Links: Being the Ricardos, Sex and the City Redux, and the Great Content Rush

• Apple will finance Ridley Scott's Napoleon epic Kitbag starring Joaquin Phoenix. (Bet you hundreds of millions of dollars that they change the title.) Ridley is such a workaholic. He is 83 and still attached to at least 6 upcoming projects as a director (not to mention his producing work) and completing work on his next epic The Last Kingdom and also has that HBO series Raised by Wolves currently running. That's a lot of energy for an octogenarian!
• Vogue Tilda talks about her career with playwright Jeremy O Harris 
• Deadline Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem to play Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos. It takes place during the production of one episode of I Love Lucy. We love a tightly focused biopic. Yes, this is the same project that Cate Blanchett was once attached to (back in 2015). Do you think Nic & Javi look anything like these two?

More after the jump including Sex and the City revival and the Kennedy Center Honors...

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Showbiz History: Hurston's work, Nicole's night, and Fame's debut

7 random things that happened on this day, January 7th, in showbiz history

1891 Best-selling author Zora Neale Hurston is born in Alabama. Where's her biopic? Hell, where are the movies based on her books and plentiful short stories? The only movie length adaptation has been the TV movie Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005). 

1971 Today is the big "5-0" for Jeremy Renner, twice Oscar nominated (The Hurt Locker, The Town), but whose promising gifts were completely swallowed up by a desire to become a franchise star which was both successful in a supporting sense (9 years and counting as Hawkeye in the MCU) and not in the headliner sense (Mission: Impossible... Tom Cruise quickly taking the franchise back, Hansel & Gretel... one and done, The Bourne Legacy... Matt Damon quickly taking the franchise back)...

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Showbiz History: Aretha, Mame, and Florence Pugh

5 random things that happened on this day, January 3rd, in showbiz history

1897 Marion Davies born in Brooklyn. The 1930s film star is best remembered in history as the mistress of tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Multiple films have featured their relationship including current Oscar hopeful Mank (2020).

1952 Dragnet begins airing in its regular time slot Thursdays at 9:00 PM on NBC (a couple of weeks after the pilot airs). The influential series -- which basically created the #1 tv genre, the procedural, will run for eight seasons, be relaunched in the late 1960s for another four seasons and spawn three movies. The last of those was a comedy in 1987  starring Tom Hanks just before Big served as the bridge between popular comic actor and serious actor, netting Hanks his first Oscar nod. Two short-lived one season attempts to revive Dragnet were attempted in 1989 and 2003 respectively...

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Barack Obama's Top 10 Lists

Okay top 14 and top 10. President Barack Obama, who has gifted us with his favourites lists in previous years and revealed the taste (no surprise), and is now involved in the movies as a producer has released his favourites list for this accursed year, writing:

Obama visiting with a "Crip Camp" activist

Like everyone else, we were stuck inside a lot this year, and with streaming further blurring the lines between theatrical movies and television features, I’ve expanded the list to include visual storytelling that I’ve enjoyed this year, regardless of format.

His top 10 (sorry, 14) movies and top 10 tv shows after the jump...

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Elisabeth Moss reads "The Lottery"

What a morbidly thoughtful surprise! NEON would you like to consider Elisabeth Moss as Shirley this season for awards. So here's Elisabeth Moss reading "The Lottery," the famous short story that catapulted noted horror novelist Shirley Jackson to fame. The video is 22 minutes long but if you don't like being read to you can always read to yourself direct from The New Yorker. 

If you haven't yet watched Shirley, streaming on Hulu, you should. It's a good creepy but non-scary option for the season with excellent performances from Moss and screen husband Michael Stuhlbarg and interesting production design too.