I’ve been a Batman fan ever since I started watching the best Batman: The Animated Series episodes at a young age. While I’ll always have a soft spot for Mark Hamill’s Joker from that DC Animated Universe continuity, Two-Face still ranks as my favorite Batman villain overall. I especially enjoyed Josh Duhamel’s performance as the character in the animated movie Batman: The Long Halloween, and the actor has shared why he’d be game to reprise the role in live action for an upcoming DC movie or upcoming DC TV show.

While speaking with Duhamel about his new movie London Calling, which is now playing on the 2025 movies schedule, CBR asked the actor if he would be interested in exploring Two-Face in a live-action setting. He said the following about why that appeals to him:

Adapting the same-named storyline by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, The Long Halloween (which was originally released in two parts and delayed for a while because of The Batman) chronicled Harvey Dent’s fall from grace as Jensen Ackles’ Batman clashed with both the mob and Gotham’s more colorful criminals. Though he started out wanting to clean up Gotham City and help Batman track down the Holiday serial killer, Harvey was scarred on half of his face and became the corrupted Two-Face. The Long Halloween was one of the more critically well-received movies in the Tomorrowverse timeline, and Josh Duhamel’s performance is a big part of that.

Considering his filmography, I would think Duhamel has the caché to at least be considered to play Two-Face in live-action. He clearly has a good grasp on Harvey Dent’s duality, and there are a handful of actors who have made the transition from voicing a character to playing them onscreen, like Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan in the Star Wars franchise and Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. in the DC Universe. Why can’t Duhamel be added to the list?

This could be accomplished by either looping him into the DC Universe continuity or putting him in the standalone Batman Epic Crime Saga franchise. The latter seems like a better bet since Two-Face could conceivably be added to a follow-up to 2027’s The Batman: Part II, whether that be Part III or his own TV show, like The Penguin. We still don’t know when the DCU’s Batman will be introduced in The Brave and the Bold, but since it’s expected that will be an older Caped Crusader, the closer similarity in age might work in Josh Duhamel’s favor.

It's just a hypothetical topic for now, but after enjoying Duhmael’s voice work in Batman: The Long Halloween, I’m definitely game to see him bring Two-Face to life for a live action project. Alas, that Tomorrowverse entry isn’t available to stream as of this writing, but you can find many other Batman movies and TV shows on HBO Max.

Josh Duhamel may be well known for being a big Hollywood star, between his roles in the Transformers movies, various romantic comedies and one of the best shows to binge on Netflix right now, Ransom Canyon. But that doesn’t mean he’s buying into the Hollywood lifestyle. A growing number of celebrities are leaving Los Angeles for other destinations to call home, and Duhamel is one of them. Did you know the actor and father of two lives in a lake side home out in the Minnesota woods? Living outside Hollywood apparently means he gets a lot more time to maintain grass, which is a huge plus for him.

Duhamel apparently even built the home himself, for his wife Audra Mari, their baby boy Shepherd, and Duhamel’s 11-year-old son with ex Fergie, Axl. Here’s why Duhamel loves living outside of Los Angeles:

When Duhamel recently spoke to Entertainment Tonight, he painted a fulfilling picture of his life in Minnesota, where his kids have access to outdoorsy activities, and surely more privacy than famous families living in the City of Angels. The actor bought an empty piece of land 16 years ago and has been hard at work making it his own since. As he spoke to, having Minnesota as his home means he gets the chance to own a lawnmower and keep his grass nice and maintained. Sure, it's a simple pleasure, but one that's important to the actor. As he continued:

Duhamel said his son Axl loves living out there too after previously living in Hollywood, too. He’s apparently got a huge group of friends and is into water sports like jetskiing and tubing, readily available at the small lake by their home. Plus, his mom still lives in Los Angeles, so he gets a little bit of both, I imagine.

The movie seems to echo a lot of other celebrities who have decided to move outside of Hollywood’s epicenter for a more balanced existence. Matthew McConaughey, for example, moved his family back home to Texas to live on a ranch and made a pact with his wife to only say yes to projects really wanted to do after overexerting himself in the world of rom-coms.

Marvel star Florence Pugh also talked about leaving Los Angeles for London last year to be closer to her friends, but has wondered in both instances if she’s a “city girl.” In a few years, I wouldn’t be surprised if she moves to the countryside, too!

Duhamel is the star of a new Netflix series, alongside Minka Kelly, that follows three battling families fighting for land in the Texas countryside. You can check it out now with a Netflix subscription. We're happy for Duhamel, and all the time he gets to spend among fresh air and fresh cut grass.

In an era of streaming services galore, it may seem like just about any past TV show can be found on at least one platform. That wasn't the case for Las Vegas, which aired for five seasons and more than one hundred episodes on NBC before ending in 2008. Fortunately for the show that starred Josh Duhamel and the late James Caan, that's about to change. The surprisingly addictive drama is coming to streaming before the start of the 2024 TV schedule, and the news was a reminder of what Duhamel told CinemaBlend about scripted vs. unscripted television.

How To Watch Las Vegas Streaming

All five seasons of Las Vegas will arrive for viewers with a Peacock Premium subscription on Friday, December 29. If you're looking for something fun to watch in the final days of 2023, the drama that ran from 2003-2008 could be a great fit, and not just because Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation" could get stuck in your head. The show centered on an elite surveillance team at the Montecito casino in Las Vegas, with James Caan's Ed, Josh Duhamel's Danny, and James Lesure's Mike manning the cameras. Caan was a series regular for the first four seasons, before departing in Season 5 and boosting Josh Duhamel to leading man position. 

The cast was filled out by Molly Sims as Delinda, the casino's entertainment manager; Nikki Cox as special events director Mary; Vanessa Marcil as casino host Sam; Marsha Thomason as pit boss Nessa; and eventually Tom Selleck as owner A.J. Cooper in his final major TV role before the launch of Blue Bloods, which soon enters its final season. As somebody who discovered Las Vegas back when Season 3 was airing back in 2005, I'm definitely excited to have access to the earlier seasons a lot easier than DVD box sets!

Las Vegas was also Josh Duhamel's first major TV role, although he'd go on to join the Transformers franchise as well as series like Jupiter's Legacy and The Thing About Pam. Most recently, however, Duhamel was found in the unscripted sphere as host of CBS' Buddy Games, and the news about Las Vegas coming to streaming left me thinking back to what he told CinemaBlend about unscripted vs. scripted. 

Unscripted Vs. Scripted, According To Josh Duhamel

I spoke with Josh Duhamel this fall for the premiere of Buddy Games, a new competition series that pit teams of close friends against each other for mental and physical challenges that were difficult for them, but fun to watch from home. Duhamel was the "test dummy" as well as host, co-creator, and executive producer for the show, and I can say as a Las Vegas fan that it was not something that I could have pictured for Danny McCoy. 

Buddy Games was Duhamel's first foray into hosting, and although he was unable to discuss Las Vegas during the SAG-AFTRA actors strike, he shared this when I asked what it was like for him to embrace unscripted:

There were no stunt doubles for the challenges on Buddy Games, and some were so grueling that I was surprised Josh Duhamel actually tried before the competitors did! I went on to ask the actor-turned-host if the challenges are entirely planned ahead of time or change in the moment, and he explained:

After so many years of work on scripted projects on the big and small screens, adjusting the plans for challenges was new for Josh Duhamel. Any Las Vegas viewer knows that his character was no stranger to action, but it works very differently for a reality competition show. Duhamel went on:

If you haven't checked out Buddy Games just yet to see Josh Duhamel hosting (and in "test dummy" mode), you can find the full first season streaming with a Paramount+ subscription. CBS has not yet announced whether a second season will be on the way, but watching the first could be a fun way to pass the time until Las Vegas arrives on Peacock on December 29.

The competition on CBS’ Buddy Games in the 2023 TV schedule is only getting stiffer, crazier, and – in the case of this next episode, anyway – a lot colder. A new clip for Buddy Games (seen above) shows the “Cup of Chilly” challenge, and it isn’t going to be as straightforward as a chili eating contest. Host Josh Duhamel is definitely taking his “Test Dummy” duties seriously, because it’s almost unbelievable that the film and TV star actually tried every step of it! 

Paddling across a lake in an inflatable flamingo, playing flip cup with a cooler, and using a power washer all sound simple enough… if not for the twists of being doused with freezing cold water, dressing in freezing cold clothes, and jumping in that lake. Personally, my favorite part of Josh Duhamel playing “Test Dummy” in this clip might actually be seeing him run and jump while wearing flippers, but his overall enthusiasm makes me glad I’m not competing against him. He did say he wanted to “get dirty” for the show; apparently, he’s happy to get chilly too. 

The new episode airs on Thursday, October 5 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS, and is intriguingly titled “Buddy Betrayals.” Coming on the heels of the drama between the Pageant Queens not too long ago and the teams continuing to get smaller as the buddies get closer and closer to splitting the prize money, it seems safe to say that the biggest challenge of the episode might not necessarily involve ice water or an inflatable flamingo. And Josh Duhamel can’t be the "Test Dummy" for conflict within the lodge!

Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that he was willing to brave the ice cold for “Buddy Betrayals,” as the show opened with Josh Duhamel going rogue for a belly flop into a mud pit. Speaking with CinemaBlend, the host shared that he didn’t actually tell anybody at the show that he was going to do the belly flop and even had to pull “a little pebble” out of his eye. According to him, in cases like Buddy Games, “sometimes you can't ask permission [because] you know they'll say no.”

Josh Duhamel is an executive producer as well as host of Buddy Games, after he directed a film of the same name and its sequel, Buddy Games: Spring Awakening. He played games like those in the CBS show with his own friends over the years, so he was a natural fit to host, even though he shared that he “never had any thoughts about hosting anything” before the network wanted him in the job. I think anybody who has been watching on Thursdays nights (or streaming via a Paramount+ subscription) can vouch that he looks like he’s having a lot of fun. 

Whether the buddies who are competing for the $200,000 grand prize will have as much fun as the self-appointed “Test Dummy” with “Cup of Chilly” remains to be seen, but the wait is almost over. Tune in to CBS tonight at 8 p.m. ET for the “Buddy Betrayals” episode of Buddy Games!

Soap Operas are not usually the first thing we think of when we think of “Prestige Television” but they have been popular since the dawn of TV and without them, some of our favorite stars might not have ever gotten their big break. In honor of that, we’ve compiled quite a list of famous actors who started out in soap operas. 

Brad Pitt (Another World)

There aren’t many bigger stars in the world than Brad Pitt. While he famously made his first mark in pop culture in Thelma & Louise, his first professional, credited acting role came on the soap Another World. The Ocean’s Eleven star played a character named Chris on two episodes in 1987. Little did anyone know just how famous he would soon be. 

Leonardo DiCaprio (Santa Barbara)

Pitt’s co-star in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Leonardo DiCaprio, is also one of the biggest stars in the world. Like Pitt, DiCaprio also can point to a turn on a soap opera early in his career as a launching pad. DiCaprio had a smattering of bit parts before starring in Santa Barbara, but it was five episodes on the soap that really got his career moving. 

Demi Moore (General Hospital)

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Demi Moore was box office gold with films like St. Elmo’s Fire, A Few Good Men, and Ghost. Moore earned a then-unprecedented $12.5 million with her role in Striptease, but she got her start much more modestly as reporter Jackie Templeton in 85 episodes of General Hospital from 1982 until 1984. 

Marisa Tomei (As The World Turns)

Marisa Tomei’s career went into the stratosphere with her Academy Award-winning turn in My Cousin Vinny in 1992. She’s since been nominated for two more Oscars in her lauded career that all started with the role of Marcy Thompson, as a series regular on As The World Turns for three seasons. 

Alec Baldwin (The Doctors)

The Doctors debuted on NBC in April of 1963, on the very same day as General Hospital premiered on ABC. Unlike GH, which is still on the air, The Doctors lasted only a mere 20 years, but like GH, it helped launch a lot of careers. Alec Baldwin was one of those actors who appeared on the soap, as the character Billy Aldrich for a few years in the early 1980s, years before his big breaks would come in Beetlejuice and The Hunt For Red October. 

Kathy Bates (The Doctors)

Another actor who got her start on the oft-forgotten The Doctors is the great Kathy Bates. Bates worked hard while scratching out a living as an actor in New York City. After scoring just one bit part in the movie Taking Off in 1971, it was another 6 years before she would land a big role, this time on The Doctors.

Laurence Fishburne (One Life To Live)

Laurence Fishburne famously made waves as a teenager starring (as Larry Fishburne) in Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece Apocalypse Now. While the role made him famous, his career started years earlier as Josh Hall in One Life To Live. Fishburne was only 11 years old when he debuted on the show.

Jordana Brewster (As The World Turns)

Jordana Brewster is a star in one of the biggest film franchises in history as Mia Toretto in the Fast & Furious movies. She got her start in one of the biggest soap operas in history as well. After a quick one-off on All My Children in 1995, Brewster landed a regular role on As The World Turns later that same year. She remained on the show for 118 episodes over the next six years. 

Shemar Moore (The Young and the Restless)

For over a decade, Shemar Moore starred as Derek Morgan on the beloved Criminal Minds and then on S.W.A.T for six years. Neither was his first long-time role on television, however, as Moore got his start on eight seasons of The Young and the Restless as Malcolm Winters, a role he’s returned to a number of times, most recently in 2023. 

Tom Selleck (The Young And The Restless)

Another actor who got his start on The Young and the Restless is the legendary TV star Tom Selleck. After bouncing around in bit parts for most of the ‘70s. The Blue Bloods star found a semi-regular role on the soap in 1974. He would later own TV in the ‘80s as Thomas Magnum on one of the greatest TV shows of all time, Magnum PI.

Meg Ryan (As The World Turns)

Meg Ryan was America’s sweetheart in the 1980s and '90s. Before she starred in numerous rom-coms, from When Harry Met Sally To You’ve Got Mail, she was Steve Andropoulos’ sweetheart Betsy on As The World Turns. She would play the role for three years, before snagging a role in a little movie called Top Gun, and off she went to stardom. 

Lauryn Hill (As The World Turns)

It’s not just actors who got their start on soap operas. Singer and rapper Ms. Lauryn Hill is famous for her amazing neo-soul album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998, but seven years before that, and before The Fugees, she starred as Kira Johnson on As The World Turns.

Taye Diggs (Guiding Light)

This one is a bit of a stretch because Taye Diggs had already put together a great career on Broadway, starring in the original cast of Rent and other shows. He did, however, get his regular screen time on Guiding Light in 1997, after a couple of smaller parts on TV. 

Julianne Moore (As The World Turns)

Julianne Moore has won a slew of awards in her career. The Boogie Nights star can boast five Oscar nominations and one win, she has an Emmy, multiple Golden Globe and SAG awards, and even one Daytime Emmy, which she won for Best Actress on the soap As The World Turns in 1988.

David Hasselhoff (The Young And The Restless)

Baywatch might have been a soap opera on the beach, but it wasn’t the first time David Hasselhoff starred in one. The Hoff played Snapper Foster (yes, that’s the name of the character) for seven years in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s on The Young and the Restless, before scoring his gig on Knight Rider. While starring on Knight Rider, The Hoff also appeared on one episode of Santa Barbara.

Mark Hamill (General Hospital)

Stars Wars has often been described as a “space opera” so it only makes sense that Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, got his start on a soap opera. The future superstar started smaller, with a role as Kent Murray on General Hospital for a couple of years right before Star Wars became the biggest thing, well, ever. 

Josh Duhamel (All My Children)

Transformers star Josh Duhamel has starred in 39 movies and had roles on 18 TV shows, including Las Vegas and Jupiter Rising, and it all started with a breakout role on ABC’s All My Children in 1999. He starred on the soap opera for a few years, before moving on, but did return briefly in 2011 to reprise his role as Leo du Pres. He even won a Daytime Emmy in 2002 for his performance. 

Kelly Ripa (All My Children)

Kelly Ripa has been everyone’s favorite morning talk show host for years now and over 30 years ago, she was a dancer on Dance Party USA. Her first serious acting gig came in 1990 as Hayley Vaughan on All My Children, a role she would play for more than a decade. Not only did it jumpstart her career, but the soap played an even more important role in her life, as that’s how she met her husband, Mark Consuelos.

Mark Consuelos (All My Children)

That’s right, Mark Consuelos also began his career on All My Children, playing Mateo Santos on the show for six years. The Riverdale star was a huge hit on the show, and like Ripa, returned in 2010 to help celebrate the show’s 40th anniversary. Consuelos and Ripa married in 1996 while starring on the show together and now almost 30 years later are still working together as co-hosts on Live.

Ryan Phillippe (One Life To Live)

From I Know What You Last Summer to Cruel Intentions, Ryan Phillippe played some iconic parts in the 1990s. It was One Life To Live where he landed his first one, though, in 1992. In the ‘00s, he got more serious, with major roles in Gosford Park and Crash, but none of it might have happened with the soap opera casting him as a teenager. 

Amber Tamblyn (General Hospital)

Amber Tamblyn wasn’t even a teen when she landed her first on-screen role on General Hospital in 1995. The 127 Hours star played Emily Quatermaine for six seasons on the soap.

John Stamos (General Hospital)

Before playing Uncle Jesse on Full House, and before playing bongos for The Beach Boys, John Stamos was breaking hearts as Blackie Parrish on General Hospital for three seasons in the early ‘80s. Stamos even earned a nomination for a Daytime Emmy for the role in 1983.

Mario Van Peebles (One Life To Live)

Mario Van Peebles made his permanent mark on film with his direction of the 1991 classic New Jack City. The cult classic was huge at the time, and Van Peebles has been acting and directing in TV and film ever since, but his career really got going a decade prior to New Jack City when he appeared as Doc Gilmore in One Life To Live in 1982 and 1983. 

Hayden Panettiere (One Life To Live)

“Save the cheerleader, save the world” is a now-legendary catchphrase from the TV series Heroes and the cheerleader was, of course, the great Hayden Panettiere. Panettiere had already scored numerous credits before Heroes, including her first role as a five-year-old One Life To Live for 26 episodes in the mid-'90s. She followed that up as Lizzie Spaulding on Guiding Light for four seasons.

Justin Hartley (Passions)

Justin Harley was part of the cast that made more TV viewers cry than any other as a part of the brilliant ensemble on This Is Us. Hartley got his start probably making daytime TV fans emotional on the short-lived (by soap opera standards) Passions. After becoming a series regular on Smallville, he returned to daytime TV on The Young and the Restless before landing his award-winning gig on This Is Us. 

Robin Wright (Santa Barbara)

In 1987 Robin Wright became part of cinema history with her role as Buttercup in the much-beloved The Princess Bride. It took a few years of starring on the soap Santa Barbara before she would get that breakout role, but she’s been on top ever since, with iconic roles on the Netflix series House of Cards and in movies like Wonder Woman 1984, which is pretty fitting, as that was the year she started on Santa Barbara.

Lindsay Lohan (Guiding Light and Another World)

Lindsay Lohan’s first movie role was actually two roles in 1998’s The Parent Trap. She immediately endeared herself to audiences, and that love only grew with Freaky Friday and Mean Girls. She’s had an up-and-down career since, but like so many others, that career started as a kid on a soap. Two soaps, actually. First, a brief one-off on Guiding Light, with a reoccurring role on Another World for two seasons. 

Kevin Kline (Search For Tomorrow)

Search for Tomorrow is one of those soaps that despite running for more than 35 years, it’s completely forgotten about today. It was canceled in 1986, but it was around long enough for Kevin Kline to make his first on-screen appearance. The classically trained Kline returned to the stage after leaving the show, but in 1982 he found himself in a role in Sophie’s Choice alongside Meryl Streep, and he’s never looked back. 

Tommy Lee Jones (One Life To Live)

Harvard grad Tommy Lee Jones actually got his first role in the classic Love Story but it was a minor “blink and you’ll miss it” type of role. It was probably his 21 episodes on One Life To Live in the early 1970s that really jumpstarted his now-legendary career. 

Tom Berenger (One Life To Live)

Speaking of One Life to Live in the ‘70s, Platoon star Tom Berenger overlapped with Jones for one season on the long-running soap. Berenger played Tim Siegel for 66 episodes from 1975 until his character’s death just after getting married in the 1976 season. Classic soap opera plot!  

While budgets of soap operas might not be that of prime-time TV, there is undoubtedly plenty of talent on these shows, and has been for many years, as this amazing of list famous actors who started out in soap operas proves. 

The competition is heating up on CBS’ Buddy Games in the 2023 TV schedule as the teams of best friends compete against each other, but a new look at the upcoming episode suggests that cracks are going to start showing in those friendships. While host Josh Duhamel has shared that he’s happy to get his hands dirty for the show, the team of former pageant queens seems to be getting messy in a different way. Check out an exclusive clip (seen above) exposing the Pageant Queens drama in the September 28 episode, and then read on for what Duhamel told CinemaBlend about the option to strip naked for the show.  

The clip gives a preview of what’s on the way with the next episode, called “It’s Prom Night, Baby!” The Pageant Queens certainly aren’t wearing gowns or corsages in the footage, and there’s clearly some dissension in the ranks about the Buddy Games take on soccer. Deveney “Devi” Shea evidently wanted to bring some soccer expertise to the field, but Yolanda “Yoli” Stennett had some support from Lourdes Spurlock and Lauren Cisneros Campbell in speaking up about feeling negative vibes. 

Some conflict was inevitable once the competition got even stiffer on Buddy Games, and the Pageant Queens are bringing the drama in the next new episode! Whether the Pageant Queens drama is enough that one of them is sent home at the end of “It’s Prom Night, Baby!” is a question that can only be answered with Buddy Games’ next episode at a special time at 8 p.m. ET on CBS Thursday. 

When I previously spoke with host Josh Duhamel about the show, he focused on the fun more than any drama that would be on the way. After he explained going rogue for his muddy Buddy Games belly flop in the series premiere (available streaming via Paramount+ subscription), the subject changed to the very first challenge of the season: the Curve Ball, which gave the teams three choices for how to advance… and time was of the essence.

Those choices were Swag, which involved stripping naked and racing to the finish line; Drag, which involved dragging a weight that equaled the weight of all teammates combined; or Gag, which involved eating some very cold and very gross mac-n-cheese as fast as possible. The host asked which one I would have picked, and I had to choose Drag by default after ruling out Swag and Gag. Duhamel noted Drag “was the slowest pick because every team that picked that came in last,” and then shared what his friends would have picked: 

Considering the results of Swag, Drag, or Gag, I would have been on a losing team while Josh Duhamel’s team could have won! It may be for the best that I'm not in the running for the $200,000 prize. Most of the competitors also shied away from baring all on CBS, but the host laughed and credited the Derby Squad for having the nerve to go for it. He said:

The Derby Squad seems to be holding together a little better than the Pageant Queens (who chose Gag back in the premiere), based on how they started and what the episode clip previews about the drama on the way! Of course, the early episodes have already proven that a lot can change very quickly on Buddy Games, whether a team still has all four players or has been cut down to three. As for how the winners will eventually split the grand prize money, the host broke down the details.

Tune in to CBS on Thursday, September 28 at a special time for the next new episode of Buddy Games, airing at 8 p.m. ET instead of 9 p.m. as per usual. The episode will be followed by Big Brother at 9 p.m. and The Challenge at 10 p.m. CBS’ fall TV schedule will look a little different this year with scripted options not returning in light of the WGA writers strike, but Buddy Games isn’t going anywhere.

CBS got its 2023 fall lineup off to a competitive, high-stakes, and even muddy start with Buddy Games, hosted by Josh Duhamel. The show began with six teams of four best friends joining forces to try and win the grand prize of $200,000 and title of champion. One of those teams already lost a member after just the premiere, and more competitors are going to depart as the weeks pass. So, how is the $200,000 cash prize going to be distributed to the winners? Josh Duhamel spoke with CinemaBlend to drop the details.

While the members of the winning team aren't going to get $200,000 each, they are bound to take some cash home... even though the total for each hasn't been determined ahead of time. When I spoke with Josh Duhamel about all things Buddy Games (including going rogue for his muddy belly flop), I asked how the money would be split between the winners, and he set the record straight:

If a team of four wins and they're all going to be fair, would the split be as simple as $50,000 each? And if the winners are a team of three by the end, would the fourth member who went home also get $50,000, or a smaller cut of that $200,000 total? Or no cut of the cash at all? Given that the teams choose who to eliminate – or one of them volunteers to go home, like what happened in the premiere – the person sent packing might not have actually made any catastrophic mistakes. 

And would Buddy Games be as much fun if the competitors didn't have to face the prospect of deciding themselves how to split the cash? As I noted to the host, this is the time to find out how much you can trust your fans. Josh Duhamel laughed and said: 

While it's too early to say if Buddy Games will be enough of a hit in the 2023 TV schedule for CBS to order a second season, Josh Duhamel is already prepared with some new ideas. As the self-proclaimed "Test Dummy" who wanted to get dirty for the show, his enthusiasm for all things Buddy Games is already part of the appeal of tuning in each week. 

Buddy Games will usually air on Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS, although the new show will have a special airing on Thursday, September 28 at 8 p.m. ET ahead of Big Brother Season 25 at 9 p.m. and The Challenge: USA Season 2 at 10 p.m. 

If you missed any of Josh Duhamel's new competition series so far, you can find episodes streaming with a Paramount+ subscription. The more viewers, the better odds of getting a Season 2 to showcase more of the host's ideas for new challenges to test best friends' bonds! 

Spoilers ahead for the series premiere of Buddy Games on CBS, hosted by Josh Duhamel! 

Buddy Games debuted in the 2023 TV schedule as CBS' newest competition series, but the show hosted by Josh Duhamel definitely isn't a redo of Survivor or Big Brother. This show pits six teams of close friends against each other in challenges that range from physically daunting to downright bonkers in pursuit of the $200,000 prize. Duhamel, who has played "buddy games" with his own friends across decades, spoke with CinemaBlend about trying out the obstacles that the competitors face, including his bold belly flop into a mud pit and the aftermath. 

The host already explained that he "wanted to be down in the trenches" with the competitors and "wanted to get dirty" by doing everything himself that he was asking them to do. He quite literally got dirty when he was introducing the first series of obstacles, called Shockingly Fun, which involved a mud pit. Not holding back, he jumped face-first into the mud in a pretty epic belly flop while wearing a "Test Dummy" t-shirt. I brought up the belly flop while speaking with Josh Duhamel about Buddy Games, and he broke it down:

Better to ask forgiveness than permission sometimes when it comes to hosting Buddy Games, apparently! If it looked to you like Josh Duhamel risked some bodily harm by all but face-planting into a pit of mud – which was even hyped ahead of time in the CBS promotion – then you weren't alone. 

Fortunately, he didn't spend the rest of the premiere wearing an eyepatch or looking worse for the wear beyond some mud, so a little pebble in the eye didn't ruin the experience. So, did he have a strategy for how he wanted to fling himself into the mud? Duhamel answered that very question, saying:

And that's why Josh Duhamel is the host of Buddy Games! Of course, as he mentioned early in the series premiere, he also made two scripted Buddy Games movies that he starred in and directed. The CBS competition series definitely explores games between pals in a different way, with six teams of friends (ideally) proving how ride-or-die they are for each other to fight for $200,000. 

And while that's pretty serious for the groups of competitors, every glimpse of Josh Duhamel – covered in mud or not – seemed like the host was having a whole lot of fun. I told him that some of my favorite parts of watching Buddy Games' premiere were the shots switching from the contestants looking stressed to Duhamel looking like he's having the time of his life. He laughed and responded: 

So, who has enough competitive fire to win the $200,000? That remains to be seen, although Philly Forever already had to say goodbye to one member of the team. Find out which team comes out on top with new episodes of Buddy Games on Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS, or streaming with a Paramount+ subscription. Josh Duhamel still has plenty of obstacles to try out for himself before sending the contestants out to tackle them! 

Buddy Games also won't be the network's only competition show on the airwaves this fall. Survivor and The Amazing Race will be super-sized on Wednesday nights with 90-minute episodes. In fact, the CBS fall 2023 TV schedule is branching out from its usual lineup, with Buddy Games as one of the new unscripted options. 

With an atypical fall TV season about to begin, CBS and actor Josh Duhamel are bringing a new kind of competition show to the 2023 TV schedule with Buddy Games. The new reality series will pit six teams of close friends against each other in obstacles that will prove just how "ride or die" they truly are. Challenges will be both mental and physical, and Duhamel is on board as host and executive producer. Having played games like this with his own friends over the years, he spoke with CinemaBlend ahead of the series premiere on September 14 about why he wanted to get his hands dirty with Buddy Games, and what element of the show that viewers might not expect to see!

Josh Duhamel is a familiar face on the small screen, with more than 100 episodes of Las Vegas to his name before joining shows like Jupiter's Legacy, The Thing About Pam, and The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. For Buddy Games, however, he's stepping into the world of unscripted television as a host. When I asked what it has been like for him to embrace unscripted, he shared:

The challenges of Buddy Games will be mental, physical, and more than a little absurd as the teams of friends try to best each other... all while living together in the same lake house in the pursuit of a $200,000 prize. According to the host, he wasn't going to just make the contestants tackle absurd tasks without putting himself through the same things, and the results should be hilarious, if the promo is any indication! When I noted to Duhamel that not all TV hosts would be willing to get dirty and try these obstacles, he responded: 

Josh Duhamel may not have his own team of friends in the trenches against other teams, but he was trying out the obstacles anyway! That involved quite literally getting extremely dirty on one occasion, and all signs point toward a show that was very creative in creating challenges for the groups of competitors. Of course, in very physical competition shows, there's always the question of whether athletes already have an advantage going in. 

It's already safe to say that the different backgrounds of the six teams means contestants of different skill levels. The teams are Derby Squad, Chicago's Finest, Team Pride, Team OK, Pageant Queens, and Philly Forever. I asked Josh Duhamel if the athletes have an edge in the new series, and his answer might be surprising to viewers who expect the physically strongest to dominate every time. The host explained: 

It's not all about who can run the fastest or lift the most or balance the best when it comes to Buddy Games! The Philly Forever team evidently isn't going to find the right strategy right away, but it certainly appears that the playing field will be pretty level for the new CBS show. While it might not always be full of laughs for the competitors, viewers should definitely be entertained. Check out a preview of what to expect in the series premiere: 

How many of us can say that we've belly-flopped into a mud pit as part of our jobs?! Josh Duhamel showed no hesitation in quite literally getting dirty, and he looks like he had plenty of fun in his role as Buddy Games host. As to which team has the most fun and comes out on top... well, the wait to check out the new show is nearly over! 

The series premiere of Buddy Games will air on Thursday, September 14 at 9 p.m. ET on CBS, and will be available streaming live and on demand for Paramount+ subscribers. With shows like Big Brother, Survivor, and The Amazing Race (the latter two of which are super-sized for the fall timed to the WGA writers strike), CBS has already proven to be the home for some of television's most exciting reality competition shows, and Buddy Games is joining a strong lineup.

Josh Duhamel and his wife had some incredible news to share with the world. The fan-favorite actor got engaged to former Miss World America Audra Mari in 2022 and married in September of that year. Now, roughly a year later they’re expecting their first child together. Once the baby news was announced, a slew of celebrities chimed in their congratulations. That included Ashley Greene and Duhamel’s famous ex-wife, Fergie. 

Audra Mari and Josh Duhamel announced on Instagram that they'd be welcoming a new member into their family. The Mrs. marked the occasion by dropping in a beautiful photo of the married couple’s ultrasound photo. It's a subtle post but one that surely elicits plenty of excitement. You can check it for yourself down below:

I'm loving this amazing news from the loving couple, as they get to experience parenthood together. And it shouldn't be too surprising that a number of celebrities have shared their congratulations. One celebrity was Twilight’s Ashley Greene, who couldn’t hold back her happiness for the future parents.

CBS also expressed its congratulations for the pair. That's likely because the Transformers alum will be joining the Eye Network's fall 2023 lineup, hosting the new reality TV competition series Buddy Games. Based on the actor's 2019 comedy film, six teams of friends compete with each other in a series of games. It's first episode airs on September 14th. The network replied:

This next praiseworthy comment shows that beauty pageant folks need to stick together. Former Miss Wisconsin USA Alex Wehrley expressed her joy towards this baby news as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if the couple's newborn baby got a sash of their own one day.

Then, there’s also Josh Duhamel’s Las Vegas co-star Jerry O’Connell who sent out his best wishes to him and his wife. 

The one celebrity response that stood out to me the most was Fergie’s. She and Duhamel started dating in 2004 when she and her then-band, The Black Eyed Peas, guest-starred on his show Las Vegas. They got married in 2009 and had a baby boy, Axl, four years later. However, their split was announced in 2017 and they got divorced two years later. Even though their marriage didn't work out, it appears there’s no bad blood between them as Fergie congratulated the couple when they first got engaged. Now, she’s continuing to be a method of support offering her best compliments to the two on their big news.

It’s so beautiful how this family is about to become a whole lot bigger. With a bunch of celebrities offering Josh Duhamel and his wife praise, this new baby is going to be welcomed into a world full of love. Take a look at our 2023 movie releases so you know the next movie the Transformers star will be in. 

Jennifer Lopez has been a romantic comedy queen for decades now, and she’s showing no signs of slowing down. But her latest release Shotgun Wedding also has an action twist, thanks to her character Darcy’s wedding being taken over by armed pirates. She and co-star Josh Duhamel had to do plenty of wild action sequences, and JLo recently revealed the “scary as fuck” moment she nearly fell off a cliff filming Shotgun Wedding.

Shotgun Wedding was released on Amazon Prime this past weekend, and plenty of folks had the chance to watch Jennifer Lopez balance action and comedy (see the reviews here). Her wedding dress is an ongoing gag throughout the film’s 100-minute runtime, and early in the film her train gets caught in the wheels of a golf cart that’s about to fall off a cliff. It turns out that life imitated art when filming that sequence, as Lopez shared with Buzzfeed and her co-stars in a recent video:

Well, that definitely sounds “scary as fuck” as JLo described it. While in the end the shot was filmed without the pop star/actress/producer being injured, it shows how much risk goes into action-heavy TV and film projects. But it sounds like she and co-star Josh Duhamel were able to form a real trusting relationship while playing spouses in Shotgun Wedding.

Jennifer Lopez’s story about Shotgun Wedding and the cliff came as a surprise to even her co-stars like D’arcy Carden and Jennifer Coolidge, who were also featured in this video by Buzzfeed. While they were all living together when filming the action rom-com on location in the Dominican Republic, JLo was keeping busy as both the movie’s star and a producer. You can check out the fun clip featuring the cast below:

Although the story that Lopez told was definitely charming and showed off her great chemistry with Josh Duhamel, it definitely highlights just how dangerous film sets can be, especially when stunts are involved. This has been a hot button issue in Hollywood lately, especially in the wake of a number of tragedies, including a few deaths. For instance, producers like The Rock have vowed to stop using real guns on sets following the tragic death of Halyna Hutchins.

Part of why Shotgun Wedding is such a fun ride is due to the action sequences, especially because protagonists Darcy and Tom are clumsy and not very good at fighting/shooting. Pair that with the hilarious ensemble cast and quick pacing, and the new comedy by director Jason Moore is a joy that I’ve already watched more than once.

Shotgun Wedding is streaming on Amazon Prime now. Be sure to check out the 2023 movie release dates to plan your next movie experience. JLo has some upcoming projects coming up, thanks to her ongoing deal with Netflix. 

Over the years, Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel have both appeared in their fair share of all-time great romantic comedies, yet their paths have never crossed; until now, anyway. Together, the pair of Hollywood stars lead Pitch Perfect and Sisters director Jason Moore’s latest addition to the genre with the action-packed rom-com, Shotgun Wedding, which centers on a soon-to-be-married couple whose family members are held hostage at their remote destination wedding.

Those family members kidnapped by a gang of pirates are played by a who’s who of talented, and incredibly funny actors and actresses, including one of the godfathers of the stoner comedy genre and the Golden Globe-winning star of HBO’s The White Lotus. Here is a breakdown of the main actors who appear in the Shotgun Wedding cast.

Jennifer Lopez (Darcy)

Leading off the Shotgun Wedding cast is Jennifer Lopez, who takes on the role of Darcy, the bride-to-be who has to rise to the occasion and save her family.

No stranger to the rom-com genre, Lopez has appeared in movies like Maid in Manhattan, The Wedding Planner, Monster-in-Law, and Marry Me over the years. Lopez, who is also a successful recording artist, also showed off her multiple talents in the 1997 biographical drama Selena, where she portrayed the late “Queen of Tejano music” in a career-defining performance.  

Josh Duhamel

Josh Duhamel takes on the second leading role in the comedy as Darcy’s fiancé, Tom, a spot the Las Vegas star took on following the departure of Armie Hammer.

Throughout his career, Duhamel has bounced from action franchises like the Transformers movies to romantic comedies and dramas like Win a Date with Tad Hamiliton! and Life as We Know It, without blinking an eye. He’s also given great performances on the small screen, as well, on shows like 11.22.63, Love, Victor, and The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. 

Jennifer Coolidge (Carol)

Jennifer Coolidge appears as Tom’s mom, Carol, one of the guests at the destination wedding gone awry.

Coolidge's career has reached new heights in recent years thanks to her dynamic performance on The White Lotus (she was the only main character to appear in both seasons). But, she has long been one of the funniest names in Hollywood with iconic appearances in the American Pie franchise (she’s Stiffler’s mom), Legally Blonde, and cult classic comedies from Christopher Guest like Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration, and Mascots.

Sonia Braga (Renata)

Sonia Braga shows up in Shotgun Wedding as Renata, the extremely opinionated mother of the bride.

Throughout her career, Braga has given decorated performances in movies like Kiss of the Spider Woman, Moon over Parador, Wonder, and multiple others dating back to the late 1960s. She has also appeared on shows like Sex and the City, Law & Order, Brothers and Sisters, and Luke Cage, to name only a few. 

Cheech Marin (Robert)

Comedy legend Cheech Marin appears in Shotgun Wedding as Darcy’s father, Robert.

One of the most recognizable faces and voices in show business the past 50 years, Marin became an international sensation with his Cheech & Chong comedy act alongside Tommy Chong, which would produce movies like Up in Smoke and Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie, as well as multiple albums and specials. Over the years, Marin has also landed roles in movies like From Dusk Till Dawn, Tin Cup, Machete, and various animated movies, including The Lion King and Coco. He was also a longtime star of Don Johnson’s CBS police procedural, Nash Bridges. 

Selena Tan (Marge)

Next up is Selena Tan, who shows up in the cast as Marge, the manager of the resort where the wedding, and kidnapping, goes down.

Though most of her career has been spent producing and starring in Singaporean movies and plays like Rogue Trader, Gone Shopping, and productions by her Dim Sum Dollies cabaret act, international audiences will surely recognize Tan from her brief performance in another beautiful wedding movie, 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians. 

D’Arcy Carden (Harriet)

D’Arcy Carden has been in a little bit of everything lately, and that includes Shotgun Wedding, in which she plays Darcy’s new step-mom, Harriet.

In the past few years, Carden has popped up in a long list of movies that includes The To Do List, Other People, Bombshell, and most recently, The People We Hate at the Wedding. However, she is best known from her work on the small screen, including great performances on The Good Place, Barry, Broad City, Poorly Drawn Lines, and A League of Their Own. 

Callie Hernandez (Jamie)

Taking on the role of Darcy’s sister, Jamie, in the cast is Callie Hernandez.

Over the course of the past decade, Hernandez has appeared in a variety of movies, including Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, the unnerving Blair Witch, La La Land, Alien: Covenant, and Under the Silver Lake. During that same stretch of time, Hernandez has landed roles on shows like From Dusk till Dawn: The Series, Graves, Soundtrack, and The Flight Attendant. 

Desmin Borges (Ricky)

Desmin Borges shows up in Shotgun Wedding as Ricky, Tom’s longtime best friend.

Fans of the FXX comedy series, You’re the Worst, will surely recognize Borges from his portrayal of Edgar Quintero throughout the show’s five-season run. During his career, Borges has also appeared on shows like The Time Traveler’s Wife, Utopia, and Next Caller, as well as in movies like Compliance, Tower Heist, and Mr. Popper’s Penguins, to name a few. 

Steve Coulter (Larry)

Taking on the role of the father-of-the-groom, Larry, is Steve Coulter.

A prolific TV actor whose credits include everything from classic shows like In the Heat of the Night to more modern standouts like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Atlanta, Coulter has continued to prove himself as one of the hardest working names in the medium. His film credits are just as impressive, with titles like The Founder, First Man, A Time to Kill, Flight, and Furious 7, to name a few. 

Lenny Kravitz (Sean)

And last, but certainly not least, is Lenny Kravitz, who appears as Darcy’s ex, Sean.

Though known more for his hit tracks like “Fly Away,” “American Woman,” and “It Ain’t Over ‘till It’s Over,” the talented musician has also appeared in his fair share of movies over the years, including Precious, The Hunger Games, and The Butler. He has also portrayed himself in Zoolander, Holy Ghost, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Shotgun Wedding is currently streaming for anyone with an Amazon Prime subscription. If you want to know what other releases are coming to the streaming platform and your local theater over the next few months, take a look at the 2023 new movie releases for a schedule of all the latest.

Stream Shotgun Wedding on Prime Video.

Jennifer Lopez long ago cemented her place in the world of romantic comedies, with some of her best rom-com movies including 2022’s Marry Me and The Wedding Planner, but she’s also found success in projects of other genres, including Hustlers and Enough. Her latest venture, Shotgun Wedding, seeks to combine some of her talents. The new comedy, which will stream on Amazon’s Prime Video, stars JLo and Josh Duhamel as a couple whose destination wedding gets threatened by more than cold feet and opinionated families. The reviews are in, so let’s see what critics have to say.

Shotgun Wedding hit a few bumps in the road en route to its upcoming January 27 release, namely the casting of Josh Duhamel to replace Armie Hammer as its lead amid Hammer’s cannibalism text controversy. Now the Transformers actor will be the one teaming up with JLo to save Tom and Darcy’s families from the armed wedding crashers holding them hostage. Let’s get to the feedback, starting with CinemaBlend’s review of Shotgun Wedding. Our own Corey Chichizola rates the movie 4 out of 5 stars, saying Duhamel’s late addition isn’t obvious, as he’s got great chemistry with Lopez, who gives her funniest performance yet. The review continues: 

Alex Maidy of JoBlo agrees, saying that it’s obvious that the cast and crew enjoyed themselves on set. The critic says Lenny Kravitz, Cheech Marin, D’Arcy Carden and others in supporting roles are great. He rates the film a “Good” 7 out of 10, basically saying come for the action-comedy, stay for Jennifer Coolidge wielding a machine gun: 

Many critics made mention of Jennifer Coolidge, who is hot off of her Golden Globe-winning performance on Season 2 of The White Lotus — even if not everyone was happy after her lengthy story at the awards. While Guy Lodge of Variety has issues with Shotgun Wedding overall, the critic says Coolidge does more than her share to make the jokes land. Lodge’s take: 

Ella Kemp of IndieWire also notes Jennifer Coolidge’s contribution to the movie, as well as leading lady Jennifer Lopez, but is less impressed with the “frustratingly average” overall product. The critic grades the film a C+, saying: 

Marya E. Gates of The Playlist, meanwhile, doesn’t find much upside to Shotgun Wedding, grading it a D and calling it an “interminable slog,” arguing that the characters are undeveloped and the only memorable moments are spoiled in the trailer. The critic continues: 

The critics may not all be in agreement about Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel’s new action comedy, but if this sounds like one you want to check out, you can do so starting on Friday, January 27, with your Amazon Prime Video subscription. Be sure to also check out our 2023 Movie Release Schedule to start planning your next trip to the theater. 

I'll be the first to admit that I love hearing Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck gush over how much they love each other. However, I gotta say seeing the singer’s Shotgun Wedding co-star Josh Duhamel getting all lovey-dovey about his screen partner’s real-life partner is pretty amazing. So, while JLo and Affleck are celebrating six months of marriage, Duhamel is getting in on the love too, by sharing how much he adores his co-star’s husband.  

While promoting their rom-com Shotgun Wedding, an interviewer for ET asked JLo about how her marriage was going. While the singer explained she didn’t have enough time to list everything she loved about her hubby, Josh Duhamel chimed in to make sure everyone knew how much he loves Ben Affleck, saying: 

I mean, he’s right. Affleck is “a beautiful man,” and watching his and JLo’s relationship evolve has been such a “dreamy” experience, especially over the last few years when they rekindled their romance. While this interview was all about Duhamel professing his love for Affleck, Lopez has also opened up more about her story with Affleck, which has spanned over 20 years. 

This is especially true when it comes to the pop star’s latest album, This Is Me…Now. The album is largely inspired by her relationship with Affleck, and she revealed that the album’s predecessor and companion This Is Me…Then kind of prophesized her love story with the Good Will Hunting star. 

JLo has also talked about blending her family with Affleck's. Both actors have kids from previous marriages and Lopez described the experience as an “emotional transition.” She also added that simultaneously all her dreams are coming true, calling 2022 a “phenomenal year.” 

Lopez has made it clear just how amazing Affleck is. However, she also took a moment in this ET interview to gush about her co-star, Duhamel, saying she couldn’t have asked for a better person to team up with and be literally tied to in Shotgun Wedding.  

As for Duhamel’s love life, he and Fergie parted ways almost six years ago. Last year, the rom-com vet got engaged to Audra Mari, and the two got married in September. And while I’m thrilled that the Transformers star is a happy newlywed I would really like to see this budding bromance between him and Ben Affleck a bit more. 

So, with all that said, hopefully, someday we’ll get a Ben Affleck/Josh Duhamel buddy comedy. However, focusing on the present, while we wait to see what comes of Affleck’s deal with Dunkin, you will be able to watch Duhamel and Lopez in their action rom-com on the 2023 movie schedule, which will be available to stream with an Amazon Prime subscription on January 27.

Jennifer Lopez has had a long and wildly successful career as both an actress and global pop star. She’s once again returned to screen in Jason Moore’s action/comedy flick Shotgun Wedding, which is going to be released on Amazon shortly. She stars opposite Josh Duhamel, who recently spoke to CinemaBlend about being tied to JLo (literally) throughout so much of the movie’s runtime.

Shotgun Wedding is a bonkers premise, where the destination wedding of Darcy and Tom (Lopez and Duhamel) is hijacked, and the guests are taken hostage. It’s up to the bride and groom to save their loved ones, while also being tied together with zip ties. As you can see in the video above, I had the privilege of speaking with the cast of Shotgun Wedding ahead of its release, where I asked Josh Duhamel (who replaced Armie Hammer shortly into filming) what it was like working in such close physical proximity to JLo throughout filming. As he shared:

He’s not wrong. Shotgun Wedding goes from quirky rom-com to an over the top adventure as soon as a battalion of armed foes descend upon Darcy and Tom’s wedding. And one of the ongoing gags throughout this is the fact that the bickering couple have their wrists tied to each other as they attempt to work together. As you can imagine, this makes for plenty of clumsy action scenes and funny moments throughout even the most dire of circumstances, with the trailer showing off a taste of the movie.

Later in our same conversation, Josh Duhamel further explained his collaboration with Jennifer Lopez, and wha the found to the be most important challenge while bringing Shotgun Wedding to life on set. Because while the movie is chock full of hilarious moments, it’s ultimately about the love story shared between the two protagonists. He said:

Emotions are usually high at any wedding, including awkward interactions and stress for the two people at the center of it. Shotgun Wedding elevates those proceedings, but the story’s heart is ultimately about two people coming together, and their loved ones rallying around them. Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Lopez’s challenges are often metaphors for their relationship, maintaining the heart of the story.

Of course, Shotgun Wedding is ultimately an ensemble cast, with plenty of familiar faces joining Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel. That includes recent Emmy and Golden Globe winner Jennifer Coolidge, the great Lenny Kravitz, The Good Place’s D’arcy Carden, Cheech Martin, and Sônia Braga.

Shotgun Wedding will arrive on Amazon Prime January 27th. In the meantime, check out the 2023 movie release dates to plan your next movie experience. And both Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel have a number of exciting projects coming down the line. 

In response to various instances of sexual misconduct in the workplace that have come to light in the past five years, many studios are more regularly hiring intimacy coordinators on the sets of their productions. That includes the set of the Disney+ show Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, which became Lauren Graham’s first time working with an intimacy coordinator. Though in that particular instance with co-star Josh Duhamel, the Gilmore Girls actress wasn’t sure one was necessary. 

Lauren Graham has been a working actress in Hollywood for nearly 30 years, and recalls that for many years, intimacy coordinators just “didn’t exist” and the protocol was someone throwing a bathrobe after the director calls cut. So, Graham was rather tickled when her first time working with one was during more family friendly fare on Mighty Ducks. As she recalled: 

The story comes from Lauren Graham’s new book, Have I Told You This Already? Stories I Don’t Want to Forget to Remember. In the collection of essays from the former Parenthood star, Graham shared her honest thoughts on the situation along with adding to Fox News Digital that she “felt bad” for the coordinator’s presence in the particular instance. She continued: 

During Graham’s interview, she added that she wishes “there was more” to coordinate in that instance and bit her tongue on making a joke to the coordinator. In terms of the role itself within Hollywood, Graham finds it interesting that it took Hollywood so long to realize how “super awkward” getting intimate on camera can be for actors and realize a liaison may make someone feel more comfortable after her own experiences on sets. 

Graham is currently in the second season of Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, which has continued to bring new episodes to Disney+ throughout November, with a new episode becoming available with a Disney+ subscription this Wednesday and the finale releasing on November 30. Graham initially began on the show with Emilio Estevez in Season 1, but since the actor’s departure, Josh Duhamel has filled in.  

Intimacy coordinators come on Hollywood sets to advocate for safety between actors and the production when it comes to intimate moments on set. They are often made available during the preproduction process along with being present on sets as well. Graham’s story shows that some productions are taking the whole thing super seriously, even when it comes to more innocent intimate moments between actors. 

It may never be too early to look at the 2023 new movie releases, but as this current year continues to march on, our gaze to the future continues to grow. Even if awards season hasn’t arrived just yet, and the festivals are kicking off, it’s good to take a peek at what might entertain us all during the later part of 2022 and early 2023. 

If the trailer for Jennifer Lopez’s Prime Video rom-com Shotgun Wedding is any indication, next year’s going to kick off rather explosively. Not content to cover a simple exchanging of vows, director Jason Moore and writer Mark Hammer have thrown a lot of R-rated action into the mix of this charming comedy. 

What starts like any other big day turns into a hostage situation, as Darcy (Jennifer Lopez) and Tom (Josh Duhamel) find their "I Do's" under siege by tons of armed baddies. Live hand grenades become an issue, as does the ever tearing dress of the bride, and her debates on counterterrorist strategies with her husband to be. But perhaps the most lethal component of Shotgun Wedding is Emmy award winner/national treasure Jennifer Coolidge rocking a machine gun, in the name of defeating evil. 

Awkwardness still finds its way into this pretty rough and tumble rendezvous. That’s where Lenny Kravitz’s slick looking Sean comes into play, as he’s been invited to the wedding by a very special party: his ex-girlfriend, Darcy. Though Tom really shouldn’t be worrying too much about this whole scenario, because if this character is anything like the real Kravitz, a Jason Momoa-style bromance  might not be far off.

So far, teaming up Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel really looks like it’s working in Shotgun Wedding’s favor. The Transformers franchise actor has highly praised Lopez’s work on the set, which goes a long way to explaining the sterling chemistry between the two actors. One still has to wonder if the same would have been true if Armie Hammer hadn’t dropped out, which allowed Duhamel to swoop in and save the day. 

It sounds like Shotgun Wedding has a good balance of your typical rom-com fluff, with an R-rated sensibility that includes swear words that need to be cut off or dubbed over in order to produce a green-band trailer. (Read Jennifer Lopez's lips as she proclaims how she "freaking" loves that cake knife, and you'll see what I'm talking about.) Firepower and fireworks will collide as this movie throws the action packed destination wedding you’ve been dreaming of attending on January 27, 2023. 

All you'll need to RSVP is a Prime Video subscription, since that will be the exclusive home for this rom-com. And if you’re like us and want to find the best Jennifer Coolidge movies/TV shows, you might need to consult a couple more streaming services to answer that specific call.

The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers went through a massive change between Seasons 1 and 2 when star Emilio Estevez’s departure was announced. As the face of the franchise and arguably the biggest name attached to the Disney+ series, losing Estevez raised the big question of who could possibly fill his shoes… or hockey skates, as the case may be. Now, the show has cast none other than Transformers and Jupiter’s Legacy alum Josh Duhamel to replace Estevez. 

That’s not to say that Duhamel will be playing Gordon Bombay in a recast, however. THR reports that he has been cast to star in Season 2 as a former pro hockey player who has become a coach. Named Gavin Cole, he applies the lessons he learned (and teaches) from hockey to life, and has a knack for inspiring and charming… while also getting intense about the training for the Mighty Ducks in the next chapter of their story on Disney+.

The Mighty Ducks players wind up training under Gave Cole when they head to a hockey institute for a summer camp, which will be the setting of Season 2 in a departure from the first season. Still, there will be familiar faces from the Season 1 cast of The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, including Gilmore Girls' alum Lauren Graham. She previously had to leave behind a role on NBC's Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist to come to the Disney+ show.  

The replacement of Gordon Bombay with Josh Duhamel's Gavin Cole came after the initial expectation was for Emilio Estevez to return and reprise his role, in which case the story for Season 2 undoubtedly would have been quite different. News of his departure came back in November 2021, with initial reports stating that a combination of creative differences and conflict over COVID vaccination requirements were the reasons for Estevez leaving. 

The actor and executive producer later released a statement (via Deadline) to clarify the situation from his own perspective, explicitly stating that he is "not anti-vaxx," and that the reason for his leaving The Mighty Ducks: The Game Changers (which he was openly enthusiastic about when he explained why he returned to acting) was "nothing more than a good old fashioned contract dispute" and not because of "an anti-vaccine position." He also cited "a myriad of creative differences," and even thanked the studio and producers.

Josh Duhamel had previously landed a very big live-action role for a streaming series with Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy and expressed his disappointment about its early cancellation back in June, but The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers brings him back to a series regular role on a streaming service courtesy of Disney+. He did also appear on Hulu with an episode of Love, Victor as well. There are currently no details for when Mighty Ducks fans will get to see his debut as Gavin Cole, but the show is clearly making some serious progress on Season 2. 

If you haven't already checked out the show that brought the iconic hockey franchise back to the screen, you can find Season 1 of The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (as well as all three Mighty Ducks movies) with a Disney+ subscription now. If you're in the market for some other viewing options during the wait for Josh Duhamel's debut in the next season, be sure to check out our 2022 TV schedule. 

Breakups are an unfortunate part of life, but they can lead to new love blooming, as well. Almost five years after Josh Duhamel and pop star Fergie initially decided to part ways, it seems the actor has decided to tie the knot again. He just announced his engagement to former Miss World America Audra Mari, and Fergie actually sent some good-hearted wishes to the couple.

In his most recent Instagram post, Josh Duhamel shows off his new fiancée in a shot apparently taken right after she accepted his proposal. You can check out the newly-engaged couple in the post below:

The couple is all smiles in the photo that announces their big news, and it appears as though the proposal was a simple, yet romantic one. With the sandy beach, the iconic message in a bottle trick, and the gorgeous sunset in the background, all the the ingredients for the perfect proposal seem to be present. 

The comment section of his post is packed with congratulations from fans and celebrities alike. While the well wishes may each be welcomed, one in particular may carry a little more weight. Josh Duhamel’s ex-wife Fergie has added her own comment to the post. Keeping her message simple, she simply notes: 

The short and sweet congratulations is followed by a number of green heart emojis. While it is a simple message, it’s also indicates she is supportive of her ex moving on with someone else and she's seemingly happy for him over the engagement.

Fans seem to be responding well to the comment, as Fergie’s congrats has a number of favorable replies. One fan calls her a class act, while others are giving her props for her co-parenting skills, saying that her support of the engagement is indicative of their positive relationship post-breakup. This makes sense. The couple's split was mentioned to be amicable when it first happened and while it took time before the divorce was finalized, it didn't deal with a lot of the headlines a lot of other celeb splits deal with.  

Families take on many different dynamics these days, and while some divorced couples don’t have the best of relationships or may have long, drawn out divorce proceedings, there are definite advantages to remaining friendly and supportive when there are children involved. Fergie and Josh Duhamel share a son, yet Duhamel’s new fiancée will likely be around for big family moments moving forward. 

It appears as though co-parenting won’t be a huge issue for the family (unlike some other celebs), at least if Fergie’s congrats go deeper than just social media appearances. Getting used to a new dynamic can be difficult for kids, so hopefully Fergie’s support will help usher in Josh Duhamel’s new fiancée and the transition will be an easy one.

Sending congrats to Josh Duhamel and his new fiancée, as well as props to Fergie for her classy response! Although she is no longer married to Duhamel, she is very much still a part of his life through their shared son, and I love to see her shining support.

Meanwhile, I don't know when Josh Duhamel's nuptials will officially happen, but you can catch him in a wedding of sorts when Shotgun Wedding with Jennifer Lopez hits theaters later this year. 

Jennifer Lopez fans are about to see the actress get married not once, but twice on the big screen between her two upcoming films Marry Me and Shotgun Wedding. The latter will have her playing off of Josh Duhamel following Armie Hammer’s prior exit from the role. The Jupiter Legacy star has wrapped his work with JLo, and he’s really hyping up his experience on the film with her.

Josh Duhamel was the third actor to be cast in his role in Shotgun Wedding, but given he’s the only one who actually got to play fiancé to Jennifer Lopez’s character, the third time's most certainly the charm. Prior to Duhamel, Ryan Reynolds was attached to the role in 2019, and Armie Hammer previously replaced him before dropping out in early 2021. Here’s what Duhamel had to say about his time working with Lopez:

It sounds like JLo is a dream of a co-star, per the actor’s words to ET Online. Shotgun Wedding will see Josh Duhamel and the Hustlers actress play Tom and Darcy, a couple getting ready for a destination wedding they are getting cold feet about. Amidst the festivities, the entire wedding party is taken hostage, and the duo must work together to save them from the danger. Get it? It’s a literal shotgun wedding!

The movie was filmed early this year from February to late April in Boston and the Dominican Republic. Shotgun Wedding has long been in the works, originally set to film in the summer of 2019. Armie Hammer was cast in the lead role in late 2020, but has since been the center of multiple assault allegations, leading him to drop out of this and all other projects he had in the works. Hammer checked into a treatment program for drug, alcohol and sex problems in June.

Despite the film dealing with a few bumps in the road, Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel sound like they could be an electric rom-com match. Both of them have dived into the genre on multiple occasions over the years, and it helps that the two actors knew each other prior to playing a couple on set.

Shotgun Wedding is expected to come out on June 29, 2022, the week after Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is released and one week prior to Minions: The Rise of Gru. Until then, J-Lo is living a rom-com of her own and Duhamel voices Two-Face in Batman: The Long Halloween, which concludes with with Part Two on July 27.

CinemaBlend participates in affiliate programs with various companies. We may earn a commission when you click on or make purchases via links.

Though it was developed with the idea of lasting multiple seasons and kicking off comic book giant Mark Millar's small-screen universe, Jupiter's Legacy wasn't really given much of a chance to kick anything off after its first season debuted on Netflix. The streaming giant cancelled the budget-breaking superhero drama less than a month after it debuted as a regular Top 10 entry in Netflix's daily rankings. Fans who were extremely disappointed by the cancellation news can take comfort in knowing star Josh Duhamel is right there along with you, and he's got ideas for how he'd like The Utopian to return one day.

While speaking with CinemaBlend to promote his other 2021 superhero-adjacent role as Harvey Dent in the DC Universe Animated Movie Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One - out on digital and Blu-ray/DVD on June 22 - Josh Duhamel shared his thoughts on Jupiter's Legacy coming to such an early and cliffhanger-filled conclusion, saying:

Critics weren't overly glowing about the methodical nature behind Jupiter's Legacy's storytelling, which possibly played a part in Netflix's cancellation decision, along with the many behind-the-scenes issues and financial problems. But from a fan perspective, as well as an actor perspective, there have been few cancellations more baffling than that of Jupiter's Legacy, considering how much of Season 1's storytelling was built to pay off in a second season. And even if he's not a fan of filming superhero brawls, it sounds like Josh Duhamel was as excited about seeing Utopian's future rivalry with his brother Walt as much as viewers were, not to mention his crumbling relationship with son Brandon. But while The Union adhered to a strict code not to proceed with lethal intentions, Netflix killed all those storylines prematurely.

There is a glimmer of hope to hang onto, however. Netflix is still going full steam ahead with its Mark Millar partnership, and buttressed its cancellation announcement with the notion that all of his comic adaptations - including the upcoming Supercrooks and The Magic Order - will all be part of the same universe. So it's entirely feasible that Jupiter's Legacy plot points and characters could be referenced in other shows. And considering Mark Millar and artist Tommy Lee Edwards only just released the first issue of Jupiter's Requiem, the source material's final arc, there's a measurable chance that Netflix execs could decide to return to the multi-generation superhero saga again in the future in some format.

Having lived with the cancellation of Jupiter's Legacy for a short while, Josh Duhamel has accepted its fate, but he hasn't fully turned away from the idea of playing The Utopian again in the future. In his mind, however, he'd prefer to wrap up the TV show's narratives through a feature-length project, as opposed to something more episodic. In his words:

Taking into account that the initial eight episodes were rumored to have cost upwards of $200 million dollars after all was said and done, Jupiter's Legacy probably has a far better chance of returning to audiences via a 100-minute close-out feature rather than anything more extensive. At this point, it will all come down to how long fans can keep Jupiter's Legacy in Netflix's Top 10, as well as how vocal the fandom can get on social media. Here's a tip, though: don't follow Hutch into oxygen-free vaults before trying to get more vocal. It's not gonna work.

With his upcoming feature opposite Jennifer Lopez Shotgun Wedding on the way, Josh Duhamel can currently be heard as the iconic comic character Harvey Dent in Batman: The Long Halloween Part 1, which will be available via all home entertainment outlets on Tuesday, June 22, with Part II hitting digital on Tuesday, July 27, and Blu-ray/DVD on August 10, right in the thick of the 2021 Summer TV season.

Netflix’s Jupiter Legacy seemed like it was going to be the next big streaming superhero hit. With an ensemble cast that included Josh Duhamel, Ben Daniels, Leslie Bibb, Mike Wade, Matt Lanter and more, the Mark Millar comic book adaptation set itself up to be destined for a second season with cliffhanger plotlines and unresolved questions. However, Netflix delivered a devastating blow and cancelled the series less than a month after its debut. While shocking, the streaming giant's cancellation decision wasn't made without a few motivating factors that are now coming to light.

Even though the story of Jupiter’s Legacy is not completely done, as Netflix has opted to instead produce its own universe-building ambitions with Mark Millar's other comics, The Hollywood Reporter states that there are multiple factors that led to the one-and-done flagship season. The series' initial developer and showrunner Steven DeKnight (of Daredevil and Spartacus fame) had initially asked the streamer for a budget of at least $12 million per episode to keep the show in line with similar high-budget superhero fare. Netflix only agreed to $9 million per ep, though that limitation ended up being moot, as Jupiter’s Legacy was reportedly overbudget and running behind soon after shooting began.

Steven DeKnight and Netflix execs also reportedly clashed over “creative differences,” leading to production shutting down halfway through the shoot. DeKnight exited Jupiter's Legacy and was replaced by Sang Kyu Kim, who apparently needed to restructure elements filmed for the first half of the season to coincide with the story's altered direction.

Furthermore, after production for all eight episodes wrapped, the show spent an excessive amount of 2020 in post-production. The filmmaker behind Netflix’s Dark Crystal and Lupin series, Louis Leterrier, was reportedly brought in during the post-production process as a consultant to help mold the footage, but it appears not everyone was 100% pleased with the finished product that went out to subscribers. According to a Netflix insider, the final budget for Jupiter’s Legacy landed at $130 million for the eight-episode season, but with the shut-down and extended post-production stretch added in, that total could have theoretically been upwards of $200 million.

As if budget problems weren’t enough, one Netflix exec who was instrumental in greenlighting Jupiter, VP of original content Cindy Holland, exited Netflix amidst the chaos. Although shuffles like that are not uncommon in the worlds of TV and streaming, those taking over the new positions are often far more scrutinizing and picky about projects developed by outgoing creatives. And if a project doesn't look like a bone fide hit from every angle, its fate is likely harder to extend.

Netflix did, in a way, buoy the cancellation by announcing an interconnected Jupiter universe, with a new live-action series based on the unrelated comic titled Supercrooks by Mark Millar, which has been given a full series order, with the previously paused project The Magic Order once again returning to development. A day after the cancellation, reports came out claiming the series generated somewhere around 696 million minutes of view time over the course of its release week, when it topped Netflix's Top 10 for multiple days. So even though that kind of popularity might have saved other shows with less problematic productions, it's clear that factors beyond viewership played into Jupiter’s Legacy ending before its story had fully been told.

Although it’s upsetting that Jupiter’s Legacy won’t be returning for a second season at this point, it will be interesting to see how Netflix sets up this new universe and how the initial series will play a part in it. Even though Supercrooks will presumably have a new and unrelated cast, maybe we can still hope to see the Jupiter’s Legacy characters in some way, shape or form.

In the meantime, Jupiter’s Legacy is streaming on Netflix, and there are plenty of other quality shows to look forward to during the 2021 Summer TV season.

Netflix's recently dropped a big super-powered axe down on another high-profile show, with the comic book adaptation Jupiter's Legacy getting cancelled after only a single season. Albeit a season that wasn't warmly adored by all. Despite the disappointing and unexpected news, star Josh Duhamel was clearly looking on the bright side of life - [whistles] - in his latest Instagram post, where he celebrated his "sexy Santa" look and jokingly (or not) let Hulu know his talents are up for grabs again.

After having already shared a more traditionally mournful post about Jupiter's Legacy's cancellation, which we'll get to a little lower, Josh Duhamel shared a selfie of himself on Instagram still rocking The Utopian's latter-day look with his long white hair, just without Utopian's costume around to cover his shirtless torso.

Is Sexy Santa Summer one where Santa Claus is too naughty even for his own naughty list? Or is it one where Mrs. Claus is the one with the red nose instead of Rudolph, because...well, I can't quickly think of a reason why that would indicate sexy. Mood lighting, maybe?

It's great to see that Josh Duhamel had some holiday-esque mirth to share after hearing about Jupiter's Legacy facing cancellation at Netflix. It's a huge blow to all involved on both sides of the screen, seeing as how Season 1 was tailor-made to set up a second season, and thus presented far more questions than answers over the course of its eight episodes. Even comic co-creator Mark Millar seemed low-key confident that the streaming service would make good on a season renewal as part of his overall deal with the company. Now it looks like he'll be diving into the in-development adaptation of Supercrooks, with the loose notion that another season could happen down the road in an anthological sense, much like how the comic arcs have been released.

But will Josh Duhamel be there to take on more superhero action scenes by reprising the role of Sheldon Sampson if that follow-up season ever enters into existence? It's certainly possible, considering how much he seemed to enjoy working with the ensemble cast and the big-budget drama's extensive crew, as indicated in his other post-cancellation Instagram post:

Of course, Josh Duhamel's return as The Utopian would almost necessarily require the actor to not be caught up in a giant contract with Hulu over some show where he plays a hunky Christmas icon. Or any other role, for that matter. Part of Duhamel's optimism may be tied to his upcoming "dream" role opposite Jennifer Lopez in the film Shotgun Wedding, for which he replaced exiting star Armie Hammer. It seems like working with J.Lo in any capacity would be a mood-lifter, so here's hoping that film turns out to be a more obvious success than Jupiter's Legacy was.

After hitting a pretty odd setback in that its star was in the middle of drama centered around sexual assault allegations as well as cannibalistic texts, Jennifer Lopez’s Shotgun Wedding has finished up filming with a new lead. Josh Duhamel quickly took up the role of Tom, previously played by Armie Hammer opposite Lopez. It appears that Duhamel did not take up the replacement role lightly, though, because he now recalls the email he sent to Hammer after securing the role.

In an interview with Man About Town (via E! Online), Josh Duhamel reveals he sent an email to Armie Hammer after replacing him at Tom on Jennifer Lopez’s Shotgun Wedding. The two actors seem to know each other and are on friendly terms, although not necessarily friends. Duhamel apparently felt they were close enough to warrant an email making sure no toes were being stepped on by taking the role, and in the email he says he doesn’t like getting roles because another actor loses out due to outside drama. Here’s what the actor says in the email, exactly:

Even if you don’t believe Armie Hammer to be an innocent or even good person, you have to admit that it’s a pretty commendable thing Josh Duhamel did. Duhamel kept his opinion out of the email, and just sent some good vibes Hammer’s way, while also laying it out that he was going to replace him in a film.

While he wished him luck, it’s unclear where Duhamel falls with his opinion on the whole Armie Hammer situation. Nevertheless, Hammer is having a pretty tough time right now in both his personal and professional life due to the scandals he has incurred and Duhamel has his thoughts with him.

Like Josh Duhamel says, he doesn’t like getting parts second hand like with Shotgun Wedding, but it seems like it’s worth it this time. The trade off of working with Jennifer Lopez is one he seems glad to have made, because he has said it was a dream on set with Lopez and a lot of fun was had.

The bulk of the fun is over, though, as filming on Shotgun Wedding has concluded. Even so, it won’t be until next summer that we see whether or not Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Lopez’s good time on set translates on screen to viewers. Armie Hammer probably won’t be having as much fun watching the film though, even if he did get a head’s up email from his replacement.

Major spoilers below for the entirety of Netflix's superhero drama Jupiter's Legacy, so be warned!

As one of Netflix's most popular original series going into the 2021 Summer TV season, the superpowered saga Jupiter's Legacy is the first of an assumed variety of streaming adaptations bringing comic book creator Mark Millar's works to life. Though viewers' mileage may vary when it comes to critiquing the overall quality of these first eight episodes, it's pretty undeniable that Season 1 ends in ways that can only be described as "plotty set-up for Season 2," to the point where a second season renewal was essentially built into the storytelling formula.

Regardless of whether that was a genius or a baffling move on the part of original TV developer Steven DeKnight (who left early on in the production) and/or the newer showrunner Sang Kim, let's take a closer look at how Jupiter's Legacy semi-wrapped up its various storylines through the finale. (A finale that is titled "How It All Ends," which is quite bizarre since nothing actually ends, so to speak, but I digress.) Let's kick things off with the biggest twist of Season 1, which all the evil telepaths reading this story just knew was going to happen.

Brainwave Was The True Villain All Along

Somewhat similar to how things play out for the Sampson brothers within the Jupiter's Legacy source material, the TV series twists a big knot in the elder siblings' relationship by revealing Ben Daniels' Walter (a.k.a. Brainwave) was the actual antagonist behind much of the current-day crises of faith and family plaguing The Union. Walt was the one who cloned Blackstar, which was the catalyst for the Code-based fissures that formed between Andrew Horton's Brandon (a.k.a. Paragon) and Josh Duhamel's Sheldon (a.k.a The Utopian), because Walt is pretty sick of the superhero status quo and thinks the U.S. has spiraled out of control because of his brother's insistence on not breaking the Code.

Season 1 ends with Walt cementing his supervillainy by slitting the throat of his own daughter Raikou (Anna Akana) after she messed up by revealing what she knew about his double-crossing nature, as well as his overall goal to coerce nephew Brandon down a different life path from his father. (Not to mention she then tried to coax more hush money from Walt.) Meanwhile, in a feat of terrible timing, Sheldon specifically asked Walt to help mend his relationship with Brandon, with the elder brother only too happy to accept the task. (More about Brandon lower.)

Those Season 2 building blocks are pretty obviously laid out for viewers, but Brainwave's fight with Matt Lanter's Skyfox (who will also be discussed lower) introduced the pretty huge implication that Walt has been a behind-the-scenes antagonist for far longer than just the events that played out in the first eight episodes. Skyfox (a.k.a. George Hutchence) accused Brainwave of convincing the other Union members to go against him, leading to him being their greatest enemy. So viewers can probably expect to see everything that led to Walt and George's fallout in future episodes, and more from Walt probably attempting to kill others, eventually approaching the same fate as others who were tested by the mysterious Island.

Sheldon Basically Ruined His Relationship With Brandon

Jupiter's Legacy brought a distinctly comic-book sense of symmetry to up-but-mostly-down relationship between Sheldon and Brandon, first incited by the younger Sampson theoretically breaking the Code by totally destroying the Blackstar clone's face. In the end, the real Blackstar tried to force Sheldon into murder by threatening Brandon's life, with the almighty Utopian taking wayyy too long to go into bright-eyed power mode. Naturally, Sheldon later tried to convince Brandon that he would never have let the villain really kill him, but even viewers know that if Tenika Davis' Petra (a.k.a The Flare II) hadn't shown up to disrupt the confrontation, things might have gone in such a way where Brandon's head would no longer be attached to his body.

And though Brandon obviously tells Sheldon that he believes him, there are roughly a billion seeds of doubt already planted there, with Elena Kampouris' Chloe Sampson (a.k.a. not an official superhero) always around to shit-talk their dad and his goody-two-shoes ways. To Andrew Horton's credit, Brandon's poker face is such that it's not entirely clear where he'll land in Season 2. He obviously doesn't fully buy into the thrust of his father's legacy, but still seems to understand the general value behind the Code, so I can't see him going completely rogue as the character more or less does in the comics. Then again, Walt can sway Brandon's actions from both the outside and the inside, so we may see a major father-son-also-uncle showdown in the next eight episodes or so.

Skyfox Finally Showed Up In The Weirdest Way

Throughout Jupiter's Legacy Season 1, Matt Lanter's George is very prevalent in the 1930s' scenes, but is almost entirely absent from the current timeline, save for a few mentions here and there about Skyfox being The Union's biggest nemesis. That changed in the finale, where it was revealed that George-as-Skyfox was/is trapped inside some kind of abstract mindspace, though that wasn't entirely explained. In any case, this is where he trapped and battled Brainwave for a while, accusing the latter of turning everyone against him, to the point where they beat him in front of his son (presumably Ian Quinlan's Hutch).

Leslie Bibb's Grace (a.k.a. Lady Liberty) popped into the cloned brain-space to assist Brainwave against Skyfox, which then led to Walt showing Grace the "how it all ends" vision that George put in his head. Only it wasn't fully clear if the imagery that Walt showed Grace - Skyfox smoking a cigarette over Utopian and Paragon's bloody-faced corpses - is the same one that he was shown. It very likely wasn't, and was instead just more of Walt's manipulation campaign to portray George as the real big bad.

I can only hope that Jupiter's Legacy viewers will see more from Matt Lanter as Skyfox in Season 2, preferably in the expanse of time between the group's inception in the 1930s and the current storyline setting. Considering how much Season 1 played up his friendship and kinship with Sheldon - which Skyfox brings up as a key reason why they all got their powers - it would be baffling for the TV series to just ignore the entire span when George was a true superhero within The Union, as well as to not reveal the big reason why he later became a villainous pariah. In the comics, it did involve a woman, which possibly plays into the story of George and Walt's respective children. Unless it doesn't. But speaking of...

Hutch Is Building A Weapon To Find His Father

As revealed in the finale following a pretty stellar fight in complete, oxygen-free silence, Hutch's grand criminal scheme throughout Season 1 was to gather all the necessary requirements needed to build some kind of a super-weapon that he tells Chloe he aims to use to find his father George. (Note that he didn't exactly offer up any denials when Chloe asked if he was going to use it against the Utopian.) It was a cool moment as far as these kinds of reveals go, but viewers were left completely in the dark how any of that was meant to happen for Hutch.

Thus, Season 2 will obviously feature Hutch using that mysterious device in such a way that he can track down his father, presumably in connection with his teleportation rod. Regardless, it seemed curious that Episode 8 was also the same episode that drew more attention to Hutch not having any innate abilities beyond controlling the power rod, as well as playing up how it originally belonged to David Julian Hirsh's Richard Conrad (a.k.a. Blue Bolt). Seems like a second season should also deliver some answers on that front, explaining why not everyone's powers were passed on genetically.

Other Characters Whose Stories Didn't Really Wrap Anything Up

While Leslie Bibb and Elena Kampouris both gave solid performances as Grace and Chloe Sampson, respectively, Jupiter's Legacy Season 1 didn't really grant either of them a full character arc that ended in any big or dramatic ways. As mentioned previously, Grace fought Skyfox and saw Walt's take on George's "how it all ends" vision, while also being aware of the growing familial rifts. Meanwhile, Chloe saved Hutch from his botched heist (while not exactly disguising herself) and appeared to be more than halfway to joining up with Hutch on his mission to find his father. But that's about it.

The same mostly goes for Mike Wade's Fitz Small (a.k.a. The Flare) and his daughter Petra. It was interesting to see how Fitz's origin story in the 1930s played out throughout the season, but viewers saw very little of him in Flare mode, with the Union's first get-together in the finale as his shining superhero scene. The lack of The Flare was strange because of how prominent the character is in the comics (though as a completely different kind of person), though understandable given the lack of storylines set from the 1940s through the 2010s.

As well, beyond the later-season flashback scenes, Jupiter's Legacy didn't take much time to explore Richard Conrad and his legacy as Blue Bolt, leaving viewers with very little to speculate over regarding the character's current whereabouts. It's presumed that more of Blue Bolt's story will come out in Season 2, given the first season's focus on Sheldon's various relationships, but still a strange move to offer such a fleeting look at such an important comic character.

Considering how Season 1 left things off, there are no exact guarantees that Jupiter's Legacy Season 2 will arrive with fully logical explanations for everything that was left out before. But if the first season is as popular as Netflix and Mark Millar are no doubt hoping, then maybe it'll inspire all involved to speed up the storytelling in the future. The only way to convince the powers that be to make it happen is to keep streaming Season 1 on Netflix, and tell all your friends, even the ones that keep talking to their parents' corpses while scrawling out maps.

While it seems like actor Josh Duhamel would have already taken on one or two live-action superhero projects in his career before Netflix's newest comic book actioner Jupiter's Legacy, the closest he came was essentially with the Transformer franchise. Now, though, he's getting his time to shine in the comic book spotlight as Sheldon "The Utopian" Sampson (even if reviews for the Mark Millar and Frank Quitely adaptation haven't been so kind). And though he seems pleased enough with the show in general, Duhamel was apparently not so enthused by having to film fight scenes for Jupiter's Legacy.

During a recent interview with press (via Digital Spy), Josh Duhamel was asked about filming the big brawl against Tyler Mane's Blackstar, and he pointed out how long it took to film that particular sequence before digging a little deeper into his particular distaste for filming superhero battles, saying:

It's easy to imagine why that process might not be the most fun element of making a movie, especially if the superhero suit that an actor is wearing happens to be extremely hot or hard to move around in. Or even if not, though, filming something in such a piecemeal state has to be a drain for actors who are supposed to be "in the moment" throughout their entire performance, without viewers understanding right away that the moment when we see Duhamel's Utopian getting punched in one moment might have been filmed days prior to him getting to punch back, such is the process when filming effects-heavy sequences like those sprinkled throughout the first season of Jupiter's Legacy.

Perhaps it might be different if all of the Jupiter's Legacy fight scenes were completely practical and featured non-powered characters, since that presumably wouldn't require nearly as much prep work and delays in the moment. But because of the heightened comic book fare on display, it's pretty impossible for Josh Duhamel's Utopian to be caught up in a fight without his mega-strength, flying abilities, and other powers being put to use. Which just meant the actor was destined for quite a few slow and steady filming days throughout Season 1.

Not that Jupiter's Legacy was packed to the gills with fight scenes. And then, only one of those battles featured the major supervillain teased throughout all eight episodes, Matt Lanter's Skyfox. So Josh Duhamel definitely had more to do than just make weird grunting sounds while swinging his fists, especially since half of the storyline took place in the 1930s prior to The Union's creation.

Tying into that point of view is the fact that Josh Duhamel isn't a huge fan of the superhero genre in general. A big reason why he joined Jupiter's Legacy, which he wasn't familiar with ahead of the offer, is that his son is a big fan of superhero lore. So if you look at it from that angle, it's like it was a gift to his son for Duhamel to have sacrificed his time, energy and patience while filming Utopian's fight scenes. Okay, so that's probably overselling things a bit.

Appearing in another comic book project debuting in 2021, Josh Duhamel voiced Harvey Dent in the DC animated movie Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One, and I'm guessing doing the voice work in his casual clothing was more comfortable overall than filming a live-action fight scene. He'll soon be seen appearing opposite Jennifer Lopez in the upcoming film Shotgun Wedding, in a role previously vacated by Armie Hammer, and that also sounds like it might have been more fun to film than mid-air super-brawls.

Jupiter's Legacy Season 1 is currently streaming in full on Netflix, with many more awesome shows coming our way in the 2021 Summer TV schedule. Fans are waiting to hear whether or not Josh Duhamel will be knocking any other villains about if Season 2 gets ordered up.

General spoilers below for Jupiter's Legacy, so be warned if you haven't yet watched!

Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy marks comic book creator Mark Millar's first adaptation through his mega-deal with the streaming service - the Big Bang of the Millarverse, if you will. The big-budget drama flips between two different timelines, one focusing on the familial superhero team The Union in the present day, and one set in the past that tells the story of how those heroes (and eventual villains) came into being. Star Wars voice actor Matt Lanter, who winningly brought The Clone Wars' Anakin Skywalker to life, features heavily in the 1930s timeline as George Hutchence, the charismatic BFF to Josh Duhamel's Sheldon Sampson. He's mysteriously absent from most of the modern storyline, however.

It's likely the Jupiter's Legacy creative team felt there were already enough moving parts to introduce in these first eight episodes that George's post-1930s future as Skyfox would be easier to explore in a second season without having to sacrifice anything. Which meant the pressure was on Matt Lanter to make George as memorable and impactful a protagonist as possible without entering into 95% of the superpowered action sequences. So as one might imagine, the actor was first able to find parallels between his name-changing hero-turned-villain in Jupiter's Legacy and the one he portrayed in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Speaking with press ahead of Season 1's premiere on Netflix, Lanter said this when asked to compare playing George and Anakin:

On the George/Skyfox side of things, Matt Lanter is speaking to elements that viewers aren't entirely privy to at this point, but are recognizable to those who read Mark Millar and Frank Quitely's Jupiter's Legacy and Jupiter's Circle comic series. There's no reason to go into that here, since it's hard to know what might change from the comics for the TV story, but suffice to say George and Walt's chiding and unfriendly spark grows into an inferno. But the comparative points he made are completely apt, with Skyfox arguably being quite a bit more of a relatable villain than than that evil bastard Darth Vader.

The bulk of George's development throughout Jupiter's Legacy Season 1 is tied to his closeness with the Sampson family, hinging largely on his friendship and support of the increasingly maddened Sheldon. So Matt Lanter had to dig into those moments to show audiences what George's true essence was, and in that way, the actor was also able to reflect on his time portraying Anakin Skywalker, particularly in developing his relationship with Ahsoka Tano (as voiced by the excellent Ashley Eckstein). Lanter , who may one day voice Anakin again, said this when asked how he approached his onscreen kinship with Josh Duhamel:

Josh Duhamel, Ben Daniels, Leslie Bibb, and Mike Wade were each able to show the before-and-after versions of their characters throughout the first season of Jupiter's Legacy, and how Sheldon's Code affected their relationships with family members and the outside world. Conversely, George only allowed Matt Lanter the time to play up the kind of hero that George Hutchence, father of Ian Quinlan's future-villain Hutch (somehow), might be as a member of the Union without twirling his metaphorical mustache with any villainous verve. And while it's almost hard to believe that anybody could ever buy into Sheldon's scrawled map and his ship scheme, Lanter plays George in such a way that feels truly genuine (also somehow).

I asked Matt Lanter about his thought process in going a full season where George is spoken of as the world's greatest supervillain without ever really showing audiences that he's anything more than loyal and dependable. In his words:

While he was speaking more loosely about the character's future, Matt Lanter spoke to the idea that the Netflix TV series from showrunner Sang Kyu Kim (who took over after creator Steven S. DeKnight's exit) might lean into Skyfox's notoriety as a mega-double-decker-supervillain might be overhype promoted by the likes of the hyper-telekinetic Walt as Brainwave, whose string-pulling actions behind Sheldon's back were revealed in the Season 1 finale. Could it be possible that the live-action Jupiter's Legacy will reveal all of George's villainy was just Walt's mindgames? Lanter continued:

It would be a massive gut punch for Jupiter's Legacy comic fans, and anyone who digs the TV show, if Netflix didn't order up a second season to wrap up everything that wasn't shown in Season 1. Plus, Skyfox is pretty badass, as seen both in the source material and in his brawl with Brainwave, so who wouldn't want to see more of that? And if they wanted to give him a weapon that looked like a certain weapon wielded by a certain Sith lord, that'd be cool, too.

Jupiter's Legacy Season 1 is available to stream in full on Netflix, with hopefully more news coming soon about whether or not we can expect to see Season 2. Everything in our 2021 Summer TV schedule should offer something to dive into while waiting, though.

Jennifer Lopez’s Shotgun Wedding is shaping up to be another possible hit to add to her acting resume. Josh Duhamel’s last-minute addition came at a turning point for the upcoming action-comedy. As handsome as Duhamel is, even he felt like a slob next to Lopez on the set. The actor recently got candid about Lopez looking flawless while he was a sweaty mess working on Shotgun Wedding.

It was commendable of Josh Duhamel to step up after Armie Hammer had to quit the film. Despite Shotgun Wedding's action flare, any human being would feel second best next to Jennifer Lopez, including fellow beautiful person Duhamel. Being the goddess Lopez is, Duhamel revealed he didn’t know how the two will look on the big screen together. As he put it:

As Josh Duhamel pointed out, Jennifer Lopez always looks impeccable, whether it's a big-budget film, television series or social media. When it comes to her public persona, the entertainer is always on point when it comes to her look from head to toe. In the rare personal moments, Lopez still looks flawless with no makeup and in some comfortable sweats. But Duhamel isn’t too bad looking himself, as seen in his various movie and TV appearances.

During his Tonight Show appearance, Josh Duhamel gave Jimmy Fallon some background on his friendship with Jennifer Lopez. They go go a ways back, according to the actor. The Jupiter’s Legacy star praised the entertainer, saying:

It’s nice to know Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Lopez rekindled their friendship. Sometimes, as actors, tackling a project like Shotgun Wedding can be overwhelming, especially with a last-minute replacement. Fortunately, Duhamel and Lopez knew each other before the film started, so it seemed to make things smoother. The actor even referred to the actress as a “dream” to work with during the production of the action-comedy.

Given Josh Duhamel’s words, it appears the action-comedy will be full of fun from both Duhamel and Jennifer Lopez. With so much drama surrounding the film, it will be fun to see Duhamel and Lopez’s on-screen chemistry once Shotgun Wedding is released. That positive energy has been on display even after the film wrapped, but fans will have to wait for a flawless Lopez as the film will arrive in theaters on June 29, 2022.

In the early days of the Jennifer Lopez action comedy Shotgun Wedding’s production, “nightmare” seems to be the word that summed up the last minute drama that saw Armie Hammer leave the project. But in the face of that unexpected scandal came the inspired casting of Transformers franchise alum Josh Duhamel in his stead. That switch-up looks to have done the trick, as Duhamel’s comments on working with Lopez have him saying that between their friendship and the awesome shooting locales, it was a dream to work with her on the project.

Speaking with ET in honor of his new Netflix series Jupiter’s Legacy, the actor had nothing but good vibes to report when it came to the Shotgun Wedding experience. Naturally, when you’re cast to play alongside Jennifer Lopez in an action-comedy where a destination wedding turns into a gigantic arms race, that sounds like it’s going to be fun on its own. But as Josh Duhamel explained in this interview, that was only the beginning:

Duhamel’s casting in Shotgun Wedding was practically heaven sent, as he was reported to land the role at the beginning of February. With the movie heading into production towards the end of that very month, it was an eleventh hour miracle that seemed to have kept director Jason Moore’s shooting schedule on track. As the film wrapped towards the end of April, it sounds like a lightning fast pace helped Shotgun Wedding blaze through the process.

Of course, it also helps when people like Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Lopez get along when making a movie. Sure enough, Duhamel partially credits Shotgun Wedding’s fast and fun experience to being good friends with his co-star. The rest though is a recipe that can’t be beat, as he proudly cites the entire team as another huge reason it all came together:

Fate truly seemed to smile on Shotgun Wedding, as the entire scenario had the potential to fall apart really quickly. But thanks to Josh Duhamel being game to throw down alongside his friend Jennifer Lopez, it seems as if it couldn’t have run any smoother. It’s a beautiful story, but it kind of makes the fact that Shotgun Wedding won’t walk down the aisle until June 29th, 2022 a bit of a disappointment.

If you happen to be a Josh Duhamel fan, don’t fret. He can be spotted in the magnificent cast of Netflix’s Jupiter’s Legacy, which takes flight on May 7th, dropping the entire first season. Though if it’s any consolation, Jennifer Lopez’s other wedding comedy, Marry Me, premieres on February 11, 2022. It’s not much sooner, but it’s certainly something.

While Netflix's programming slate is vast and varied enough to keep the company from pigeonholing its original content, I think we can all agree the streaming giant has some experience in the superhero genre, with projects such as Daredevil and the other Defenders series, Gerard Way's The Umbrella Academy, and Raising Dion. Mark Millar and Frank Quitely's widely acclaimed comic book series Jupiter's Legacy is one the platform's next powered-up dramas, and it looks like an emotional and action-packed journey into a superhero family's heritage (both literally and metaphorically) led by Transformers vet Josh Duhamel. Check it out above!

The first thing that comic book fans will notice is that the Jupiter's Legacy TV show definitely doesn't look like a beat-for-beat interpretation of the often NSFW comic book series, which centers on the multi-generational superhero team dubbed The Union. By opening up on that mysterious island, the Netflix series clearly isn't going to cryptically tease out the way in which the Union's central heroes came upon their powers, which is quite different from how Mark Millar's original tale handled those reveals. Which isn't to say it's a bad thing, as it certainly serves as a thrilling bite-sized introduction to the core group.

The Union is headed up by Josh Duhamel's Sheldon Sampson, a.k.a. The Utopian, who becomes the planet's most powerful, moral and well-respected hero, and yes, there are oodles of Superman parallels to recognize. Sampson's (second) wife Grace Kennedy, played by American Housewife's Leslie Bibb, handles her hero duties as the super-strong lawyer Lady Liberty, while his brother Walter (The Crown's Ben Daniels) is turned into a flying psychic who goes by the name Brainwave. As it is stated within the Jupiter's Legacy trailer, these three have been living with their island-oriented powers for 90+ years, so you can imagine that things were not innocent and hunky dory the entire time.

Keeping things familial are Sheldon and Grace's children Chloe (Elena Kampouris) and Brandon (Andrew Horton). In the comics, the telekinetic Brandon goes by the alter ego Paragon, while Chloe chose to sidestep the superhero spotlight early on, despite having her own special abilities. It's not entirely clear if that'll play out accordingly in the TV show, with Chloe meant to be "the ideal," but you can imagine how complicated teens with superpowers might be.

Also popping up in the trailer are the Union's other core original members. SEAL Team vet Mike Wade stars as Fitz Small, whose abilities as The Flare include flight, super-strength and powerful energy blasts. (Casting a Black actor as Flare is indeed one of the changes made in bringing Mark Millar's comic book to TV.) Fitz's daughter Petra, portrayed by model Tenika Davis, also shows up in costume a time or two. Sheldon's best friend George Hutchene, an egotistical engineer who can also fly and boast mega-strength as his alter ego Skyfox, was definitely the Union's most sexed-up member in the comics, though that appears to have been watered down for the show. And then there's David Julian Hirsh as Richard Conrad, whose alter ego Blue Bolt was also strong and capable of flight, and also wielded a self-crafted power rod to blast energy blasts into enemies.

In any case, the Jupiter's Legacy trailer has nearly a century of storytelling to set up, and it does so in a successful manner, at least in my book. Created by Daredevil and Spartacus' Steven S. DeKnight, who left mid-production over creative differences, Jupiter's Legacy appears to have been granted a giant budget for second showrunner Sang Kyu Kim to continue bringing this story to life. The fights look gritty, the flying heroes look graceful, and it looks like just about every shot in the trailer has some form of special effects work. (And no, I'm not just talking about how good Josh Duhamel and Leslie Bibb look in those costumes.)

The trailer also gives audiences our first look at A Million Little Things' Anna Akana as the heroic and sword-swinging Raikou, who looks like she'll bring some martial arts flair to the traditional superhero fare. As well, we got our first good look at the TV show's big, ugly villain Baryon, as played by actor Chase Tang, though it's not exactly clear what kinds of schemes he and/or any of the drama's other villains will be keeping themselves busy with.

Considering Mark Millar is the comic book storyteller behind such popular hits as the Kick Ass movies and the Kingsman films, fans can expect to see some subversive and off-kilter moments during Jupiter's Legacy, but also some important takes on the importance of family lineage and loyalty. If nothing else, it's proof that every big victory just leads to more threats.

Now that we finally have our first big look at Jupiter's Legacy to mull over, fans only have to wait a month to binge all the generational superhero action, as the new series' first eight episodes hit Netflix on Friday, May 7. Let us know in the poll below what you thought of the trailer!

This poll is no longer available.

CinemaBlend participates in affiliate programs with various companies. We may earn a commission when you click on or make purchases via links.

Believe it or not, Jupiter is nearer than you think. Or, rather, to be more specific, Jupiter's Legacy, the upcoming superhero drama streaming series based on the graphic novels by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely, is a bit closer than you might think. We have about two months before this decades-spanning superhero saga debuts on Netflix, but we do know some key details about this much-anticipated show. Here's what we know (so far) about Jupiter's Legacy, which comes from creator Steven S. DeKnight (Daredevil).

Jupiter’s Legacy Premieres On Netflix On May 7

We won't have long to wait to see what Jupiter's Legacy has in store. The first 8-episode season is scheduled to premiere on May 7, 2021, which would be the start of a traditional summer blockbuster season. That release date doesn't seem incidental for that reason. Jupiter's Legacy is slated to be one of Netflix's most high-profile projects this year, which is saying something. The service is definitely looking to drive-up interest and attention for this expensive new program, as we'll discuss in more detail a little bit later.

The Jupiter’s Legacy Cast Includes Josh Duhamel, Leslie Bibb, And More

When it comes to the cast of Jupiter's Legacy, Netflix assembled a recognizable pair of stars for our lead generation-spanning superheroes. Specifically, Josh Duhamel and Leslie Bibb will reunite to play Sheldon Sampson, i.e. The Utopian, and Grace Sampson. The former is the leader of the superhero team, The Union, while the latter is considered one of the world's strongest superheroes. Also rounding out the ensemble are Ben Daniels as Walter Sampson, Sheldon's older brother, Elena Kampouris as Chloe Sampson, Grace and Sheldon's daughter, Andrew Horton as Brandon Sampson, Grace and Sheldon's son, Mike Wade as Fitz Small, a valued member of The Union, and Matt Lanter as George Hutchene, Sheldon's closest ally. Additionally, Tenika Davis, Anna Akana, Tyler Mane, and Chase Tang will play either recurring roles or guest stars.

Jupiter’s Legacy Is Based On A 10-Issue Graphic Novel Series From Mark Millar And Frank Quitely

Mark Millar shouldn't be a stranger to movie lovers and/or comic book aficionados. The graphic novelist is known for creating the source material for popular adaptations like Captain America: Civil War, Wanted, Logan, the Kick-Ass movies, and the Kingsman franchise. Additionally, away from the big screen, he wrote the Ultimates, Marvel Knights Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Superior, The Authority, and Superman: Red Son. Recently, Millar joined forces with Netflix, and Jupiter's Legacy, based on his 10-issue graphic novel series with Frank Quitely, is one of their first collaborations.

Certainly, Jupiter's Legacy will be a big undertaking, as it is the longest-running graphic novel series under Mark Millar's pen. But hopefully, the author's creative involvement will assure that this new show will reach the same quality as his past film adaptations.

Jupiter's Legacy Is A Decades-Spanning Superhero Drama Navigating The Complex Dynamics Of Power, Family, And Loyalty Of The World’s First Superheroes

Even by superhero standards, Jupiter's Legacy has lofty ambitions. As it was reported in their official press release, Jupiter's Legacy will chronicle a decades-spanning story that follows the world's first superheroes and how they navigate through "the complex dynamics of power, family, and loyalty." Notably, "after nearly a century of keeping mankind safe," the first superhero family "must look to their children to continue the legacy." But it won't be easy when the superpowered children don't exactly live up to the high standards and demanding expectations of their parents, causing a lot of tension.

Sounds like an interesting mix of The Incredibles, Sky High, Watchmen, and Amazon Prime's The Boys. Narratively, Jupiter's Legacy sounds more expansive than any other superhero show in recent memory — especially in live-action. Color us intrigued!

Chase Tang Claims His Role Will Be ‘Something We Haven’t Seen Before’

While we don't know a lot about Chase Tang's role as Supervillain Baryon, we do know that this supporting performance was very meaningful to the actor, and it's one that he believes could be very influential in the years to come. During his appearance on Climate Change with Scott Amyx, Tang discussed the impact of playing an Asian character — specifically an Asian villain — in this hotly-anticipated new streaming series, and how his role in this show could open the door for more Asian representation in the industry, especially in other superhero movies and shows. Likewise, the actor claims there are a lot of surprises in store, which we'll have to discover for ourselves when Jupiter's Legacy premieres on May 7th. Here's what Tang said on this podcast:

Jupiter’s Legacy Was Created By Daredevil’s Steven S. DeKnight (Though He Left The Series Over Creative Differences)

Jupiter's Legacy certainly isn't Netflix's first superhero show. Prior to this series, the streaming service hosted a number of Marvel-based shows, including Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher, and Daredevil. For the latter, Steven S. DeKnight was the showrunner for the first season, and he served as the creator and main creative influence on Jupiter's Legacy... until he called it quits. Leaving over some reported (but unspecified) "creative differences," as Deadline noted, DeKnight did have a hand in this program but don't expect him to stick around for future seasons. He was later replaced by Sang Kyu Kim. Nevertheless, DeKnight wrote both the pilot and the season finale.

Netflix Dropped A Mysterious Teaser For Jupiter’s Legacy In Late February

We haven't gotten a good glimpse at Netflix's hotly anticipated new superhero series just yet, but we've been properly teased for Jupiter's Legacy. In late February, in an effort to drum up its blockbuster-friendly early May release, Netflix dropped the first mysterious teaser trailer, which features a gravely-voiced Josh Duhamel (presumably) providing voice-only narration over symbols, capes, and corridors that will likely only be familiar to those who read the graphic novel series. Of course, some of the imagery is evocative of other well-known superhero properties, but it's clear that Jupiter's Legacy is attempting to establish, well, a legacy of its own. To some unseen superperson, Duhamel claims they'll one day be "stronger than anyone else in the world," and "every evil in the world is gonna rise up against mankind." 

With a lingering threat of "vengeance," this trailer promises that this kin will soon be "the future," thus ushering in a new era of heroes for this superpowered world in this intriguing introduction.

Check out the teaser below:

We Got Our First Look Of The Actors In Character In Early March

In addition to this enticing teaser, Netflix dropped a first look video in early March, which features some colorful stills of our larger-than-life superhero characters. This video provides our first official looks at the characters played by Josh Duhamel and Leslie Bibb, along with some other notable personalities to boot. Once again, this teaser appears to be directed more at the fans of the comic book property than newcomers. The images of these drawn characters coming to life on-screen might not mean as much if you're unfamiliar with their hand-drawn origins. Nevertheless, it does give us an early glimpse at the show's visual style, costuming, and world-building, showcasing the generations of superheroes that we'll meet throughout this decade-spanning saga. Obviously, we're only getting a few brief peeks at this upcoming show, but Netflix is definitely doing all they can to drive interest towards their latest superhero series.

You can check out this first look video below.

Expectations are certainly sky-high, but we'll have to wait to see if this is Netflix's answer to The Boys. As noted, Jupiter's Legacy Season 1 will premiere on May 7th. You can set a reminder for Jupiter's Legacy on Netflix's site.

Armie Hammer stepped away from two high-profile projects he was signed on to star in last month after private social media messages allegedly written by the Call Me By Your Name actor leaked online. He requested to depart from his role as The Godfather producer Al Ruddy in the Paramount+ series The Offer as well as stepped away from appearing alongside Jennifer Lopez in the action-comedy Shotgun Wedding. However, his replacement has just been officially cast for the latter project, and it’s a great pick.

Jennifer Lopez will now play the bride to Josh Duhamel instead of Armie Hammer in Shotgun Wedding. Lionsgate President of Production Erin Westerman made the announcement via a PR release, saying the studio “couldn’t be happier” with the movie’s new star. The executive also said this:

Shotgun Wedding will revolve around Darcy and Tom, an engaged couple who whisks away their families on a destination wedding just as the couple begins to grapple with potentially breaking things off. Things really heat up when their wedding party is taken hostage, and J-Lo and Josh Duhamel’s characters must go on some sort of adventure in order to save their loved ones, all while being at odds with one another.

It looks to be one of those rom-coms where chemistry is an absolute must, and Josh Duhamel has definitely been involved in enough movies of the genre to take on a role like this. Aside from his time in the Transformers movies, the 48-year-old actor has been the leading man in quite a few romance movies, including comedies like When In Rome, Life As We Know It and New Year’s Eve. And, of course, Jennifer Lopez is something of a rom-com queen herself.

Additionally, it was announced that Sonia Braga will be playing J-Lo’s mother in the film, and Legally Blonde’s Jennifer Coolidge will play the role of Josh Duhamel’s mom. Shotgun Wedding will be directed by Pitch Perfect’s Jason Moore from a script written by Mark Hammer and New Girl creator Elizabeth Meriwether.

Armie Hammer requested to exit Shotgun Wedding after DMs were released of the actor laying out graphic sexual acts and telling a woman he is “100% a cannibal” and wanted to drink her blood. The actor has denied these claims, calling them “vicious and spurious online attacks” against him, but more women have come out to discuss the claims, including two of his alleged exes, writer Jessica Ciencin Henriquez and model Paige Lorenze.

Paige Lorenze claimed that the actor would use a knife on her body, and even cut the letter “A” above her pubic bones. She also alleged that the actor wanted to remove a rib so he could consume it. Armie Hammer’s ex-wife and mother of his two children, Elizabeth Chambers, has responded to the allegations, stating that she is “shocked, heartbroken, and devastated” by what she has heard about him.

Shotgun Wedding is set to start filming in the Dominican Republic next month ahead of an undisclosed release date for the action comedy.

Jennifer Lopez clearly has weddings on the mind, because along with appearing later this year alongside Owen Wilson and Sarah Silverman in Marry Me, she’s also set to star in the upcoming romantic action comedy title Shotgun Wedding. Originally Lopez was going to perform opposite Death on the Nile star Armie Hammer, but he exited the project last week after sexually graphic direct messages allegedly from him were leaked, with one message saying he was “100% a cannibal.” Well, it didn’t take long for Hammer’s replacement to be found, with Transformers actor Josh Duhamel reportedly being eyed.

According to THR, Josh Duhamel is currently in talks to take over Armie Hammer’s role in Shotgun Wedding. The article noted that the search for Hammer’s replacement began immediately after his exit, with Jennifer Lopez having a say in the casting process and Duhamel’s name coming up early on. With the project set to begin filming in February, it makes sense that the filmmakers would line up a new co-lead quickly.

Among Josh Duhamel’s notable credits include playing William Lennox in four Transformers movies, Leo du Pres in All my Children and Danny McCoy in Las Vegas, while his more recent appearances include Love, Simon, The Buddy Games, The Lost Husband and the Veronica Mars revival. Along with Shotgun Wedding looking like a bright prospect for him, Duhamel is also starring in the upcoming Netflix series Jupiter’s Legacy as Sheldon Sampson.

In the aftermath of these direct messages attributed to Armie Hammer making their way online, Hammer decided to depart from Shotgun Wedding. Lionsgate, the studio behind the movie, initially announced that Hammer requested that he be able to step away from the project, and the studio obliged. Hammer later said in his own statement that he would not address these “bullshit claims,” but felt that in light of the “vicious and spurious online attacks” against him, he couldn’t go to the Dominican Republic to shoot a movie for four months.

As for what Shotgun Wedding holds in store, the movie will follow Jennifer Lopez’s Darcy and Tom, the character Josh Duhamel would play. The couple is holding a destination wedding, but having to contend with their opinionated families, which in turn leads to Darcy and Tom getting cold feet. As if that wasn’t enough, uninvited and armed guests also make their way to the wedding and start making demands, leading to the couple working together to save their family and friends.

Behind the cameras, Pitch Perfect’s Jason Moore is directing Shotgun Wedding off a script written by Mark Hammer and Elizabeth Meriwether, the latter of whom created the series New Girl. Ryan Reynolds is also attached as a producer, though it’s unclear if he’ll also have an on-screen presence. There’s no word yet on when Shotgun Wedding will premiere in theaters, although with filming beginning soon, that would put it on track for dropping sometime in 2022.

Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more updates on Shotgun Wedding’s progress. For now, keep track of the movies that are on this year’s calendar with our 2021 release schedule.

Netflix’s The Lost Husband has been trending ever since it was released on the subscription streamer, and honestly, with its romantic premise and fun cast (Josh Duhamel and Leslie Bibb star; Netflix’s Lucifer star Kevin Alejandro is also in it), it’s a perfect end of summer tale. But if you ask Josh Duhamel, there’s a specific reason The Lost Husband’s release has been so timely.

You guessed it, the pandemic may have really led a lot more eyeballs to The Lost Husband than may have otherwise, particularly given the schedule and ways the now-Netflix movie has been released. While previously speaking to ET ahead of the flick’s initial release, Duhamel said The Lost Husband was coming at “the perfect time.”

If you’ve been keeping tabs on The Lost Husband at all, it’s had quite the trajectory in the era of Covid-19. The movie was initially released on VOD when most of us were quarantined back in April and when Josh Duhamel was able to take some time off and spend it in the great outdoors rather than the concrete jungle in Los Angeles. Then, Netflix scooped the project up and the rest is history.

The Lost Husband first hit Netflix on August 10. It joins a lineup of some fan favorites returning to Netflix or hitting the streamer this month, as well as a few originals. This includes Rob Schneider’s new comedy special, Asian Mamma, Mexican Kids, which also hit this week, as well as Work It, Crazy Awesome Teachers, The Sleepover, All Together Now, and other upcoming flicks.

Meanwhile, The Lost Husband has been impressively popular over its last few days on the streaming service. It’s the number one title on Netflix at the time of this writing – both in movies and television programming – and I do think there’s something to Josh Duhamel’s thoughts about the timing of the romantic film. People need breezy content right now and even though The Lost Husband has some sad and serious plot material, at the end of the day a little romance doesn’t hurt, particularly when people are consuming more content at home. You can take a look at what to expect with the full trailer.

Netflix still isn’t often releasing numbers for its programming, but if The Lost Husband continues to hang around in the Top 10 for more than a couple additional days, I’d assume it’s a pretty reasonable success. The Lost Husband is also based on a novel by Katherine Center if you’d like to delve into its story a bit more.

Fergie and Josh Duhamel's pending divorce after eight years of marriage arrives at the same time as the release of her second solo album, Double Dutchess, her first album in eleven years. The 42-year-old pop singer previously said that she and Duhamel did not plan their breakup announcement to coincide with her promotional tour, and honestly, it would be odd if Duhamel had agreed to such an arrangement. Still, it appears Fergie's return to prominence in the music scene may have contributed, in part, to the split. Apparently, Duhamel was over it with Fergie staying out and partying for her marketing campaign.

Previous reports suggested the split between Fergie and Josh Duhamel was amicable, which might still hold true. However, as Page Six tells it, the Transformers actor was not keen on breaking up after nearly a decade. After all, past reports said Duhamel always tried to balance his Hollywood career and family life in a way where he and Fergie could be home often to spend time with their four-year-old son, Axl.

On the other hand, Fergie reportedly wanted to blend her family life into the pop star world she was trying to bring back to life. In fact, Fergie spoke to reporters soon after she and Josh Duhamel announced the breakup, and what she said made it seem like she had already taken time to deal with the grief. Fergie told reporters the reason for the announcement was that it was "getting a little weird" trying to pretend the marriage was not over. According to Fergie, there was "no perfect time," so they "just decided to do it." But the reports that her husband did not want to get a divorce indicate otherwise.

People close to the couple reportedly said Fergie was getting back into her groove of being a global pop star with all of the events and late nights that come along with it. Supposedly, around the time she began working on her new music, the marriage started falling apart. The Black Eyed Peas vocalist and Josh Duhamel allegedly even sought couples counseling to work on their issues, but in the end, Duhamel felt like his wife was reverting to the party-hearty person she was before they linked up back in the mid-aughts.

Still, whatever was happening between Fergie and Josh Duhamel, the stars clearly both love their son. Their joint statement touched on their dedication to co-parenting him, and they both show him off all the time with pictures like this one from Duhamel's Instagram:

Now that Fergie's new album is out, some of her fans have been listening closely to songs like "Love Is Blind" and "Love Is Pain" to see if there might be any clues about what happened or any cryptic references to her breakup with Josh Duhamel. Fergie, herself, has yet to comment on whether or not the couple's road to Splitsville was a direct influence on the album, but Fergie did say that she put a lot of her life on the album and let herself go to a vulnerable place to get the songs.

The reports that indicate Josh Duhamel no longer dug his wife's pop star lifestyle could be accurate. However, Duhamel also has a busy Hollywood career with acting roles in upcoming movies and voiceover gigs in projects like the Call of Duty video game franchise. Therefore, it is more likely that his frustration with her pop star lifestyle was but an element in an overall complicated situation that saw him off working on movies and her off playing concert shows. After all, it would not be the first time two big stars had trouble making it work because of career conflicts. We'll have to stay tuned for specifics from Fergie or Duhamel.

Last week, Fergie and Josh Duhamel announced in a joint statement they had decided to divorce after eight years of marriage. Now Fergie has shared additional insight into the reason for the split. Apparently, she and the Transformers actor moved on, at least emotionally, long before they made the announcement. In recent times, the pair were only playing house as friends. Fergie explained,

The information Fergie gave People seemed to match what previous reports said about the Black Eyed Peas vocalist and Josh Duhamel having grown apart despite trying to make the marriage work. Fergie's statement came across as if she and Duhamel had thought about splitting up for a long time. From the sounds of it, the breakup is far enough along that Fergie has had a chance to process the painful feelings, at least enough that she felt comfortable opening up about the pending divorce a week after letting the press know about the separation.

In fact, Fergie indicated to reporters that she and Josh Duhamel took time to adjust to the parting in private. Plus, she noted they both remain focused on co-parenting their four-year-old son, Axl, who is in school now.

As of yet, Josh Duhamel has not spoken out about the matter with reporters. But if Fergie's statement is any indication, there are no hard feelings. It would make a lot of sense for the two of them to have an amicable separation. After all, they both are busy bees.

Josh Duhamel has several acting projects in the works as well as other gigs like voicing parts in the Call of Duty video game franchise. Similarly, Fergie is promoting her upcoming album, Double Dutchess. It is her second solo outing and her first in eleven years. These days, she is concentrating on plugging her new music and traveling the world to do shows like last week's Rock in Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she arrived without her wedding ring.

The release date for Fergie's new album is just around the corner, so it might seem like she and Josh Duhamel timed the announcement of the split to coincide with the release of her new album. However, she promised it was just a coincidence. Fergie said Duhamel would back her up and vouch for the fact it was becoming weird to pretend to be together.

Fergie and Josh Duhamel's separation does arrive at a strange time when we are seeing more and more celebrity couples splitting up even after lengthy relationships. Of course, Anna Faris and Chris Pratt shocked many fans with the news they decided to divorce after a decade together. Similarly, Rachel Bilson and Hayden Christensen announced they called it quits after ten years.

While Fergie's perspective on everything sounds pretty friendly, it would be interesting to see what Josh Duhamel has to say about the split. Hopefully, the breakup is as amicable as Fergie says.

Those of you that can remember all the way back to 2007, and in particular the very first Transformers film, will be able to recall that the subplot to that blockbuster involved Josh Duhamel's Captain William Lennox trying to make it back to his family and young daughter in America after being attacked by Transformers. But don't feel too bad if you've forgotten about that story, because it appears as though the creative team behind the Transformers films have done exactly the same thing. Now, Josh Duhamel has revealed he wants to know exactly what happened to Lennox's baby, hopefully in a potential sequel to The Last Knight. The actor recently remarked,

Josh Duhamel made the above comments to me when I sat down with the actor in London over the weekend to discuss his return to the Transformers franchise with The Last Knight. Although it seems as if Michael Bay has no interest in returning to the story, there's always the chance that he might get to depict some of William Lennox's back-story in a future Transformers film. This is especially possible now as Michael Bay has recently insisted that The Last Knight will be his final film at the helm of one of the blockbusters. The problem for Duhamel is that Michael Bay has made this promise before only to then return for another whack at the franchise.

While there's a slight chance that we'll get to see Lennox's wife or his daughter again in a future Transformers film, it is less likely that it'll turn out to be Isabela Moner's Izabella, as Josh Duhamel predicted. So as not to spoil you, you'll have to go and see Transformers: The Last Knight to find out. In the meantime you can check out a snippet of my chat with the hugely affable Josh Duhamel regarding Transformers: The Last Knight, below.

Transformers: The Last Knight has actually been released into some cinemas already ahead of its fully-fledged release this weekend. The Last Knight marks a coming together of the human elements of the franchise, too, as Josh Duhamel, who appeared in the first film, its sequel Revenge Of The Fallen, and Dark Of The Moon, pairs up with Mark Wahlberg's Cade Yeager from Age Of Extinction. But even their combined presence can't stop the most alluring element of these films being the Transformers themselves, especially since Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and The Hound have been joined by the mercurial robotic efforts of Cogman (Jim Carter).

You'll just have to see Transformers: The Last Knight for yourself to see why the diminutive, psychotic butler is so sensational. But as you may already guess it has something to do with him being diminutive, psychotic, a butler, and a Transformer. God bless Michael Bay.

The decision for Age Of Extinction to be a mini-reboot of the Transformers franchise seemed vindicated when it became the highest grossing film of 2014. Because of this success, it was assumed that we would never see the cast of the original trilogy alongside Optimus Prime and pals ever again. However when it was decided that a military presence was needed in The Last Knight, the team behind the franchise quickly looked to bring Josh Duhamel back into the fold as William Lennox. And it turns out that the actor was more than willing to do just that because he had really missed working on such a huge blockbuster. Josh Duhamel recently made this admission, remarking:

Josh Duhamel made the above comments to me when I sat down with the actor in London last weekend to discuss his return as William Lennox in Transformers: The Last Knight. And clearly he was rather happy to be back as the character, too, as he explained that that he held no grudges about being left out of the Age Of Extinction, and reasoned that he was only omitted because of a lack of a military presence in the film.

In between 2011's Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon and The Last Knight Josh Duhamel didn't come close to dabbling in a cinematic playground akin to those that Michael Bay creates. Instead, he appeared in the likes of New Year's Eve, You're Not You, Lost In The Sun, Bravetown and Spaceman, each of which had much smaller budgets and were more character driven. So it's rather obvious why Josh Duhamel reveled in sharing the screen once more with Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, as well doing battle with the Decepticons again in The Last Knight. You can check out a snippet of Josh Duhamel discussing his return in Transformers: The Last Knight with me, below.

You can watch Josh Duhamel's return to the Transformers universe in The Last Knight for yourself right now, as the blockbuster has just been released into theaters. You can also take a peek at our review for the film, too. If you're looking for something else to devour on the big-screen, though, please take a gander at CinemaBlend's full 2017 schedule.

Michael Bay has a reputation. On a film set, he knows what he wants... and he won't let anyone stand in his way of getting it. This has produced numerous financially successful films -- but it also creates a kind of tension on set that's not for everyone. At the same time, actors return to Michael Bay sets often... so there has to be a reason. Still, Josh Duhamel, who is back on screen for his FOURTH Transformers movie in Transformers: The Last Knight, explains that when you cross Bay on set, you get "Bay'd" -- as he phrases it -- and it's not always a pretty sight. Duhamel recently told CinemaBlend:

That's the greatest. And also the worst. I can't imagine how I would feel, getting Bay'd for the first time. Actors have had highly publicized feuds with Michael Bay on the sets of movies. Megan Fox and Bay have had words on and off set, and in the press, though actors like Shia LaBeouf, Will Smith, Mark Wahlberg and, yes, Josh Duhamel always end up returning to his sets. Would they if Bay was insufferable? Absolutely not. They clamor to work with him, In fact, Wahlberg has mainly said recently that he'd only leave the Transformers franchise because he agreed to collaborate with his Pain & Gain director, and if Bay plans to walk, Wahlberg plans to follow him.

Listen to Josh Duhamel's loyalty in our exclusive interview with the Transformers: The Last Knight co-star:

In the current Transformers: The Last Knight, Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and a band of human allies are trying to solve why Optimus Prime has gone rogue, while also figuring out why Transformers keep returning to our planet to wage their wars. The movie opens in theaters tonight, and will likely break the summer blockbuster bank wide open. After The Last Knight, Michael Bay is expected to move on, while new filmmakers take over with a Bumblebee spinoff movie. I wonder who Bay will "Bay" on set next?

Michael Bay's Transformers: Age of Extinction was meant to be the start of a new trilogy. Gone were Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, replaced by Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz and Jack Reynor. And with Bay behind the "wheel" of this massive sequel, the fourth Transformers movie did what previous Transformers movies have done: disappointed critics while earning boatloads of money.

Despite the fact that the formula continues to work, Paramount has promised sweeping changes for the Transformers franchise by the time Transformers 5 rolls into theaters. For starters, it's no longer called Transformers 5. It now goes by Transformers: The Last Knight. So, that happened. In addition, this is being looked at as a launch of the next phase of Transformers movies, which likely will break from the mythology created by Michael Bay and place a greater emphasis on characters who have not been in the spotlight yet. (Hello, Bumblebee Solo Movie!) Since massive pieces already are moving into place on the upcoming sequel, we figured now was a great time to get the lay of the land and catch you up on everything we know about the ongoing cinematic battle between the Autobots, the Decepticons, and mankind.

What Is The Transformers 5 Release Date?

Paramount has given Transformers: The Last Knight a release date of June 21. This means that the massive robot sequel will bleed into the July 4 holiday, where Michael Bay's movies tend to shine. It also means that, by coming out on that weekend, Transformers has the time frame all to themselves. Though right behind the Transformers, audiences will be getting ready for The House, with Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler, while Despicable Me 3 hits on June 30. Of course, there's Wonder Woman to contend with (that is still crushing at the box office), and a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man swinging into theaters on July 7. Busy, busy summer season.

What Is The Transformers 5 Rating?

Just like the previous entries in Michael Bay's Transformers franchise, Transformers: The Last Knight is PG-13. All of these movies have been PG-13, dating back to 2007, so I don't expect the director, or the studio, to ever aim for anything different. Bay likes pushing the envelope with these Transformers movies, despite the fact that they are based on a toy line (which produced an animated series). But he'll never go R with a Transformers movie. I also think we'll need a new director in the chair before the series softens for a PG rating (if that ever happens).

Michael Bay Is Directing Transformers: The Last Knight

Love him or hate him, Michael Bay has been the face of the Transformers franchise, the driving creative force since Paramount unveiled the inspired-by-toys franchise in 2007. And while early indicators once suggested that the director would move away from the massive robot series with the next movie, he actually allowed himself to be pulled back into the fold for one more Transformers story. He even did it with the most Michael Bay quote ever, telling Rolling Stone, "I'm doing Transformers... 5 is it?" Yeah, Mike. It's the fifth one. It's is almost to the point where I won't believe that Michael Bay isn't directing the next Transformers movie until a different filmmaker delivers one into theaters. This has been Bay's show since Day One. To his credit, the director has done an incredible job keeping his fans up to speed with video shares from the globe-trotting set of Transformers: The Last Knight. To dig into all that war revealed, read on.

Mark Wahlberg Will Return For Transformers: The Last Knight

Pain & Gain, Michael Bay's collaboration with Mark Wahlberg, actually led to the Happening actor taking a lead role in Transformers: Age of Extinction. But we were uncertain whether or not Wahlberg and his character, Cade Yeager, would stay with the franchise. A while back, Wahlberg explained to the media that he didn't view Age of Extinction as a sequel, and that he "thought of it more as a stand-alone thing. I've never done a sequel." Which is true. But then he did a second Ted movie. And then Bay lured Wahlberg back for another Transformers film. So I guess Wahlberg does sequels now. We expect Cade Yeager to be a major player in the new storyline for Transformers: The Last Knight. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the "Last Knight" of the title refers to Cade Yeager, and not Optimus Prime. Would that be blasphemy? We shall see. At the very least, we know that Wahlberg's not going to be the lead of the film. Bay's bringing in someone new, to appeal to a different demographic.

Isabela Moner Has Joined The Series

Knowing that he needed some fresh blood (seeing as how Megan Fox has moved on to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise), Michael Bay has started populating Transformers: The Last Knight with human co-stars who are able to run and scream alongside Mark Wahlberg. Up first? Isabela Moner, a 15-year-old actress from Cleveland, OH whose credits are limited to Nickelodeon. When The Wrap broke the news of her casting, they described her as:

So that's how she'll be made part of the human side of the equation. And the presence of Moner's new character gives the franchise, as a whole, someone to build on -- providing that audiences respond to her character, and her heroic actions. Yes, yes. We know that fans show up for these movies to see the Autobots and the Decepticons. But the human element is equally important, so for now, you get Wahlberg and Moner, and a handful of familiar faces who Bay has convinced to return. Are the Coen brothers releasing their stable of character actors again? John Turturro's got to eat, people!

Josh Duhamel

Josh Duhamel is a dependable actor with a decent number of credits to his resume, though none, arguably, were ever as big as Transformers. The actor appeared in the original trilogy of Transformers films, then sat out Age of Extinction, which was Paramount's attempt at spinning off in a new direction... sort of. Well, worlds are about to collide, as Duhamel and Bay both confirmed recently that his character, Lennox, would be returning for Transformers: The Last Knight -- though we don't yet know in what capacity. The Autobots clearly know who Lennox is, though he'll be a new ally to Mark Wahlberg's Cade Yeager. It will be nice to have a familiar face like Duhamel around when the explosions and the screaming begin.

Tyrese Gibson

Josh Duhamel isn't the only one knocking on Michael Bay's door, looking for a gig. Tyrese Gibson, who played Epps in the first three Transformers movies but also sat on the sideline during Transformers: Age of Extinction, did what Tyrese likes to do when there's a part that he wants to nab. He took to social media and recorded an original video message to Michael Bay stating "I'm ready!" Tyrese said that acting in the movies is "a high," saying he loves "all of the magic shit" that comes with acting alongside massive robots. Bay has been egging Tyrese along in the comments of the actor's Instagram page, and we finally confirmed that the actor will be back on screen, running from Decepticons and battling with the Autobots on June 21.

The Storyline

Bear with me here, because this one gets a little crazy. In Transformers: The Last Knight, a possessed Optimus Prime lashes out at Cade (Mark Wahlberg), Bumblebee, and previous allies because he now believes that in order for his homeworld to survive, the Earth must be destroyed. This is a classic plot twist, with the main hero going rogue. Hell, it has been used on screen already this year, as Dom Toretto turned on his "family" in the eighth Fast & Furious movie. Even though The Last Knight trailers show Prime fighting Cade and Bumblebee, we know that Prime won't stay evil for the duration -- that's just not possible. What we CAN'T figure out yet is how Michael Bay plans to use time travel in The Last Knight. That's right. I said time travel. Previous reports indicate that Merlin, Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table will play a major part in this next Transformers movie. Additionally, we know that we'll be seeing Transformers in the time of World War II. And promo shots show three-headed Transformers dragons. No clue what century they are from. Sir Anthony Hopkins joins Transformers: The Last Knight as someone with the knowledge that the robots in disguise have been fighting with us for centuries, and this time out, Bay plans to show it. Color us intrigued.

The Transformers Writers' Room

There's a reason that we are remaining optimistic about Transformers: The Last Knight and potential Transformers movies that may come down the pipeline... even though we know that the previous four Transformers movies were underwhelming. Way back in July 2015, Paramount put together a television-inspired Writers Room for the Transformers franchise, and recruited some top names in long-form storytelling to come together and pitch ideas for the creative future of the series. Steven S. DeKnight, the brains behind Netflix's Daredevil series and Spartacus, was one of the voices in that room. And when he reflected on the creative experience, DeKnight told Collider:

This, I believe, is exactly what the Transformers movies needed -- an infusion of fresh blood and new ideas that could help bring the film franchise more in line with what the animated series and the comic books offered to fans. That being said, every major studio is doing what they can to jump start potential film franchises, and Paramount needs only to look across the street at Universal to see how The Mummy struggled to get a Dark Universe concept off the ground. Putting the cart before the horse can be dangerous. Transformers: The Last Knight will be the first movie born of the Writers Room experiment, while a Bumblebee solo movie is next on the docket. And if they work, we might actually be excited about the future of this massive-screen movie franchise.

A G.I. Joe Crossover Movie

The other prevailing rumor swirling around in the heads of Transformers: The Last Knight fans is that Paramount might want to boost both of its toy-based action franchise by combining them in a Transformers / G.I. Joe mash-up movie at some point down the line. Can you imagine Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Bruce Willis going toe-to-toe with Optimus Prime? That's the stuff of legend. But in an interview with Total Film, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura went so far as to call it a "possibility" before throwing cold water on the hopes of fans. "I don't think [it's] in the near future at all," he explained. "It's not something we talk about either. There's a lot more story to be told in both cases. And I think if at some moment we think, 'You know what? It's time to bring the two of them together,' we'll do that. But I think they're strong enough to exist on their own." So this team up isn't likely for Transformers: The Last Knight, but maybe a few years down the road? Hold out hope.

The Autobots and the Decepticons may have gotten their start as children's toys, before elevating to a harmless Saturday morning cartoon. But now the Transformers are a blockbuster franchise, and they usually earn their PG-13 rating. The Transformers movies are surprisingly violent, and that doesn't seem to change in Transformers: The Last Knight. The fifth outing for the alien robots is set to hit theaters soon, and a familiar debate has once again re-emerged: is Transformers alright for kids to see? That's up to the parent, but if it's any consolation, Josh Duhamel is taking his.

After starring in the first three Transformers films as Colonel William Lennox, and then taking a break for No. 4, Josh Duhamel is back in Transformers: The Last Knight. This time around Duhamel has a young son, which has sparked a debate in his household over whether his kid is old enough to see his old man fight some robots. Ultimately, Duhamel has decided to bring his son to the premiere, and he told ET Online that he was ready to face any consequences after.

Under the mad eye of Michael Bay, the Transformers, for better or worse, have become synonymous with the summer popcorn blockbuster. The movies are big, loud, crazy punch-fests, full of all the action and explosions you could possibly want. The films have never shied away from going as hard as a PG-13 rating will allow, as multiple human and robot characters meet sometimes gruesome fates. For instance, I seem to remember Optimus Prime ripping the spine out of a Decepticon. The movies are really for teenagers and up, so it's ultimately up to the parents for how badly they want to look cool by letting the kid see the movie.

Transformers: The Last Knight is proving to be the darkest Transformers film yet, as the world is once again in danger of being overrun with evil robots. This time around the threat comes from within as Optimus Prime has gone rogue and must fight Bumblebee, Cade Yaeger, and his former allies as the secret history of the Transformers will be revealed. And there's a bunch of King Arthur stuff, too. Michael Bay is back as director for what he promises to be the last time, with Mark Wahlberg, Isabela Moner, Laura Haddock, Josh Duhamel, and somehow Anthony Hopkins filling out the cast.

Transformer: The Last Knight is all set to hit theaters in just a few short weeks on June 21, 2017.

Activision and Sledgehammer Games released the official Call of Duty: WWII trailer for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The trailer covers the new game's campaign mode, some of the gameplay and a few of the characters you'll meet along the way.

The trailer recently went live over on the official Call of Duty YouTube channel, and instantly became the number one trending video on YouTube, all to no one's surprise. It is the biggest annual video game series out there, and it has an unbelievably loyal following.

The trailer clocks in at just over two minutes, and it starts with a dramatic look at the beach of Normandy, where soldiers get ripped to shreds as the MGs on the hilltop rip into the attackers like a lead-made hailstorm.

Graphically, Call of Duty: WWII looks to be up there with its closest rival, Battlefield 1. Obviously the Frostbite 3 affords DICE a lot more leeway in achieving near realistic visuals for some of their vehicles and environments, but Sledgehammer isn't too far behind with their tactical use of post-processing and film-gauze filters in certain areas of their upcoming World War II first-person shooter.

We get to see that the game won't be limited to just boots on the ground situations. There are also moments where players will accompany tank patrols through thick forests, and even man AA guns to take down incoming aircraft.

The trailer is freaking intense.

It looks like there are some soldiers who don't get along, some moments where everybody seemingly dies, and some moments where the whole world seems to be collapsing around the ears of everyone just trying to survive.

Whatever you think of Call of Duty is fine, but you have to give props to Activision's marketing team for putting together a trailer that looks absolutely fantastic.

We also get confirmation that Hollywood actor Josh Duhamel is in the game. So the veteran actor will be starring in at least two super huge blockbusters this year, with Call of Duty: WWII and Transformers: The Last Knight. Of course, in both cases there's really no telling how long he'll last. Call of Duty is notorious for killing off its main characters before the credits roll (or sometimes before you even get halfway through the game), so it's impossible to know exactly how much of a starring role Duhamel will have in the upcoming title or if he'll even live to the end credit scenes.

Anyway, the trailer ends by rocking a November 3rd release date for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC, and there's a quick reminder that you can gain access to a private beta for Call of Duty: WWII by pre-ordering the game. So far, the reception and feedback for Activision's dive back into the World War II era seems to be rather positive, and you can check the action out yourself later this year.

There are good movies and great movies. There are bad movies and terrible movies. Occasionally, there are movies that are so bad that they’re still entertaining. Then, there’s Misconduct. This movie, which co-stars Al Pacino and Anthony Hopkins is, by all accounts, absolutely terrible. It’s so bad that when it opened in Britain this past weekend almost nobody saw it. Like almost literally nobody. The movie only grossed $141 in three days. No, I didn’t leave out any zeroes.

It’s hard to imagine how something like that can even happen. You’d think that any movie that has both Al Pacino and Anthony Hopkins in it would draw a few dozen people per theater at least. Not so much. In the film’s defense, according to Variety, it only opened in five theaters in the country, but that still only translates to about one viewer per theater per day over the course of three days. Not per screening, per day. If the movie showed more than once per day, then most theaters were empty while the movie played. If only teenagers looking for a place to make out had known, the move could have doubled its take and sold at least two tickets per showing. Marketing firms, take note.

The film, which stars Josh Duhamel as a lawyer who takes on a pharmaceutical company, has an 8% score on Rotten Tomatoes with 25 reviews. Anthony Hopkins plays the head of the drug company while Al Pacino plays a senior partner at the law firm.

It’s amazing that a movie with big names like this could be so under the radar. Yet, somehow it happened, as Misconduct was already released in the US back in February, but you almost certainly didn’t notice. The movie only grossed $24,000 in its entire run. Variety doesn’t tell us how many theaters that was in, but unless the answer is one, it’s not a good number. It’s not all bad news, however. South Korea apparently loved the movie, as it took in $900,000. Still, with a reported production budget of $11 million, Misconduct has a lot of ground to make up. Maybe they’ll love it in Italy, it’s being released there next week.

The studio math for a terrible movie is a tough balancing act. When a studio knows they have a movie that isn’t great they have to make choices. Marketing the film more will increase ticket sales to some degree, regardless of how bad a movie is, but marketing costs money, which puts the studio deeper in the hole. Most of the time, the decision is made to simply cut bait and recoup whatever they can without spending another penny. Writing it off as a loss is essentially guaranteed at that point.

If you’ve actually seen Misconduct we’d love to hear your review in the comments. Is it really that bad? Should we ignore it entirely, or should we rent it with a bunch of friends and large quantities of alcohol? 

When Transformers: Age of Extinction came out in 2014, it was a bit of a soft reboot for the franchise. While all the giant robots were back, all of our human lead characters had been replaced by new faces. However, amongst all the other news that has recently broken regarding Transformers: The Last Knight, is the fact that one actor from the original trilogy will be returning. Josh Duhamel is back as Lt. Colonel William Lennox.

Josh Duhamel played the role of William Lennox in all three of the Transformers films that starred Shia Labeouf. Lennox was stationed at an army base which was one of the very first places that Decepticons attacked in the first Transformers movie. From that point on, he was always somewhere on the front lines whenever the giant robots were attacking each other. While there was talk at one point that Duhamel would reprise his role in Transformers: Age of Extinction, that never materialized. At the time, the actor said that Michael Bay wanted to include him in the Mark Wahlberg-led sequel. While it didn’t work out at the time, it appears there was at least some truth to that, as the director is happy to have him back now.

The news that Josh Duhamel will be returning comes on the heels of another casting announcement. Isabela Moner will be joining the film as well. Transformers: The First Knight looks to be rounding out it’s human cast quite quickly now. With a scheduled release of 2017, the movie will be going into production very soon, so it’s time to get their cast lined up. The returning lead is also excited to have Josh Duhamel back for the series fifth installment.

As it stands, Josh Duhamel will be the only actor from the original trilogy to return for the new one. Most other actors from the first three films have sworn off the franchise at this point. Does the return of Duhamel mean good things for the next installment? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Ah, Halloween, where we all get to embrace our inner weirdo and express our hidden desires to be someone or something else, if even only for a night. Us normals aren’t the only ones fond of this annual practice, and even folks who make a living pretending to be other people want to get in on the action. To celebrate the season of Jack-O-Lanters, wart-nosed witches, black cats, and skeletons, we’ve compiled a collection of some of the best celebrity costumes. There are a few doozies, so let us know which is your favorite in the comments below.

Nicki Minaj As A Fairy Princess

Jessica Alba As Romy From Romy And Michele’s High School Reunion

Robert Downey Jr. As Tigger From Winnie The Pooh

Justin Bieber As Jackie Moon From Semi-Pro

Ariana Grande As A Cow

Miley Cyrus As A Pot-Smoking Cinderella

Rihanna As A Sexy Ninja Turtle

Channing Tatum As Winnie The Pooh

Channing Tatum And Wife Jenna Dewan As Cats In The Hat

Kevin Durant As Martin Lawrence In Blue Streak

Chrissy Teigen As Guy Fieri

Josh Duhamel And Fergie As Karl Lagerfeld And Choupette

The Today Show Cast As Peanuts Characters

John Stamos And Josh Peck As Devils

Kourtney Kardashian As Wonder Woman

Ellen DeGeneres As “The Other” Kardashian Sister

Miranda Kerr As Marilyn Monroe

Neil Patrick Harris And Family In A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Fergie is a proud mother. The pop star entered the hospital this morning to undergo a c-section procedure, and after it was over, she and husband Josh Duhamel had a new member of the family. The beautiful baby boy weighed in at seven pounds, ten ounces, and even more importantly, he was and remains absent any health problems.

That's the good news, but this family addition announcement comes with a bit more. The couple's publicist also passed on the little guy's name to TMZ, and the Internet can't seem to agree on whether the handle is utterly brilliant or insanely stupid. From this point forward, he will be known as Axl Jack Duhamel.

Neither Fergie nor Josh has spoken publically about the inspiration, but given her occupation and the fact that she asked Slash to perform at the Super Bowl, it seems pretty obvious he was named after Guns N Roses lead singer Axl Rose.

You can check out Fergie do her best Axl voice/ dance moves while belting out “Sweet Child O Mine” below…

On the one hand, there are plenty of reasons to like this name. At GNR's height in the last 1980s, Axl Rose was the epitome of cool. He stood for aggression, for living life on your own terms and for straight up, badass Rock N Roll. He also had a little bit of a sensitive side and was, in many ways, the perfect lead singer. Beyond that, the name itself has a nice punchiness to it. It's extremely short and original, but it's still feels like a reasonable name. It doesn't feel contrived or like it's trying too hard. If you heard some dude named Axl just arrived at a party, you would assume he was interesting.

On the other hand, however, there are some serious cons to the whole Axl Rose association too. Not only has that dude had problems with everyone of his bandmates over the years, he's had problems with the law, problems with the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame and problems with women. Besides, while a name like Axl is almost guaranteed to make a kid cool in middle school, it won't necessarily play as well when an employer is going through resumes. Would you rather hire an accountant named Rutherford C Worthington III or one named Axl J Duhamel?

What do you think? Do you like the name Axl? Let us know your thoughts by voting in the poll below…

This poll is no longer available.

For more questions of the day, head here

We’ve known for a while that Josh Duhamel and his wife Fergie are having their first baby together. The couple announced the pregnancy all the way back in February and even accompanied the announcement with a super cute photoshopped image of the two as kids. However, this week Duhamel revealed the hot fact fans of the couple have been dying to know. Duhamel and Fergie are having a baby boy.

The couple, like any couple, are super pumped about having a child, but the fact that they are getting close to a due date is even more exciting since the famous names actually tried to have a baby for a while before achieving success. The news was actually revealed on LIVE with Kelly and Michael in a taped episode that is set to air on Wednesday. Cleverly, Kelly pulled out a pink onesie and a blue onesie and asked Duhamel to choose the one revealing his soon-to-be little tyke’s gender. After riling up the audience, the actor clearly chose the blue onesie.

Fergie and Duhamel have been busy planning for the baby over the last few months, prepping for the new child to head home and even trying to come to decisions about how the two will work out their busy schedules to spend time with their kid. The 40-year-old actor recently told People they hope to have a fluid schedule worked out.

Duhamel and Fergie’s baby boy is due in late August or early September, but we may have to wait until the baby is born to find out what sort of name the couple has in store for their little bundle of joy. Duhamel recently took to Twitter to promise the kid's name won’t be too weird.

Obviously, you can’t have a story about a baby without a cute photo of a child present, so I’ll just leave you with the gem that Fergie posted to her Twitter account some months back.

I'm a sucker for any film that just features two or more characters yelling at each other and hashing out their issues for the entire run time. It's one of the main reasons why I enjoyed last year's Roman Polanski movie Carnage so much, and the same can be said for movies and plays like 12 Angry Men, No Exit, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? There's simply no better way to get a glimpse at human nature than to watch two people trapped in a desperate situation. That lovely tradition will continue with Scenic Route, the new film from writer Kyle Killen and directors Kevin and Michael Goetz. We first told you about the film last July and now, according to Deadline, the two leads have been found.

Josh Duhamel and Dan Fogler have both signed on to star in the new survival drama. In the story two former college friends decide to go on a road trip together, but things start going bad when their car breaks down in the middle of the desert. As they begin to lose hope that they will ever be found and rescued, they begin to take their panic out on each other, starting big emotional and physical confrontations. Killen is best known for writing the under-seen Jodie Foster-directed drama The Beaver, which came out last year, but he also created the upcoming NBC series Awake, starring Jason Isaacs (the show isn't set to debut until March 1st but you can watch the pilot right HERE).

When I first heard about this film I was thinking that they would cast much younger, but putting Fogler and Duhamel together is an interesting choice. Only problem is that I can't stop thinking of it as a dramatic version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Let's be honest-- nobody was going to see the Transformers movies because Josh Duhamel was in them. The actor had some nice moments as a military man fighting the good fight against the Decepticons, but he-- and, let's face it, most of the humans in the movies-- were never really the main draw. And as the franchise prepares to get kick-started again with Transformers 4, the actors may all be kicked to the curb in favor of more robot mayhem. Talking to E!, Duhamel confessed what we all kind of expected-- none of the humans are likely to return.

Of course, Duhamel shouldn't feel too offended-- the only reason we know that Michael Bay is returning to direct the film is because producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura let the info slip earlier this week, and even then he insisted everything was so early there wasn't even a story in place. Even if Duhamel were set to return, it seems entirely possible he wouldn't have gotten a phone call yet. But really, if Shia LaBeouf isn't looking likely to return, it's hard to imagine they'd bring Duhamel, or Tyrese Gibson, or especially replacement girlfriend Rosie Huntington-Whiteley back into the fold. The Autobots and the Decepticons are the main appeal, and if Bay and company want to paint Transformers 4 as change of pace from the previous films, they'd do well to add some more humans to the mix.

Do you think you'll miss Duhamel and company in the film, which is set for a summer 2014 release? Or are you also anxious for a change of pace. Let us know in the comments below.

Billy Crystal has hosted the Academy Awards eight times, but, in poetic fashion, it's also been 8 years since he last did it. But it's not only from the Oscar stage that he's disappeared. With the exception of his uncredited role in 2010's Tooth Fairy, Crystal hasn't been in a live-action movie since 2002's Analyze That. For that reason, it's totally understandable why William Fichtner had to send Josh Duhamel and Megan Fox to Mongolia to hunt him down. Now, at this point I have to assume that you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, so to clarify, allow me to present the first trailer for the 84th Annual Academy Awards:

I actually liked this trailer a lot more than I expected to. Sure, it features some actors who have no business even being around an Oscar statue (*cough*Megan Fox*cough*), but it's witty and fun. I still wish that it was the Muppets who were hosting the show - can you even imagine how awesome that trailer would have been? - but this did succeed in putting a smile on my face and I'm excited to see what Crystal will do come February 26th.