Keith Urban's Hitting 'The Road,' Your Weekend Guide For The 97th Oscars, And 'OMITB' Scoring Gold At The SAG Awards

Happy Friday y’all!

In this week’s TFL, we’re covering:

• Keith Urban’s new music competition series on CBS

• Your guide for this weekend’s Oscars

• A closer look at Only Murders In The Building’s surprise wins at Sunday’s SAG Awards

• A banging new “Good Noise” playlist featuring 30 new songs you need to hear from this week

• A round-up of this week’s new trailer drops

• Plenty of tidbits across the entertainment industry going on and in the works!

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Thank you for being here - now let’s get into it!

—Stephen Frost

🎵 Keith Urban Tapped To Headline New Music Competition Series “The Road” On CBS

Country superstar Keith Urban is taking the term “going on the road” to another level beyond playing arenas and stadiums across the world. The Blue Ain’t Your Color singer has been tapped to headline a new music competition series on CBS called The Road.

Fill me in: unlike traditional singing shows like The Voice and American Idol, The Road (from executive producers Blake Shelton and Taylor Sheridan) takes a unique approach to capturing the experience of going on tour. It’s described as “a backstage pass into the gritty and unforgiving life of a touring musician. With exclusive access to the behind-the-scenes workings of the music industry, viewers will see what happens when some of the best up-and-coming performers pile into a tour bus and tackle a grueling schedule in pursuit of their dreams.”

As part of capturing “The Road” experience, Urban will be performing a select run of taped shows in Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee with emerging talent (to be announced) opening up each of the shows. Upon these emerging musicians taking the stage as Urban’s opening acts, the audience will then have the opportunity to influence which musicians will continue on the tour and move to the next city. More information on claiming a ticket for these shows can be found here.

Keith on joining the new series: “I spent a lot of years playing in some real seedy pubs, sometimes just for the bartender – but it’s where I learned so much about what I do,” says Urban. “So, I love the idea of putting artists into a real-world environment, to find out if they have what it takes. Paying your dues sucks, but there are many things that just can’t be taught, like how to put together a set list, whether to extend or cut a song during your performance or how to work the crowd.  For me, touring has always been my first love, and this show is about what happens when you leave the glitzy TV studio. It’s where the rubber meets the road.”

The Road is set to premiere this fall!

🍿 A Weekend Guide For The 97th Academy Awards And Film’s Biggest Night

This weekend marks the official wrap-up of a busy and wide-ranged awards season for movie fans. The Golden Globes, the BAFTA’s, and the SAG Awards among others have finally brought us to this Oscars weekend, where we’ll finally see who will take the crown at Sunday night’s anticipated Academy Awards.

Want to join in on selecting your Oscars picks? Letterboxd made this neat ballot card you can print and fill out ahead of Sunday’s ceremony to watch along with and predict Sunday’s winners (not an ad, we just genuinely love this ballot along with Letterboxd and think you will do, you can download it here).

Everything to know ahead of Sunday’s ceremony:

• The Oscars air Sunday, March 2nd on ABC and will stream live on Hulu at 7 PM ET/6 PM CT.

• Conan O’Brien will make his Oscars hosting debut.

• Nick Offerman will serve as this year’s show announcer.

• Emilia Pérez leads this year’s nominees with 13 followed by The Brutalist and Wicked each tied with 10.

• Doja Cat, Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, LISA of Blackpink, Queen Latifah, and RAYE are performing with a special appearance by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. These are all in place of the traditional best original song performances (which are not happening this year):

  • Erivo and Grande, the stars of Wicked, are rumored to be opening the show with songs from their blockbuster musical.

  • Queen Latifah will be performing a tribute to the late and great Quincy Jones.

  • RAYE and Lisa could likely be performing their new song “Born Again” together.

  • All of these performances will be “celebrating the filmmaking community and some of its legends” per a press release.

• Robert Downey Jr., Harrison Ford, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Poehler, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Bowen Yang, Ben Stiller, and more are lined up to present at this year’s ceremony.

📺 The Hit Show That “Never Wins” Finally Won At Sunday Night’s SAG Awards

This past Sunday night’s Screen Actor’s Guild Awards featured only winners in the building. For some of those winners, they were pleasantly and visibly surprised.

After premiering four consecutive seasons since 2021 and truly cementing itself as a hit series, Only Murders In The Building finally took home gold from one of Hollywood’s favored trade organizations winning Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series and Male Actor in a Comedy Series for Martin Short (his first win, who skipped this year due to contracting COVID from SNL50).

Despite being nominated for 15 Primetime Emmys, 16 Golden Globes, and 9 Actors (SAG) since its premiere, it had never won a peer-voted award until Sunday night’s ceremony. Over the last few years, fellow comedy series mainstays The Bear, Abbott Elementary, and Hacks have been crowned for winning their respective categories in series, actor, and actress.

“We never win, this is so weird,” said one-third of the Arconia murder-solving trio Selena Gomez, who was there to accept the ensemble award without her co-stars Steve Martin and Martin Short present. She joked in her speech, “Marty and Steve aren’t here because… you know, they don’t really care.” Later adding in a follow-up Instagram post, “After 4 seasons we got our first award as a cast!!! Steve, Marty you deserve this more than I do. You guys have shaped the character I play on our show.”

With Only Murders leading the pack for comedy’s TV honors at Sunday’s ceremony, it could foreshadow what’s to come with season five and how the voting members of the Television Academy and the Hollywood Foreign Press will respond when the next Awards season comes around.

That’s it for this week folks. Let me know if you have any feedback or comments on what’d you like to see in this newsletter, feel free to reply to me on this email.

We’ll see you back again next Friday & have a great weekend!

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