Category: 5. Entertainment

The much-anticipated release of Shrek 5 has been delayed for a second time.

DreamWorks Animation originally scheduled the sequel for next summer, but pushed it back to December 2026.

It has now shifted the release back further to June 2027, according to US website Deadline.

BBC Newsbeat has approached DreamWorks Animation and Universal for comment.

Although the report didn’t give a reason, fans and news outlets have speculated that the delay was to avoid competing with Avengers: Doomsday, Dune: Part III, and Ice Age 6, which are all set to hit cinemas in December 2026.

Fans have expressed disappointment at the delay, with one writing on X: “Another delay? At this point my kids will be showing Shrek 5 to their kids.”

The first film, released in 2001, followed the story of an ogre who wants nothing more than to be left alone, but ends up on a quest to rescue a princess trapped in a tower.

Along the way, he gets help from a ragtag bunch of misfits, including a chatty donkey and, later, a boot-wearing cat.

It was a huge hit for DreamWorks, making $487m (£362m) worldwide at the box office.

The studio then went on to bring back the characters again and again for three more movies.

Number five will actually be the seventh film in the wider franchise, which includes two spin-off films – Puss In Boots and Puss In Boots: The Last Wish.

It has been confirmed that Shrek (voiced by Mike Myers), Princess Fiona (voiced by Cameron Diaz) and Donkey (voiced by Eddie Murphy) are all returning for the new movie.

The movie’s trailer also revealed a new addition to the cast – Fiona and Shrek’s teenage daughter Felicia, voiced by actress Zendaya.

However, the reaction to the clip was mixed, with some fans taking to X to say they didn’t like the new style of animation and it was ugly.

Some have compared the reaction to the original movie version of Sonic the Hedgehog, which Paramount Pictures changed in response to a backlash in 2019.

Others couldn’t be more excited about a return to the kingdom of Far Far Away.

EXCLUSIVE: Filipino filmmaker Pedring Lopez (Netflix’s Maria, Nilalang) is set to direct The Ascendants, a psychological horror feature from Silent D Pictures.

The film will begin production in early 2026 in the UK, and stars Australian actors Cristian Lavin and John Jarratt and US-born Indonesian actress Chelsea Islan.

Lavin also penned the film’s screenplay. Additional casting for The Ascendants will be announced in the coming weeks.

The film follows a journalist who returns to her childhood mining town in search of her missing brother — only to uncover a cult, sacred rites, and a blood-soaked ancestral legacy.

Lopez is currently shooting his English-language debut feature, Shadow Transit, which stars UK-based singer-songwriter Qymira and Indonesian actor Yoshi Sudarso.

Principal photography is taking place in Manila, with several scenes shot in Hong Kong. The film will be presented to buyers at the American Film Market.

After The Ascendants, Lopez will direct and line produce action-horror Blood Passage, produced by GFM Film Sales and Evolution Pictures (UK), VeryTay Media (Singapore), Shaw Organisation (Singapore) and BlackOps Studios Asia (Philippines).

Blood Passage will be shot entirely in the Philippines, primarily on the remote islands of Camarines Sur.

Lopez was also showrunner and director of Filipino prison crime series Sellblock, executive produced and distributed globally by LA-based Blue Fox Entertainment.

“As a Filipino filmmaker making my crossover into international cinema, I’ve always been drawn to stories that wrestle with faith, trauma, and inherited myth,” said Lopez. “With The Ascendants, I’m bringing my Southeast Asian roots and cinematic language to a Western storyworld — one grounded in atmosphere, tension, and emotional truth. This is the kind of film that lets me explore universal fears through a very personal lens.”

Lavin added: “Pedring brings a rare mix of emotional insight and genre precision. He knows how to shape horror through performance, atmosphere, and meaning — not just effects.”

Djonny Chen, founder of Silent D Pictures, said: “We’re thrilled to collaborate with Pedring. His work consistently blends bold vision with grounded humanity. The Ascendants is the kind of project that demands that — and he’s the right voice to deliver it.”

Getty Images

Getty Images

Getty Images

‘We’d already been mourning Matthew Perry’

Michelle Obama friendship

A piece of rock history is set to hit the block.

Rocker Eddie Van Halen’s 1982 Kramer electric guitar will be auctioned by Sotheby’s New York during the house’s inaugural Grails Week from Oct. 21-28. According to estimates, the guitar, which was custom-built for the Van Halen star, is expected to fetch a whopping $2 million-$3 million. A previous Sotheby’s sale for a guitar owned by Van Halen — that one on display in the band’s “Hot for Teacher” music video — netted $3,932,000 in April 2023.

Based on Van Halen’s original “Frankenstein” design, the piece was extensively played during Van Halen’s 1982-83 tours, seen onstage during concerts in Philadelphia; Caracas, Venezuela; São Paulo, Brazil; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Van Halen gifted the guitar to longtime friend and guitar technician Robin “Rudy” Leiren, who later sold it to Mick Mars, former lead guitarist and co-founder of Mötley Crüe. Mars used it during the recording of the hit Dr. Feelgood album, including on the track “Slice of Your Pie.” 

The guitar will be on display in Monterey, California, from Aug. 13-16, a date that coincides with RM Sotheby’s Monterey auctions. It will mark the first time the guitar has been seen in public in more than 40 years since Van Halen last played it in concert. Sotheby’s Grails Week is curated to showcase items from the worlds of film, music, TV and comics.

“Played during some of Eddie’s most iconic performances and later used by Mötley Crüe’s Mick Mars, this instrument connects two giants of heavy metal,” explained Ian Ferreyra de Bone, Sotheby’s managing director of its luxury division. “With its custom build and incredible backstory, it’s a true grail — exactly the kind of piece we had in mind for Sotheby’s first-ever Grails Week, which shines a spotlight on the most sought-after treasures from music, film, TV and comics and puts Sotheby’s right at the center of pop culture.”

Van Halen died following a battle with cancer at age 65 on Oct. 6, 2020.

Can you please explain tamarind? Pods, pulp, paste, concentrate … I can’t keep up with them all. David, via email
How does Chaya Maya, development chef at Ottolenghi Test Kitchen, love tamarind? Let her count the ways: “It’s delicious, plus you can use it in sweet and savoury dishes, or to make lemonade, which we do in Mauritius; it has that sour sharpness that makes your mouth tingle. Actually, we need a tamarind movement.” Also in favour of the pucker fruit is Melissa Thompson, author of Motherland, namely for its “lovely consistency” and ability to “coat things nicely” while adding “depth”.

As David says, tamarind comes in various forms, but let’s start at the very beginning with those peanut-shaped pods, which Thompson likes to snack on – just crack open the shell and eat the flesh. “When I started cheffing, I wanted to do all the processes myself, so I’d buy a box of pods, peel them, soak them and mash them, which took so long!” Perhaps unsurprisingly, these days she prefers a compressed block, which also happens to be Maya’s go-to: “You have to hydrate it, then make a paste, but the blocks last longer, plus the manufacturer will have waited until the tamarind is ripe, so it’s sweet and caramelly.” Perfect, then, for Thompson’s barbecue sauce, which involves breaking off 50g pulp, steeping it in water and combining with apple molasses, but the possibilities are (almost) endless: “A block is the most versatile option, but only for someone who gets through a lot.”

Perhaps easier is a jar of paste, which is readily available in supermarkets, or tamarind concentrate. “Depending on where it’s from [predominantly Thailand and India], it tastes quite different, which can cause confusion,” says Feast’s own Helen Goh, whose first solo book, Baking and the Meaning of Life, is out in September. “I only ever use Thai or Malaysian tamarind, which is fruity, bright, smooth, liquidy and brown; Indian tamarind, by contrast, is darker, almost black, and far more concentrated and intense.” Add a spoonful for instant oomph in soups, stews, meat marinades or anywhere you might otherwise turn to citrus. “It’s not quite the same as a block, but it’s still pretty delicious,” Maya says. “Just watch out when seasoning, because the jarred stuff is often already salted.” She suggests adding lime juice to loosen, then flavouring with crushed garlic, chopped spring onion and fresh chilli, plus salt and sugar to taste. “Roast some fish, pour on the tamarind mix and it’s the best. If you’ve got crispy onions, pile them on top as well.” Thompson, meanwhile, would use her noodle: “Make a dressing by watering down tamarind paste, add vinegar, honey, chopped shallot, garlic, lime juice and zest, and pour over a cold noodle salad.”

Pineapple and tamarind are synonymous with Malaysia, where Goh grew up, and she says that duo are particularly welcome in an upside-down cake: “Tamarind concentrate goes into the caramel,which is poured into a cake tin. Lay pineapple on top, pour in the cake batter, then bake – it melts into a gooey, syrupy thing that I love.” There’s also tamarind extract, but Thompson would be inclined to leave that well alone: “People tend to come unstuck with that because it is so concentrated.” That said, it works a dream in vegan fish sauce, which is yet more proof that sweet-sour tamarind really does make everything better.

Over the years, Elle Decor has opened the gates to some of the most breathtaking gardens in the world—spaces that blur the lines between landscape, art, and fantasy. There’s Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent’s Eden-like French estate, which is dripping in German irises and perfectly clipped parterres. In Monaco, designer John-Mark Horton transformed a tri-level garden overlooking the Mediterranean into a fragrant escape of romantic decay. And in East Hampton, Ina Garten’s gardens are an idyllic explosion of dahlias, white hydrangeas, and, if you visit her 25-tree orchard in May, apple blossoms.

These are gardens shaped by the personal obsessions of aesthetes who treat the outdoors with the same care as their interiors. Indeed, a garden isn’t just a place to grow things and show off your horticultural prowess, it’s a reminder that beauty can be cultivated over years, even decades, and that slowing down to watch something bloom is always worth it.

Whether you’re designing your dream landscape or just looking for a little green escape, these gardens from the pages of Elle Decor offer plenty of inspiration. Just be warned: You may find yourself searching obsessively for vintage urns, or whispering sweet nothings to your hydrangeas. We won’t judge.

Rachel Silva is the associate digital editor at ELLE DECOR, where she covers all things design, architecture, and lifestyle. She also oversees the publication’s feature article coverage, and is, at any moment, knee-deep in an investigation on everything from the to the on the internet right now. She has more than 16 years of experience in editorial, working as a photo assignment editor at Time and acting as the president of Women in Media in NYC. She went to Columbia Journalism School, and her work has been nominated for awards from ASME, the Society of Publication Designers, and World Press Photo. 

After years of prison and conniving her way into luxury, Anna Sorokin has New York talking about her again.

This time, it is not posing as a German heiress or being jailed for four years, instead the convicted fraudster has been left “disturbed” and “horrified” after three rabbits used in her photoshoot were found dumped in a nearby park.

Sorokin, who also went by the name Anna Delvey and is the subject of Netflix’s Inventing Anna, shot to infamy after a high-profile court case. The fraudster, who masqueraded as an heiress, swindled the wealthy in Manhattan with an invented trust fund.

But this latest saga involves a photograph on her Instagram account, in which she is pictured outside a Tribeca subway station with a black ankle monitor – stipulated under the terms of her 2022 prison release – and holding two leashed rabbits.

Days after posing for the photographs, social media users were quick to link the abandoned bunnies with Sorokin after the animals were spotted in Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

“I felt ashamed and embarrassed to be associated with it,” Sorokin said of the affair. The 34-year-old said she was not responsible for the rabbits and was “horrified” to learn they had been dumped.

The first bunny, a one-and-a-half-year-old Harlequin lop, was found in the bushes by Terry Chao near a cardboard box used as part of Sorokin’s photoshoot last week. On Thursday, another rabbit was found near the same cardboard box, followed by a third on Sunday, near a black carrier bag, she told the New York Times.

The man who photographed Sorokin, Jasper Egan Soloff, told the newspaper through a lawyer that it was not his shoot and claimed to have no knowledge of how the animals were obtained or handled.

Another person involved in the shoot appears to have apologised and taken responsibility in a since-deleted Instagram post.

“When I realised the rabbits were being surrendered to me I panicked. At 19, with no experience caring for animals, no pet-friendly housing, and no knowledge of available resources, I felt overwhelmed and made the worst possible choice,” he reportedly wrote.

“Believing, mistakenly, that there were existing rabbits in that area, I released them there, thinking that was my best option.”

He added that they were being fostered by someone in New York, while Sorokin said she offered to help rehome the rabbits when she learned they had been abandoned.

People on social media have accused Sorokin of animal cruelty. Many commenters decried her use of the animals as props, and warned against photographing bunnies on leashes on their backs, a position known as trancing that can be harmful to the animals.

“I do not eat meat, and I had no involvement in the acquisition, transport, or return of these animals. I would never condone these actions,” Sorokin told the website Page Six. After being convicted in 2019 on multiple counts of larceny and theft, she was released after nearly four years in jail and a further 18 months in immigration detention for overstaying her visa, and was told to refrain from posting on social media.

In the violet hush of a late-night doom scroll, I stumbled across her: a woman clad in lacquered leather and glinting chains, legs laced in harnesses. She stood mid-growl, clutching the mic as if to throttle it, her silhouette framed by a red LED screen that read “Rock Nights” along with the name of the artist: Clayrocksu.

Beneath the stage at Pop Landmark in Lagos, Nigeria, a sparse crowd of silver-studded misfits was filmed thrashing around in a trance. The performance provoked a small moral panic in the comments: cries of “demonic” and fears that Clayrocksu was “slipping into darkness”.

The darkness Clayrocksu and others move through isn’t occult, though – it’s obscurity. In the west, goth and emo subcultures offer outsiders a name, a tribe, but in Nigeria they barely exist. The industry here forgets itself every few decades, and since the rise of Afrobeat, and later Afrobeats, rock has been sealed off or paved over. But it’s kept alive by DIY shows such as Clayrocksu’s Rock Nights series, WhatsApp chats, shared gear, and today’s small scene – bands such as LoveSick, ASingerMustDie and the Recurrence – is raw and defiant.

Long before Clayrocksu et al ever screamed into a mic, Nigerians were shaping rock to their own rhythm. Between 1967 and 1970, Nigeria fought a brutal civil war after the south-eastern region declared itself the Republic of Biafra. In the aftermath, the Hygrades, who lit up the 1970s with tracks like In the Jungle, came from the east along with the Funkees and the Doves – post–Biafran war kids with guitars, trying to turn trauma into sound. These early bands still leaned on the swagger of Hendrix and the snarl of Jagger, but it wasn’t until Fela Kuti – fierce, lyrical, unmistakably ours – that Afro-rock began to speak in a Nigerian voice.

But more immediately palatable pop, dance and gospel came to fill the airwaves, while rock had no radio, no label push, no hype. Still, it lived on in the margins, and more recently fan-led WhatsApp groups such as Rockaz World and Rock Republic have kept the flame going, along with the now-defunct Naija School of Rock blog. Clayrocksu isn’t just a musician and now a member of the Recording Academy in the US, whose members vote for the Grammys; she’s also an ambassador for the scene who set up the collective Afrorockstars in 2024. It’s a kind of Justice League for Lagos’s indie rock scene, where artists band together, host shows, and keep the flame alive.

With her monthly Rock Nights series on hold due to a lack of funding, Clayrocksu has teamed up with Lagos venue Kevwe and Cam for a band showcase called Lagos Misfits Takeover. I head there to find what is left of Nigerian rock.

“I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t into rock,” Clayrocksu says before going on stage. As a kid, she played bootleg pop-rock CDs on her Walkman. Her dad was a rock head, too – less edgy metal, more Bon Jovi and Michael Bolton – but when Clayrocksu started covering his favourites, she finally got it. “I can’t explain it,” she says of her love of rock. “The music called to me, and I want others to feel that, too.”

She’s unfazed by the moral panic she unleashed. “I don’t pay it any mind, honestly,” she says. For the Afrorockstars community, “rock is just part of life, same as their faith”. She pauses, fingers grazing the crucifix around her neck. “Some of them wear crosses, too.”

She introduces me to LoveSick’s frontman Korny, a 31-year-old, soft-spoken man with a bald head and a Jason Voorhees–style hockey mask clipped to his pants, his lucky charm. “I bought it the night we won Battle of the Bands,” he says, referring to a Lagos event late last year, which was LoveSick’s first ever live performance. “I used my last cash to buy it from a vendor who said everything she sells is blessed. I wore it, we played and we won triple what I paid.”

He looks every bit the nerdy IT solutions guy, but that changes when he takes the mic and growls through Guiding, a track whose lyrics – “I’ve got 5k [Naira, about £2.50] left in my bank account” – are about surviving Nigeria as a broke youth.

The sound at the venue is rough, but “we can’t wait for perfect sound like Afrobeats,” Korny shrugs. “The show must go on.” His voice – guttural, sharp, sometimes screeching – feels scorched. “I taught myself back in 2011,” he says. “Just mimicking my favourites.” They were Korn’s Jonathan Davis, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, Asking Alexandria’s Danny Worsnop. Now, he cycles through screams, growls and pig squeals. “It’s not noise,” he says. “It’s a voice. A message.”

Also playing at Kevwe and Cam is brother duo ASingerMustDie. “Hope y’all are ready to die tonight,” one of them deadpans into the mic. The venue’s walls are lined with portraits of legends like Oliver De Coque and Fela Kuti, watching over the night’s rising acts, and ASingerMustDie’s set feels distinctly Nigerian – rock as the vessel, but with a message rooted in lived experience. “It’s all about feelings, experiences, societal issues,” the brothers tell me. Their song Córazon, for instance, was born from a toxic love story and the fear that leaving would hurt more than staying.

Phones light up during LoveSick’s set, and again for Clayrocksu, as fans look to prove they were here. Xavier, a fan of LoveSick, says he’s been into rock for about 13 years: he first heard it on Need for Speed and Fifa, and it hit him like nothing else. “Power chords and riffs break from traditional music patterns – they’re chaotic, but beautiful,” he says. “In a place as chaotic as Nigeria, rock helped me make sense of it all.”

For this crowd, it isn’t just music, it’s making space to feel seen in a country that doesn’t reward difference. “Even if you don’t sing rock,” Clayrocksu tells me, “you can still be one of the cool kids with us.”