Latest news with #Deadwood

'Alien: Earth' Star Shares Bold Take on Hollywood's Reboot Craze

Yahoo

5 hours ago

Entertainment
Yahoo

'Alien: Earth' Star Shares Bold Take on Hollywood's Reboot Craze

'Alien: Earth' Star Shares Bold Take on Hollywood's Reboot Craze originally appeared on Parade. Fans of edgy TV series might know Timothy Olyphant best from Deadwood or maybe Justified. In fact, the Emmy-nominated actor, 57, later revisited his characters from both these shows in follow-up projects — a trend that seems to have become all the more in Hollywood these days. It has even become a source of contention, the notion of constantly rebooting classic shows and movies instead of creating new content for the masses. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Olyphant offered his own take on the matter. "Every experience I've had revisiting characters or working with the same people again, I'm batting a thousand in terms of it being really gratifying. I highly recommend it," the longtime actor said. "And I don't have a problem with people remaking or rebooting things. I mean, everybody goes to Broadway to see the same couple plays every few years. It's such a dumb, shallow argument to say Hollywood has no new ideas just because they're rebooting things." Olyphant spoke out while promoting his upcoming FX series Alien: Earth, out Aug. 12, which is itself a reboot of sorts — continuing on the sci-fi franchise that all started with Ridley Scott's groundbreaking film from 1979. Olyphant offered additional thoughts to THR on the reboot craze, adding in a signature splash of humor that has made the performer such a magnetic presence on screen over the years. "Ralph Fiennes is doing Hamlet again? Hasn't that been done?" he said with a laugh. "I'm not comparing what we're doing on the Disney lot with Hamlet, but why not revisit stories? If someone wants to redo something, God bless 'em. Just do something new with it. If I'm not mistaken, that Luke Skywalker guy is reminiscent of a Bible story that everybody likes. I think Iron Man went into a cave and came out reborn, too. I wonder if that's why it works so well? You know what? If we do another Raylan story [from Justified], I'm putting that f---er in a cave and he's coming out reborn." 'Alien: Earth' Star Shares Bold Take on Hollywood's Reboot Craze first appeared on Parade on Aug 12, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Aug 12, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword

Wall Street Journal

11 hours ago

General
Wall Street Journal

‘Deadwood' Review: Outlaw Capital

The city of Deadwood, in present-day South Dakota, was a raucous icon of the Wild West, rife with gamblers and gunslingers, prospectors and prostitutes, robbers and rustlers. In his rollicking yet nuanced book 'Deadwood,' Peter Cozzens pans the gold-mining boomtown's history while sifting out some popular misconceptions. An 1874 expedition led by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer confirmed rumors of gold in the Black Hills. By late summer of the following year, some 800 hopefuls were working claims. The prospectors would eventually congregate around Deadwood Gulch, named for its profusion of fallen timber. When diggings there proved especially fruitful, the area emerged as the center of Black Hills gold mining. Mr. Cozzens, the author of previous histories of the Civil War and the American West, shows how the rush to the goldfields was spurred by events far from the Dakota Territory. Since the fall of 1873 the U.S. had suffered a crippling financial depression, with the collapse of banks, railroads and thousands of other businesses. Because Congress had recently voted to transition to a gold standard, credit and currency were limited by the amount of gold held in the U.S. Treasury. 'The nation ached for a bonanza that would offer the chance for renewed prosperity,' Mr. Cozzens writes. Desperate, unemployed men stampeded into the Black Hills guided by 'hope, greed, and the chance for a fresh start.' The prospectors overlooked the inconvenient truth that, under the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the Black Hills formed part of the Great Sioux Reservation and belonged to the Lakota people, who had long held the mountains sacred. When several Lakota leaders, notably Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, refused to cede their bands' claims, President Ulysses S. Grant launched the Great Sioux War in February 1876. The following year's spring, after the loss of hundreds of lives on both sides (including the annihilation of Custer's Seventh Cavalry at Little Bighorn on June 25-26, 1876), the U.S. forces prevailed. A wide strip of territory, including the Black Hills, reverted to federal ownership, and the Native Americans were removed to smaller reservations.

'Alien: Earth' star Timothy Olyphant: Scary AI tech is on our doorstep

Yahoo

15 hours ago

Entertainment
Yahoo

'Alien: Earth' star Timothy Olyphant: Scary AI tech is on our doorstep

NEW YORK, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- Justified and Deadwood icon Timothy Olyphant says playing the synthetic Kirsh on Alien: Earth made him realize just how fast artificial intelligence technology is advancing in the real world. "You can get [news] articles read by AI. It has gotten so good so quickly, those voices, where, in the beginning, you could tell there was an odd rhythm to them, and I remember thinking, 'Oh, so, this really is a thing where there could just be people around that aren't human and appear human in almost every way, that we probably don't have to dress it up much [for the show],'" Olyphant told UPI in a recent Zoom interview. "But it never occurred to me, the idea of putting people's brains and memories into synthetic bodies was on our doorstep and it appears as though it might be on our doorstep," he laughed. "And that's really quite shocking." Premiering Tuesday on Hulu and FX in North America, and Disney+ internationally, the eight-episode series was created by Noah Hawley and takes place two years before the events of the 1979 sci-fi classic Alien, in a universe where corporations are more powerful than countries. Olyphant stars as Kirsh, a synthetic at Prodigy's futuristic Neverland Research Island facility, where a group of humanoid robots with human consciousness are charged with finding and neutralizing the terrifying monsters who escape a spaceship crash on Earth. The ensemble includes Sydney Chandler, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, Alex Lawther, Essie Davis and David Rysdahl. "Well, it feels like he appears to be some kind of mentor. Chief scientist, I think, is his official title," Olyphant said about Kirsh. "I'm also just not sure you can trust him." At the end of the first episode, Kirsh delivers a chilling speech in which he warns about humans' precarious places in the food chain. "It was just a great piece of writing," Olyphant said. "I always tell Noah he could gift wrap those pages before he sends them to me," he added. "It's fun to get that material in your inbox and it makes memorizing the lines just really enjoyable. Just rehearsing it is fun. By the time you show up on set, it's kind of playtime and just working off of Sydney and that was easy." Into the Badlands alum Ceesay plays Morrow, a cyborg security officer who was onboard the Weyland-Yutani ship that crashes and isn't initially forthcoming about what the vessel was transporting. "He's got trauma. He's got a vision in his head for what his life is going to mean and be," Ceesay said. "In terms of trying to get into that, as Tim said, it's just the writing is so incredible," he said. "You just turn up and play the scene and work with the other actor." The Witcher and Peaky Blinders actor Blenkin described his character Boy Kavalier as a "horrible, horrible man who is the CEO of Prodigy Corporation, which is one of the newest of the five companies that rule the Earth." "Governments? Don't need those. It's companies now. He sees himself as a rule breaker. Not just a competitor, but the person who is going to absolutely change the world," Blenkin said. "He is one of those people who, no matter how stupid the idea is, no matter how insane the choice is, he's convinced it's the best for humanity because he's the most intelligent person on the planet," he added. "It was really fun to play somebody with that kind of blind ego." Blenkin said Hawley's writing blends the character's mixed motivations of power and discovery. "There's a little bit of both of those things at play and, as the season goes on, I think what happens is that the deeper, darker emotional motivations of what drives those people starts to get revealed," he added. "It's a great arc for a character." Asked by UPI at a separate virtual press conference if the stars felt like filming together in Thailand, away from their loved ones, made them closer as a cast, Olyphant replied: "It was a special one, special place. Good time on set. Good time off the set. Really. The people in front of the camera, the people behind the camera. This was a good one." Lawther, who plays human soldier and medic Hermit, agreed. "It did bond us as a cast. I think for most of us, it was our first time in Thailand. We were there for longer than six months in the end," he said. "Although we were far away from home, we were really welcomed. It was a quite extraordinary host country to be working in." The country's heat and humidity also influenced the show's story-lines and actors' performances, Lawther added. "There's a lot of sweat in this show and that's, in part, thanks to the makeup department. But I'm sure a good 50 percent of that has to do with the 90 percent humidity of Thailand's climate. Then we had the quite extraordinary outdoor locations in Krabi and the jungle on the water, which lends itself to visually something quite dramatic." Blenkin also noted that the show depicts a version of Earth where humans are "fighting humidity at every moment." "So, you've got these fantastic figures who are kind of cleaning mold off the surface of the facility," Blenkin said. "There's this feeling that there's a rot at the center of this that's not really going to go away, which I feel like is a really interesting parallel to the themes of the series," Blenkin added. "And, obviously, the humidity in Thailand made that feel very real. There wasn't much acting required." Ceesay called Thailand one of his favorite places on Earth. "I had the privilege of having my family there, as well. But we did develop incredible bonds because you're far away from home," he said. "You're all together in one place. It's not often that you enjoy yourself so much on set and working, but that you also have such a phenomenal group of people outside of it." Solve the daily Crossword

Television with no interest in teaching any lessons

Winnipeg Free Press

a day ago

Entertainment
Winnipeg Free Press

Television with no interest in teaching any lessons

The best TV aspires to make viewers better people … nope, we want that to be true, and maybe it is occasionally, but it's really all about entertainment, right? Which is a huge relief to these five recommended shows that if they were templates for how to live a life would be leading many astray, far far astray. But do enjoy! ● Alien: Earth (series premières the first two of eight episodes Tuesday, Aug. 12 on FX/Disney+) There are (hello, Murderbot!) many meditations on artificial intelligence and robots pining to become human. This TV prequel to the 1979 Alien movie, about drooling metal-toothed monsters on spaceships, ponders the reverse. On Earth in the year 2120, a creepy trying-too-hard young man tells Wendy (Sugar's Sydney Chandler), 'You are going to be the first person to transition from a human body to synthetic.' Because she's 'special.' Wendy, run! But that is only the subtext. The main action of the series starts when Wendy and company crash land on Earth. Co-stars include Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood). Created by Noah Hawley (Fargo). All systems go! ● Butterfly (series premières all six episodes Wednesday, Aug. 13 on Prime Video) This is a sweet father-daughter drama set inside a spy thriller. Daniel Dae Kim (Hawaii Five-0) plays David Jung, a dad who really tried to do the right thing way back when. But his now grown daughter (Reina Hardesty, The Secret Art of Human Flight) has a couple of beefs with his (lack of) parenting. But nothing unites scrapping family members like a common foe. In this case, it's the international spy network Caddis, headed by a steely boss played by Piper Perabo (Yellowstone). Lock and load for some ultraviolent fun. ● Fixed (animated movie premières Wednesday, Aug. 13 on Netflix) NETFLIX Summer is no time — especially not this summer — to stay serious for very long. Right on cue, here comes an animated movie about a dog named Bull (voiced by Adam Devine). He is hoping to live his best life for one more day. One more day until he goes to the vet for the title procedure. And if you have fooled yourself into thinking neutering is not a devastation for pooches, you better sit down for this very X-rated day with Bull and his very high canine libido. Co-star voices provided by Kathryn Hahn, Idris Elba, Michelle Buteau and a handful of ex-Saturday Night Live talent including Fred Armisen, Bobby Moynihan and Beck Bennett. ● Night Always Comes (movie premières Friday on Netflix) ALLYSON RIGGS / NETFLIX There are many ways to express family love, as therapists across the land will tell you. Screen fiends get two of those archetypes courtesy of actress Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman). As Sue Storm in The Fantastic Four: First Steps on the big screen, she plays the mama bear, and her wrath knows no limits. In Night Always Comes, Lynette (Kirby) is so desperate to keep her big brother from ever again being forced into care, she hatches a plan to con some rich guy, steal a car and take on drug lords in Portland all played out on a 12-hour deadline. Lynette knows this is crazy, but family is family, right? And Kirby is pretty impressive, so press play. Based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin. ● Long Story Short (animated series premières Friday, Aug. 22 on Netflix) NETFLIX From left: Lisa Edelstein, Ben Feldman, Max Greenfield, Abbi Jacobson and Paul Reiser provide the voices in Long Story Short. NETFLIX Popular wisdom states that there are two kinds of smart people: those who've watched and loved BoJack Horseman (2014-20) and those who have not yet gotten around to the story of an oversexed, washed-up former TV star (voiced, despairingly, by Will Arnett). Netflix subscribers in both camps will want to mark the calendar for this latest from BoJack creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, which has already been confirmed for a second season ahead of its première. Confidence! Long Story Short is an animated time-travel comedy about one family. Think This Is Us, but less crying. Voice stars include Lisa Edelstein, Paul Reiser, Abbi Jacobson and Max Greenfield. Broadcast dates subject to change. Questions, comments welcome at

5 things we can expect in ‘Alien: Earth,' the very first ‘Alien' TV show

Toronto Star