Lena Dunham Is Reviving 'Girls' and That's Not the Craziest Pop Culture News This Week

It's only Wednesday, but there's been enough big-time entertainment industry news this week to make our heads spin, from Lena Dunham's Girls revival and Euphoria creator Sam Levinson's HBO departure to trailers releases for upcoming films by two very different directors: Greta Gerwig and Ben Shapiro. Below, I tried to make sense of it all.

Young Thug’s Getting a Trial Documentary

The past few years have seen a handful of rappers walk on high-profile cases that almost certainly spelled life sentence doom. Who can forget A$AP Rocky dramatically leaping over the stands into Rihanna’s arms when the verdict went his way. Lil Durk’s current outlook seems way more promising than it did this time a year ago. Even Diddy got off relatively easy compared to the charges he faced. But no trial in the hip-hop world has been quite as dramatic, full of twists and turns, and populated with a host of colorful characters like the Young Thug YSL trial. The fallout from the two-and-half-year ordeal is still rippling across rap: Thug is trying to find his footing musically after two years in jail, leaks of his prolific not-so-private phone calls from the pen affected everything from Atlanta geopolitics to Kendrick Lamar, and Gunna continues to surge as a formidable solo artist despite the dissolution of his once-fruitful musical relationships with the likes of Thug, Lil Baby, Future, and more. And of course there’s Brian Steel, the beguiling defense attorney who’s now become a sort of Johnnie Cochran to the rap stars following his success with YSL. All of that is to say, this trial is ripe for the documentary treatment—hopefully it lives up.

The Girls are Back in Town

It’s been awhile since we had a notable revival of a truly beloved, once-important property, but Lena Dunham is about to shake shit up with this one. After years of essays, rewatches, and reappraisals by fans arguing that Dunham’s seminal HBO series Girls was actually, despite its lightning rod status, still underrated, Dunham announced plans to return to Greenpoint. The whole gang—Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke and even Andrew Rannells—is set to appear for a five-episode run that’ll start production early next year, a decade after the original's series finale. Last year, Dunham riffed about how the quartet’s lives might have ended up; let’s see if those ideas hold up. This could go full And Just Like That…, or it could be the “Voice of a Generation’s” grand return.

Sam Levinson Parts Ways With HBO

Finally, some good news coming out of the greater Warner Bros studio. He’s your problem now, Amazon—we will be there to watch the fire.

Ben Shapiro’s Death Row Records

Big Ben is moving like Suge Knight over at the Daily Wire. Cancelled in the court of public opinion? Ostracized in all mainstream corners of Hollywood? Accused of, at minimum, weird behavior towards women? Come to Death Row. Earlier this year, Ben and Daily Wire made waves for scooping up Jonathan Majors for a bullshit action film, and this week it was announced that their latest movie will put James Franco back in front of the camera for the first time since the industry cast him out with Confession, which also features the similarly outcast Emile Hirsch, as well as Rob Lowe (long rumored to share Ben’s politics), Dean Norris, Nick Nolte and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The logline reads—just kidding, I know (hope?) none of you actually care.

Greta Gerwig’s First Narnia Trailer

I’ll be honest: sometimes I roll my eyes when Film Twitter clutches its pearls about a beloved director committing their talents to franchise fare. As much as we need original stories and careers like post-Batman Nolan or Jordan Peele, we unfortunately live in a franchise world, made occasionally bearable when artists with real flair intervene. But still, I scratched my head a little at the news that Greta Gerwig was cashing her Barbie blank check on a Narnia adaptation with Netflix. Maybe that’s because that book series was never really my bag—like any other child born in the 90s, I read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and watched the accompanying animated movie, but that’s as far as I go with C.S. Lewis. Regardless, all eyes have been on Gerwig to see how she’ll acquit herself here, especially after its release was delayed from Christmas 2026 to next spring. Finally, we have a trailer, which I checked out of around the two-minute mark. Sorry, this just isn’t my bag. But as with any new offering from a great auteur, I will be there at the first available screening, ready and willing to be proven wrong.

Rest in Peace, RJ Mitte

On Monday, news broke that RJ Mitte, the 34-year-old actor best known for playing Walter White’s son Walt Jr. on Breaking Bad, had tragically passed away. By the time Bryan Cranston posted a heartbreaking note on Instagram later that evening, it became clear that Mitte had taken his own life. The outpouring from his other castmates has been unbearably sad and heavy. Mitte was a prolific disability rights activist, having broken barriers and stigmas for portraying a character with cerebral palsy, with which Mitte himself struggled in real-life.

Druski Is Hosting Saturday Night Live

I’ve seen people pushing back on the idea that this is exciting since it marks the first digital creator to host this storied and notably traditional institution, citing past hosts such as Quinta Brunson and Issa Rae. With absolutely no disrespect to those ladies and their incredible achievements, it doesn’t take away from their legacy to note that they got the gig after having created huge, groundbreaking television series. Sure, Druski has a big supporting role in an Emma Stone rom-com dropping next year, but at press time he’s still more or less The Skit Guy. This is a big deal—and if Lorne Michaels gives Druski the amount of creative control Druski told me he demanded from the BET Awards, we should be in for the rare SNL episode that’s actually top-to-bottom funny.