KRISTEN STEWART AS PRINCESS DIANA: Fans are getting their first look at Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana for Pablo Larrain‘s Spencer. The film follows one weekend in Diana’s life, as she spends Christmas with the Royal Family at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk and decides to leave Prince Charles. A fall 2021 launch is expected. “‘Spencer is a dive inside an emotional imagining of who Diana was at a pivotal turning point in her life,” said Stewart. “It is a physical assertion of the sum of her parts, which starts with her given name: Spencer. It is a harrowing effort for her to return to herself, as Diana strives to hold onto what the name Spencer means to her.”
CLORIS LEACHMAN DIES AT 94: The Oscar and Emmy winner Cloris Leachman, best known for her role as Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died of natural causes at age 94. “It’s been my privilege to work with Cloris Leachman, one of the most fearless actresses of our time,” her longtime manager Juliet Green said. “There was no one like Cloris. With a single look she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh ’till the tears ran down your face. You never knew what Cloris was going to say or do and that unpredictable quality was part of her unparalleled magic.”
JAMIE DORNAN BOARDS THE TOURIST: Jamie Dornan will topline The Tourist, a six-episode limited series for HBO Max. Danielle Macdonald (Dumplin’), Shalom Brune-Franklin (Line of Duty) and Hugo Weaving (The Lord of The Rings) also star. The show focuses on a Brit (Dornan) who finds himself in the Australian outback, pursued by a truck driver who tries to drive him off the road.
HBO MAX REACHES 37.7M SUBSCRIBERS: The release of Wonder Woman 1984 helped drive subscribers to HBO Max, much faster than they forecast, AT&T CEO John Stankey said. HBO Max now has 37.7 million total subscribers, up from 28.7 million in September. All together, HBO and HBO Max has 41.5 million subscribers in the U.S. by the end of 2020.
SNL WRITER AND ALEX STRANGELOVE FILMMAKER TEAM FOR HORROR COMEDY: New Line has snagged The Parenting, a project that puts an LGBTQ spin on the horror-comedy genre. Kent Sublette, co-head writer of Saturday Night Live, will write and Craig Johnson, the director of The Skeleton Twins, is in negotiations to direct.