Billy Bob Thornton

So much for a Lauren Graham appearance in Bad Santa 2! Billy Bob Thornton’s foul-mouthed crook will have a new love interest in the upcoming sequel, as Christina Hendricks has joined the lineup, joining fellow new addition Kathy Bates and a few other returning stars whose names are not Lauren Graham.

Today in release date news: Guy Ritchie’s Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur has been pushed back from its 2016 slot to February 2017, with Warner Bros. trying to capitalize on the box office precedent set by another violent film directed by a white British guy. Meanwhile, the long-awaited Bad Santa 2 has been given an official 2016 release — just in time for next year’s holiday season.

After years of promises from Billy Bob Thornton, Bad Santa 2 is finally heading into production, with the actor set to reprise his role as booze-soaked, foul-mouthed con-man Willie in the follow-up to the 2003 comedy classic. While we still don’t know much about the long-developing sequel, the latest addition to the cast gives us some indication of what we can expect. We’re going to meet Willie’s mom.

After years of speculation and casual promises that eventually became very easy to brush off, a sequel to 2003's Bad Santa is finally happening — with a catch. While Billy Bob Thornton has been confirmed to return (obviously), director Terry Zwigoff will not be joining in on the mean-spirited holiday fun, with Mean Girls director Mark Waters taking his place.

I loves me some Bad Santa. This 2003 black comedy from Terry Zwigoff is my kind of Christmas movie: Dirty, silly, funny, raunchy, vulgar, offensive, and did I mention dirty? It’s also got a surprisingly sweet heart buried deep (deep) beneath its surface of bad language and mall Santas having sex with random women in department store changing rooms.

When Vice President Joe Biden appeared on The Late Show last week, Stephen Colbert’s first question was about authenticity. “You’re not a politician who’s created some sort of facade to get something out of us,” Colbert said. “We see the real you. How did you maintain your soul in a city that is so filled with people who are trying to lie to us?”

Boy, Billy Bob Thornton with no hair really looks like James Carville, huh?

That’s Entourage in a nutshell. Whenever things threaten to get too serious, the show (and now the film) would just trot out a celebrity cameo or two, distract the audience for a couple minutes, and then carry on as if nothing ever happened. For better or worse, the Entourage movie is an extremely faithful adaptation of the Entourage television show. All the main characters and most of the key supporting players from the show’s eight seasons are back, along with series creator Doug Ellin (who co-wrote and directed the movie). Even though the TV show ended with its lovable bad boys making their first tentative steps toward maturity and monogamy — Vince gets engaged, his manager Eric (Kevin Connolly) finally settles down with his pregnant ex-girlfriend Sloan (Emmanuelle Chriqui), and Ari decides to retire to spend more time from his family — all of that gets instantly erased before the movie’s opening credits roll. Status quo restored, Vince, Eric, Ari, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara), and Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) return to their luxurious, lascivious ways with R-rated abandon. Shouldn’t these characters have grown up by now?

April Fools’ Day is an occasion marked by silliness. Many websites choose to celebrate by tricking their readers with goofy pranks. But for every one of these hoaxes that’s funny, there are ten more that are terrible (plus our budget would not allow us to turn the site into ScreenFlush, the #1 place on the Internet dedicated to movie toilets, for a single day). So instead, let’s honor some humor professionals; the men and women who’ve made the best comedies of the last 25 years.

We haven’t heard much about country thriller ‘Cut Bank,’ which was snatched up by A24 prior to its premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, but there’s now a trailer for the new film, starring Liam Hemsworth (the non-‘Thor’ Hemsworth) and Billy Bob Thornton. The trailer touts a comparison to the Coen Brothers’ classic ‘Blood Simple’ (obviously), which is a set of pretty big shoes to fill, but with Thornton and a pretty solid cast on board, it looks solid at the very least.