Hollywood reboots have become so commonplace, it’s hard to keep up with who’s remaking what. The latest victim? Suddenly 30.

The 2004 hit starring Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo is basically perfect. So, why touch it? Garner has signed on as Executive Producer for the remake; news which may come as comfort to some, and further perturb others.

When it comes to reboots, I couldn’t help but wonder: Are we all out of original ideas? Is it so delusional to want a new rom-com?

I want to hear from you, what do you think?

“Well, I mean, listen. We are just, we are like… we are so… As women today,”
Pussycat Dolls lead singer Nicole Scherzinger froze on the U.S. Today Show when asked about the decision to tour with just three of its six members. Scherzinger, Kimberly Wyatt and Ashley Roberts will perform 53 shows across Europe and North America from June. Original Pussycat Dolls Carmit Bachar, Melody Thornton, and Jessica Sutta are not involved in the comeback tour, amid rumours a feud has divided the girl group.

226,000.
The number of viewers who tuned in to watch SNL UK’s debut on British channel Sky One. The figure is based on the show’s live 10pm broadcast, with viewership expected to rise when catch-up streaming data is released. The show’s premiere, hosted by Tina Fey and featuring Wet Leg as the musical guest, drew a 3.2% share of the TV audience at the time, which is considered a solid result.

Megan Thee Stallion has made her Broadway debut in Moulin Rouge! The Musical in New York. The rapper will perform the role of Zidler until 17 May.

American broadcaster ABC has cancelled its new season of The Bachelorette after leaked footage of its leading lady, Taylor Frankie Paul, went viral.

Paul, an established reality star from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, was arrested for domestic violence in 2023. At the time, the 31-year-old pled guilty to aggravated assault. The incident was public knowledge, and formed the basis of the Secret Lives debut episode in 2024.

However, previously unseen video from the night of the assault was released online last week. The clip appears to show Paul attacking her partner with a chair, in front of her daughter.

A network spokesperson said “in light” of the new footage, ABC has decided “not move forward with the new season of The Bachelorette at this time”.

Here’s the latest.

Taylor Frankie Paul rose to fame on TikTok, where she became the face of a viral group of Mormon women known as ‘MomTok’. Paul made global headlines in 2022 when she revealed a “soft-swinging” sex scandal involving the group.

Her celebrity status elevated further as a central cast member on the hit reality series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (SLOMW). Paul has spoken openly on the show about a 2023 domestic violence incident involving her then-partner Dakota Mortensen.

Now in its fourth season, SLOMW has amassed millions of viewers worldwide across Hulu and Disney+.

In September last year, Paul revealed she’d been cast as the Bachelorette for the show’s upcoming 22nd season.

Unlike the (now-cancelled) Australian version of the show, this marked the first time The Bachelorette U.S. had cast a star with no previous links to The Bachelor franchise as a past contestant.

The announcement divided fans, with many suggesting the controversial casting decision was motivated by consecutive years of declining ratings.

Filming began in October and production wrapped in December.

Season 22 of The Bachelorette was due to premiere on Sunday, but the show was pulled at the last minute, after vision relating to Paul’s assault charge was leaked online.

The vision, published by TMZ, shows an altercation between Paul and Mortensen. Paul appears to have her partner in a headlock, before throwing metal chairs at him in front of her daughter, who was five at the time.

According to court documents, Mortensen told police one of the chairs struck the child, leaving her with swelling on her head. Paul was charged with domestic violence in the presence of a child, but the offence was dropped after she completed a parenting course.

Paul is also subject to an ongoing “domestic assault investigation” following a separate alleged incident in February.

Paul was on probation over the incident when ABC cast the reality-star for The Bachelorette last year. But, the network’s parent company Disney Entertainment Television said they “have made the decision to not move forward… at this time,” citing the new footage.

“Our focus is on supporting the family,” Disney said.

In a statement to People, a spokesperson for Paul said she has been “silent out of fear of further abuse, retaliation and public shaming,” but was “currently exploring all of her options, seeking support, and preparing to own and share her story.”

After years of “extensive mental and physical abuse as well as threats of retaliation,” the statement said, “Taylor is finally gaining the strength to face her accuser and taking steps to ensure that she and her children are protected from any further harm.”

It is not yet clear if the show will air at a future date.

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A TikTok account that didn't exist two weeks ago has quickly amassed 3.3 million followers. Its content? Animated anthropomorphic fruit acting out soap opera storylines.

Think 60-second clips of love triangles, cheating scandals and paternity battles acted out by absurdist fruits and vegetables.

As TDA’s Partnerships Manager Sera Cadigan put it earlier this week: “Is anyone else's Instagram reels filled with AI fruit drama? where did this come from?!?!?!”

Great question. Let’s find out.

In the last month, short AI-generated videos featuring personified fruit characters have taken over TikTok. No idea what I’m talking about? Think of the dramatic storylines you'd expect from reality TV shows like Married at First Sight, and then imagine them playing out between animated strawberries, oranges and bananas with human faces. Totally normal.

The trend took off with a viral TikTok of a strawberry who had cheated on her strawberry husband with an eggplant. That video alone has surpassed 26 million views. The format quickly spawned dozens of copycat accounts, with one, ai.cinema021, growing to over 3 million followers in less than two weeks by posting an AI Fruit series spoofing Love Island.

By this week, the videos had migrated from TikTok to X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, flooding many users' feeds, regardless of whether they had sought them out.

The videos and their characters are absurd. That, according to experts, is precisely the point.

Bond University Associate Professor of Creative Media, Dr James Birt, says the format is engineered to hijack the same psychological responses that made reality TV a ratings juggernaut in the first place.

"Even though it's synthetic and it's generative, it still has those core human issues of conflict, attraction, rejection, and it's highly amplified," Dr Birt told TDA.

"Our brains are telling us this is something really interesting to watch. It's hitting endorphins, it's hitting the feel-good chemistry in our brains."

He describes the phenomenon through the lens of "affordance theory" — the idea that audiences engage most readily with formats they already understand. By mimicking the structure of shows like Love Island, the videos tap directly into years of audience conditioning.

"What they're doing is relying on our understanding of these types of shows, then using new AI production mechanics to create them far more quickly at a far reduced cost,” Dr Birt said.

The videos are produced using a new generation of AI tools, including platforms like Google Veo 3, Runway, and PixVerse. These tools allow creators to generate animated characters with realistic expressions, movements, and voices from simple text prompts.

What once required a full production studio can now be done by a single person with a smartphone and a free trial account.

Dr Birt says the tools themselves have likely been trained on vast libraries of existing film and television content, which is part of why the videos feel so familiar.

"Reality TV in itself is algorithmic," he said. "There's a lot of neuroscience, behavioural science, cognitive science behind how people react to situations and the AI is just following exactly the same formula.”

Dr Birt says Fruit Love Island is an early indicator of a much broader shift in how entertainment content is produced and distributed.

"This is the worst it's ever going to get," he said. "The technology is in its early stages and it's only going to improve from this point."

The same tools that created warring fruit characters today could, in the near future, generate entirely original AI human characters or digital replicas of real ones.

Dr Birt notes that platforms like TikTok have little commercial incentive to crack down on AI slop videos like this.

"It's not even really in the platform's interest to worry so much about the copyright side of things because it keeps people's attention on those platforms," he said.

For now, the internet is locked in on its fruit drama, with plenty of open questions. Will Strawberrina and her husband work it out? Will Cheritta get her revenge? Where is Bananito?

Reporting by Elliot Lawry.