Here are the fresh news and happenings from Hollywood. So, readers, read on to know about your favourite celebrities.

Lamorne Morris joins Vin Diesel's 'Bloodshot'

New Girl star Lamorne Morris will join Vin Diesel in Bloodshot.

He will join the Sony Pictures film in the role of scientist Wilfred Wigans, who becomes Bloodshot's unlikely ally, reports suggest so.

Toby Kebbell, Eiza Gonzalez, Michael Sheen, Sam Heughan, Talulah Riley and Alex Hernandez also star in the project, which will be directed by Dave Wilson.

Bloodshot, first published in 1992, centres on a mortally wounded soldier with powers of regeneration and meta-morphing made possible through nano-machines in his bloodstream.

Bloodshot was created by Kevin VanHook, Don Perlin and Bob Layton for Valiant. Over its comic book run, "Bloodshot" totalled 110 issues with more than 7.5 million copies sold.

'The Nun' to release in India in September

James Wan's The Nun will release in India on 7 September.

Warner Bros Pictures is bringing the film to India. It will release in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, read a statement to a leading publication.

Valak, a demonic Nun, had a part in The Conjuring 2. And The Nun narrates the origin of the demon.

Directed by Corin Hardy, this film is produced by James Wan and by Peter Safran, who has produced all the films in The Conjuring franchise. It stars Demian Bichir, Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, Charlotte Hope, Ingrid Bisu and Bonnie Aarons.

When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. The film narrates what they uncover during the investigation.

Minaj, Grande deny competition

Singers Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande have laughed off speculations that the former has delayed the release of her new studio album "Queen" to compete with the latter's "Sweetener" on the same date.

Minaj announced that her fans would have to wait another week to listen to "Queen" -- her first studio album in four years -- and that it would release on 17 August. It's the same date as Grande's "Sweetener" is to be launched.

Internet trolls were quick to speculate that the albums were being purposefully scheduled to compete for music chart's top position. However, the close friends and frequent collaborators, who reunited earlier this year for hit songs "Bed" and "The Light Is Coming," disregarded any such assumptions, reports suggest so.

Grande tweeted, "Me and Nicki laughed at that."

In response to Grande's tweet, Minaj wrote, "I love this woman. Can't wait for the fans to benefit from all the hard work on both ends. We love your passion. You guys will be very happy. Trust. That's all I'll say.

Nick Carter under review over alleged sex assault

Nick Carter, a member of the popular group the Backstreet Boys, is under review by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office in connection with a sex assault case.

The case against Carter, 38, was presented by the Santa Monica Police Department on Tuesday, the district attorney's office told Fox News on Thursday.

The investigation follows a police report filed against Carter in February. The report, in turn, arises from an incident that's alleged to have taken in 2003.

The Santa Monica police had said earlier this year that a report was filed against Carter, and that an investigation was underway, but the department did not identify the person involved in the report.

Around the same time, former pop star Melissa Schuman tweeted that she was "finally doing what I thought I could no longer do", seemingly confirming that she had filed the report against Carter, as per media reports.

In November 2017, Schuman wrote in a blog post that she was "forced to engage in an act against my will", maintaining that Carter took her virginity when she was 18 and he was 22.

Carter said he was "shocked and saddened" by the accusations, and insisted that Schuman "never expressed to me while we were together or at any time since that anything we did was not consensual".

Evangeline Lilly was 'cornered' into doing partially nude scenes in 'Lost'

Actress Evangeline Lilly says she was pressured into filming partially nude scenes in ABCs hit fantasy drama Lost.

The Ant-Man and the Wasp star, who played the show's heroine Kate Austen during its six-season run, revealed in an interview for "The Lost Boys" podcast that she was coerced into doing partially-naked scenes for her role, particularly in the third season, reports suggest so.

"In Season 3, I'd had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene partially naked, and I felt had no choice in the matter," she said.

Added Lilly, "And I was mortified and I was trembling when it finished. I was crying my eyes out, and I had to go and do a very formidable, very strong scene thereafter."

Lilly said her discomfort continued into the following season of the show.

"In Season 4, another scene came up where Kate was undressing and I fought very hard to have that scene be under my control. And I failed to control it again," she noted.

Added the actress, "So I then said, ‘That's it, no more. You can write whatever you want - I won't do it. I will never take my clothes off on this show again.' And I didn't."

Lilly has not filmed another scene involving nudity since her stint on Lost, a choice she has pointedly made when selecting projects.

Bazzi teams up with Camila Cabello

Singer Bazzi has collaborated with singer Camila Cabello for the new version of his hit single "Beautiful".

"Bazzi opened for us on the North American 'Never Be the Same' tour. I came across this song and fell more in love with it hearing it every night. A couple of weeks ago on a day off, I went to a studio and wrote a verse for it! Here is 'Beautiful'," Cabello tweeted on Thursday.

The track has been co-written by Bazzi and Cabello.

Bazzi said, "Working with Camila is really cool because she gives a similar vibe of what I'm trying to portray. A nod to 80s' nostalgic music that really creates an experience. I think she really captures that."

"Beautiful" is featured on Bazzi's breakthrough debut album, "Cosmic", which has been streamed more than half a billion times globally.

Michael Kelly joins John Krasinski's 'Jack Ryan'

House of Cards star Michael Kelly has been cast in the second season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan as a series regular.

He is joining previously announced Noomi Rapace and John Hoogenakker, reports suggest so.

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, which hails from the Lost duo of co-showrunner Carlton Cuse and writer Graham Roland, Platinum Dunes, Skydance Media and Paramount TV, is a reinvention with a modern sensibility of the famed and lauded Tom Clancy hero, starring John Krasinski and Abbie Cornish.

It centres on Jack Ryan (Krasinski), an up-and-coming CIA analyst thrust into a dangerous field assignment for the first time. He uncovers a pattern in terrorist communications that launches him into the centre of a dangerous gambit with a new breed of terrorism that threatens destruction on a global scale.

Kelly will play Mike November, a smart, seasoned career field officer in the CIA who works with both Jack Ryan and Jim Greer across the new season.

The first season of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan will premiere on 31 August on Amazon Prime Video. And Season 2 will debut in 2019.

Want to devote 90 per cent time to direction: Jodie Foster

Candleshoe fame actress Jodie Foster, who moved on to direction from acting quite a long time ago, says there's a lot to explore in the field.

On Conan O'Brien's show, Foster said, "I made a decision. I used to act 90 per cent of the time and direct 10 per cent of the time. Now, I want to do the opposite."

The 55-year-old actress has directed films including The Beaver and Money Monster, as well as helmed episodes for Netflix series Orange is the New Black, House of Cards and Black Mirror.

Foster also revealed the kind of parts that would persuade her to get back in front of the camera, reports suggest so.

"I want to enjoy myself. I've never had to learn how to do anything hard. I'd like to learn how to be a javelin thrower, or play violin or speak Italian. I'd like to be good at something, I'm not really good at anything," said Foster.

O'Brien then took the opportunity to joke, and said, "You're going to get all these roles for being an eye surgeon and you're going to disappear for two years and come back an eye surgeon."

"I'd just like to be an expert at something that's useful then I'd like to stop doing it and never do it again," she responded.

Foster promoted her film Hotel Artemis, in which she plays a nurse at and proprietor of a secret Los Angeles hospital for criminals.

Affleck, Damon team for movie about McDonald's monopoly scheme

Fox is developing "how an ex-cop rigged McDonalds Monopoly Game and Stole Millions" as a movie with Ben Affleck to direct it and Matt Damon to star in it.

The studio won the movie rights to Jeff Maysh's true-crime story, recently published in the Daily Beast, which detailed how ex-cop Jerome Paul Jacobson rigged the McDonald's Monopoly game in 2001, allegedly stealing millions of dollars, as per media reports.

Damon and Affleck will produce through their Pearl Street Company. The Deadpool writing team of Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese has been hired to write the script.

The auction was handled by IPG's Joel Gotler, who repped Maysh. David Klawans is exec producing.

The story starts by describing how Michael Hoover claimed he had won the $1 million grand prize after collecting Monopoly pieces and a camera crew was dispatched to his home in Rhode Island.

"The camera crew listened patiently to his rambling story, silently recognizing the inconsequential details found in stories told by liars," the story reads. "They suspected that Hoover was not a lucky winner, but part of a major criminal conspiracy to defraud the fast-food chain of millions of dollars. The two men behind the camera were not from McDonald's. They were undercover agents from the FBI. This was a McSting."

Affleck is starring in the Netflix political thriller The Last Thing He Wanted with Dee Rees directing. Damon is portraying car designer Carroll Shelby in Fox's Ford vs. Ferrari movie.

Weinstein gets approval to disclose rape accuser's emails

A bankruptcy judge gave permission to the attorneys of disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein to include 40 emails from an anonymous rape accuser in a motion to dismiss his criminal case.

Judge Mary Walrath allowed Weinstein's lawyers to use the emails, provided that the alleged victim's name and initials are not used in the motion.

Weinstein's attorney, Benjamin Brafman, argued that the emails would show that Weinstein had a friendly, long-term relationship with the woman, lasting for four years after the alleged rape occurred in 2013, as per media reports.

"They are endearing, intimate, pleasant, flattering, friendly emails between her and Mr. Weinstein... If the grand jury had these emails, they would not have indicted,” Brafman said.

The woman has not been identified in court.

Brafman asked permission to refer to her by her initials, which he repeatedly stated are "J.M." James Stang, a lawyer for the committee of unsecured creditors, objected to using the woman's initials, saying that would make it easier to discover her identity.

Brafman said he intended to accuse the Manhattan District Attorney's office of prosecutorial misconduct for not sharing the emails with the grand jury. He intends to file a motion to dismiss the indictment on Friday morning.

He has repeatedly stated that Weinstein had a 10-year consensual affair with the victim.

The woman is one of three whose allegations underpin the criminal case against Weinstein. Weinstein faces up to life in prison if convicted.

She is just not that person: Tim Allen on Roseanne Barr

Actor Tim Allen has spoken out in defence of the actress-comedian Roseanne Barr he once knew.

"I go away back with Rosie and that's not the Rosie I know," Allen, 65, told reporters on Thursday at the Television Critics Association's press tour when asked about Roseanne's firing from ABC in May over her racist tweet comparing Valerie Jarrett to an ape.

"She was the most diverse and tolerant woman I've ever known for a long time. Whatever got in her head, isn't the Roseanne I know," reports suggest so.

"It's a very icy time. I'm a veteran comedian for 38 years and I've never seen it, like Lenny Bruce said at the Purple Onion, ‘We've gone backwards.' There are things you can't say. There are things you shouldn't say.

"Who makes up these rules? And as a stand-up comic, it's a dangerous position to be in because I like pushing buttons. It's unfortunate," Allen added.

However, when it comes to ABC's decision to cancel Roseanne, Allen said, "They had to do what they had to do and it's their decision."

In addition to being friends and fellow comedians, Allen can certainly relate to Barr considering his own conservative ABC show Last Mind Standing, a series about a traditional American father and his family in Denver, Colorado, was cancelled after six seasons in 2017.

"I've worked for ABC for years… I don't really believe it was a political decision. I think it was a financial decision… I thought it was done very poorly, that's my point of view. I was heartbroken," Allen said on Thursday.

(SOURCE : IANS)