OHMYGOSSIP — Sean Penn is slamming the backlash against straight actors playing homosexuals as “timid and artless”.
The ‘Mystic River’ actor and director, 63, earned critical acclaim and his second Oscar for best actor thanks to his portrayal of the openly gay politician Harvey Milk in 2008’s ‘Milk’, and has now said he has been “miserable” on movie sets ever since.
He told The New York Times about how he could not star in the film today amid hot debate over heterosexuals playing queer characters: “No. It could not happen in a time like this.
“It’s a time of tremendous overreach. It’s a timid and artless policy toward the human imagination.”
Opening up about how his work on ‘Milk’ was the “last time I had a good time” on a film set, Sean added: “I went 15 years miserable on sets. I was faking my way through that stuff and that was exhausting.
“Mostly what I thought was just, ‘What time is it? When are we going to get off?’… I was sure it was done, but I didn’t know how I was going to keep my house running or travel freely or things like that if I stopped.”
But Sean has kept acting despite falling out of love with the process, with one of his most recent roles as a grizzled New York paramedic in 2023’s ‘Black Flies’.
He admitted he has found new meaning in his job after his friend and fellow actor Dakota Johnson, 34, sent him the screenplay for their new film together, ‘Daddio’.
The film is a two-hander that stars only Sean and Dakota – with the actor playing a cabbie who taxis a young woman played by Dakota to the airport.
They end up in a wide-ranging discussion, with Sean’s character a street philosopher from New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen.
He added: “I felt like this could be a pleasant experience and that’s gonna matter to me now, maybe more than in the past.”

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OHMYGOSSIP — ‘Downton Abbey 3’ will be released on September 12th, 2025.
Universal Pictures UK took to Instagram to confirm the third instalment of the film franchise will hit the big screen in autumn next year.
The caption read: “A new motion picture event. The third film in the beloved #DowntonAbbey franchise will be released only in cinemas September 12, 2025.”
Hugh Bonneville, Dominic West, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Phyllis Logan, Robert James-Collier are to return for the hotly-anticipated movie.
What’s more, Joanne Froggatt – who confirmed this week she is pregnant with her first child – Allen Leech, Penelope Wilton, Lesley Nicol, Michael Fox, Raquel Cassidy, Brendan Coyle, Kevin Doyle, Harry Hadden-Paton, Sophie McShera, and Douglas Reith will also be back at Downton.
Last month, it was revealed Paul Giamatti will also be part of the cast.
The Oscar-nominee is to reprise his role from the TV series as Cora’s brother Harold Levinson.
Joely Richardson, Alessandro Nivola and ‘House of the Dragon’ actors Simon Russell Beale and Arty Froushan are also expected to join the third film in the franchise.
Plot details have so far remained under wraps about the upcoming motion picture, which is written by Julian Fellowes and produced by Gareth Neame, Fellowes and Liz Trubridge.
A third ‘Downton’ movie was confirmed in May, alongside a clip of the cast reuniting at a read-through.
Dockery said in the video: “It feels amazing, a tad emotional. It’s wonderful to all be back together again. We come back together and it’s like no time has passed at all.
“We’re so happy to announce that we’re in production for the third ‘Downton Abbey’ movie. We can’t wait to see you.”
The hugely successful period drama started on ITV in 2011 and has spawned six seasons and two movies.
The first two films, released in 2019 and 2022, grossed a combined $287.3 million worldwide.

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OHMYGOSSIP — ‘The Fantastic Four’ will be a 1960s-set superhero tale.
Comic book movie fans were sent into a frenzy when Marvel released a poster for the upcoming installment in the franchise on Valentine’s Day that showed its characters in a period home setting, with some speculating at the time it looked as if the film was going to make a comment on America’s family dynamics in the ’60s.
A handful of their theories have now been confirmed by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, 51, who told ‘The Official Marvel Podcast’: “‘The Fantastic Four’ will be a period piece set in New York City.
“However, it’s probably not the New York City many are familiar with.
“There was another piece of art we released with Johnny Storm flying in the air making a ‘4’ symbol and there was a cityscape in the corner of that image.
“There were a lot of smart people who noticed that that cityscape didn’t look exactly like the New York that we know, or the New York that existed in the ‘60s in our world.
“Those are smart observations, I’ll say.”
Set for a cinema release on 25 July, 2025, production on ‘The Fantastic Four’ is set to launch later this year.
The superhero quartet in Marvel’s ‘The Fantastic Four’, which were characters first created for Marvel Comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, will be played by Pedro Pascal, 49, as Reed Richards (Mr Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby, 36, as Sue Storm (The Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn, 30, as Johnny Storm (The Human Torch) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, 47, as Ben Grimm (The Thing.)
The cast will also include Ralph Ineson, 54, Paul Walter Hauser, 37, Natasha Lyonne, 45, and 30-year-old Julia Garner.
Filmmaker Matt Shakman, 48, who was behind ‘WandaVision’, is directing ‘Fantastic Four’ from a screenplay by Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer.
Actor Joseph Quinn recently said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly: “With the story of ‘The Fantastic Four’, it feels like we want to get this right.
“There are aspects of it that are very different to other Marvel films. That felt very compelling to me.
“And again, going back to who’s involved, Matt, of course, the director, I think is brilliant, and the cast, and I’ve read it, and the script is brilliant. It’s really brilliant. I’m delighted to have this opportunity.
“Superhero movies are movies about people. And if we’re invested in the people and the characters and the peril and the spectacle, then that’s why people go to the theatres to watch films.
“We’re not just in a penny; we’re in for a pound with this one. We’re going to go for it.”

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OHMYGOSSIP — ‘Street Fighter’ is slated for a 2026 release.
The latest movie version of the hit fighting game from Sony is set to be out on 20 March in two years, according to Variety.
It added the movie is being co-developed and produced with Japanese game distributor Capcom.
Producers Legendary scored the film and television rights to the highly popular gaming series in 2023.
Since the franchise launched in 1987, ‘Street Fighter’ has shifted more than 49 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most well-known and highest-grossing video game franchises of all time.
It has also spawned other games, spin-offs and crossovers featuring characters including Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile and M Bison.
Capcom is behind other popular games including ‘Resident Evil’ and ‘Monster Hunter’, and news of the upcoming ‘Street Fighter’ adaptation comes amid a trend of using games as inspiration for hit live action series including Prime Video’s ‘Fallout’.
But 2026 won’t be the first time ‘Street Fighter’ has hit cinemas – Universal mounted a much-mocked adaptation of the game under the same name in 1994.
It starred Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kylie Minogue, Ming-Na Wen and Raul Julia, and was lambasted by critics and fans.
Then in 2009, 20th Century Fox released ‘Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li’ with Kristin Kreuk – which was also mauled by critics and derided by gaming fans,
Along with the series ‘Fallout’, other recent hit game-to-movie adaptations have included ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ and its 2022 sequel, along with Tom Holland’s ‘Uncharted’, as well as ‘Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ and the ‘Super Mario Bros Movie’.
Legendary – which has a distribution deal with Sony – has been behind a string of adaptations of comics and novels including ‘Dune’, ‘Godzilla vs Kong’, ‘Pokémon: Detective Pikachu’ and ‘Enola Holmes’.

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OHMYGOSSIP — Letitia Wright has declared there is a “lot coming up” from the ‘Black Panther’ universe.
The actress, 30, gained critical acclaim first playing Shuri – the courageous and tech-savvy younger sister of T’Challa – in 2018’s ‘Black Panther’, before taking over the eponymous superhero role from her late co-star Chadwick Boseman in Marvel’s ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’, which in 2022 grossed $860 million at the global box office.
Even though Marvel Studios is yet to slate a release date for ‘Black Panther 3’ – or confirmed whether Letitia will return as Shuri or Black Panther in the next ‘Avengers’ movies – the actress said on ‘The View’: “Let’s just say… I would like to continue with Shuri.”
‘Avengers: The Kang Dynasty’ is set for cinematic release on 1 May, 2026, while ‘Avengers: Secret Wars’ is due out the same date a year later.
Letitia added: “(Shuri is) one of my favourite characters. Such a blessing, honestly. I kid you not, I’m so grateful for her.”
When asked about any plans for ‘Black Panther 3’, Letitia teased: “There’s a lot to, a lot to – a lot coming up.”
But it was all the actress could say about her future with the Marvel franchise, as bosses of the studio are notoriously secretive about the contents of its scripts.
In January 2023, Letitia told Variety she thought ‘Black Panther 3’ was “already in the works”, adding: “You know, we just had a terrific two years of bringing it out and everybody coming together to support it.
“We need a little bit of a break, we need to regroup and (director) Ryan (Coogler) needs to get back into the lab, so it’s going to take a little while, but we’re really excited for you guys to see that.”

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OHMYGOSSIP — Shailene Woodley thinks her fellow Hollywood environmental activists must have felt they were “screaming into the void” when they started raising climate change issues.
The ‘Ferrari’ actress, 32, has been actively campaigning for environmental causes since she was a child actor appearing in films such as ‘The Divergent’ and ‘The Descendants’, and got arrested protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota in 2016.
She told The Hollywood Reporter about following in the footsteps of eco campaigning A-listers including Leonardo DiCaprio and Susan Sarandon: “When I first started talking about this publicly, 15, 16 years ago, it was like, ‘Oh, that cute little hippie girl.’
“I’m definitely a tree hugger, but it was looked at as this cute idealistic thing instead of a real cause to pay attention to.
“I look at people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Susan Sarandon, Edward Norton, Harrison Ford – people who have been having this conversation publicly for a very long time.
“It must have felt like screaming into the void. And now there are finally other people who have joined that chorus.
“I’ve met people who have been trying to have this conversation for decades, and there is a feeling of exhaustion, of, ‘Where were all of you 20 years ago? Why does everyone suddenly care now?’
“Oftentimes, until it’s on our doorstep, we don’t want to pay attention.”
Shailene’s latest bid to spotlight an environmental issue sees her diving for purple urchins in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Catalina Island in the new PBS docuseries ‘Hope in the Water’, made by ‘Big Little Lies’ creator David E Kelley and chef Andrew Zimmern.
Shailene’s episode will be shown on 3 July, and she said about taking on the project: “So often when it comes to the environment, specifically with culinary consumerism, the mass majority of people are left out of the conversation for economic or accessibility reasons.
“The biggest question I had going into this was, ‘Who is the audience? Who are the people who can participate?’
“I really loved the fact that it was so inclusive of so many people, regardless of economics or location accessibility… it’s really talking to consumers and people who live in food deserts and who don’t only live near coastal regions.”

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OHMYGOSSIP — Taika Waititi is in early talks to direct ‘James’.
The 48-year-old filmmaker could be set to helm an adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel that will be executive produced by Steven Spielberg for his Amblin Partners company.
‘James’ is a reimagining of Mark Twain’s 1884 novel ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ told from the perspective of the slave Jim.
The synopsis reads: “When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan.
“Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. Thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.”
Everett’s work has previously been adapted for the big screen after his novel ‘Erasure’ was made into ‘American Fiction’ last year – which starred Jeffrey Wright and took home the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Taika directed two movies in the ‘Thor’ franchise but explained that he had “no interest” in working in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and only ended up doing so to support his family financially.
Speaking on the ‘Smartless’ podcast, Taika said: “You know what? I had no interest in doing one of those films. It wasn’t on my plan for my career as an auteur.
“But I was poor and I’d just had a second child, and I thought, ‘You know what, this would be a great opportunity to feed these children.'”

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OHMYGOSSIP — Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser are to star in ‘Balls Up’.
The pair have joined the cast of the action comedy that is to be directed by Peter Farrelly for Amazon MGM Studios.
The movie follows two marketing executives who are fired for blowing a client sponsorship opportunity and decide to make the most of their free tickets to a game of soccer.
The duo’s drunken debauchery results in them being hunted by every person in the country.
‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ scribes Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese have penned the script and are to produce with Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger and Andrew Muscato.
Mark, 53, explained earlier this year that he was interested in making movies that appeal to families after appearing in R-rated flicks such as ‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘Ted’ during his acting career.
The star – who has children Ella, 20, Michael, 18, Brendan, 15, and Grace, 14, with his wife Rhea Durham – told Yahoo Entertainment: “You know, I do enjoy doing things that the whole entire family can see.
“Look, I’m 52 years old now. I’m a dad of four. I’ve got a kid in college. I like playing age-appropriate roles. I think a lot of people don’t embrace that and audiences are like — this doesn’t seem real.”
Wahlberg says that audiences want to see “the guy and the gal being in the same age bracket” and aims to feature in “believable and realistic” projects.
‘The Departed’ actor said: “There’s many different things that I think audiences frown upon and I want to do things that are believable and realistic.
“Listen, if the right script comes, I don’t rule anything out.”

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