Parineeti Chopra has appreciated Pakistani makeup artist Natasha Ali Lakhani’s recreation of her look from her latest film The Girl on the Train. The Bollywood actor shared the tutorial of Natasha’s look on her Instagram story.
Sharing screenshots of Parineeti’s story, Natasha wrote: “When Parineeti Chopra reposts the recreation that I did of her look in her latest movie The Girl on the Train.”
“I know it’s shameless self promotion but so fun,” she added.
Earlier, Natasha also shared pictures of the recreation on social media along with the reason why she decide to recreate this look.
Natasha said that she was inspired by a fellow makeup artist to recreate the look and also wanted to do it for fun.
“I went back to my roots as an editorial makeup artist and other than the makeup created fake wounds/blood/bruising and I loved the end result,” wrote Natasha.
The Girl on the Train is the Hindi remake of a 2016 Hollywood film featuring Emily Blunt, which was an adaption of Paula Hawkins’ bestselling novel. The movie released on February 26 on Netflix. The cast of the movie includes Aditi Rao Hydari and Kirti Kulhari, besides Parineeti.
Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground Productions on Friday announced six new projects in development for Netflix Inc, including a love story with a supernatural twist and a young adult thriller.
The former president and first lady’s Higher Ground Productions will adapt British-Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid’s novel Exit West into a film, according to a statement from Netflix. The book tells the story of a young couple who find magical doors to transport them to other places and land in the middle of a global refugee crisis. Obama had also named it as one of the best books he read in 2017. According to The New York Times, the upcoming project will star the Pakistani-British actor Riz Ahmed.
Other film projects include a science-fiction movie called Satellite, which will be produced with T Street, a production company run by Star Wars director Rian Johnson and producer Ram Bergman. Another is Tenzing, the story of the Nepalese-Indian man who first reached the summit of Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand.
The Young Wife is a feature film that follows a woman on the day of her wedding who feels out of sync as a storm approaches.
The company also is developing two TV series. Firekeeper’s Daughter is a thriller based on a young adult novel by Angeline Boulley about an 18-year-old Ojibwe tribe member who reluctantly goes undercover in a police investigation on her reservation.
The other series is a nature documentary about national parks.
Netflix said the projects will be released over the next few years but did not give exact release dates.
The Obamas signed a multiyear production deal with Netflix in 2018. Their earlier Netflix projects include American Factory, which won an Oscar in 2020 for best documentary.
The nominations for the 78th annual Golden Globe Awards were unveiled on Wednesday, and Netflix’s Emily in Paris ended up receiving two nominations – Best TV Series (Musical or Comedy) and Best Performance by an Actress in a TV series (Musical or Comedy).
The unusual nominations did not sit very well with audiences who were upset with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association – a 90-member group known, and often criticised for, unpredictable choices – for snubbing out favourites such as I May Destroy You and Bridgerton.
Interestingly, even the writers on the show are surprised with the nominations.
“I’m a writer on the show. I tried to avoid reading its criticism, but I don’t live under a rock. It never occurred to me that our show would be nominated,” said Deborah Copakenn, a writer on the show.
In a piece for The Guardian, Copaken said: “Emily in Paris aired a few months after I’d spent June and July marching for racial justice through the streets of New York with my kids. I could definitely see how a show about a white American selling luxury whiteness, in a pre-pandemic Paris scrubbed free of its vibrant African and Muslim communities, might rankle. Our show also aired soon after I read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and gobbled down Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, a work of sheer genius about the aftermath of a rape. ‘That show,’ I told everyone who would listen, ‘deserves to win all the awards’.”
She continued: “When it didn’t, I was stunned. I May Destroy You was not only my favourite show of 2020. It’s my favourite show ever. It takes the complicated issue of rape – I’m a sexual assault survivor myself – and infuses it with heart, humour, pathos and a story constructed so well, I had to watch it twice, just to understand how Coel did it.”
Copaken added that though she is excited about the nomination, “but that excitement is now unfortunately tempered by my rage over Coel’s snub. I May Destroy You did not get one Golden Globe nod is not only wrong, it’s what is wrong with everything.”
Created by Darren Star of the Sex and the City fame, Emily in Paris follows Emily as she navigates her life in Paris and tries to add an “American touch” to the firm she works at. The series has been produced by the show’s star Lily Collins.
In November 2020, Netflix announced that it was renewing Emily in Paris for a second season.
Note – An earlier version of the story wrongly credited Abby Govindan as a writer on the show after she tweeted: “As the creator of Emily in Paris, can I just say…why the f*** were we nominated for a Golden Globe. I made that show as a prank.”
Sonic Prime, a family-friendly, 24-episode animated series starring the popular video game character, is set to premiere on the streamer in 2022, Netflix, Sega of America and Wildbrain announced Monday.
According to the announcement, the show will focus on Sonic’s race to save the multiverse. The “high-octane adventure” will also be “a journey of self-discovery and redemption” for the hero. Man of Action Entertainment — known for creating Ben 10 and the characters of Big Hero 6 — will serve as showrunners and executive producers. The series will be animated by Wildbrain.
“Sonic is a beloved character and holds a special place in everyone’s heart including my own,” said Dominique Bazay, Netflix’s director of original animation, in a statement. “I spent many hours with the blue blur as a kid and it’s a privilege to be able to bring this character everyone knows and loves on a brand-new adventure with Netflix — one that a generation of loyal fans and brand-new fans around the world can enjoy.”
Since debuting in Sega’s 1991 video game Sonic the Hedgehog, the critter has been the face of a media franchise that has grown to include TV shows, comic books and movies.
Meanwhile, the beloved video game is completing it’s 30th anniversary this year.
The beloved blue speedster was seen most recently in the 2020 movie Sonic the Hedgehog, starring Ben Schwartz, James Marsden and Jim Carrey. The film grossed almost $320 million worldwide.
British-Pakistani-American fashion designer famed for Netflix’s makeover series Queer Eye, Tan France in a recent interview with a local media publication opened up about being a queer Pakistani-Muslim and shed light on his love for his home country.
Talking about taking the burden of representation, France said: “I think the pressure on me is a little different – I am the only member of the LGBTQ community, who is also South Asian and very open about the fact that I am Muslim also. And so, I’m a few things in America – I’m an immigrant, I’m Muslim, I’m South Asian and I’m gay – and there hasn’t been anybody like that on TV in the US before, or entertainment in general, so the pressure is really really great. It’s the hardest part of this job without a doubt.”
He continued: “I’m sure you can imagine when you are somebody who is a little different, a lot of Pakistanis don’t appreciate that. There still are a lot of small-minded Pakistani people in and outside of Pakistan, who say ‘we don’t have gay people in our community’, and that’s the most difficult part when there’s nobody else to help you balance it out. When there’s only one person to focus your anger on, you are responsible to make sure you are the ‘perfect’ version of that. That pressure is a lot.”
“The first year of Queer Eye was very difficult, though I’m very grateful for its success. Being on such a massive international show may be lovely for my white castmates because they just get to enjoy the joy of being famous and successful and wealthy and all those things,” said the reality show star further.
“Whereas for me the bigger the show got, the more pressure I got from my own community, to be perfect, to not bring shame onto the community. To not embarrass Pakistan. And that’s not easy, and it doesn’t get any easier,” said Tan, adding that the pressure on his has become less now “because I’ve stopped giving a sh*t, quite honestly, what ‘Uncle Bilal’ thinks of me – but – the bigger my star gets, the more pressure is put on me.”
Later, responding to another question, France said: “The amount of DMs I get through the likes of Instagram, both good and bad where the Pakistani community is saying we don’t have gay people here. Well, that is ridiculous. The other community, the gay community, and the ally community say we need people that show that we exist, that we are not alone, we are not monsters and we deserve love and kindness. The fact that I get those DMs so regularly, makes it clear that things aren’t where they need to be in Pakistan.”
“That’s why people like me are so important in entertainment. If I had people like me on TV, I wouldn’t have felt like a freak, I wouldn’t have felt alone as a child. I think it comes from the top, so laws need to be changed from the top”, said France.
Meanwhile, recalling memories from the last time he visited Pakistan, Tan said: “My favourite memory is my last trip, about 14 years ago when I went to Rawalpindi to design my sister-in-law’s wedding lehenga. My brother was getting married, and our family was to provide the clothes so I was a designer, and I said I want to design it, but I want to go to Pakistan to make it.”
“So, I went with my mom, and we stayed in Rawalpindi with my brother’s wife’s family who also came with us (I’m really close with my sister-in-law) and I had probably one of the best vacations of my life. I helped cook every day and my sister-in-law’s mom, who has never been to England–found it so strange that this boy from England wanted to make gobhi and bhindi every morning with her -and I would teach her to make it my way! She was just so confused that this boy was cooking!”
“It was one of my favourite trips, I loved it so much! The rest of the time I would do whatever I wanted. I could go and explore, I went to a zoo, a theme park in Islamabad, it felt like the most fun trip there,” he shared.
Regency-era British drama Bridgerton is Netflix’s biggest series ever with more than 82 million households tuning in to watch the show, the streaming platform has announced. That is a 19M households higher than the four-week projection Netflix issued 10 days into the Shondaland series’ run (63 million), at the time the streamer’s fifth-biggest launch in history.
The series which continues to be a sensation is now Netflix’s biggest series ever, pushing down the previous record-holder The Witcher (76M in its first 28 days) to number two.
Created by Shondaland veteran, Chris Van Dusen, Bridgerton ranked number one overall in 83 countries including the US, UK, Pakistan, India, and South Africa, and made the top 10 in every country except Japan, Netflix stated in a blogpost. The series is based on Julia Quinn’s novels of the same name. The first season followed Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) as she made her debut in Regency London, seeking a husband.
Analysts say that the series’ timing likely played a role in its breakout success. It arrived amid the latest deadly COVID-19 surge with people in many countries exhausted after months in quarantine.
“I think the show really provides an incredible escape for audiences at a time where that’s exactly what’s needed,” Van Dusen said last week when the series Season 2 renewal was announced. ”Bridgerton is this lavish, vibrant, steamy Regency love story; it is about romance, love, and joy; I think all of those things are really universal themes people are responding to.”
Meanwhile, the cast and creators of the drama have also expressed their shock and delight over the show’s success.
Netflix has officially announced that their trending period drama Bridgerton will be returning for a second season. While the announcement was not unexpected given the show’s popularity, we admit that it did bring us great joy.
The renewal announcement came from none other than Lady Whistledown, who in a message posted to social media said: “Dearest Readers, The ton are abuzz with the latest gossip, and so it is my honour to impart to you: Bridgerton shall officially return for a second season.”
According to Lady Whistledown’s announcement, production will resume in Spring 2021, and the second season will focus on the “romantic activities” of Lord Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey).
Dear Readers, I dare say this may be the most exciting edition of my column yet… pic.twitter.com/jwOJwl6zQi
Bridgerton creator Chris Van Dusen, while talking about the second season, said: “We have a bunch of new characters we are going to be introducing. Anthony is going to have a love interest and it’s going to be as sweeping and as beautiful as viewers have come to expect from the show.”
He further shared that casting is currently underway for several new roles, most notably the female romantic lead opposite Anthony Bridgerton in The Viscount Who Loved Me, Kate Sheffield. It is also being reported that the actor who will play Sheffield will likely be an actress of color, likely of South Asian/Indian descent.
Indeed, this author is looking forward to reporting on many a tryst involving Lord Anthony Bridgerton in the coming season… pic.twitter.com/pZBedmPuMx
The series which is based on Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton romance novel series featured a different sibling in each of the eight books and from what we understand, it is now Anthony’s turn. The first season followed Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) as she made her debut in Regency London, seeking a husband.
Bridgerton debuted on Netflix in December 2020 and has continued to win audiences trending worldwide even a month after its release. Netflix earlier said that the series was on course to watched by more than 63 million households in the four weeks from its Christmas Day premiere.
The buzzy Regency romance comes from Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes and puts a modern twist on the books about an upper-class family in early 19th-century England, introducing colour-blind casting and strong feminist themes.
While a release date for the second season has not yet been announced, it is being speculated that the show will either release on Christmas 2021 or 2022.
Netflix on Tuesday topped subscriber growth expectations in the past quarter, keeping ahead of new streaming rivals competing for viewers stuck in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic.
As per details, the streaming platform added some 8.5 million paid subscribers in the quarter to reach 203 million, topping 200 million despite recent price hikes, its quarterly earning update has revealed.
“COVID-19 has accelerated that big shift from linear to streaming entertainment,” said Netflix chief financial officer Spencer Neumann. “So, the underlying long-term looks good.”
The company’s cash flow was so strong that it will no longer borrow money to pay for operations, and is considering starting to buy back shares, according to a letter to investors.
Netflix shares jumped more than 12 percent in after-market trades following the release. Profits dipped to $542 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $587 million in the same period in 2019. But overall revenue in the quarter surged 21.5 percent to $6.6 billion.
According to the earnings report, Netflix added a record 37 million paid memberships for the full year. Paid membership increased 23 percent in the final quarter of 2020 when compared with the same period a year earlier, but average revenue per membership was flat, according to the Silicon Valley-based company.
While Netflix raised rates slightly in the US late last year, the majority — some 83 percent — of its new subscribers were from outside North America, the earnings report indicated.
Meanwhile, Netflix has invested heavily in original shows and films to make itself a must-have service in the increasingly competitive streaming market. Netflix executives said their productions are back up and running in most regions after being derailed by the pandemic.
Netflix boasted having more than 500 titles in post-production or being readied for release on the service, with the plan being to launch at least one new original film every week.
Already the master of the pandemic-era movie landscape, Netflix last week offered a preview of upcoming 2021 releases, a list with no fewer than 70 star-studded feature films.
From drama, comedy, and science fiction to horror and even Westerns, the slate will take in every major film genre before the year is out, with some releases poised as potential competition for major awards.
Netflix has announced it will release more than 70 movies this year across comedy, drama, family and other genres, a lineup that underscores the streaming service’s growing prominence in the film business. It added that it plans to release a new movie every week for the entire year of 2021.
Sharing the news on their website, Netflix said: “This year’s line-up will surprise and delight cinephiles across the globe with films from award-winning filmmakers, including Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog), Paolo Sorrentino (The Hand of God), and Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up).”
“We’re bringing you a year of films filled with more of the things we know our members love – zombies (Army of the Dead), cowboys (The Harder They Fall,Concrete Cowboy), and high school romance (including the culmination of the To All the Boys and The Kissing Booth trilogies).”
“We’re re-introducing you to teen screams (Fear Street trilogy, There’s Someone Inside Your House), turning your favourite books into films (The Woman in the Window, Munich, The Last Letter from Your Lover), bringing you more adrenaline-pumping blockbusters (Red Notice, Sweet Girl, Kate) and giving your family a reason to say yes to watching films together (YES DAY, Back to the Outback, Finding ‘Ohana).”
“Netflix will bring you a new movie every week featuring the biggest stars including Leonardo DiCaprio, Sandra Bullock, Dwayne Johnson, Idris Elba, Meryl Streep, Zendaya, Jennifer Lawrence, Ryan Reynolds, Jennifer Garner, Gal Gadot, Dave Bautista, Naomi Watts, Jake Gyllenhaal, John David Washington, and Octavia Spencer.”
The Netflix pace of releasing more than one film per week dwarfs that of other Hollywood studios. Disney, by contrast, currently plans to debut roughly two dozen movies this year in theatres and on its Disney+ streaming service, including four Marvel Studios films and two from Pixar.
The Netflix 2021 schedule includes 18 dramas, nine thrillers, eight animated films and eight romances.
Though Netflix usually refrains from revealing it’s official viewing figures, they occasionally release stats about their own shows, in a bid to promote their biggest successes. The streaming giant recently revealed that their Christmas release Bridgerton is expected to be viewed by 63 million households in its first four weeks making it it’s fifth-biggest original series so far.
In their first four weeks, it's projected that 63 million households will have courted Shondaland's Bridgerton and 44 million households will have suited up for Robert Rodriguez's We Can Be Heroes, making this our biggest viewing week between Christmas and New Year's ever! pic.twitter.com/dWoLCWn6NO
Here is the list of Netflix’s most-watched original series, as reported by Newsweek.
5. Bridgerton Season 1
Described as a period drama which sees Downton Abbey meets Gossip Girl, Bridgerton is based on Julia Quinn’s best-selling romance novels. The show is a delightful mix of drama, romance, fantasy, gorgeous costumes and opulent sets. The series is indulgent and will have you hooked throughout.
As the world went into lockdown in mid-March 2020, Netflix’s docuseries about rival big cat owners in the United States Tiger King became a global sensation. Netflix said the series was viewed by 64 million households in its first four weeks.
3. Stranger Things Season 3
More than 64 million households watched the third season of Netflix’s mystery-thriller set in the 80s.
2. Money Heist Part 4
The only foreign-language drama to feature in the list, the fourth part of Money Heist was watched by at least 65 million people. The Spanish drama locally known as La Casa de Papel is about a group of thieves attempting to rob the Royal Mint of Spain.
1. The Witcher
Topping the list is The Witcher, which was watched by 76 million households in its first four weeks, as announced by Netflix in January 2020. Starring Henry Cavill, the series explores the legend of Geralt of Rivia and Princess Ciri, who are linked to each other by destiny.
Special mention to The Queen’s Gambit, the miniseries starring Anya Taylor-Joy which was reported to have been watched by 62 million households, making it Netflix’s biggest scripted limited series to date.
Meanwhile, here’s the list of Netflix’s most-viewed shows, as per Variety Magazine.
