Joe Manganiello

Excited about more Batfleck in The Batman? No one is more pumped for it than Ben Affleck himself, probably, but Joe Manganiello’s enthusiasm comes pretty close. While appearing on a podcast this week, he said all the right things about the standalone Batman movie that have us feeling hopeful that maybe the DC cinematic universe’s darkest days could be behind it.

The future of the DC Cinematic Universe is filled with lots of mystery. We don’t know what that second Justice League film we be called, nor do we have many details on Aquaman and Shazam. But we might finally have an idea as to when Ben Affleck’s solo Batman movie will hit theaters.

Zack Snyder likes to tweet photos from the set of his movies. They’re usually first looks at cool stuff like costumes and Batmobiles and whatnot. So it wasn’t out of the ordinary for Snyder to tweet something like this yesterday:

More and more, TV and film actors of the DC universe have been able to appreciate one another’s shared roles. We’ve seen one Flash digging another’s costume, and now Arrow star Manu Bennett weighs in on Joe Manganiello taking the role of Deathstroke to the big screen for Ben Affleck’s solo Batman movie.

Just last week, Ben Affleck shared a new set video that revealed an interesting new addition to the DCEU: Deathstroke, the masked comic-book villain who sorta-kinda resembles Deadshot. That footage left us with a couple of big questions; who is playing Deathstroke, and is he appearing in Justice League or the new solo Batman movie? DC’s Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns has given us the answer to one of those questions.

Pee-wee Herman has long existed in a queer space, though one only subliminally alluded to. Paul Reubens’ feminine boyish persona, oscillating between effeminate gay man and asexual man-child, has long played with ideas of gender expression that comment on an underlying queerness. From the drag queen genie Jambi in Playhouse to Pee-wee’s episodes of crossdressing, from his makeup and exaggerated feminine gestures to the fluctuating inflections of his comical voice, Pee-wee has been deconstructing gender and sexuality norms all along while disguising it as campy comedy. Yet Pee-wee never directly acknowledged the queerness of his imaginative universe and even struggled with embracing it, as an early episode of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” shows. In the Season 2 episode “Pee-wee Catches a Cold,” the host reveals the daily secret word as “Out,” and then immediately falls ill, as if weakened by the idea of being out to the world. But after a 28 year absence from the big screen, Pee-Wee is finally coming out.

In this age of delayed sequels, Paul Reubens has achieved something almost miraculous with Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, delivering a film that is just as joyful, hilarious and wonderfully weird as you hoped. 31 years after Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Reubens has returned to his iconic and enduring character for a new Netflix movie in which Pee-wee Herman is inspired by Magic Mike star Joe Manganiello to take his first-ever vacation. We had a chance to speak with Reubens and Manganiello following the world premiere at SXSW, where the two discussed their bromance and whether or not Pee-wee's Big Holiday is a prequel.

Judd Apatow knows a thing or two about manchildren. He’s built an entire career chronicling the exploits of immature boys straining for maturity against the pull of their juvenile urges. Apatow’s latest producing effort, though, presents an entirely different sort of overgrown kid: Pee-wee Herman, who’s less of an adult with the impulses of a child as a child in the body of an adult...

There are few TV shows as purely, innocently, and energetically delightful as Pee-wee’s Playhouse, the Saturday morning vehicle for Paul Reubens’ grey-suited man-child. An adult perpetually trapped at the stage of early boyhood in which kids mostly say funny nonsensical things and that’s it, Pee-Wee and his colorful gang of anthropomorphic pals brought a hefty dose of camp humor to the happy shiny

Magic Mike was a movie about strippers trying to make ends meet in the midst of the Great Recession, the difficulty of modern romance, and the dangers of drug use. Magic Mike XXL is a movie about strippers stripping. And not a whole lot else.