This just in: The STW Daily serves up all the streaming news that’s fit to (digitally) print for Wednesday, June 17th, 2022. Hacks avoids cancelation and Blonde is slated for Netflix.
Hacks Doesn’t Get the Axe
HBO Max is in the middle of filling out its 2023 calendar, and some faves didn’t make the cut, including Made for Love and Raised by Wolves. But Emmy darling and overall beloved comedy Hacks has been renewed for a third season, right on the heels of finishing a pitch-perfect sophomore outing.
The comedy about comedy stars Jean Smart as Deborah Vance–a stand-up comedy legend with a Las Vegas residency–and Hannah Einbinder as Ava, a Gen Z up-and-coming comedy writer with a lot to prove professionally and lot to overcome personally.
As Deborah takes stock of her career past and present, she decides it’s time for a personal reckoning of her own. She tackles some demons from her past and, with Ava’s help, repurposes them into inspiration for a whole new era in her career.
As Deborah serves as Ava’s professional mentor, Ava, being of a different generation and thus more comfortable recognizing and processing emotions (despite being herself a hot mess) serves as something like Deborah’s emotional mentor. It’s a symbiotic relationship, a dark and twisted one, but productive nonetheless. It’s this twisty yet familiar relationship at the heart of Hacks that makes the show so beloved.
No release date has been set, but if current trends hold, a third season will likely hit HBO Max by spring 2023.
HBO Max Officially Goes West
HBO Max previously dropped a teaser for Season 4 of Westworld in early May, but absent of dialogue, the teaser was just that: a big old tease. With only visuals to go on to suss out where the various robots and humans of Westworld landed after the Season 3 finale, not much was certain from the teaser other than the fact that Season 4 seems to take place in a bleak futuristic version of NYC.
But HBO finally did everybody a favor and dropped a full and official trailer this week, providing a little more insight into the state of the union of Westworld. The trailer finds Evan Rachel Wood inhabiting a new character, Christina, but whether she is android or human is unclear (which is kinda the point, right?).
Tessa Thompson, Thandiwe Newton, Aaron Paul, Jeffrey Wright, and Ed Harris are all back for the fourth outing, but even with dialogue this time, it’s still difficult to define their relationships to one another.
Presumably much of that will be revealed in the Season 4 premiere hitting on June 26th.
Ana de Armas Goes Blonde for Netflix
Hollywood is filled with icons, figures whose accomplishments and contributions are so indelible that their work would be impossible to forget, so universally known that their silhouettes are instantly recognizable. On the exclusive totem pole of Hollywood icons, one figure from the 20th century holds a place at the top that overshadows all others.
Though technically Marilyn Monroe’s contributions to Hollywood were through her work as an actress and model, the complicated and troubled beauty soared to icon status more or less for simply being herself. And of course, the unforgettable scene on the subway grate from The Seven Year Itch didn’t hurt things either. And neither did her many celebrity marriages and a close friendship with the Kennedy family.
The icon is the subject of Blonde, a film from director Andrew Dominik based on the bestselling novel by Joyce Carol Oates that boldly reimagines the complicated life of Marilyn Monroe. Blurring the lines of fact and fiction, the film artfully explores the tension between her public and private life.
Snagging the coveted and challenging title role is Knives Out breakout star Ana de Armas. The brief trailer gives a glimpse into just how complicated Marilyn’s inner life was as well as Armas’s deftness at conveying her brokenness.
Blonde hits Netflix on September 23rd, 2022.