EXCLUSIVE: Sara Gilbert is set to play an “important journalist” opposite Skyler Gisondo’s Jimmy Olsen and Jimmy Tatro’s titular ape in The People v. Gorilla Grodd, HBO Max’s upcoming Superman spinoff series, we hear.

In the half-hour comedy series, a superintelligent ape is convicted of murdering his father, the King of Gorilla City. In an eight-part “true” crime docuseries, the Daily Planet’s Jimmy Olsen reopens the case, investigating whether Gorilla Grodd was wrongly convicted in one of Metropolis’ most famous murder trials.

Glibert joins a cast that includes several Superman actors reprising their roles — Beck Bennett as Steve Lombard, Mikaela Hoover as Cat Grant, and Wendell Pierce as Perry White — as well as new cast additions Mary Holland, Eduardo Franco, Arian Moayed, Dan Perrault, Andrew Leeds, and Tim Baltz.

It’s under wraps as far as which notable journalist in the James Gunn and Peter Safran DC-verse Gilbert will portray. It’s certainly not Lois Lane, as that character is currently played by Emmy winner Rachel Brosnahan, and it’s not Cat Grant. Other notable journos in the DC-verse include Lana Lang played by Annette O’Toole in the feature Superman III; Vesper Fairchild, voiced by Rachel Maddow in the CW Batwoman series, and Gotham’s Vicki Vale played by Kim Basinger in the original 1989 Tim Burton Batman movie.

Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault, creators of the 2017 Netflix true-crime satire series American Vandal, serve as showrunners, writers, and EPs, with Yacenda set to direct all eight episodes. DC Studios’ Co-Chairmen & Co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran also serve as EPs. The People v. Gorilla Grodd is from DC Studios in association with Warner Bros. Television.

Gilbert earned two Emmy noms playing Darlene Conner on the hit ABC series Roseanne, a role she reprised on the series revival The Conners. She serves as EP alongside Michael Showalter on the Sony TV/Amazon series The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh. Gilbert recently wrapped production on the Netflix live-action series Scooby-Doo: Origins opposite McKenna Grace, André 3000, and Paul Walter Hauser. Her list of TV credits also includes The Big Bang Theory, The Comeback, Bad Teacher, Will & Grace and more. Feature credits include 80 for Brady, High Fidelity, Riding in Cars With Boys and Poison Ivy which landed Gilbert a supporting actress Independent Spirit Award nomination. She’s repped by Gersh and Entertainment 360.

An Iowa judge has tossed out Donald Trump‘s lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer, concluding that the president and his allies “stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability.”

Trump has sued over Selzer’s pre-election 2024 poll that showed Kamala Harris ahead by three points. As it turned out, Trump won Iowa by more than 13 points. Trump filed suit under a state consumer fraud law, and Rep. Marianne Miller-Meeks (R-IA) later joined his case as another defendant, as did former State Sen. Bradley Zaun.

Iowa District Court Judge Scott Beattie wrote in his opinion, issued on Wednesday, “Election polling is speech protected by the First Amendment, both because it involves a conversation between a pollster and a voter and because the poll itself is speech. Reporting such a poll during a presidential and congressional election year is speech about a matter of public concern, occupying the summit of the pyramid of First Amendment values. The First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application to speech uttered during a campaign for political office.”

Trump claimed that because of the poll, his campaign devoted more resources to the state. But the judge rejected the notion that the poll was commercial speech.

The judge wrote that the lawsuit “identifies no act any Plaintiff took because of a poll. Roughly seventy-two hours separated the first publication from the close of the election. Within that period, according to reporting the Petition relies upon, President Trump publicly rejected the poll as ‘a fake poll’ conducted by ‘a Trump hater’ who had ‘oversampled, by a lot, Democrats.’ A party who publicly called the poll false did not rely on it, whether or not it was fabricated.”

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team did not immediately return a request for comment.

Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, wjp led Selzer’s defense, said in a statement, “We’re pleased that the court recognized what we’ve said all along: This lawsuit was laughable from the beginning and never should have been brought. The First Amendment does not allow anyone in government, least of all the president, to punish people under the banner of ‘fake news.’”

Selzer said in a statement, “Polling is a social science, not clairvoyance, and no responsible pollster can guarantee an election outcome. What we can guarantee is that we will follow the data wherever it leads, even when the results are uncomfortable or unexpected.” She added that she was grateful that the judge’s ruling “recognizes these principles and reaffirms the fundamental freedom to pursue and publish the truth without political interference.”

The 2026 Zurich Film Festival is officially underway with a Golden Eye Award bestowed upon the ever-suave Tom Hiddleston.

The event has opened with the European premiere of Hiddleston’s latest feature, Tenzing, which co-stars Willem Dafoe. It follows the true story of Nepalese-Indian Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (played by Genden Phuntsok), a gifted mountaineer who, together with New Zealand alpinist Edmund Hillary (Hiddleston), became the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. Dafoe plays Colonel John Hunt, the leader of the British expedition team. Thinley Lhamo plays Tenzing’s wife Dawa, and Caitríona Balfe co-stars as expedition secretary Jill Henderson.

Both Dafoe and director-writer Jennifer Peedom joined Hiddleston for the screening. The British star was photographed collecting the honor in the Swiss city on Thursday night, dressed — as always — pretty impeccably. He was recognized for his iconic role as Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as standout performances in the likes of The Night Manager, War Horse and Midnight in Paris, and an impressive stage career too.

Speaking at a sit-down session ahead of the ceremony, Hiddleston reflected on the “larger than life” experience of being a part of the MCU. “The difference [with Marvel] was in the scale of the resources, the size of the crews, the size of the sets. It was so larger than life,” he said about joining one of the most successful franchises in film history. He described his early memories of playing the character in 2011’s Thor as “a very vivid, happy, immediate, fast friendship with Chris Hemsworth [playing Thor] that had both of us feeling like we were the two luckiest guys in the world.”

He continued about the friendship with his on-screen brother: “We were immediately bonded. It was a shared excitement about being invited to make a film like this. Marvel Studios had made one film at that time — which was Iron Man, which we both loved — and we were being directed by Kenneth Branagh, Anthony Hopkins was playing our father, Rene Russo was playing our mother, and we had extraordinary resources. We had an amazing, brilliant creative stunt department where we would train for sequences of dizzying choreography. We both loved movement and these opportunities.”

Hiddleston remained professionally tight-lipped about the hotly anticipated Avengers: Doomsday, only uttering the unrevealing words: “It is coming.”

On making Apple’s Everest drama Tenzing, Hiddleston admitted that he has been “compelled” by the globe’s tallest mountain for as long as he can remember. “What moved me so much about Jen’s screenplay and the premise and the promise of her film, which she sent to me three years ago with a beautiful letter, was that it was to put Tenzing Norgay at the center of his own story, to reframe that narrative from a different perspective and bring him into the foreground.”

Hiddleston said that he loved how the film reveals a spiritual connection between Norgay and the mountain: “Not a mountain to be conquered,” he said, “but a goddess to be revered, a mother into whose lap he might climb. I think Hillary was really open to that depth of feeling,” said the star. “They did this extraordinary thing. […] They achieved the impossible, like stepping on the moon. After that, their lives were changed forever; summiting Everest became possible, and thousands and thousands of people have done it since.”

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Angie Han wrote in her review of Tenzing out of Telluride: “It’s a subtle but lovely reframing of Norgay and Hillary’s historic climb, from an act of conquest to one of pure, spiritual love. But it’s not quite enough to free Tenzing as a whole from the usual sturdy-but-staid biopic formula. With its good-hearted heroes and pretty (but rarely breathtaking) landscapes, the Apple release is plenty likable, but also plenty forgettable.

The 22nd Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4, and will also honor John Turturro and Julianne Moore with their respective Golden Eye and Golden Icon awards.

The fest’s feature film competition jury will be presided over by James Bond director Cary Joji Fukunaga, while filmmaker Sine Plambech will head up the documentary competition jury. Among the starry galas are Club Kid, Bunker, Ink, I Play Rocky and Possible Love.