Catching you up on today’s top entertainment headlines with the Spirit Awards going gender-neutral when it comes to award categories, Elton John debuting a snippet of his newest collaboration with Britney Spears at a French restaurant, John Boyega saying he will not be returning to the "Star Wars" franchise, and more.

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In Entertainment: Gender-Neutral Award Shows, Elton and Britney, Star Wars & More

by the way Ariel, the categories for the Independent Spirit Awards gonna look a little different next year. So we definitely got to talk about the show going gender neutral for the 2023 ceremony On the film side categories will now include best lead performance and best supporting performance with 10 nomination slots in each of those categories as well as the new best breakthrough performance with five slots. The tv acting categories are now now best lead performance in a scripted series and best supporting performance in a scripted series. The awards follows in the footsteps of the Grammys, which also went gender neutral in 2012. The Gotham Awards, the british Independent Film Awards and more. Another 2023 ceremony will take place on March the fourth. This has been something we know actors have been clamoring for for a long time not to sort of separate them into two separate gender classes here. And the way you see get around this is you expand the nominations in the sense that there's more people in the categories that way. Instead of maybe the five or six maybe traditionally you would see for best Actor or best actress for an Oscar award. You expanded too tense that way you get a lot more people inside of it. I think this is really good And this only shows that more of these sort of big Hollywood heavyweights in terms of these big awards ceremonies are starting to get the point when it comes to gender neutrality here. I absolutely agree. I think it will also allow for people to kind of have that title that they have been nominated for a particular category where they may have not been likely to have that in the past because it would have been such a small number of people who would be for each best supporting actress or actor category versus best Big breakthrough individual. I'm curious that this will stick though. I know back in 2012 with the Grammys they tried this, but I'm curious this will be something they continue on with maybe Oscars or golden globes can mirror this in the future. It could be something to look into maybe. But this is how it starts. It starts small and then you see more of these awards ceremony started and then it just cascades from there. Well, we're gonna have to pivot to of course some music over here because you have to get excited because of Britney fans. I guess what, We're just two days from her return to music Spears and Elton john are expected to release their new collaboration Hold me closer. This friday, The up Coming track is a reimagining of John's 1971 smash hit tiny dancer. If you want a better idea of what the track sounds like. Well, the Icon gave a few unsuspecting diners. Lucky diners a sneak peek at a restaurant in France. So take a listen to this. So catchy, Hold me close their Mark Speer's first new route material and get this six years. We'll just continue watching this instagram video on repeat to get the full until the full song comes out about a week later. What are you thinking so far baker? I'm already kind of like, can we just keep playing? Yeah, it's a little bit of a bop. I like it. So when the, some of it had been leaked out last week, you know, we kind of got an idea of what Brittany's tracks were and what Elton's parts were. I feel like they've added a little bit more dance beat to the one that I had heard last week. But again, I'm reserving all judgment until I actually hear the full track. But obviously the fact that Elton john has been playing some of this at least two diners gives you an indication of a little bit of what it sounds like here Now TMZ is reporting, which I think this is really interesting Brittany and Elton, we're not even in the same room when they recorded this song. Apparently she recorded it in Los Angeles. He got on zoom sort of helped direct where he wanted the song to go. So it's great. And it only took her like a couple of hours to basically lay her tracks down. But basically they were not in the same room when they put the song together. That's amazing. But also very similar to how Tiktok stars are kind of recording and doing duets right now. Um, but you know, I have seen, which is kind of interesting. There's this kind of call back to that retro dance pop hot music kind of song. We've seen that with Beyonce and the kind of Donna Summer. Not we see that as well with Drake and his last album. So the fact that this has a kind of upbeat kind of feel to it, I'm not surprised by that well. And also look Elton john had a song with Dua lipa where they're basically redoing his song Rocket Man as well. So this is kind of sort of in the same genre of where we got with that song and that song did really well in the charts as well and Britney fans like myself, incredibly excited to finally get to hear new Brittany, not just, you know, new Britney music, but also knew Brittany in this new phase of her life right now. You know, like you said, we're all waiting for this. So great. You know, Yeah, everything. I'm just too excited. That's such a good point baker because we haven't seen what Britney has been able to come up with since this new time period where she has her own independent. So this will be really exciting. Absolutely. Meanwhile, speaking of exciting Disney plus now headed to Skull Island Alive, Action. King Kong TV series is now in early development at the streaming platform now while there's been many, many King Kong movies over the years, the series gonna be based on the original iconic 1933 film. The show is expected to explore the giant Gorillas origins as well as the mysteries of Kong's home, Skull Island. Now this king kong show is its own entity and that's important because it's not connected to the monster verse series from legendary entertainment which released kong Skull island and also Godzilla versus kong Apple tv plus also working on their own live action monster series as well. Godzilla and the titans that will be part of legendary big screen universe. It's also a family affair as both kurt Russell and his son Wyatt are expected to star in this as well. Now I was looking into this, the copyright in kong and king kong very very very, very delicate and important here because king kong is different than kong. Which is why kong was done Buy Apple TV. This is why you had Kong Skull Island. You had Godzilla vs Kong. That is in no way related to King Kong. So this is why this is very important. The last King Kong we actually had was Peter Jackson's version that he had in the early 2000s and before that was the one that was in the 1930s which this one is being recreated from. Well, I'm curious just how different they can make this because like as you mentioned at the beginning of this baker, we've seen so many different versions of King kong of kong Godzilla versus kong, which is not the same thing as what's happening right here. But you know, I'm curious if they're going to get creative with this, especially as it's a series, what new characters they're just going to kind of bring into this as well. Um so you know, I think this is something to watch, but hopefully they hit it out of the park because it's hard. You have so much competition from just the previous king kong's and kong from the kong's from, you know, from the past, it's gonna be very difficult. Well, to that point, is this a character that is so oversaturated because there's so many different versions of king kong and kong that then all of a sudden how do you sort of make this version different? I think that is going to be sort of the small challenge they have here, but either way exciting nonetheless. Well we're gonna have to go to the Star Wars kind of thought process here. A very big pivot here because if you're expecting to see john Boyega in the galaxy far, far away, you're going to have to think again in an interview with Sirius XM, the 30 year old actor who played reformed Stormtrooper Finn in the newest Star Wars trilogy says that he's quote cool off it, noting that the actor is at a good point for him to walk away in 2015, bodega became an star after being cast in the franchise. However, it wasn't all fun and light sabers for the actor as he experienced almost constant racist attacks. Boyega criticized Disney for not coming to his defense and not devoting enough time for non white characters. Yeah, the same thing recently happened to Obi wan Kenobi actor moses ingram but Boyega much happier with how the house of Mouse reacted to that situation. Star Ewan McGregor came to ingram's defense, publicly denouncing the racist backlash that she was receiving and also condemning those who harassed her online. Boyega says the support both Disney and McGregor showed ingram makes him feel protected as well. And you mentioned the interview Boyega did on Sirius XM I thought it was really sort of telling what he said about it. He says it doesn't make me feel better at all with what happened at Disney. It makes me feel like sometimes you're the guy and my dad taught me that you're not the guy that gets the blessing and sometimes you are moses he goes on to say you lead the people to the mountain but you see the destination, you don't get to go in, you get others to go in and that's where you derive your happiness from essentially saying, I took all of the criticism unjustified and and basically was able to open doors for so many other actors of color to get into the Star wars universe and not take as much horrible racist, terrible things said at me like they would be like that, that a key had to experience, which maybe that's a point that is really important here. And he also made the point that now he's not the elephant in the room. The fact that his co star or his other colleague was able to get some type of defense from uh some of his other CO stars when it comes to this, like you said is groundbreaking and you know, because there's this period of time where he is just doing his job, but if no one is protecting him, what he has to do is just continue to his job. Um, and so this like you said, did open doors did break the glass ceiling for hopefully more awareness, especially when it comes to racism surrounding some of these pivotal characters in that universe.