Deep Inside Hollywood: Jonathan Bailey

Queers who haven’t watched Bridgerton or Fellow Travelers are getting what may be their first look at gay actor Jonathan Bailey in Wicked, as the man who’s winning the hearts of both Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. Of course, Christmas 2025 will see him back in Wicked: Part Two but new fans won’t have long to wait for more of him: he’s wrapped shooting Jurassic World Rebirth, the next chapter in the now-decades-long Jurassic film franchise.

Co-starring Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Rupert Friend, the movie is set five years down the road from Jurassic World Dominion, and the earth’s climate is no longer compatible with the dinosaurs. It also turns out that the remaining creatures might hold the genetic key to a human-life-saving miracle drug. This is only fair after all the people they ate in the previous films. Look for the big summer movie — when else — in July.

Ian McKellen joins Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers

We’re loving the recent viral internet pic of 85-year-old Sir Ian McKellen out at the club with go-go boys because life is, after all, for living. Of course, he also never stops working. Case in point: he’s always on stage somewhere in London, and he’s starring in the latest project from another man who chooses never to retire, Steven Soderberg. The film is called The Christophers, and it’s a dark comedy involving the estranged children of a famous artist who hired a forger to finish their fathers’ paintings so that they can be sold after his death.

It co-stars James Corden and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and I May Destroy You actor Michaela Coel and is written by Ed Solomon, who’s already collaborated with Soderbergh on the film No Sudden Move and the TV series Mosaic and Full Circle. In production now, figure to get first looks sometime in late 2025, probably while both Soderbergh and McKellen will have already wrapped something else.

Olivia Colman and John Lithgow bring Jimpa to Sundance

Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde, whose most recent film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande with Emma Thompson, was a bright spot in the Covid streaming-at-home moment, is back with one you’ll probably get to see in a movie theater. It’s called Jimpa, and it stars Olivia Colman, John Lithgow and Hyde’s child, non-binary actor Aud Mason-Hyde.

It’s a family comedy-drama about a mother and her non-binary child visiting their gay grandfather (Lithgow) and discovering the value and important bonds of a queer family lineage. The film premieres in early 2025 at the Sundance Film Festival and should drop into multiplex world at an unspecified time after that. NB representation keeps rolling into 2025, and that’s a good thing.

Tom Daley knits up a reality series

Gay British Olympic diver Tom Daley might not be competing anymore, but he’s got plenty to do. And if you’ve paid any attention to his personal life, you’ve seen that one of those things is knitting. He’s always got his needles with him out in public, working on something cozy. Enter TV stardom on a new reality competition series: Game of Wool. Daley will host the eight-episode knitting competition series, set in rural Scotland, where 10 contestants will take part in challenges such as making jewelry, furniture, sculptures, and more.

How this will be accomplished with knitting is why you’re probably going to tune in and watch; because otherwise it’s just a show about people sitting down and making sweaters (or “jumpers” as they call them over there). In production now, expect this one to catch fire among devotees the way Great British Bake-Off has turned home cooks into bread warriors.

Romeo San Vicente is exceptionally crafty.