Box office weekend… SNL’s host Nate Bargatze… Shawn Mendes about new music… An old Taylor Swift story resurfaces… and Matthew Perry dies aged 54

Listen to “Showbiz – Oct 30, 2023” on Spreaker.

 

Even though they could’ve stayed home and streamed it on Peacock, enough people wanted that movie theater experience and made “Five Nights at Freddy’s” the number one movie at the box office, with a whopping $78M in its opening weekend. This is the biggest horror movie debut of the year and the best showing ever for Halloween weekend, which should serve as a lesson for all scary movies. Only 26% of critics on RottenTomatoes.com gave “Five Nights at Freddy’s” a positive review, while the easier-to-please audience scored it 88% fresh. Critics and audience members are in complete agreement when it comes to loving “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.” Freddy bumped Taylor down to second with another $14.7M, bringing its domestic total earnings to just shy of $150M over three weekends. “Killers of the Flower Moon” came in third with $9M, followed by “After Death” with $5M and “Exorcist: The Believer” in fifth with $3.1M.

After watching him host “Saturday Night Live,” I am now a Nate Bargatze fan! SNL has been surprising us with tons of cameos this season. This week, Christopher Walken, Padma Lakshmi and Dave Grohl popped up in a couple skits. Dave pulled a little double duty because Foo Fighters were the musical guest. Apparently, there won’t be a new SNL this weekend. But Timothée Chalamet will host for the second time on Nov. 11, with musical guest boygenius, a trio of women comprised of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker. Timmy last hosted on Dec. 12, 2020, where he did a spot-on Harry Styles. He’s hosting SNL to promote his upcoming movie “Wonka,” which hits theaters Dec. 15.

Are we finally about to get new music from Shawn Mendes? All signs point to yes. Shawn’s last album “Wonder” was released in 2020. He launched a world tour in 2022, but a few months into it, he pulled the plug to focus on his mental health. Since then, he released one song — “What the Hell Are We Dying For?” — which came out this past June. At the time, he told Apple Music 1 he’d been struggling with a lot of things — his relationships, his career, the environment. He said, “I was in the studio and this moment of just deep frustration came over me and I finally started to feel this inspiration come. And, honestly, in that moment, it felt like it was the first time I felt that in a year and a half in the studio.” That inspiration must’ve stuck because Shawn was recently spotted on the set of a new project in LA, which looked an awfully lot like a music video.

Taylor Swift wasn’t at Travis Kelce’s game on Sunday, so how could Taylor possibly end up in the Showbiz Top 5? Like this…Back in 2015, The Weeknd had his big breakout with his “Beauty Behind the Madness” album, which included hits like “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills.” That, of course, got him invited to all the cool parties, including the one thrown for Sam Smith after he won 7 Grammys that year. The Weeknd told “Rolling Stone” that he found himself a this ritzy mansion in Bel-Air, freaking out a little because he was surrounded by heavy hitters like Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran. Right when he was about to get a drink to calm his nerves, The Weeknd said Taylor Swift came up to him and started going on and on about how much she loved his music. He said, “She actually schooled me on my own s***! She was like, ‘I’ve been listening to ‘The Morning’ (from his debut mixtape “House of Balloons”) for years! It’s one of my favorite songs ever!’” This was when The Weeknd had dreadlocks, which leads to the most interesting part of this story. He said Taylor talked to him for about for about 15 minutes, and “the whole time she was talking, she was kind of, like, petting my hair? I think she was just drawn to it. She must have been a little gone off a few drinks. And of course, I’m not going to be like, ‘Hey, can you stop?’” But maybe it was that incident that got him thinking he should lose the dreads because he cut it all off the next year.

Matthew Perry passed away on Saturday at the age of 54. Some details we know, others will take some time. Basically, we heard Matthew played pickleball for a couple hours Saturday morning, went home and sent his assistant on some errands. When the assistant returned a couple hours later, Matthew was dead in the jacuzzi, either from cardiac arrest or drowning. We have to wait for toxicology reports to see if anything was in his system that may have contributed to his death. Billy Bush was one of Matthew’s friends, and he says he spoke to the woman who’d played pickleball with Matthew Saturday morning. She told Billy that Matthew was feeling more fatigued than usual, so they only played one hour instead of their usual two. A lot of Matthew’s friends and costars paid tribute to him on social media, but still no word from his “Friends” cast mates. A source said the group is working on a joint statement that will be released at some point this week. Meantime, a source told the “Daily Mail” that Lisa Kudrow wants to adopt Matthew’s golden doodle, Alfred.

 

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