Tag: Netflix Original

  • ‘Crashing Eid’ is the hilarious Arabic Netflix comedy that is the talk of the town

    ‘Crashing Eid’ is the hilarious Arabic Netflix comedy that is the talk of the town

    ‘Crashing Eid’ is currently dominating Netflix Pakistan and seriously, this is the comedy series we have all been waiting for. Created by Saudi filmmaker Nora Aboushousha, the family drama tackles Saudi norms with comedy and ends with the enduring message that love conquers all.

    The drama follows the hilarious and fiercely independent Razzan, a single mother who lives in Britain with her daughter Lamar. She proposes to her British-Pakistani boyfriend Sameer, under the assumption her family back home in Saudi Arabia would approve of their marriage. However, sheer hilarity breaks out when her parents refuse to recognise their engagement, and the couple tackle racial divisions, prejudice and cultural norms to get married.

    Since this series hit Netflix, it is already getting rave reviews from Pakistani users, who praised the series for not holding back on tackling the racism Pakistanis face in Arabic countries.

    “The comedy series “Crashing Eid” is a good window into Arabs’ racist tendencies, bigotry, and toxic masculinity. As someone who visited a Gulf country earlier in the year, this comedy series portrays only but the tip of the iceberg,” one user wrote.

    Speaking to Arab News, Aboushousha spoke about how she came up with the concept of the series.

    “We started off with a concept of someone who is different from their family, and that grew into this story of a single mother who returns from abroad. We started wondering, what will inspire the clash with the rest of the family? And immediately we realized, ‘oh, she should come back ready to be married to someone from outside the culture!’ Everything fell into place from there.”

  • ‘The audacity’: Never Have I Ever’s finale divides audience

    ‘The audacity’: Never Have I Ever’s finale divides audience

    Warning: spoilers

    The series finale for ‘Never Have I Ever’ aired yesterday, bringing fans to a conclusion that divided opinions. Devi finally graduated high school, resolving the mystery about who is the man she will end up with.

    The series revolved around a messy kid Devi, who navigates love, peer pressure from belonging to an Indian family, and deals with the death of her father.

    From Season 1, there were two men in Devi’s life, Paxton Hall-Yoshida and Ben Gross. We were led through a four season long will-they-won’t-they as Devi made her way through misunderstandings, hurried confessions and miscommunication to now finally watching a grown and less-chaotic Devi who finally chooses…

    Ben!

    How did we get to this conclusion? Devi and Ben got intimate in the last season after which, the two remain awkward, drifting off, but eventually ending back together as friends. Devi ends up getting in to the college of her dreams: Princeton, with Ben’s help.

    While packing for college, Devi misses Ben, who is in New York for a law internship. However, during her friend Nirmala’s wedding, Ben shows up at the last minute, with both deciding to give their relationship a shot.

    Needless to say, this outcome did not sit well with a lot of fans, who criticised creator Mindy Kailing for hyping mediocre looking white men, and routinely depicting brown women who indulge in self-critical commentary and consistently put down their own culture and heritage in the shows.

    Many pointed out that Devi’s conclusion with Ben was another domino in the long line of Kailing’s female leads hyping bare-minimum men, and putting down south asian men for the sake of appealing to a white audience.

    https://twitter.com/xoxo58585858/status/1666967691553382406?s=20

    https://twitter.com/literatiez/status/1666867525731360768?s=20

    But other users felt that the conclusion was satisfying and were happy that Ben and Devi went from being enemies to close friends and finally falling in love with each other.

    https://twitter.com/bvbhive/status/1666811983524663296?s=20

    What did you think of the finale? Let us know in the comments!

  • Charles Sobraj, the true story serial killer in the Netflix series ‘The Serpent’, walks free after 18 years

    Charles Sobraj, the true story serial killer in the Netflix series ‘The Serpent’, walks free after 18 years

    French serial killer Charles Sobraj has been granted freedom from a 20 year prison sentence in Nepal. The Frenchman is now flying back to his home country.

    The serial killer had been the inspiration behind the Netflix limited series “The Serpent” which narrated the string of murders Sobraj had committed in South Asia during the 1970’s.

    Sobraj was nicknamed “The Serpent” because of his reputation as an escape artist and ability to hide with the help of disguises.

    Sobraj confessed in 2004 to the murder of Canadian and American backpackers. Nepal’s Supreme Court had ruled that the serial killer could be released on account of his ailing health due to heart failure, good behavior and having completed his life sentence. In Nepal, life sentences are only 20 years.

    Sobraj had previously been held in a high-security prison in New Delhi for two decades on suspicion of robbery, but he had been deported without charges to France in 1997. However, the Frenchman had later re-emerged in Kathmandu in September 2003. The serial killer has also been believed to be responsible for at least 20 murders in countries like India, Afghanistan, Thailand, Turkey, Iran and Hong Kong during the 1970’s.

  • ‘Lucky to have him’: The Crown’s leading lady Elizabeth Debicki reveals how much she adores Humayun Saeed

    ‘Lucky to have him’: The Crown’s leading lady Elizabeth Debicki reveals how much she adores Humayun Saeed

    Pakistani superstar Humayun Saeed is essaying Dr Hasnat Khan, Princess Diana’s love interest in season five of the hit Netflix series, The Crown.

    Saeed will be the second Pakistani to be cast in a Netflix Original which will premiere on 9th November 2022.

    'The Crown': Release date of Humayun Saeed's Hollywood debut revealed

    The actor will play alongside Australian actor Elizabeth Debicki who has been cast as Princess Diana.

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    Now Elizabeth has praised the London Nahi Jaunga hero in her latest interview, “I absolutely adored Humayun — he was such a lovely actor, and such a beautiful person,” she told Entertainment Weekly. 

    Elizabeth Debicki Praises Humayun Saeed

    “You never know how that’s going to feel when you’re playing things like that with an actor. So I was very lucky to have him and I think he does such a beautiful job.”

    When the news was confirmed earlier this year, Pakistani superstar Mahira Khan congratulated the Bin Roye hero.

    Dr Hasnat Khan, a British-Pakistani surgeon, is widely known for his romantic, two-year relationship with Diana. In May 1996, she visited his family in Lahore too. Diana’s friends are reported to have described Hasnat as the “love of her life” and to have spoken of her distress when he ended their relationship in June 1997. Dr Khan attended Diana’s funeral ceremony in September 1997.

    Season 5 will be about the turmoil of Diana and Prince Charles’ marriage breakdown and the tragic death of Diana in August 1997.

  • Netflix drops grand teaser of ‘Money Heist’s’ final season’s first part

    Netflix drops grand teaser of ‘Money Heist’s’ final season’s first part

    The end is almost here! Netflix on Monday surprised Money Heist fans with a short date announcement teaser of the upcoming and final Part 5.

    Read more – Money Heist’s Pakistani lookalikes you won’t believe

    As per the announcement, the final fifth season of the Spanish crime drama will release in two parts. The first part will release on September 3, while the second part will stream on December 3.

    Money Heist’s creator Alex Pina, in a statement, while talking about the upcoming part said: “When we began to write Part 5 in the midst of the pandemic, we felt that we had to change what was expected from the ten-episode season and used every tool we could to create the sensation of a season finale or series finale in the first volume itself.”

    “We decided to work in an extremely aggressive genre, putting The Gang on the ropes. In volume 2, we focus more on the emotional situation of the characters. It is a journey across their sentimental map that connects us directly to their departure,” added Pina.

    Meanwhile, in a synopsis provided by Netflix, the next season will follow the gang that been shut in the Bank of Spain for over 100 hours.

    “They managed to rescue Lisbon, but their darkest moment is upon them after losing one of their own. The Professor has been captured by Sierra and, for the first time, doesn’t have an escape plan. Just when it seems like nothing else could go wrong, an enemy comes on the scene that is much more powerful than any they’ve faced: the army. The end of the greatest heist in history is approaching, and what began as a robbery will turn into a war.”

    The series, originally titled La Casa De Papel (The House Of Paper), first released on Spanish network Antena 3 in May 2017. Set in Madrid, it’s about a team of thieves who are led by a mysterious man known as The Professor. The Netflix series stars UIrsula Corbero, Alvaro Morte, Itziar Ituno, Pedro Alonso, Paco Tous, Alba Flores, Miguel Herran, Jaime Lorente, Esther Acebo, Enrique Arce, Maria Pedraza, Darko Peric and Kiti Manver among others. The show was first created as a limited series but was later recut into three Parts when Netflix bought the rights to the show.

    Meanwhile, Money Heist is one of Netflix’s most-watched original series.

  • Saba Qamar wonders why ‘Sexify’ is trending on Netflix Pakistan

    Saba Qamar never shies away from sharing her opinions, whether on social media or in real life.

    Read more – Saba Qamar is winning the internet with her latest video

    The actor, in a recent social media post, raised a question which many Pakistanis had been asking over the past month: “Why is Sexify trending at number one on Netflix Pakistan during the Holy month of Ramzan?”

    “Awam toh humari bohut shareef hai phir yeh trending mein No 1 peh kyun hai?” questioned Saba.

    Sexify, an eight-episode Polish series, is about budding software developer Natalia who knows a lot about programming and very little about sex. With her friends Monika and Paulina, she embarks on a quest to better understand the mysteries of the female orgasm and build an app that will win an inter-university competition and maybe, just maybe, serve the needs of her peers.

    The series has a rating of 6.6 on IMDb.

  • Is Netflix’s trending ‘Things Heard & Seen’ based on a true story?

    Is Netflix’s trending ‘Things Heard & Seen’ based on a true story?

    Netflix’s latest horror film Things Heard and Seen, featuring Amanda Seyfried and James Norton, is reportedly based on a true story of a murder that took place in 1982.

    According to a report in NY Post, the film based on Elizabeth Brundage’s novel All Things Cease To Appear was partly inspired by the gruesome death of Cathleen Krauseneck in 1982 in Brighton, New York. Cathleen’s murder is better know as “the Brighton Ax Murder.”

    On February 19, 1982, James Krauseneck Jr. returned to his new house on Del Rio Drive near Rochester from his job as an economist at Eastman Kodak Co., when he spotted broken glass inside from a window and called the police. He had found his 29-year-old wife, Cathleen, dead in bed with an ax lodged in her head and their 3-year-old daughter seated calmly in her own bedroom, dressed to go out.

    In a statement to the police, James had said: “She [his daughter] had a red sweater over a pink sweater with blue ABC corduroy pants and two pairs of socks. She looked dazed to me. I picked her up from her bed and ran downstairs and out the front door with her.”

    James, who was considered to be one of the key suspects, said he had been at work all day. The next day he reportedly took his daughter Sara and fled to Michigan, where he grew up. Brighton Police Chief Eugene Shaw opted not to question the daughter a month later because “too much time has gone by.”

    James Krauseneck Jr.

    Meanwhile, Cathleen’s murder case, which had gone unresolved for almost 39 years, finally made a breakthrough in November 2019 when James was indicted by a grand jury on a second-degree murder charge. He pleaded not guilty.

    The Brighton Police Chief attributed the delayed charges to improved forensic technology that’s clarified the timeline of the murder — calling James’ alibi into question — and has shed more light on the crime scene.

    “I understand people want a singular piece of evidence that can directly point to James Krauseneck Jr.,” the current Brighton Police Chief David Catholdi had told a local media out. “This is not one of those cases.”

    It is pertinent to add that at the scene of the crime no other DNA was found other than the family’s. It was also reported that shortly before her death, Cathleen found that James had not completed his doctorate and lied to his employers.

    After Michigan, James moved to Gig Harbor in Washington, where he worked as a vice president of sales for a timberland company called Weyerhaeuser. When he was charged, James was living in Peoria, Arizona, with his fourth wife.

    To add another twist, serial rapist Ed Laraby, right before he died in 2014 claimed that he killed Cathleen and committed at least a dozen more crimes.

    “Ed Laraby is a notorious self-described sociopathic killer of women,” Krauseneck’s defense attorney said. “The issue is he lived really within basically a half mile, or less than a half mile, and has confessed to this murder as he lay dying in prison.”

    Unlike the ending of the movie, which had a comprehensive end, Cathleen Krauseneck’s murder remains unsolved. James, now 69, was freed on $100,000 bail and is awaiting a trial that was delayed by the pandemic — the next pretrial hearing is set for June.

    Things Heard and Seen follows an unhappy young mother (Seyfried), who is brutally murdered with an ax while her child is found eerily seated on the couch downstairs. Her studious husband (Norton) leaves shortly after the crime. The film gives the real-life characters different names, changes up their circumstances (they have a son and live in the Hudson Valley) and adds some ghosts for some more horror.

    The film is currently trending in the top ten on Netflix Pakistan.

  • ‘Emily in Paris’ season 2 begins production in France

    ‘Emily in Paris’ season 2 begins production in France

    Bonjour friends! Our beloved Emily (Lily Collins) is back in Paris as filming for the record-breaker series officially commenced on May 3 in France. As per details, filming began in Villefranche-sur-Mer and the paparazzi managed to snap pictures from the sets.

    Emily in Paris’ official Instagram announced the news with a star laden video featuring Emily and all her friends.

    Cast members returning for the second season include Collins, Ashley Park (Mindy), William Abadie (Antoine), Samuel Arnold (Julien), Leroy-Beaulieu, Bruno Gouery (Luc), and Camille Razat (Camille).

    Talking about the second season, creator Darren Star told E! News that Emily might be in for some “surprisingly tough choices”.

    “The show’s so much about the culture undermining her expectations of how things are and how things seem. And everything will not be as it seems. It’s always about challenging her American worldview. We certainly have a lot of forks in the road and a lot of places to go,” he added.

    Meanwhile, it was reported that the second season will shed more light on Emily’s equation with Gabriel and his girlfriend Camille.

    Earlier, in an interview with Vogue UK, Collins had said: “Does Camille like Emily? You can’t really get a vibe, and I feel like that ambiguity is what keeps Emily intrigued. I think anyone in that position would be like, you’re my friend, but now I have this romantic connection [with Gabriel], and I don’t want to hurt you, but… Oh my God! So, you know what, it’s really confusing. I feel like the next season will only create more love triangle drama, although maybe Emily will have a little bit of a stronger handle on the situation… Or maybe not.”

    Released on October 3, 2020, Emily in Paris became Netflix’s most-watched comedy of 2020 conquering a viewership of about 58 million households. The series revolves around the life of Emily, a marketing enthusiast from a Chicago-based firm, who is sent to France to help renew the social media marketing strategy of their newly acquired French organisation.

    Read more – Every Pakistani girl wants to be ‘Emily in Paris’

    Emily is faced with difficult expectations to live up to, amusing culture shocks, and a steaming romance with the boy next door.

    A release date has not yet been announced.

  • ‘Peaky Blinders’ star Helen McCrory passes away at 52

    ‘Peaky Blinders’ star Helen McCrory passes away at 52

    Helen McCrory, the “beautiful and mighty” British actress known for playing steely female characters on stage and screen, has died of cancer at the age of 52, her husband, Damian Lewis, said on Friday.

    “I’m heartbroken to announce that after a heroic battle with cancer, the beautiful and mighty woman that is Helen McCrory has died peacefully at home, surrounded by a wave of love from friends and family,” said the Homeland actor.

    “She died as she lived. Fearlessly. God, we loved her and know how lucky we are to have had her in our lives. She blazed so brightly. Go now, Little One, into the air, and thank you.”

    The shock announcement drew tributes from author JK Rowling, fellow actors including Michael Sheen and from the artistic director at London’s National Theatre who hailed McCrory as “unquestionably one of the great actors of her generation”.

    Read more – GCU students produce Pakistan’s first-ever fan-made Harry Potter movie

    Born in London to a Welsh mother and Scottish-born father, McCrory spent a year in Italy before studying acting at the Drama Centre. Her film roles included portraying Cherie Blair – wife of former prime minister Tony Blair – in Peter Morgan’s The Queen and The Special Relationship in 2006 and 2010 respectively. She also played Narcissa Malfoy – mother of Draco Malfoy – in the final three films in the Harry Potter franchise and appeared in the James Bond film Skyfall.

    On television, she had a leading role as the Shelbys’ matriarch Polly Gray in Peaky Blinders. The BBC show began filming the sixth series this year, expected to air later in 2021, with McCrory understood to have reprised her role.

    Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy described McCrory as a compassionate friend and fearless actor.

    “I am broken-hearted to lose such a dear friend,” Murphy said in a statement. “Helen was a beautiful, caring, funny, compassionate human being. She was also a gifted actor — fearless and magnificent. She elevated and made humane every scene, every character she played. It was a privilege to have worked with this brilliant woman, to have shared so many laughs over the years. I will dearly miss my pal. My love and thoughts are with Damian and her family.”

    The couple, who had two young children, married in 2007. They had recently raised over one million pounds to give health workers restaurant meals during the pandemic.

  • Prince Harry, Meghan announce first Netflix series

    Prince Harry, Meghan announce first Netflix series

    Prince Harry will produce a documentary about the Invictus Games for disabled military veterans — the first series under a lucrative deal he and wife Meghan Markle signed with Netflix after moving to California last year.

    Harry, who served with the British military in Afghanistan, will appear on camera and executive-produce Heart of Invictus, a multi-episode series which follows competitors as they train for next spring’s competition in The Hague.

    “This series will give communities around the world a window into the moving and uplifting stories of these competitors on their path to the Netherlands next year,” said Harry in a statement.

    The program will be the first released by the couple’s Archewell Productions, which inked a sprawling deal with streaming giant Netflix last September to produce “impactful” films and series.

    “As Archewell Productions’ first series with Netflix, in partnership with the Invictus Games Foundation, I couldn’t be more excited for the journey ahead or prouder of the Invictus community for continuously inspiring global healing, human potential and continued service,” said Harry.

    No financial terms were disclosed, but the deal is reported to be multi-year and exclusive to Netflix.

    Multiple other projects rumoured to be in development include a nature documentary series and an animated series focused on inspiring women, although former Suits star Markle has no plans to return to acting.

    “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the Archewell Productions team are building an ambitious slate that reflects the values and causes they hold dear,” said Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos.

    “From the moment I met them, it’s been clear that the Invictus Games hold a very special place in their hearts, and I couldn’t be happier that their first series for Netflix will showcase that for the world in a way never seen before.”

    Harry has previously appeared in Paralympics documentary film Rising Phoenix, and launched the first Invictus Games back in 2014.

    The couple first went public together at the Games’ September 2017 edition.

    The Olympics-style sports event taking place in The Hague in the Netherlands was initially scheduled for 2020 but was twice delayed to spring 2022 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

    As well as following their training, the series will also dive into the competitors’ “powerful stories of hope and resilience.”

    The couple quit the British royal family and moved to California last year.

    An explosive interview they gave to Oprah Winfrey last month — in which they claimed an unnamed royal had asked how dark their baby’s skin would be — plunged the monarchy into its biggest crisis since the death of Lady Diana.