s historical wretched neighbourhood. The show will be a six-part series debuting on BBC One, produced by Bad Wolf. According to Deadline, Dope Girls is a “spiritual successor of Peaky Blinders” and is currently in the discussion stages with US production partners and streaming services.

The storyline hasn’t been finalised yet, but it will follow the beginning of the London nightclub scene in Soho.

The show will tackle the non-fiction book Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground by Marek Kohn, including fictional characters and storylines, exploring all angles of the criminal world in Soho during the 20th century.

It is partly based on the true story of an independent 42-year-old single mother, Kate Meyrick, who owns a nightclub empire and Mobstyle enterprise and is crowned the most dangerous woman in London and the enemy of Baron Chang, the boss of Soho’s grimy underworld.

Her nightclub is powered by drugs and alcohol, becoming the Number One spot for World War One survivors to forget their postpartum stress disorder after returning from war. It will also capture women owning the right to be open about their sexuality as they use sex and drugs to dominate men.

Filming is set to begin later this year, and casting will be revealed at a later date.

In other news, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has put out a casting call for skinheads to star in his new BBC drama This Town.

Announced late last year, This Town “tells the story of an extended family and four young people who are drawn into the world of ska and two-tone music, which exploded from the grass roots of Coventry and Birmingham in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, uniting black, white and Asian youths”.

Levi Brown, Jordan Bolger, Ben Rose and Eve Austin will star as the four young leads, with filming beginning in Wolverhampton earlier this year. Casting agency Mad Dog 2020 has since appealed (via Birmingham Live) for “skinheads and people with shaved heads… in and around West Bromwich” to become involved with the show, but only if they “have good availability from now until the end of February”, when filming presumably wrapped.

After the sixth and final season of Peaky Blinders aired last year, lead star Cillian Murphy said that the script to a follow-up movie was “close” to being finished – with other TV spin-offs said to be in the works too.

The post ‘Peaky Blinders’ “spiritual successor” ‘Dope Girls’ coming to the BBC appeared first on NME.

NME

A new series Dope Girls has been developed by the BBC – described as the “spiritual successor” to Peaky Blinders. 

• READ MORE: How the Peaky Blinders finale sets up a movie and TV spin-offs

Dope Girls is new crime series about a female gangster in Soho’s historical wretched neighbourhood. The show will be a six-part series debuting on BBC One, produced by Bad Wolf. According to Deadline, Dope Girls is a “spiritual successor of Peaky Blinders” and is currently in the discussion stages with US production partners and streaming services.

The storyline hasn’t been finalised yet, but it will follow the beginning of the London nightclub scene in Soho.

The show will tackle the non-fiction book Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground by Marek Kohn, including fictional characters and storylines, exploring all angles of the criminal world in Soho during the 20th century.

It is partly based on the true story of an independent 42-year-old single mother, Kate Meyrick, who owns a nightclub empire and Mobstyle enterprise and is crowned the most dangerous woman in London and the enemy of Baron Chang, the boss of Soho’s grimy underworld.

Her nightclub is powered by drugs and alcohol, becoming the Number One spot for World War One survivors to forget their postpartum stress disorder after returning from war. It will also capture women owning the right to be open about their sexuality as they use sex and drugs to dominate men.

Filming is set to begin later this year, and casting will be revealed at a later date.

In other news, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has put out a casting call for skinheads to star in his new BBC drama This Town.

Announced late last year, This Town “tells the story of an extended family and four young people who are drawn into the world of ska and two-tone music, which exploded from the grass roots of Coventry and Birmingham in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, uniting black, white and Asian youths”.

Levi Brown, Jordan Bolger, Ben Rose and Eve Austin will star as the four young leads, with filming beginning in Wolverhampton earlier this year. Casting agency Mad Dog 2020 has since appealed (via Birmingham Live) for “skinheads and people with shaved heads… in and around West Bromwich” to become involved with the show, but only if they “have good availability from now until the end of February”, when filming presumably wrapped.

After the sixth and final season of Peaky Blinders aired last year, lead star Cillian Murphy said that the script to a follow-up movie was “close” to being finished – with other TV spin-offs said to be in the works too.

The post ‘Peaky Blinders’ “spiritual successor” ‘Dope Girls’ coming to the BBC appeared first on NME.

NME

Adam Sandler was punched in the face by Mark Strong on the set of their new film Murder Mystery 2.

The comedy is the follow-up to the 2019 Netflix film, Murder Mystery, and will follow Sandler and Jennifer Aniston as they reprise their roles as Nick and Audrey Spitz after they launching their private investigation agency. Strong plays Connor Miller, a former M16 hostage negotiator and skilled detective who often gets into numerous fights with Sandler.

While appearing on BBC’s The One Show, Strong jokingly admitted to punching Sandler in the face during an action scene.

“The [action sequences] go on for ages,” he explained. “You’re doing one movement for ages and I had to literally hold [Sandler’s] shoulder and punch him but keep a [small distance] away from him because of where the camera was. And one time I caught him.”

Sandler showed good sportsmanship as he wants to move forward from the situation, with him and Aniston joking about it in a video they sent to the BBC chat.

“We’re not gonna talk about Mark punching me in the face that time. Accidentally, Mark punched me in the face. You remember that Mark?” Sandler said.

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We surprised Mark Strong with a message from his co-stars, Jennifer Aniston and @AdamSandler! #TheOneShow https://t.co/Jmn9qRPl6G pic.twitter.com/ZpSsJlERud

— BBC The One Show (@BBCTheOneShow) March 21, 2023

Aniston thanked Strong for “elevating” their movie numerous times.

The Uncut Gems actor continued: “You’re a good man though, Mark – I forgave him immediately and I was knocked out for about half a second.”

Aniston added, “He cried a little bit but then he was over it,” before Sandler replied: “The tears went away and I was like, ‘Mark’s my friend'”.

In other news, Sandler has shared how he came to terms with critics “hating” his movies.

The actor has starred in a number of critical flops over his career, including Grown Ups, Jack And Jill, Little Nicky, Mr. Deeds and others.

Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Sandler explained how Kathy Bates helped him handle negative reviews when they starred together in 1998’s The Waterboy.

The post Mark Strong punched Adam Sandler in the face on set of ‘Murder Mystery 2’ appeared first on NME.

NME

Tony Soprano’s cutthroat character in HBO’s legendary series The Sopranos inspired season two of Yellowjackets, showrunners have claimed.

• READ MORE: Yellowjackets season two review: a terrific yet traumatic return to the wild
  

Yellowjackets tells the story of a team of talented female high-school soccer players who survive a plane crash deep in the Ontario wilderness. The series chronicles their descent from a complicated but thriving team to warring, cannibalistic clans, while also tracking the lives they have attempted to piece back together.

The series became Showtimes’ highest-viewed new series in six years, with over five million viewers weekly.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, creators of the show Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickelson discussed how normalising cannibalism, murder, and trauma is connected back to the Italian mob boss. “Tony Soprano is an absolute monster — but, because he’s so well drawn, you understand him. That’s what we’re aiming for.” Lyle told the publication.

He continued: “We have conversations about what could be too far, but it’s less about likeability for the characters and more about the type of story. We never want to be shocking and salacious for the sheer joy of it.”

Co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco taunted fans jokingly, during a separate interview with Entertainment Weekly, by adding that cannibalism is “the tip of the iceberg” of the soccer team’s numerous crimes.

“If we do our job right, the eating of a person will not be the most transgressive thing that these young women do in the wilderness,” he said.

Lisco added:  “That’s just the tip of the iceberg. If season 1 was about our teen characters learning to adapt to their harsh surroundings, season 2 is where it all just really explodes. Each one of them is gonna make choices that they never dreamed possible.

“And, and as we cut forward 25 years, we’re gonna watch those terrible actions surface in ways that I would say irrevocably changed the fate of their lives.”

 

Meanwhile, actor Tawny Cypress also told Entertainment Weekly that the series will not cross moral grounds such as “eating a baby”, but it will most certainly cover “beheading dogs”.

In other news, Florence + The Machine has covered No Doubt‘s ‘Just A Girl’ for the trailer of the new season of Yellowjackets. 

The cover of No Doubt’s 1995 hit was produced by Florence Welch and Mark Bowen of IDLES, and is now available on streaming platforms.

“I’m such a huge fan of Yellowjackets and this era of music, and this song especially had a huge impact on me growing up, so I was thrilled to be asked to interpret it in a ‘deeply unsettling’ way for the show,” said Welch. “We tried to really add some horror elements to this iconic song to fit the tone of the show. And as someone whose first musical love was pop punk and Gwen Stefani it was a dream job.”

Yellowjackets season two will premiere Friday, March 24. In a four-star review of the new season, NME wrote that “the second instalment of this acclaimed thriller series continues to prove that, even 25 years later, what happens in the wilderness definitely does not stay in the wilderness”.

The post ‘Yellowjacket’ showrunners say Tony Soprano inspired season two appeared first on NME.