New this week: Jeremy Renner, Metallica and 'Cocaine Bear'
This week’s new entertainment releases include albums from Metallica and Natalie Merchant, Jeremy Renner's four-part series “Rennervations” debuts on Disney+ only a few months after the actor was badly injured in a snowplow accident and “Cocaine Bear” lumbers onto Peacock.
'Magic School Bus' author Joanna Cole dies at age 75
Cole, whose "Magic School Bus" books transported millions of young people on extraordinary and educational adventures, has died at age 75. (Annabelle Helms/Scholastic via AP)NEW YORK Author Joanna Cole, whose Magic School Bus books transported millions of young people on extraordinary and educational adventures, has died at age 75. The idea for "The Magic School Bus" came in the mid-1980s. And with The Magic School Bus it was how to explain it so that it is accurate and in a form that a kid can understand and use. She had a rare sense of what could be humorous.Cole and Degen recently completed The Magic School Bus Explores Human Evolution, scheduled to come out next spring.
Elizabeth Banks to drive 'Magic School Bus' onto big screens
NEW YORK The Magic School Bus has traveled everywhere from Pluto to inside the human body. Scholastic Entertainment said Thursday that it will make a feature-length, live-action hybrid film based on the animated TV show that ran from 1994 to 1997. Elizabeth Banks will play the manic science teacher Ms. Frizzle. The Magic School Bus, adapted from a series of books written by Joanna Cole and illustrated by Bruce Degen, centers on a group of school children who board a yellow school bus for field trips to such unlikely places as outer space or the human digestive system. Lilly Tomlin supplied the voice for Ms. Frizzle in the original cartoon series and Kate McKinnon voiced her sister in a recent Netflix reboot, The Magic School Bus Rides Again.The film version will be led by Scholastic Entertainment, Brownstone Productions, Marc Platt Productions and Universal Pictures.