seth rogen

Summer is officially here and Jimmy Fallon and the late night circuit had some help ushering in the season.

These days, we take our amusement where we can. For the past week, the internet has been entranced by the disaster that is the Frye Festival, a supposed music festival for rich millennials that quickly descended into anarchy when musicians and vendors pulled out due to its unsafe conditions. The full scope of the festival’s failure was laid bare in Friday’s piece at New York Magazine, where one administrator  —  or former admin, since she dropped as soon as she realized the full scope of the organizers’ failure  —  spoke candidly about the missteps leading up to the festival. For entertainment value, the Frye Festival just can’t be beat.

Jon Favreau’s “live-action” (let’s use that term loosely, here) remake of The Lion King is batting 1,000 when it comes to casting, with Donald Glover in the role of Simba and Beyoncé (rumored) for the role of Nala. But today’s additions might be the most perfect yet, as Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen have signed on to voice Timon and Pumbaa, everyone’s favorite unlikely-but-lovable meerkat and warthog buddy duo. Meanwhile, we’ll just be waiting for the other shoe to drop in this casting situation — like, say, if Favreau decides to cast Steve Bannon as Scar. Wait, actually that would be sort of perfect.

Following their small screen success with Preacher, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are setting their sights on another comic-series, but this time they’re taking it to the big screen. The creative duo will write and direct a film adaptation of Invincible, based on the comic-book series by Robert Kirkman, best known as the creator of the series that inspired that other popular AMC TV show.

What, you didn’t think we’d get through The Walking Dead Season 7 finale without a taste of Preacher, did you? Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy hit the road in our first official Season 2 teaser, chock-full of all the blood and supernatural shenanigans we’ve been missing.

The success of Preacher certainly opened TV doors for Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, most recently with the Hulu order of Josh Hutcherson series Future Man. Now, Rogen and Goldberg are at it again two-fold, eyeing a sidekick inversion for a new FOX superhero series, and an Illuminati spoof for ABC.

To date, only one R-rated animated film has ever been nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the Oscars: Anomalisa, Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s acclaimed 2015 drama. If execs at Sony Pictures get their way, Sausage Party will become the second R-rated animated film to receive that honor — and according to Sony chief Tom Rothman, they may very well win.

With Sausage Party setting an August box office record this past weekend, that sound you hear is doors across Hollywood opening for R-rated animated movies. This is probably an overdue development. Movies from studios like Pixar and Studio Ghibli have long been praised by people of all ages for the maturity of their themes; it was only a matter of time until someone with a proven track record and a bit of vision  —  a filthy, filthy vision  —  pushed animated movies right off into the deep end.

Watch what you eat.

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg may have succeeded against odds in bringing Garth Ennis classic Preacher to life on AMC, but can lightning strike twice to bring the artist’s superhero-smashing The Boys to Cinemax? A new interview sees Rogen on the decision to attack the superhero world (with or without Simon Pegg’s help), while Ennis says “Sick of superheroes? Because we are.”

Eating a hot dog will never be the same.

Despite how much of a refreshing surprise the first ‘Neighbors’ was, I’ll admit I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the sequel, which looked dispensable and derivative. The poster and trailer for ‘Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising’ made it clear that Nick Stoller’s sequel to the 2014 Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne comedy was simply replicating the original premise and gender-swapping it to raise the stakes. It seemed like the expected set-up for a movie to stereotype and villainize young women, ridicule and dumb them down for laughs, and subject them to dick jokes. But it turns out ‘Neighbors 2' is a more pleasant surprise than the first movie. Not only is it one of the best and funniest comedy sequels, but the most feminist, self-aware and gay-inclusive mainstream comedy of the year, if not ever.