Latest news with #TheWildRobot
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
10 Most Popular Netflix Movies Streaming Right Now (May 26-June 1)
Netflix started June pretty much the same way it ended May — by offering more movies filled with saucy grandmas, butchered prom queens and the downfall of a football icon. But Netflix subscribers also streamed several new titles that testify to how strange and diverse people's tastes truly are. Among the most popular movies this week are a Nicolas Cage revenge flick about a missing pig, a true-crime story about a potentially murderous nurse and an animated adventure about a wild robot. Need more recommendations? Then check out the Best New Movies on Netflix, Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and More, the Best Movies on Amazon Prime Video Right Now, the Best Movies on Hulu Right Now and the Must-See Movies on Netflix Right of 2024's best films is now one of Netflix's most popular movies of 2025. In The Wild Robot, an android named Roz (Lupita Nyong'o) crash-lands on an island andt befriends various animals, like the fox Fink (Pedro Pascal) and orphaned gosling Brightbill (Kit Connor). Now a 'wild robot,' Roz must choose between its new companions or leaving the island to complete its mission. The truth is sometimes scarier than fiction in the Spanish thriller The Widow's Game, which is based on a true story. When Arturo Puig's body is discovered in a garage, no one initially suspects his young widow, nurse Maje. But soon, Maje's story doesn't hold up, and the police think she may have killed Arturo for his money. Mark Wahlberg has portrayed action heroes who have saved the world countless times, but in Instant Family, the actor faces his most challenging role yet — a new dad to a 15-year-old daughter. The 2018 dramedy stars Wahlberg and Rose Byrne as Pete and Ellie Wagner, who are eager to adopt a child. They get more than they bargained for when they adopt teen Lizzie (Isabela Merced), who insists they adopt her younger brother and sister if they want her to live with them. The Wagners agree and all of a sudden, they have an instant family to take care of — and love. Someone took Rob Feld's (Nicolas Cage) pet pig, and he's mad as hell. Filled with rage, he embarks on a revenge quest to find his beloved porker and punish the men who kidnapped her. But Rob's journey reveals some past secrets he'd rather forget and sets him up for an uncertain future he can't avoid. High school is terrifying enough, but add in a masked killer systematically slaughtering prom queen candidates, and you may just want to drop out and take a GED test instead. Prom Queen is the latest movie in Netflix's Fear Street franchise, and while it's not quite as good as 1994 or 1978, it still has enough appeal for enough viewers to make it onto this list. It's no surprise that this new Vince Vaughn comedy shot straight to No. 1 soon after it debuted — it's sweet and reassuring, and it follows a formula that made Moonstruck and Steel Magnolias big hits in the late '80s. Vaughn stars as Joe, who tries to get over his mother's death by opening a restaurant with Italian grandmothers as cooks. The restaurant is a success, but can Joe find a way to reconcile with his loss and move on with his life? Only a zany DreamWorks animated children's film can unite a vocal cast that includes Steve Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Jim Parsons and Rihanna. In Home, aliens called the Boov have taken over Earth and sent many humans to Australia to live. Gratuity 'Tip' Tucci (Rihanna) was left behind in all the chaos, and she's desperate to find her mother. Can a rogue Boov, Oh (Parsons), help the little girl? Or will he follow orders and send her to live with the other humans? Those Minions just can't be stopped! Those lovable lemmings return with their master, Gru (Steve Carell), for yet another brightly colored adventure. This time around, Gru and his new family must go into hiding after an old classmate, Maxime Le Mal (Will Ferrell), wants to turn his son, Gru Jr. (Tara Strong), into a super-villain cockroach. Hijinks ensue as Gru and his family assume new, mundane identities in bland suburbia to avoid being detected by Maxime. But Le Mal is craftier than Gru gives him credit for, and he'll have to defend his family at any cost. Brett Favre is most famous for his time as a quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, but his star has dimmed lately due to some recent scandals involving the misuse of welfare funds and inappropriate sexting. Untold: The Fall of Favre focuses on the football player's recent tribulations and paints a not-so-flattering portrait of a man once considered a wholesome icon. Havoc continues to be one of Netflix's best-performing original titles so far in 2025. Tom Hardy stars as Walker, a jaded detective who is in a lot of trouble. After a botched drug deal, he's on the run from a gun-happy crime syndicate that wants him dead and some dirty cops who don't want their criminal side hustles exposed. To make it worse, he has to protect a crooked politician's son who was involved in the drug deal and knows more than he's letting on. Can Walker save the boy and not be killed in the process?
Axios
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Axios
Juneteenth, Buckeye Country Superfest and other Columbus weekend events
🎲 Roll into the weekend at the Origins Game Fair, a tabletop gaming convention celebrating its 50th anniversary. Event schedule. Wednesday-Sunday. $15-50 daily. Kids under 13 free! ⚾ Buy some peanuts and Cracker Jacks and watch the Clippers take on the Indianapolis Bats. 7:05pm Wednesday, 12:05pm Thursday, 7:05pm Friday-Saturday and 1:05pm Sunday. $10-32. Promotions schedule, including zoo day on Sunday. 🤖 Watch "The Wild Robot" during Bexley's first Main Event of the year, featuring food trucks, live music and kids activities. 6pm Friday, East Main Street and College Avenue. Movie starts at 9pm. Free! ✊ Celebrate Juneteenth during the annual Juneteenth Ohio Festival on the downtown riverfront. Noon-11pm Saturday-Sunday. Free noon-3pm, then $20. 🤠 Giddy-up to Buckeye Country Superfest at Ohio Stadium starring Jelly Roll and Kane Brown. 🎵 Yes Indeed — see Lil Baby's WHAM World Tour stop at Nationwide Arena. 7pm Saturday. $65-221.
Business Insider
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
My 7-year-old interviewed the author of his favorite book. He asked big and small questions with more confidence than I have.
When author and illustrator Peter Brown set out to write "The Wild Robot," he didn't head to a studio or café — he went to the Catskills, Maine, and the Pacific Northwest to find inspiration. When I had the chance to connect with Brown, I knew I had to turn to an expert who truly appreciated the book: my 7-year-old son. "I tried to spend as much time in kind of a wilderness area as I could to feed my imagination, give me little ideas, remind myself of the kind of sounds that you hear when you're out in the woods," Brown told me and my son over a video interview. That juxtaposition — the mechanical and the natural — sits at the heart of "The Wild Robot," Brown's beloved middle-grade novel and now an Oscar-nominated major motion picture from DreamWorks. "The last place you'd expect to find a robot is out in the wilderness," Brown explained. "And so I thought, well, that's kind of interesting." My three children agree. They are such fans of the movie that we ended up not only buying it, but also getting the book to read the original story, which we've already enjoyed multiple times. My son had lots of questions to ask Brown, from whether he liked robots to whether there would be more movies starring his favorite robot, Roz. He wanted readers to care about the robot To prepare for the interview, my son and I talked about our favorite parts of the movie and the book. I asked him what he wanted to ask Brown, and he surprised me with how much he wanted to know, including why the robot doesn't have a mouth but can still talk, and more profound questions that, as a parent, moved me. For those who aren't hardcore fans like we are, "The Wild Robot" follows Rozzum Unit 7134 (a.k.a Roz), a machine that washes ashore on a remote island and must learn to survive — and eventually, thrive — among wildlife. "This is a very extreme fish out of water story," Brown said. "You take that advanced technological character and you put it in the least technological place you can imagine." The book's premise is simple, but the emotional arc is complex. Brown imagined a robot that becomes more "natural and wild than even a person could." Both my husband and I cried at different scenes of the movie because Roz reminded us of different parenting phases we've been through, helping our kids learn how to walk, or learning ourselves how to let them go and become their own person. "That is kind of the main goal of an author — to make sure your readers care," Brown said. Roz is an optimistic vision of AI At a time when most portrayals of artificial intelligence tend toward the dystopian, Brown aimed for something different. "We are very familiar with stories about robots, kind of like a robot uprising," he said. "I thought it was more interesting to show a more optimistic vision of what the future could look like." He backs that vision with research, not just imagination. Brown visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and spoke with scientists designing robots to explore other planets. "They're already using robots to communicate with animals," he told my son, who listened with both his eyes and mouth wide open in surprise. Roz, Brown believes, could someday exist. There might be a movie sequel Brown has long loved animation, and the adaptation of the first book from his three-book series into a movie has been a surreal experience. "Before I started writing children's books, I actually worked in animation," he said. So when DreamWorks reached out, saying they wanted to adapt the book into a movie, he was very excited. He hopes for a sequel, which was one of the more important questions my son had because he wants more of Roz. "I'm pretty confident there will be at least one more movie," he said. My son shared with Brown how his twin sisters, who are two years younger than him, often get distracted when my husband reads the original book because it doesn't have illustrations on every page. Brown's latest project, " The Wild Robot on the Island," is a picture book adaptation of the original novel, aimed at an audience like my daughters. He wants readers to learn something from Roz Throughout the interview, Brown answered my son's big questions and little questions with the same enthusiasm and attention to detail. They talked about whether Brown had a Roomba (he doesn't) and whether he had adopted anything like Roz did in the story (he did adopt his dog Pam). My son surprised me by asking one of the more profound questions of the interview — what we, as readers, could learn from Roz. Brown hopes it's empathy and interdependence. "Roz learns that she needs help. She can't do it all by herself," he said. "We all need each other; we should just be good to each other because we're going to need each other at some point or another." It's a message that Brown feels is often forgotten. But through the eyes of a robot (or in my case, during this interview, a 7-year-old) trying to understand the world, it becomes fresh again.
Tom's Guide
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
When is 'How to Train Your Dragon' coming to streaming? Here's our best guess
DreamWorks is whisking us away on a fantastical adventure with Hiccup and Toothless in the live-action remake of "How to Train Your Dragon." Fifteen years after the original movie, this new release takes us back to the island of Berk and reintroduces us to its Viking residents, who have been warring with dragons for generations. Amid all the trouble, Hiccup (Mason Thames) befriends the lovable Night Fury dragon, Toothless, and their unlikely bond challenges the very foundations of Viking society. Despite trepidation around this trend of remakes, "How to Train Your Dragon" looks to be off to a flying start. The new release is Certified Fresh on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, and currently holds a near-perfect 99% rating from fans, too. Waiting to watch "How to Train Your Dragon" from the comfort of your own sofa? Well, we do not currently have a confirmed home release date for the new movie. However, if you're waiting to watch the live-action movie at home, or you've already seen it and want to relive the adventure all over again, here's my best guess at the "How to Train Your Dragon" streaming date. At the time of writing, the only way to watch the live-action "How to Train Your Dragon" remake is by heading to your local movie theater, and seeing as it only came to theaters on June 13, that probably won't change for a while yet. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. And, of course, would-be streamers will first have to wait for the movie to do the rounds on premium video-on-demand (PVOD) platforms, first. However, being a Universal release, we can at least presume that when "How to Train Your Dragon" comes to streaming, it'll first be made available to watch on Peacock. At the time of writing, I'd guess that "How to Train Your Dragon" will come to Peacock at some point in October 2025. That's based on how long we've waited for past DreamWorks features to come to NBCUniversal's streamer. For example, we waited 120 days between "The Wild Robot's" theatrical and streaming debut. Similarly, "Dog Man" came to Peacock on Friday, May 30, 120 days after it premiered in theaters on January 31, while "Kung Fu Panda 4" had a slightly quicker turnaround, arriving on Peacock 106 days after hitting theaters in March 2024. Of course, if the "How to Train Your Dragon" live-action remake really takes flight at the box office, there's always the chance it might stay in theaters even longer. And, of course, that above release window is just a guess; nothing's official just yet. As and when we get a confirmed "How To Train Your Dragon" streaming date, we'll be sure to update this article and include it here, so keep checking back. If you're looking for more streaming fun while you wait to watch "How to Train Your Dragon" at home, why not check out our guide to the best family movies on Netflix for more recommendations fit for your next family movie night?
Los Angeles Times
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Peter Brown rebooted ‘The Wild Robot' for the preschool set. His underlying message remains
There are rare moments in the culture when a children's book resonates with everyone. Parents who buy the book for their kids find themselves moved by a story that is not intended for them but somehow speaks to them. Peter Brown's 'The Wild Robot' is one such book. A tender-hearted fable about a robot who washes ashore on a remote island and goes native, the 2016 middle-grade novel from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has spawned two sequels and last year's hit (and Oscar-nominated) adaptation from DreamWorks Animation, with book sales for the series topping 6.5 million worldwide. Brown has now created a picture book titled 'The Wild Robot on the Island,' a gateway for those still too young to read the original work. 'This new book gave me a chance to create these big, colorful, detailed illustrations, while still maintaining the emotional tone of the novel,' says Brown, who is Zooming from the Maine home he shares with his wife and young son. 'I've added some little moments that aren't in the novel to give younger readers an introduction and when they're ready, they can turn to the novel.' The new book's mostly-pictures-with-some-words approach is a return to Brown's earlier work when he was creating charming fables for toddlers about our sometimes fraught, sometimes empathetic attitude toward nature. In 2009's 'The Curious Garden,' a boy encounters a patch of wildflowers and grass sprouting from an abandoned railway and decides to cultivate it into a garden, while 2013's 'Mr. Tiger Goes Wild' finds the title character longing to escape from the conventions of a world where animals no longer run free. This push and pull between wilderness and civilized life, or wildness versus timidity, has preoccupied Brown for the duration of his career, and it is what brought Brown to his robot. 'I was thinking about nature in unlikely places, and the relationships between natural and unnatural things,' says Brown, a New Jersey native who studied at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design. 'And that led to the idea of a robot in a tree.' Brown drew a single picture of a robot standing on the branch of a giant pine tree, then put it aside while he produced other work. But the image wouldn't let him go: 'Every couple of months, I would think about that robot.' Brown began researching robots and robotics, and slowly the story gestated in his mind. 'Themes began to emerge,' says Brown. 'Mainly, the idea of this robot becoming almost more wild and natural than a person could be. That was so fascinating to me that I wanted to let this thing breathe and see where it took me.' Brown knew the involved narrative he had imagined wouldn't work in picture book form; he needed to write his story as a novel, which would be new territory for him. 'When I pitched the idea to my editor, she basically said, 'Pump your brakes,' ' says Brown. 'If I was going to write, I had to include illustrations as well. The publisher thought it was a bit of a risk. They wanted pictures in order to sell it, because of what I had done in the past.' Brown locked himself away out in the wilds of Maine, in a cabin with no Wi-Fi, and got down to it. 'I was nervous, and my editor wasn't sure, either,' says Brown, who cites Kurt Vonnegut as a literary influence. 'I realized there was no other option but for me to do it. And once I got into it, I had a blast.' Like all great fables, Brown's story is deceptively simple. A cargo ship full of robots goes down in the middle of the ocean. Some of these robots, still packed in their boxes, wash ashore on a remote island. A family of otters opens one such box, which turns out to be Roz, Brown's wild robot. As Roz explores this strange new world, she encounters angry bears, a loquacious squirrel and industrious beavers, who regard her as a malevolent force. But the robot's confusion, and the animal's hostility, soon dissolve into a mutual understanding. Roz is the reader's proxy, an innocent who acclimates to the complex rhythms of the natural world. Eventually she is subsumed into this alien universe, a creature of nature who allows birds to roost on her chromium shoulder. 'Roz has been programmed to learn, but her creators, the men who built her, don't expect her to learn in this particular way,' says Brown. 'And so she uses that learning ability to mimic the animals' behavior and learns how to communicate with them. Roz is the embodiment of the value of learning, and part of that is adapting, changing, growing.' The story isn't always a rosy fairy tale. There are predators on the island; animals are eaten for sustenance. Real life, in short, rears its ugly head. 'It gets tricky. Life is complicated, right?', says Brown. 'But thanks to Roz's influence, all the animals discover how they are all a part of this interconnected community.' Roz adopts an abandoned gosling that she names Brightbill, and the man-made machine is now a mother, flooded with compassion for her young charge. Their relationship is the emotional core of Brown's series. At a time when the world is grappling with the increasing presence of robotic technology in everyday life, Brown offers an alternative view: What if we can create robots that are capable of benevolence and empathy? Roz reminds us of our own humanity, our capacity to love and feel deeply. This is why 'The Wild Robot' isn't just a kid's book. It is in fact one of the most insightful novels about our present techno-anxious moment, camouflaged as a children's book. 'Technology is a double-edged sword,' says Brown. 'There's obviously a lot of good that is happening, and will continue to happen, but in the wrong hands it can be dangerous.' He mentions Jonathan Haidt's bestselling book 'The Anxious Generation,' and Haidt's prescriptions for restricting internet use among children, which Brown endorses. 'I don't have a lot of answers, but I just think we need to reinvest in our own humanity,' he says. 'We have to make sure things are going in the right direction.' In subsequent books, the outside world impinges on Roz's idyll. 'The Wild Robot Escapes' finds Roz navigating the dangers of urban life and humans with guns, while a toxic tide in 'The Wild Robot Protects' leaves the animals scrambling for ever more scarce resources. None of this is pedantic, nor is it puffed up with moral outrage. Brown knows children can spot such flaws a mile away. Like all great adventure tales, Brown's 'Wild Robot' stories embrace the wild world in all of its splendor, without ever flinching away from it. 'In the books, I just wanted to acknowledge that the world is complicated, and that people we think are bad aren't necessarily so,' says Brown, who is currently writing the fourth novel in the 'Wild Robot' series. 'Behind every bad action is a really complicated story, and I think kids can handle that. They want to be told the truth about things, they want to grapple with the tough parts of life.'
