At WonderCon a few days ago, I landed an extended video interview with Danny McBride.  While he was in attendance to help promote Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s awesome-looking end of the world comedy, This Is the End (click here for the red band trailer and our panel recap), we also talked about Eastbound & Down season 4 (which starts filming next month!), Larry David‘s Clear History, and a lot more.

For those not familiar with This is the End, the R rated comedy stars everyone in Hollywood (Rogen, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Jason Segel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, Emma Watson, Paul Rudd, Jay Baruchel, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart, Martin Starr and more) and it looks to be one of the better films this summer.  Hit the jump for what McBride had to say about all of his projects and circle June 14, 2013 on your calendar (the release date of This is the End).

Director Paul Weitz (About a Boy) comedy-drama Admission opens this weekend.  The film stars Tina Fey as an admissions officer at Princeton University whose life is thrown for a curve when she runs into an old friend (Paul Rudd) while visiting an experimental high school in New Hampshire.  Admission also stars Lily Tomlin, Michael Sheen, Wallace Shawn, Nat Wolff, and Gloria Reuben.  For more on the film, here’s the trailer and six clips.

The other day I got to speak with Tomlin here in Los Angeles.  We talked about how she got involved in the project, her thoughts on the script and her character, how much improv they did, if she ever tried to make Tina Fey laugh on camera, and her great work last season on HBO’s Eastbound & Down.  Hit the jump to watch.

Eastbound and Down is a ridiculously entertaining show that has had a core issue since Season 2, which is that the arc of Danny McBride’s Kenny Powers is virtually the same for every season.  He’s an arrogant guy who learns a lesson on how to be a slightly better person every time, but in a way that suggests for every two steps forward there’s one back.  He’s still an ignorant redneck jerk, but maybe a little better.  Season Three looked to close out the series, and that gives it a nice boost over Season Two, which was also good, but suffered more in direct comparison to the first season.  Now it seems that creators McBride, Jody Hill and David Gordon Green are going back to this well for a fourth season.  But they had a good ending, with Season Three, and that makes us a little worried about more.  Our review of Season Three of Eastbound and Down on Blu-ray follows after the jump.

While at the HBO portion of the TCA Press Tour, President of Programming Michael Lombardo and co-President Richard Plepler took some time to talk about new and returning programming.  During the interview, they spoke about how long Game of Thrones and True Blood could run for, the status of the Entourage movie, their movie deal with Larry David and the affect that could have on future seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, their thoughts on the first season of The Newsroom, the possibility of a fourth season for Treme, and what viewers can expect from the Woody Harrelson/Matthew McConaughey series True Detective.  Check out what they had to say after the jump.

Last Sunday, the third and final season of Eastbound and Down premiered with one of the series’ best episodes to date.  They’ve got the comedy of Kenny Powers (Danny McBride) down to a science, and every one of his lines absolutely kills.  A couple years ago, K-Swiss made the bold and brilliant decision to hire Kenny as their pitchman/MFCEO (Motherfuckin’ Chief Executive Officer).  Now he’s back, parodying Steve Jobs (tooo soooon!), and selling K-Swiss’ latest shoe, Blades.  The commercial is five-minutes long and only ten seconds are devoted to talking about the design of the shoe.  Everything else is Kenny Powers being awesome and hilarious.

Hit the jump to check out the commercial, which features a conversation with Bruce Lee, green chicks on the moon, and a blood-drenched animated sequence.  Eastbound and Down airs at 10pm EST on HBO.

While the new season of HBO’s Eastbound & Down started this past Sunday, NASCAR’s Nationwide Series is set to kick-off at Daytona this Saturday. If you’re asking me what Kenny Powers (Danny McBride) and NASCAR have to do with each other, well then you haven’t been paying attention. HBO and Eastbound & Down are sponsoring the #50 car, driven by T.J. Bell for MAKE Motorsports.

The #50 Eastbound & Down/Make Motorsports Chevrolet features elements of Kenny Powers’ prized jet ski, The Panty Dropper, with a purple and leopard-print scheme, as well as the likeness of the “legend” himself, who also hails from Shelby, N.C.

Hit the jump to check out the images.

“Look at y’all jumping around like a bunch of child molesters at Chuck E. Cheese.” Damn it’s good to have Kenny Powers back, or at least know that his return to HBO for the third (and maybe final) season of Eastbound & Down is coming on February 19th, less than a month away. Now a new trailer straight from HBO promises a great duo between Danny McBride and Jason Sudeikis as Powers’ new best friend and fellow ball player and we catch a quick glimpse of the return of Will Ferrell, Steve Little, and John Hawkes too. The trailer really does speak for itself so you can check it out after the jump.

With the midseason premieres of several new and returning series just around the corner on network television, cable has plenty of new stuff in store as well. Deadline reports HBO has just brought their midseason premiere schedule to the table with the return of the third (and possible final) season of Danny McBride in Eastbound & Down returning on February 19th at 10/9c. Then following immediately after on the same night at 10:30/9:30c Ricky Gervais brings yet another one of his British successes to the cable network with Life’s Too Short. But before all that, the new drama series Luck, starring Dustin Hoffman, will debut on January 29th. However, the series will actually have a sneak preview after the season finale of Boardwalk Empire on December 11th as well. After the jump you can check out the trailers for all three series.

Though Kenny Powers won’t be coming back until January 2012, that doesn’t mean HBO doesn’t want you to miss out on the majesty of such an iconic athlete. A short teaser for the third season of Eastbound & Down has just been released with one hell of an airbrushed tanktop featuring the shining face and signature curls for Kenny Powers on one lucky lady. It sounds like this will be the last season for the hilarious and vulgar comedy series, so savor the flavor of anticipation while you can and check out the new teaser trailer after the jump.

One of the great things about Danny McBride is how he creates different iterations of his comic persona. McBride usually plays one form of white trash or another but The Foot Fist Way’s Fred Simmons is different than Kenny Powers, and way different than the characters in Your Highness and The Pineapple Express. All are delusional egotistical assholes, but each offer different dilemmas and delights. Kenny Powers – the main character of Eastbound and Down – was a superstar and he’s still got the swagger long after he lost his arm and his money, and even when he’s hiding out in Mexico. It’s a different sort of delusion than his other characters: Kenny’s someone desperately clinging to the time when they were still hot shit, while the majority of his other characters never hit those heights, and it makes all of the difference in the world. Our review of the season one and season two Blu-rays of Eastbound and Down follow after the jump.

Coming to theaters this weekend is Ruben Fleischer’s 30 Minutes or Less. The film, which reunites Fleischer with his Zombieland star Jesse Eisenberg, tells the story of a pizza delivery boy (Eisenberg) who is strapped to a bomb and forced to rob a bank as part of a harebrained scheme hatched by two hapless criminals (Danny McBride and Nick Swardson) looking to inherent a fortune. Along the way, Eisenberg enlists his best friend, (Aziz Ansari) to help with the heist.

Recently, I got on the phone to talk to McBride about the film.  Unlike his boarish characters on screen, McBride comes off as a thoughtful and well-spoken man who is far more dedicated to creating real characters than many of his detractors would like to admit.  During our interview we discussed how he has refined his on-screen persona, his admiration of Nick Swardson, acting like a monkey on screen, the future of Eastbound and Down as well as several other HBO projects he has in the offing, how he would rob a bank and much more.  Hit the jump for the interview:

We just learned about the addition of Jason Sudeikis in a new recurring role on HBO’s hilarious comedy series Eastbound & Down. We now know that some familiar faces will return for the third and possibly final season later this year as well. THR reports that Will Ferrell and Matthew McConaughey will both reprise their respective roles in the series from the first and second season. Ferrell appeared in two episodes as cocky BMW dealership owner Ashley Schaeffer while McConaughey showed up in the second season as openly gay Texas baseball scout Roy McDaniel. The series starts shooting this summer and, if it’s really going to be the final season, I’m sure it’ll go out with the type of bang only Kenny Powers can deliver.

For details on Ted Danson replacing Laurence Fishburne on CSI, hit the jump.

The quick yet effective official trailer for the second season of HBO’s Eastbound and Down has landed online.  If you’re a fan of the series then you probably already know that this season will see Danny McBride’s Kenny Powers take his talents south-of-the-border to Mexico where he is pitching for a team owned by Michael Pena (Observe & Report).  Moreover, Powers will also enjoy a new love interest this season in the form of the lovely Ana de la Reguera (Nacho Libre).  While the first season of the show didn’t exactly rake in the viewers (it’s premiere only garnered about 671,000 viewers), HBO was quick to renew the series for a second season.  Here’s to hoping more people enjoy this consistently funny show the second time around.

To take a gander at the trailer, which features the “biggest comeback celebration any y’all have ever seen,” hit the jump.  Season two of Eastbound and Down premieres on HBO Sunday, September 26th at 10:30 ET.

We’ve already seen a teaser trailer for the forthcoming second season of the raunchy, vulgar and hilarious HBO comedy series Eastbound and Down starring Danny McBride as blowhard, jerk-off, has-been pitcher Kenny Powers. Reminiscent of the original teaser for The Dark Knight, all we heard was McBride’s dulcet tones over a jolly roger image with baseball bats crossing a skull in place of bones. Just after our own Andre Dellamorte was welcomed into The K-Swiss Tubes Brotherhood of Elite Badassness, a new short TV spot gives us our first look at Kenny Powers cruising through Mexico on a motor scooter like the bad-ass we all know and love.

See the promo and details on the second season after the jump.

Collider was asked “Would you like to do a promotional activity for K-Swiss and Eastbound and Down?” The immediate answer was “fuck yes we do!” The catch: having no idea what the promotional event would be. All Collider was told was that someone had to be at around at a designated time for a special delivery. It was an inviting but foreboding commitment.

Recently, Funny or Die unleashed a clip of Kenny Powers (played by the lovely and talented Danny McBride) talking to K-Swiss about how his promotional campaign should go, and it involved murder and naked women. This – if you’ve followed the brilliant HBO series – is par for the course with Powers. What was unknown at the time was that K-Swiss was into the idea of working with Kenny Powers, and K-Swiss has launched their new Tubes line with Danny McBride’s Powers as their spokesman. None of this answered our question: What the fuck is going to show up? The answer to that is answered after the jump.

UPDATED with message from Kenny Powers!