Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo teaming up for the soundtrack to the coming movie “Wicked” and a TV series based on the 1999 film “Cruel Intentions” are some of the new music, television, films and games headed to a device near you. Also among the streaming offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: season three of Max’s “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” Denzel Washington’s son Malcolm directing August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” for Netflix and the animated tale in “Spellbound” with a heroine voiced by Rachel Zegler.
NEW MUSIC TO STREAM
- Kim Deal, the center of bands like the Breeders and the Pixies, will release her debut solo album Friday, “Nobody Loves You More,” via the influential indie label 4AD Records. The project has been in the works for many years — beginning with tracks like “Are You Mine?” and “Wish I Was,” dating back to 2011 — but no matter, it still sounds like some left-of-center future, from the Steve Albini-produced “Coast” to noisy, clangorous world-building of “Crystal Breath.” “Beat by beat I expel your point of view,” Deal declares. “The heels of my imagination digging into you I start a new life/Beat’s gonna lead us/Live on.”
- For those hoping for something a bit more classic, look no further: PBS’ “Great Performances” anthology series, which features musicals, operas, plays, ballets and concerts, will spotlight the great Patsy Cline on Friday, broadcast on PBS and available to stream on the PBS app. “Patsy Cline: Walkin’ After Midnight” celebrates the country music giant on stage at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium with performances by Wynonna Judd, Ashley McBryde, Mickey Guyton, Kristin Chenoweth, Rita Wilson and more, with interviews from her husband, Charlie Dick, and famous friends like Loretta Lynn.
— AP music writer Maria Sherman
- We’ve already gotten an Ariana Grande album this year with “eternal sunshine” but there’s more on the way. On Friday, her voice is all over the soundtrack for the movie “Wicked” as Glinda, opposite Emmy-, Grammy- and Tony Award-winner Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. The album is part of a two-fer, with the first 11 songs from the first chapter of the two-part film adaptation. That means two of the musical’s best tunes will be available — “Popular” and “Defying Gravity.” Also listen for Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey and Jeff Goldblum.
— AP entertainment writer Mark Kennedy
NEW MOVIES TO STREAM
- Steve McQueen’s “Blitz,” streaming Friday on Apple TV+, is a wartime odyssey about a 9-year-old biracial boy (Elliott Heffernan) who, after being sent to the countryside during the Nazi bombing of London, tries to get home to his mother (Saoirse Ronan). “Blitz,” McQueen’s first narrative feature since 2018’s “Widows,” sometimes feels stuck between a conventional war drama and something more adventurous. But it’s vividly drawn, and, as I wrote in my review, “more complicated and unsparing than the average WWII drama.”
- Denzel Washington’s quest to bring the works of August Wilson to the screen has already produced several exceptional films, and performances, in “Fences” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” In “The Piano Lesson” (on Netflix Friday), he hands the reins to his son, Malcolm Washington, who makes his directorial debut in a production starring John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, Samuel L. Jackson, Erykah Badu, Ray Fisher and Corey Hawkins. The film, set in 1930s Pittsburgh, is about a family wrestling with the legacy of a family heirloom, and of slavery. In her review, AP film writer Lindsey Bahr praised it as a “a literal ghost story, with creaks, spooks and shadows lurking.”
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— AP film writer Jake Coyle NEW SHOWS — Alicia Rancilio NEW VIDEO GAMES — Lou Kesten