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Joan Didion the author revered for her coolly dispassionate essays and novels such as “Play It as It Lays,” has died, her publisher confirmed to The New York Times on Wednesday. She was 87. Along with her late husband John Gregory Dunne, Didion co-wrote screenplays for the films “True Confessions,” “A Star Is Born,” “The Panic in Needle Park” and “Up Close and Personal.”
It was the 1968 essay collection “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and 1970 novel “Play It as It Lays,” which she also adapted for a 1972 film, that secured her reputation as a sharp-eyed observer of the culture and people of California and beyond.
In an age of television where nothing is more attractive to networks than established I.P., it’s not enough to build a solidly performing drama on a humble plot of land. It’s all about the hydra-headed franchise these days, with even a series like “Law & Order” clawing back its territory following a decade of austerity measures. So it was only a matter of time before “Yellowstone,” Paramount Network’s superlatively popular nouveau Western, began manifest destiny.
Tom Holland’s newest web-slinging adventure “Spider-Man: No Way Home” hits theaters on Friday and is poised to generate $150 million in its box office debut — a heroic feat even by pre-covid standards. The film’s distributor Sony Pictures modestly predicts a three-day tally closer to $130 million, which would still rank as a huge win. But given pent-up demand and record pre-sales, some box office prognosticators are more bullish. They believe an opening weekend near $175 million could be within reach.
Wilmer Valderrama is attached to star in and executive produce a live-action “Zorro” series that is in development at Disney Branded Television.
In “Zorro,” Valderrama would star as Don Diego de la Vega and his swashbuckling alter ego, the masked horseman known as Zorro, in the days of Spanish California.
The show is a reimagining of the Disney-abc “Zorro” series starring Guy Williams that aired in the 1950s. That show also starred Gene Sheldon, George J. Lewis, and Henry Calvin. It aired for 78 episodes between 1957 and 1959, with four hour-long episodes airing in the early 1960s.
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