Was Warner Bros. right to remove the controversial Looney Tunes character from the new Space Jam movie?

Pepé Le Pew is no more, apparently. In addition to having been removed from Space Jam: A New Legacy (as first reported by Deadline), the lovesick skunk won’t be appearing in any Looney Tunes TV projects for the foreseeable future, as revealed by The Hollywood Reporter. In both cases, the decision was made approximately a year ago (in the specific case of Space Jam, the scene featuring Pepé was shot by a director who subsequently quit the project, and his replacement dispensed with…

Gina Carano’s recent dismissal from Lucasfilm has brought back the old discourse regarding Hollywood’s relationship with politics.

Last night, during his closing “New Rules” segment on Real Time, comedian and television host Bill Maher went on another extended rant against political correctness, citing Gina Carano’s removal from the cast of The Mandalorian as yet another example of something that he views as new form of McCarthyism. …

The last couple of years have marked a minor, yet important shift in how streaming services treat their episodic products.

When Netflix first started putting out original episodic content in 2013, one of the major selling points was that viewers would have access to the entire season at once, much like when the service acquired streaming rights to third-party shows from established networks and studios. This became the platform’s most recognizable trait, and Amazon Prime Video followed suit with its own business model.

For about six years, this was the dominant setup, with only Hulu, the third major streamer in…

Some Star Wars fans expect the latest trilogy to be stripped from the franchise canon, which will never happen.

If one were to have browsed Twitter or Facebook shortly after the debut of the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian (or, a week later, the Lucasfilm announcements during the Disney Investor Day), they would most likely have run into at least one post expressing the hope that, within a few years, the final trilogy in the Skywalker Saga will be undone. As in, declared not part of the canon, or retconned or redone or whatever.

Granted, it is a small…

What do the screenwriting credits on a major motion picture actually mean?

A few weeks ago, Netflix released Mank, David Fincher’s tribute to Herman J. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who collaborated with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane. The authorship of that film has been a controversial subject for decades, and Fincher’s movie opts for the (erroneous) notion that Mankiewicz was the sole writer, with Welles hogging credit.

Interestingly, Mank itself is credited exclusively to the director’s father, the late Jack Fincher (whose viewpoint was inspired by Pauline Kael’s discredited essay Raising Kane), but it has been reported that some revisions —…

All the Doctor Who Christmas Specials (2005–2017), from worst to best.

From 2005 to 2017, December 25 (or a few days later, depending on where you live) was guaranteed to make fans of Doctor Who happy, as that is when the annual Christmas Special — a tradition shared with other successful British shows — would air on television. This went on for the duration of Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat’s tenures, before being retired under the current creative leadership of Chris Chibnall, who has instead opted for New Year’s Specials.

As we await the return of Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor…

An overview of popular, yet erroneous beliefs about the world of film critics.

Among the many reactions to WarnerMedia’s recent announcement regarding its 2021 film slate (all 17 movies will be available in US theaters and on HBO Max at the same time), one made a modicum of rounds on social media: the idea that this was another figurative death knell against film critics, who would become even more “irrelevant”.

It’s a hilariously misguided line of thinking, since online streaming does not prevent critics from seeing movies in a timely fashion and review them. Case in point: Wonder Woman 1984…

There were no Marvel Studios titles throughout 2020, and that was quite all right.

Of all its many weird characteristics, the year 2020 will be remembered by some as being the one without any Marvel movies. Well, that’s not entirely accurate, in that there was one Marvel adaptation that did make it to the silver screen: The New Mutants, the final installment in what used to be 20th Century Fox’s X-Men franchise, which came and went in theaters in late August.

It’s also not entirely accurate to say there were no Marvel Cinematic Universe titles, be it on the big…