TV & Beyond on 2025-08-01 15:00:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-08-01 15:00:00

by | Aug 1, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

/Film’s Ethan Anderton gave “The Naked Gun” a glowing review as the funniest movie of the year, and I couldn’t agree more.

Lonely Island alum Schaffer, along with producer Seth MacFarlane and co-writers Dan Gregor & Doug Mand, honor the spirit of ZAZ’s zany sense of humor, while making their “Naked Gun” feel like a breath of fresh air. If I wasn’t already sold by the teaser trailer’s brilliant O.J. Simpson joke (one of many genius decisions on behalf of this film’s marketing department), then Kevin Durand’s villainous henchman stealing a literal P.L.O.T. Device in a “Dark Knight”-inspired heist opening had me locked in. Liam Neeson was the best possible casting choice to play Frank Drebin Jr., as the character shares his father’s lack of self-awareness, albeit through the prism of his gruff action movie persona. But while Neeson ensures a lot of good laughs on his own terms, some of the film’s strongest moments are when he shares the screen with Pamela Anderson.

Neeson and Anderson are supposedly dating after having worked together on “The Naked Gun,” and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s seen the film. They make an adorable screen pair that are having so much fun being silly in one another’s presence, especially in a hilarious sequence that takes the shadowy innuendos of “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” to a whole new extreme. Anderson’s Beth Davenport, a more lighthearted spoof on Sharon Stone’s femme fatale from “Basic Instinct,” mines some huge laughs in her attempt to get closer to Drebin Jr.’s heart — and turkey.

For as much as the “Naked Gun” movies are about laughing at a walking disaster like Drebin, the romantic pulse at the center of them has always been one of their most critical components. In the ’88 film, there’s a hilarious montage of Nielsen’s Drebin going on a bunch of romantic escapades with Priscilla Presley’s Jane Spencer in which they knock couples over at the beach, squirt one another with hot dog condiments, and guffaw as they walk out of Oliver Stone’s harrowing war drama “Platoon.” Schaffer’s “Naked Gun” gives Neeson and Anderson their own courtship montage, but takes it to an even more absurd degree.

Incantations, threesomes, and a killer snowman

A snowman holding a gun in The Naked Gun

Paramount Pictures

About halfway through “The Naked Gun,” Drebin Jr. and Beth take a little excursion to a wintery getaway called Snowman’s Cottage. Set to the tune of Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” the couple does everything expected of lovebirds in the early stages of their relationship. If you’ve never been gifted a katana during the first vacation, you’re missing out. They even build a snowman together, but things take a hilariously unexpected turn when Beth pulls out a book of spells and incantations. The pair sit around a summoning circle to manifest their “Frosty the Snowman” fantasy, and sure enough, he walks right on in.

Drebin Jr. and Beth’s childlike amusement for his chilly resurrection almost immediately reveals itself as something much kinkier, with the couple engaging in a PG-13 ménage à trois with the snowman. Neeson even drizzles the snowman’s arm with snow cone syrup and licks it off as if it’s a hot summer day. But alas, there are only so many ways you can screw a snowman, so he starts becoming visibly disappointed for being left out of their amorous activities. Little did I know I’d only have to wait just a few more moments until the horror movie shoe dropped. Folks, I can’t tell you how hard I laughed when the song slowly drones out as it pans up to the angry snowman watching them in the hot tub, where Lorne Balfe’s score takes on a much more sinister cadence.

For a brief moment, “The Naked Gun” becomes a hilarious horror movie spoof as the snowman chases Drebin Jr. and Beth around the cottage with a Glock. Just when it appears that the bumbling detective is done for, Anderson pulls a sneak attack and decapitates their magical third wheel with the katana she was gifted earlier. The Starship song kicks back in, and the happy couple gets right back to their amorous activities. This is what happens when you invite a lusty snowman to join in and leave him behind. They probably would have been fine if they had read “If You Give a Snowman a Soul” beforehand.

This entire cabin sequence is a great example of why “The Naked Gun” succeeds. Rather than retreading the same beats as the ’88 film, Schaffer ports over the kind of joke you’d expect to see in a Lonely Island digital short that still somehow fits in line with the ZAZ school of playing something so ridiculously dumb completely straight. You get a lot of great sight gags, with the sequence being relatively wordless, which also proves they possess a strong bond and will look out for one another in dangerous situations. In some ways, the snowman twist also plays like a pseudo-reimagining of a cult holiday horror movie.

The Naked Gun evokes Jack Frost

Jack Frost holding a Stop sign in Jack Frost

A-Pix Entertainment Inc.

One of the biggest reasons why I love horror movies is that the genre has its ardent defenders, even when it comes to low-budget shlock. Direct-to-video movies may not have a lot of money to work with, but they’ve got the spirit to get it made, as is the case with 1997’s “Jack Frost.” No, we’re not talking about the inadvertently creepy Michael Keaton family flick of the same name from a year later. We’re talking about the Michael Cooney-directed cult horror comedy that features a mutant snowman going on a rampage.

The similarities between the two deadly snowmen don’t lie so much in their origins or motives. In Cooney’s film, the titular slasher is a convicted serial killer named Jack Frost (Scott MacDonald) who ends up colliding with a truck loaded with hazardous chemicals during the wintertime and emerges on the other side as a mutant snowman. It’s pretty much a pale imitation of the killer’s soul being transferred inside an unexpected vessel plot that Brad Dourif perfected with the “Child’s Play” series. There’s also the matter of “Jack Frost” being a real slog that feels pretty icky at times, notably with a distasteful assault scene involving Shannon Elizabeth in a shower. Where the similarities lie between the two films, however, is in how the snowmen are presented.

Jack Frost is a creation of special effects artist (and director of “The Guyver”) Screaming Mad George that doesn’t really resemble moving snow. It’s portrayed as either stilted foam or someone in a flexible puppeteering costume. “The Naked Gun” opted to go with a slightly similar approach, with Schaffer and producer Erica Huggins wanting to avoid CG by going practical. Considering they had significantly more money to work with, “The Naked Gun” opted to reach out to none other than The Jim Henson Creature Shop to get their threesome-ousted snowman made. According to the film’s press notes, Schaffer’s 4 a.m. fever dream manifested in the form of Henson puppeteers Lindsey Briggs and Chris Hayes constructing/operating a giant felt costume with animatronic eyebrows. Credit also needs to be given to the folks at Innovative Workshop who made the foam visage of the snowman that Neeson and Anderson built at the top of the montage.

By comedy logic, you’d expect the snowman to use his carrot as a weapon, but it’s so much funnier to watch an Academy Award-nominated actor fearing for his life from a puppet charging at him with a loaded gun.

“The Naked Gun” is now playing in theaters nationwide.

TV & Beyond on 2025-08-01 14:00:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-08-01 14:00:00

by | Aug 1, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

great shows like “X-Men ’97” and “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.” While the computer-animated look of “Wakanda” doesn’t stand out in quite the same way as the more hand-drawn aesthetics of those previous series, it still looks good, and there’s a lot of interesting material in the four episodes, each one telling an independent story of Wakanda’s secret spy network, the Hatut Zaraze.

But there’s one thing that keeps bugging me: vibranium. The mystery metal from space, the source of Wakanda’s hyper-advanced technology in the present-day MCU, has always been somewhat ill-defined in the franchise. It’s basically indestructible and absorbs energy at an extreme rate. It’s also responsible for transforming the ecosystems around it. In the movies, this typically manifests as sci-fi tech like flying vehicles, supersuits, energy weapons, cloaking devices, etc.

But in “Eyes of Wakanda,” we jump back thousands of years, and in many ways, the potency of Wakanda’s vibranium tech seems… largely the same? They have holographic projections, spears and knives that fire purple energy blasts, and other devices that, for all intents and purposes, seem to be about as advanced as what we see in the modern day. Now, I’m entirely open to the idea that the mere presence of vibranium led to Wakandan civilization hitting certain other technological advancements well before the rest of the human world. But that’s not necessarily in-line with what we see in the “Black Panther” movies.

How does vibranium technology actually work?

Noni scowling over her shoulder at The Lion in Marvel's Eyes of Wakanda

Marvel Animation

I understand that vibranium is incredibly durable. I understand that it is an amazing conductor of energy. But I understand less how that leads to “Star Wars” space binoculars in 1200 BC, or why any given vibranium-imbued spear or broach basically functions like a red barrel in a video game, waiting for any stray blow to detonate it.

And I want to be extremely clear that this confusion does not ruin, or even really hamper, my enjoyment of “Eyes of Wakanda.” If anything, these are questions I would love more thorough explanations of. The story of how access to a particular mineral led to not just stronger armor, but the discovery of electricity and digital technologies thousands of years early would be fascinating to see. The fact that every “vibranium artifact” in the new show basically feels like a magical trinket with glowy purple vibes seems reductive to me.

It also begs some questions about how Wakandan civilization evolved more recently — or rather, how it didn’t.

Wakanda should be even more advanced than it is in the MCU

The Lion lounging on a throne with a spear in his hand in Marvel's Eyes of Wakanda

Marvel Animation

Yes, Wakanda is incredibly advanced by today’s standards when we see it in the “Black Panther” and “Avengers” movies. But in an age when Iron Man suits, S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers, and all manner of other sci-fi tech exists all over the world, it’s also not that far of a bridge to cross. “Eyes of Wakanda” shows that many of the core systems that make up Wakanda — digital communication, advanced air travel, the sophisticated clean-energy rail systems seen in the first “Black Panther” — are at least 600 years old. So why is Shuri’s impact-absorption technology treated as being so groundbreaking in the movies? Why doesn’t Wakanda already have the medical technology required to save T’Challa’s life when he dies?

Yes, this is plot-hole-punching — a low-class Internet activity that I try hard not to dabble in. If anything, the version of Wakanda shown in the new “Black Panther” spin-off series is more intriguing because it shows an even more advanced world. And in fairness, the animated shows aren’t necessarily meant to be one-to-one matches with the main MCU. But when you go out of your way to make so many connections, these sorts of questions are going to arise.

It’s very likely that I’m the problem. Maybe too many years of Marvel Easter egg hunting have left me unable to take the version of events right in front of me at face value. There is a ton of really cool stuff in “Eyes of Wakanda.” I just still have absolutely no idea how vibranium actually works.

TV & Beyond on 2025-08-01 13:00:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-08-01 13:00:00

by | Aug 1, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

paying off the long-simmering tease of the villainous Mule (Pilou Asbæk) and rushing headlong into the final few months of the Cleonic Dynasty’s reign over the galaxy. Those who don’t pay attention to their psychohistory are doomed to fall victim to it, to paraphrase a certain scientist/doomsday prophet named Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), and we’re finally witnessing the chickens coming home to roost after centuries of Empire pretending that nothing was wrong. All of these seeds were planted as early as the very first episode of the Apple TV+ series back in 2021 … as was the individual secretly responsible for setting this grand plan into motion in the first place.

Say it with me, folks: It was Demerzel all along. The loyal robot played by Laura Birn throughout the show has always pledged her allegiance to Empire — or, at least, has done so ever since the end of her involvement in the Robot Wars and her subsequent reprogramming to serve the Cleons. This being a story based on prolific sci-fi genius Isaac Asimov’s writings, of course, the character is bound by the Three Laws of Robotics that prioritize the safety of human beings (known as the Zeroth Law in the world of “Foundation”). That’s what makes it all the more shocking early on in the fourth episode of this season, when Demerzel meets with Zephyr Vorellis (Rebecca Ineson) for her unburdening — essentially a therapy session for a character doomed to keep the worst secrets to herself for unimaginable lengths of time — and admits that she was responsible for the single deadliest act of terror we’ve seen in the entire show.

Remember that whole Sky Bridge bombing way back in the season 1 premiere? This mass-casualty attack was originally attributed to two bickering kingdoms of the Imperium, Anacreon and the neighboring planet Thespis, but the truth turns out to have been far more complicated than that. The big twist involves Demerzel taking responsibility for this heinous event and, in the process, rewriting everything we thought we knew about the narrative to this point.

The Demerzel twist changes our understanding of the Star Bridge bombing

An orbital space elevator is destroyed in space in Foundation season 1

Apple TV+

As far as rude awakenings go, the climax of the season 1 premiere of “Foundation” certainly left an impression — quite literally, unfortunately, for the cityscape planet of Trantor. It’s easy to see why the seat of power for the Galactic Empire would be considered impenetrable and immune to decline, no matter what Hari Seldon and his followers may think. Having lasted over 12,000 years, the regime of clones had fully bought into their own hype. And when Hari invites young prodigy Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) halfway across the galaxy to back up his dire warnings of the fall of Empire, well, it’s hardly surprising when the authorities apprehend both scientists on charges of inciting revolution. For a dynasty at the absolute peak of its powers, even the slightest spark of dissent must be snuffed out before becoming a wildfire.

It all comes crashing down (again, very literally) when, right as Hari and Gaal are sentenced for execution, all hell breaks lose and the majestic Star Bridge connecting the surface of Trantor to the orbital platform is attacked. We see two agents of Anacreon and Thespis carrying out their tasks simultaneously, leading to the destruction of the space elevator, an unfathomably huge scar across the planet as the structure hurtles down, and the deaths of hundreds of millions of innocents. At the time, Brother Day (Lee Pace) cites the war cries yelled out right before the suicide bombers detonated as evidence of Anacreon and Thespis’ conspiracy. The episode ends with delegates from both planets led away in chains and Demerzel announcing to both Hari and Gaal that they’ll instead be allowed to create their Foundation in exile on the distant world of Terminus. All’s well that ends well, right?

Now, however, Demerzel confessing herself as the party responsible for ordering and arming the bombers to do what they did 300 hundred years ago completely upends every one of our assumptions.

Foundation’s season 3 retcon makes perfect sense — from a certain point of view

Laura Birn as Demerzel and Rebecca Ineson as Zephyr Vorellis sitting on a park bench in Foundation season 3

Apple TV+

So much for robots being unable to go against their programming … right? Well, maybe not. Demerzel’s main mission in life since her servitude to the Cleonic Dynasty has always been to advance Empire’s agenda and preserve their ironclad rule over the long centuries. So how does dealing a serious blow to her masters, saving the lives of Hari and Gaal, and ensuring the survival of Foundation remain consistent with that?

In the idyllic Trantor garden, Demerzel explains to Zephyr Vorellis that she judged Foundation’s early success as crucial to Empire’s reign. With more and more people believing in Hari’s predictions of Empire’s fall, making him a martyr would’ve galvanized the masses against the Cleons. What’s more, this suggests Demerzel herself couldn’t deny the mathematical precision of Hari’s work in psychohistory. With the Foundation able to establish a foothold on Terminus and slowly begin to set things in motion to save humanity’s legacy after the Empire’s inevitable fall, well, even the horrific deaths of hundreds of millions could be seen as a necessary sacrifice from the point of view of a calculating robot. Her actions directly led to the show as we know it now, with both Hari and Gaal able to further the Foundation’s goals over an incomprehensibly vast timescale and position itself in direct opposition of the Cleons all these centuries later with the Second Foundation.

Is Demerzel the most prolific mass-murdering robot in history, the inadvertent savior of humanity, or something else altogether? Something tells us her story isn’t fully written in ink just yet, and she clearly has a significant part to play in the episodes to come. Whether all this talk about her wishes for “freedom” actually leads to something drastic or not remains to be seen. 

New episodes of “Foundation” season 3 stream on Apple TV+ every Friday.

TV & Beyond on 2025-08-01 12:00:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-08-01 12:00:00

by | Aug 1, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

the late Trek writer Tracy Tormé. Because it could create simulated environments, the show could have a lot more visual variety; it gets boring looking at the same eight starship sets week after week. Now characters could playact as 1930s film noir detectives, James Bond-like spies, or 1950s sci-fi heroes. They could go river-rafting or, in Worf’s case, fight villains from a “He-Man” cartoon. The holodeck made the entire “Star Trek” franchise more pliable. 

“A Space Adventure Hour” finally allows “Strange New Worlds,” already a visually varied show, to have one more outlet for its genre explorations. Of course, “Strange New Worlds” takes place before the original “Star Trek” series and a century before “Next Generation,” so some readers may already be crying foul. Know that “Strange New Worlds” covers for this by explaining that holodeck technology is still in its design phase, and that it, in its current form, requires more power than a starship typically generates. Holodecks don’t work yet, explaining why it they wouldn’t be standard issue on a starship for another century. 

Of course, if there’s a holodeck episode of “Strange New Worlds,” it’s going to have to be an homage to “Next Generation” and Tracy Tormé.

Strange New Worlds pays tribute to Tracy Tormé and other holodeck episodes

Holograms of Dr. M'Benga and Nurse Chapel, dressed in 1970s clothing on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Marni Grossman / Paramount+

As mentioned, “A Space Adventure Hours” sees Lieutenant Noonien-Singh testing the holodeck, just to explore its capabilities and limitations. She asks that Scotty (Martin Quinn) program the holodeck to recreate one of her favorite detective novels, a book set in the 1960s. Her 1960s detective story involves, in a bizarre meta-narrative twist, the machinations and creators of a very “Star Trek”-like TV series called “The Last Frontier.” Scotty doesn’t know how to create random NPCs yet, so he uses the likenesses of the Enterprise crew to serve as La’an’s co-stars. As such, she’s interacting with holograms that look just like her co-workers, but with altered hairdos, costumes, and personalities.

The fact that La’an is recreating a detective story will instantly remind Trekkies of Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his favorite holodeck programs on “Next Generation.” Picard was very fond of a 1930s detective named Dixon Hill, based on a (fictional) series of books he read in his youth. Picard got to wear a fedora and a trench coat, use a tommy gun, and yell out lines like “Da doll is wit’ me!” Dixon Hill first appeared in the Tormé-scripted episode “The Big Goodbye” (January 11, 1988), and some of Picard’s own co-workers got to dress in era-appropriate costumes. Dixon Hill even turned up in the 1996 feature film “Star Trek: First Contact,” albeit only briefly. 

In both “A Space Adventure Hour” and “The Big Goodbye,” a tech error causes the characters to become trapped on the holodeck, forcing them to play out the fictional drama in order to escape. On the inside, a murder is afoot. Back on the Enterprise, there is a massive engine failure (or some other technical problem). 

Star Trek has a long history of detective stories in the holodeck

Data as Sherlock Holmes and Geordi as Dr. Watson on Star Trek: The Next Generation

Paramount

Detectives are common holodeck fantasies, as one was also seen in the episode “Elementary, Dear Data” (December 5, 1988). In that episode, Data (Brent Spiner) became enamored of the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and play-acted Holmes mysteries with Geordi (LeVar Burton) serving the role of Dr. Watson. As with all holodeck episodes, though, a crisis arose. It seems that Geordi accidentally creates a self-aware hologram of Dr. Moriarty (Daniel Davis) to face off against Data. “A Space Adventure Hour” is certainly evoking that. 

But then, it’s also just the latest in a long line of whimsical “Star Trek” stories centered on the holodeck. The new “Strange New Worlds” episode also evokes “Our Man Bashir” (November 22, 1995), an episode of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” in which Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig) play-acts as a James Bond-like spy, something he wants to share with his would-be boyfriend Garak (Andrew Robinson). Thanks to a transporter glitch, though, his fellow co-workers on DS9 are shunted into the holodeck computer core, storing their consciousnesses. They begin appearing in Bashir’s 007 adventure, and he has to play along, lest they get deleted. 

Which, of course, also plays into “A Space Adventure Hour,” as this episode also links the holodeck to the transporter systems to create realistic avatars of the ship’s senior staff. Although the holodecks are a fantastical technology, a lot of the tech remains weirdly consistent throughout the franchise. (Well, as consistent as a hyperrealistic video game can be.)

They may be silly, those holodeck episodes, but they provide fun asides to the ordinarily staid life of a Starfleet officer, and, as mentioned, the visual variety they bring to a “Star Trek” show is vital to keeping the shows feeling fresh.

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-31 19:00:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-31 19:00:00

by | Jul 31, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

The first trailer for “The Conjuring: Last Rites” confirmed that the Warrens’ final case would involve the infamous Smurl family haunting, a shocking bit of real-world folklore that remains contentious to this day. There, it was implied that Ed and Lorraine have encountered over a “thousand” individual cases over the course of their careers … only a fraction of which we’ve actually seen over the course of the films, of course. Well, the final trailer released today (which you can watch above) adds yet another crucial piece of the puzzle. Indeed, one key reveal brings the entire franchise full circle in a way we may not have expected — and, in the process, retcons a major piece of lore in “The Conjuring” as a whole.

For those who’d rather go in completely spoiler-free, consider this your last warning to turn back now. For everyone else, join us down below. As that one creepy demon child snarls in the footage: “We’ve been waiting so patiently for you.”

The demon in The Conjuring: Last Rites ties back to the Warrens’ very first case

Madison Lawlor as young Lorraine Warren wearing a wedding dress in a room full of mirrors in The Conjuring: Last Rites

Warner Bros.

Man, if only I had a nickel for every time the past managed to catch up to us in the most dramatically ironic of ways. After decades of surviving the most harrowing paranormal events that the supernatural world could possibly (ahem) conjure up, the Warrens may have finally met their match in “The Conjuring: Last Rites.” It’s the year 1986, and Ed and Lorraine appear ready to finally wind down their life’s work. Of course, anyone who’s ever watched a single piece of narrative fiction before can likely guess what happens next. Sure enough, they’re roped into one last case (very loosely based on a true story) … and it apparently involves a demonic presence they’re well familiar with.

“There’s an evil here … something I’ve felt before. This thing in your house is a demon. It’s the first one that we ever encountered,” a distraught Lorraine slowly comes to realize early on in the footage. What better way to bring things to a satisfying end than by forcing the couple to contend with the demonic entity that apparently set them on their investigative path in the first place? It doesn’t sound like things went very well the first time, as Lorraine explains that she and her husband were young and frightened all those years ago. To emphasize that point, we see imagery of actors Madison Lawlor and Orion Smith, respectively, as younger versions of Lorraine and Ed, with the former caught in a terrifying vision, dream sequence, or flashback of herself stuck in a room of mirrors as one of her reflections comes knocking — literally and sinisterly.

Based on the first footage we saw from that early teaser, which foregrounded all the various trophies and possessed artifacts collected by our characters over the years, could the upcoming sequel have some more twists up its sleeve regarding franchise lore? Given how close we came to an “Avengers: Endgame”-style crossover for this movie, nothing can be considered off the table. 

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” scares its way into theaters September 5, 2025.

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-31 17:31:00

TV & Beyond on 2025-07-31 17:31:00

by | Jul 31, 2025 | TV & Beyond Articles

a sequel to David Fincher’s 2010 film “The Social Network” is definitely happening. Now, outlets like Deadline are reporting that Jeremy Strong is the top choice to portray the CEO and founder of Facebook and Meta, Mark Zuckerberg.

As “Social Network” fans are well aware, the original film — written by Aaron Sorkin, who’s set to both write and direct the sequel — cast Jesse Eisenberg as a younger Zuckerberg during and beyond his college years, jumping through timelines to show us both the origin of Facebook and the multiple lawsuits Zuckerberg ultimately faced from adversaries like the Winklevoss twins (played by Armie Hammer) and former best friends like Eduardo Saverin (a stunningly great Andrew Garfield in one of his early film roles). Now, years after the movie’s release — and amidst a lot of controversy surrounding Facebook’s role and influence in society, especially when it comes to politics — Strong, who won an Emmy for his performance on HBO’s “Succession” and earned an Oscar nomination in 2025, looks to take over from Eisenberg (who incidentally also picked up an Academy Award nod for playing Zuckerberg).

Deadline was also the outlet that exclusively reported the news that multiple Emmy winner Jeremy Allen White (from “The Bear”) and recently minted Oscar winner and “Anora” star Mikey Madison are circling “The Social Network Part II,” so if Strong does join the cast, he’s in very good company. Obviously, it’s a shame that neither Fincher nor Eisenberg are returning, and as a huge “Social Network” fan who’s still mad that it lost out the Best Picture Oscar to “The King’s Speech,” I have my doubts. Still, Strong could be a — sorry — strong choice to portray Zuckerberg.

The Social Network sequel is probably a terrible idea, but maybe Jeremy Strong would be good in it?

Kendall in a flight suit jacket on stage at Succession

David Russell/HBO

Look. I get it. At the risk of sounding like a sourpuss, I don’t want a sequel to “The Social Network” either! The first film is basically perfect, and even though Facebook has made headlines in the decades since it came out — mostly in a bad way — nobody really needs a continuation of this story. But if it’s going to happen, which it is, there are two things to note here. One is that the movie will probably not focus on Mark Zuckerberg again (I could be wrong, but I hope I’m not), which means Strong wouldn’t be doing, like, a bad Jesse Eisenberg impression. Two, Strong is a very good actor, and when it comes to playing pompous characters who traffic in business nonsense, he’s got the experience.

In case you somehow missed this, Strong spent four seasons playing the eldest failson Kendall Roy on “Succession,” a show that excelled at making its characters talk about their many business enterprises in the most ridiculous and most over-the-top way possible. (His Elon Musk-inspired “flight suit” from season 4 certainly comes to mind, but it’s far from the only example of Kendall’s attempts at seriousness that turn out to be total clownery.) This actually makes him a perfect non-Eisenberg choice to play Zuckerberg, who definitely dabbles in business nonsense himself. (Remember when he tried to convince us all that his awful-looking AI avatars were the way of the future?) Strong is, if nothing else, a transformative actor, and he’s also worked with Sorkin before on “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” so if he takes this role, he knows exactly what he’s getting into.

More casting news about “The Social Network Part II” will drop as the film takes shape, and if we learn that Strong is playing Zuckerberg, he’ll probably do a pretty good job. If you want to watch the first movie, “The Social Network” is available to rent or buy on streaming platforms, including Amazon.