Same network, same executive producers, same research budget, same Emmy category, same ten-episode shape. One of them is the show people rewatch every year, and the reason is a structural call made before a single frame was shot.

The call was this: Band of Brothers follows one unit. Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne — from jump training at Camp Toccoa in 1942 to the Eagle's Nest in 1945. Every episode hands the point of view to a different man in that same company, which means the faces never reset. When somebody dies in episode 6, you have been watching him stand in formation since episode 1. The Pacific threw that out and followed three Marines in three different units, adapted from three different memoirs, who almost never share a scene.

The three-man split costs the audience its footing

The Pacific is built from Robert Leckie's Helmet for My Pillow, Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed, and Chuck Tatum's Red Blood, Black Sand, with John Basilone as the third thread. James Badge Dale, Joseph Mazzello, and Jon Seda are all excellent. They are also, functionally, in three separate shows that cut between each other.

The practical effect is that every time the series builds momentum with one man, it leaves him for six weeks of screen time. Basilone goes home to sell war bonds. Leckie goes to a hospital on Banika. Sledge is still in Mobile, Alabama, not yet enlisted, while the other two are already fighting. Critics at the time called it disjointed, and the word stuck.

"The road to Berlin was a very linear undertaking, starting with Normandy and ending on Hitler's doorstep," Narrative First wrote in its structural breakdown of the two series. The Pacific had no equivalent line to walk.

Band of Brothers has Dick Winters as a fixed reference point across all ten hours even when he isn't the focus. The Pacific has no equivalent. Sledge comes closest, and he arrives late.

The second thing HBO dropped: the veterans

The 2001 series opens every episode with the real Easy Company men on camera, talking. They are not identified. You watch ten hours of testimony from old men in cardigans without knowing which of the characters you've been following each one grew into, and the names only appear in the finale.

Read more: Black Sheep Squadron: what happened to Gutterman? If you're rewatching and he's just gone, you didn't miss an episode

The Pacific replaced that device with historical introductions narrated by Tom Hanks — context about the campaign, not faces from it. It's informative. It is also the difference between a documentary frame and a briefing.

The numbers, for the record

• Budget — Band of Brothers cost $125 million, roughly $12.5 million per episode. The Pacific cost $217 million, the most expensive miniseries made at that point.
• Broadcast — Band of Brothers ran September 9 to November 4, 2001. The Pacific ran March 14 to May 16, 2010.
• Ratings — the 2001 premiere drew close to 10 million viewers; the finale drew 5.1 million after HBO pulled its marketing following September 11. The Pacific opened at 3.08 million and finished at 1.81 million.
• Critics — 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and 87 on Metacritic for Band of Brothers; 89% on Rotten Tomatoes for The Pacific.
• Awards — seven Emmys plus a Golden Globe for the first; Outstanding Miniseries for the second.

What The Pacific got right anyway

It is the more honest show about what the fighting did to the men doing it. Sledge's arc through Peleliu and Okinawa is more psychologically detailed than anything in the European series, and the homecoming material in the final episode is better written than the equivalent in 2001. Where Band of Brothers ends with a unit that survived together, The Pacific ends with three men who were never a unit at all and cannot explain themselves to anyone at home.

That ending is truer to the Pacific campaign. It is also why the series is admired more than it is rewatched.

For the record: both were produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman, and both used surviving veterans as consultants. The 2010 series simply asked its audience to do the work of holding three unrelated men in mind for ten hours, and most of that audience declined.

Earlier we wrote: House of the Dragon: Green vs Black, who wins? If you're rooting for a queen or a king, you've already lost

The voice that made Lou-Lou believe in his label wasn't studio trickery — Starz hired an actual working musician and let her sing every note herself.

With Raising Kanan closing out its final season on Starz, rewatchers keep circling back to one of the show's tenderest, cruelest storylines — Lou-Lou Thomas and Zisa, the singer he signed, believed in, and lost — and to one question: who is that, and is she really singing?

The answer to both: Paulina Singer, and yes, every note.

An actual musician, not a lip-syncing actress

The surname is not a bit — Singer is a working recording artist, producer, and songwriter alongside her screen career. Born in Exeter, New Hampshire, to an African American father and a mother of Ukrainian heritage, she trained in improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade at 19, then stacked a decade of screen credits before Dodge... before Queens came calling:

• TV: Jessie Tyler on Freeform's Dead of Summer, the recurring role of Detective Josie Mac on Gotham, plus Person of Interest, The Affair, and Blue Bloods.
• Film: The Intern opposite Robert De Niro, and The Wilde Wedding with Glenn Close and John Malkovich.
• Music: her own releases as an independent artist — she records and produces under her own name (and the handle Zuzusilk), including the 2024 single "LUCKY GIRL (Everything Works Out For Me)" with Cobrayama.

Read more: Who Killed Krystal in Raising Kanan? The Reveal Comes in the Very First Minute of One Episode

The proof of the no-dubbing claim is right on the official record: when Lionsgate Records put out the Raising Kanan season 2 soundtrack EP, four of its five tracks — "Bruised (Remix)," "You & I," "Play a Little Game," and "No One Ever" — were credited to Paulina Singer performing as Zisa. The only track she didn't carry was the original "Bruised," sung by castmate Hailey Kilgore, whose remix Zisa records in the story.

Casting directors usually solve a "character who can sing" problem with a soundalike in a booth. Raising Kanan solved it by hiring a musician who happens to act — which is why Zisa's studio scenes feel like documentary footage.

Why the character still stings

Zisa arrived in season two as the raw talent who made Lou-Lou's label dreams feel legitimate — his discovery, his artist, his proof he could be more than a drug operation's money man. Then the show did what Power shows do: Zisa was murdered by Sal Boselli's mobsters, and the two men who killed her were later shot in the head in Lou-Lou's retaliation — vengeance that avenged her and hollowed him out in the same stroke. The final season premiered June 12, 2026, and Lou-Lou's endgame still carries the shape of that loss.

Singer, meanwhile, kept doing what her character never got to: releasing music, under her own name, on her own terms.

Earlier we wrote: What Is Power Book III: Raising Kanan About? Power's Coldest Villain Gets a 1990s Origin Story

Television's longest-running Western wrote out its original second lead with the boldest strategy available: total silence — until one throwaway line, a decade late.

When Dennis Weaver left Gunsmoke in 1964, the show faced a problem every long-runner eventually hits: how do you explain away a character the audience has loved for nine years? Gunsmoke's answer was radical. It explained nothing.

One week he's there, the next he's not

Chester Goode's final episode is season nine's "Bently" — a proper showcase, with Chester front and center working to clear a dead man's name. Then, as Remind magazine puts it, in the very next episode Chester has simply "gotten out of Dodge," and not one resident of the town seems to register that the marshal's constant companion of nine years is gone. No goodbye scene. No letter read aloud. Nothing.

The vacancy itself was handled with more care than the man who left it:

• Ken Curtis stepped in as Festus Haggen, the scruffy hillman who became Matt's new right hand for the rest of the run.
• Festus got a promotion Chester never had — he was made an actual Deputy Marshal, a title Chester was never given in nine years of service.
• Weaver, for his part, held no grudge — he returned to direct four episodes of the show he'd written himself out of.

Read more: Gunsmoke: Why Did Chester Leave? Dennis Weaver Tried to Quit Twice and Came Back

The line that finally came

Here's the detail that turns trivia night: Gunsmoke did eventually acknowledge Chester's existence — once, more than ten years later. In season 20's "The Fourth Victim," Matt Dillon is digging through old court records with Newly, his young deputy, when Chester's name surfaces. Dillon's entire eulogy for nine years of partnership, as delivered in the episode:

"He used to work for me here. He was before your time."

He adds one speculative detail — "He left, I think, right after the trial" — and that's it. The marshal isn't even sure of the timeline. The same scene tidies up another famous departure while it's at it, noting that Burt Reynolds' blacksmith Quint Asper "went to California about 10 years ago."

Twenty seasons, 635 episodes, and the fate of the original sidekick fits in eleven words that begin with "he used to work for me here." Modern shows kill a character with a three-episode arc and a tribute montage; Gunsmoke filed Chester under paperwork.

The line aired in 1974 — by which point Weaver was two seasons deep into McCloud and wearing a deputy's title of his own.

Earlier we wrote: Who From Gunsmoke Is Still Alive? Only One Main Cast Member Is Left

Before she steps on set, Florence Pugh makes one last stop: the perfume counter. She says every character she plays gets their own fragrance, a scent she buys specifically to help her lock into who that person is. It’s the very last thing she puts on—after the costume—so it becomes part of how the character moves through a scene.

Scent as character work

Pugh described the ritual in a recent Elle interview tied to her new role as the face of Max Mara’s Le Parfum, explaining that fragrance is her final key into a role’s mindset—and body language.

"It's really important locating who that woman [the character] is, and what she smells like. It could be scents that I would never buy for myself and but when I'm that character, it makes so much sense," she said.

An Amy March example

For Amy March in Little Women, Pugh said she went even further, creating a bespoke perfume—this time with help from her mom. When Pugh tackles period pieces, her mother dives into research about what scents would have been available and what a woman of that era could actually buy.

"She made a unique smell for me that was perfect for older Amy, because it was really sophisticated and floral and beautiful, and it just made me love Amy even more," she told Elle.

That Amy fragrance, Pugh added, was inspired by the character’s lifestyle and even nodded to the minerals Amy might have used while painting—another way of making the scent feel historically and personally true.

Asked about her own comfort smells outside of work, Pugh singled out the aromas that steady her at home:

• The smell of cooking
• Jasmine candles
• Oud candles

From Marvel’s Yelena Belova to the title role in Lady Macbeth, Pugh says the rule doesn’t change: every character gets a signature scent that helps her find them. She discussed the practice in Elle while being introduced as the new face of Max Mara’s Le Parfum.

America's favorite limping deputy didn't storm off the biggest show on television — he spent three years trying to escape it, and kept getting pulled back.

Dennis Weaver's exit from Gunsmoke in 1964 looks clean in hindsight: nine seasons, over 290 episodes, out. The actual history is messier and much funnier — because Weaver had already quit twice, and both times Gunsmoke got him back the way shows always got actors back in that era. His replacement gigs collapsed.

Two failed escapes

Weaver's problem was never the show; it was the ceiling. He'd won an Emmy playing Chester Goode, the loyal, coffee-brewing assistant with the stiff leg and the drawled "Mis-ter Dillon" — and he could feel the role calcifying around him. Per a 1964 Hartford Courant interview, he made two runs at the exit:

• "TV Tonight" — a variety-show pilot with Weaver as host and emcee. Rejected.
• "Giant Step" — a pilot with Weaver as a high-school vice principal. Also rejected.
• After each flop — back to Dodge City, because the paychecks were real and the alternatives weren't.

Read more: How Did Gunsmoke Explain Kitty Leaving?

He wasn't coy about the reason he kept trying. His verdict on the character he'd played for nearly a decade:

"I've exhausted all the dimensions of Chester. There's nothing I can do with that character anymore."

Third time, with a contract attached

The difference in 1964 was that NBC showed up with an actual deal instead of a pilot script: Kentucky Jones, a dramedy in which Weaver wasn't just the lead — he owned 25 percent of the package and drew around $5,000 a week. For a man who'd been doing $5-a-day extra work before Gunsmoke made him a millionaire by 38, ownership was the argument that stuck. His stated ambition at the time was blunt: "I want to grow as an actor, to create, to expand."

The gamble half-worked. Kentucky Jones died after 26 episodes — against Gunsmoke's eventual 635 — but Weaver's larger bet on himself paid out: Gentle Ben, Spielberg's Duel, and seven seasons as the lead of McCloud. Decades later he summed up the decision without a trace of regret, saying he'd exhausted the creative possibilities and "just wanted to do something else" — though he also admitted, in the same breath, that some part of the character never left him:

"I don't think I'll ever completely leave Chester, you know."

As for how Gunsmoke handled his departure on screen — that's its own strange story, and the short version is: it didn't.

Earlier we wrote: Why Did Gunsmoke Go Off the Air? The Cast Found Out From the Newspapers

Set in 2006, Primetime drops into the moment when NBC’s sting segments on To Catch a Predator were exploding into a national obsession. According to the film’s synopsis, Robert Pattinson plays host Chris Hansen as producers push to turn the catch-and-confront footage into a full-on primetime machine — and to win a ratings fight opposite ABC’s Lost.

The movie leans on real headlines and TV history, but it isn’t a documentary. It’s a dramatization inspired by Hansen’s show and the era around it, with Pattinson acknowledging the influence while stressing it’s not meant as an authorized bio.

Cast and creative team

Alongside Pattinson, the film surrounds the newsroom and sting-house world with a mix of familiar faces and a notable first-timer:

• Robert Pattinson — Chris Hansen
• Phoebe Bridgers — a decoy (acting debut)
• Merritt Wever — a producer
• Skyler Gisondo

Lance Oppenheim directs from a script by Ajon Singh and Luke Dittrich, shaping the behind-the-scenes scramble as much as the on-camera confrontations.

Festival reception

The film’s first audience reaction was loud and clear in Italy, where it bowed to a big response at Venice.

The film received a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.

While real events set the plot in motion, the project frames them through a fictionalized lens — from the decoy rooms to the control room — with the NBC-vs.-Lost ratings sprint as its backdrop.

On Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live, Rob Lowe said a long-discussed follow-up to St. Elmo’s Fire now has an actual script on the way and interest from the original cast to come back. Lowe told Andy Cohen the team expects to see a draft in the first week of October.

“It is definitely in the works, for sure.”

His update marks a shift from July, when he told Entertainment Tonight he’d only recently met with the studio and that talks were still early. Earlier this year, Demi Moore also said discussions were happening with Sony and that landing the right writer was the key. Variety, however, reports there’s still no production start or release date.

Who’s in that original circle?

• Rob Lowe — Billy Hicks
• Demi Moore — Jules Van Patten
• Emilio Estevez — Kirby Keager
• Andrew McCarthy — Kevin Dolenz
• Judd Nelson — Alec Newbury
• Ally Sheedy — Leslie Hunter
• Mare Winningham — Wendy Beamish

The 1985 Joel Schumacher film followed seven Georgetown grads trying to figure out adulthood, and its Brat Pack lineup became a defining snapshot of the era. Lowe indicated on Watch What Happens Live that the “original actors” are interested in returning.

The Oscars memory he can’t shake

While making the sequel rounds, Lowe also revisited his notorious 1989 Oscars opening during an appearance on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live. He joked that when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 ceremony, he briefly thought his own moment might get bumped from the all-time-disaster list — and that he still hears about it whenever past Oscar trainwrecks resurface.

“I was the only person happy.”

Lowe’s opener paired him with Eileen Bowman as Snow White in a “Proud Mary” number that’s since lived in Academy lore. He said Lucille Ball complimented his singing at the time, and John Fogerty — who wrote “Proud Mary” — later forgave him; Entertainment Weekly has periodically revisited the segment’s place in Oscars history.

What’s next

Lowe says a script draft for the St. Elmo’s Fire sequel is due in the first week of October, and he expects the original crew to weigh in once it arrives. Variety notes there’s no production start or release date yet.

On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, John Cusack didn’t dance around the question. Asked how Lloyd Dobler’s grand gesture — hoisting a boombox outside Diane’s window to Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” — would land now, he said modern audiences might see it through a totally different lens, one focused on boundaries and consent.

"There's a good chance if Say Anything was made today, they'd be like, 'You can't do that. You're stalking her. You know, she gave you her emotional boundaries and you're you're putting a boom box," he said.

Cusack added that there’s a newer habit of grading older characters by today’s rules. He also talked about how he helped shape Lloyd back then, pushing the character away from a glossy fantasy into a kid who had some shadows but chose optimism anyway. At a screening last year, he explained the turn that made the character click for him.

“So I thought, I don't really know how to do it. And then finally at the end of the movie, I thought, ‘Oh, what if he's really bad? And he's more defiant.’ And that was what made it work," he said.

Released in 1989, Say Anything was Cameron Crowe’s directorial debut, written by Crowe, and followed the post–graduation romance between underachiever-turned-true-believer Lloyd and class valedictorian Diane Court.

• John Cusack — Lloyd Dobler
• Ione Skye — Diane Court
• John Mahoney
• Lili Taylor
• Amy Brooks
• Pamela Segall

How to watch

Say Anything is currently available to rent digitally on Prime Video and Apple TV.

The Grey's Anatomy star's final chapter moved with terrifying speed, and he chose to spend it in front of cameras, talking about the thing that was killing him.

Eric Dane died on February 19, 2026, at 53, in a Los Angeles hospital, roughly two years after the first symptom he didn't take seriously. The cause was ALS — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the motor-neuron disease that progressively shuts down the body while leaving the mind intact.

The timeline, reconstructed from his own interviews, is what makes this story so brutal.

From a sore hand to a diagnosis

In late 2023 and early 2024, Dane noticed weakness in his right hand and blamed it on texting too much. His wife, Rebecca Gayheart, later remembered smaller tells — trouble with chopsticks, dropped food. Getting an answer took nine months and a chain of specialists; Dane described the moment the search escalated:

"I went and saw a neurologist, and the neurologist sent me to another neurologist and said that 'this is way above my pay grade.'"

He went public in April 2025 through People magazine, saying he was grateful to have his family beside him — and that he planned to keep acting. He meant it: he stayed on Euphoria and the Prime Video series Countdown even as the disease advanced.

The year he refused to hide

What set Dane's final months apart was how visible he chose to be:

• June 2025: in an ABC News interview, he laid out the progression without cushioning — "My left side is functioning, my right side has completely stopped working" — and admitted he expected to lose the working arm within months.
• September 2025: his speech had slurred, he was photographed in a wheelchair, and Gayheart confirmed he needed 24/7 nursing care. That same month, he accepted an Advocate of the Year award for ALS awareness.
• February 2026: he died ten months after the public announcement, survived by Gayheart — who had withdrawn divorce proceedings after his diagnosis — and their daughters, Billie and Georgia.

Read more: Eric Dane in Euphoria Season 3: The Real Story Behind His Fate

He never pretended the disease was something he'd made peace with. In one of his last interviews, he described living with it in a single line:

"I will never forget those three letters. It's on me the second I wake up."

His message to his daughters, delivered publicly while he still could: "Billie and Georgia, you are my heart. You are my everything." The man TV knew as McSteamy spent his last year doing the least vain thing imaginable — showing exactly what ALS does, on the record, at every stage.

Earlier we wrote: Grey's Anatomy Season 22 Finale Breaks Hearts With a Beautiful Tribute to Eric Dane

If you’re digging into the Christa Pike case right now, skip Netflix. The newest deep dive is Dead Woman Walking: Pike vs. Tennessee, a feature documentary that began streaming free on the Criminally Obsessed YouTube channel on September 18, 2026. It pulls together archival footage, interviews with Pike’s legal team and with Colleen Slemmer’s mother, plus an exclusive sit-down with Pike from prison.

The film, produced by Sinclair, traces Pike’s crime and conviction and follows nearly three decades of appeals right up to her current execution date, focusing on the legal and personal questions that have kept the case in the headlines.

Other places to watch

• Mean Girl Murders — episode titled “She-Devil”, dedicated to Pike’s story
• World’s Most Evil Prisoners — a 2024 episode simply titled “Pike”

The case in brief

Pike was 18 when, according to court and news accounts, she believed fellow Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer was interested in Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. In January 1995, Pike, Shipp, and another student lured Slemmer, 19, to a secluded spot on the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus in Knoxville, where Slemmer was beaten and killed. The brutality of the attack and reported satanic imagery drew national attention.

Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy in 1996 and sentenced to death. She has remained on Tennessee’s death row for about 30 years, while her attorneys have highlighted her age at the time of the crime and a documented history of childhood abuse and trauma in efforts to commute her sentence to life in prison.

What’s next

Pike, now 50, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on September 30, 2026, at 10 a.m. CDT.

If carried out, it would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman since 1819.

Put on the spot on Watch What Happens Live, Rob Lowe didn’t mull it over or phone a friend. Asked to name his best on-screen kiss, he went straight to Nastassja Kinski — and then explained why.

“At that moment in time, she was probably the most beautiful woman I’d certainly ever seen,”

Lowe added that locking lips with Kinski on camera left him “very, very scared,” saying he felt genuinely intimidated during their shoot.

• Demi Moore
• Rashida Jones
• Kim Cattrall
• Calista Flockhart
• Meg Tilly

Those were some of the other names Andy Cohen tossed out before Lowe made his pick.

The Kinski memory comes from The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Tony Richardson’s adaptation of John Irving’s novel. The movie arrived early in Lowe’s career and also featured Jodie Foster and Beau Bridges.

‘St. Elmo’s’ update

On the same WWHL appearance, Lowe said a sequel to one of his most beloved films, St. Elmo’s Fire, is moving ahead.

“It is definitely in the works, for sure,”

he told Cohen, adding,

“all of us actors want to do it.”

According to Lowe, the cast expects to see a script draft in the first week of October. He’s talked with the studio before and has said the project has been in the works since 2024, but emphasized at the time that it was still early days.

Documentary on deck

Lowe also revealed a personal project: a documentary about his life that’s been three years in the making and is headed to Netflix. He described it as an honest look at “the good, the bad and the ugly,” and said he expects it to arrive around Thanksgiving.

Asked who should play him if his life ever hits the screen, Chris Olsen didn’t hesitate to aim high — then quickly undercut himself. The TikTok favorite, now an author at 28, said he’d love to see Harry Styles take the lead in a hypothetical biopic, before adding he’d actually prefer an unknown to get the shot.

“It would have to be someone humble like Harry Styles.”

That’s how Olsen put it in an interview with Variety. After the laugh, he clarified he’d want a newcomer in the role if his story ever becomes a movie.

Olsen’s new memoir, I Think My Therapist Hates Me, tracks his struggle with substance abuse and how he put his life back together. He’s said the most gratifying response so far has been the flood of messages from readers who are dealing with similar issues and found the book helpful.

Others on the shelf

Olsen isn’t the only star turning pages into a second act. Recent books from boldface names include:

• Millie Bobby Brown — a historical-fiction novel published in 2023 when she was 19; it became a New York Times bestseller.
• Prince Harry — Spare, the headline-grabbing memoir.
• Sylvester Stallone — a memoir released in 2026.
• Christina Applegate — a 2026 memoir.
• Lena Dunham — a 2026 memoir.

There’s no screen adaptation of Olsen’s book in the works right now; for casting, he’s sticking with “a newcomer first, Styles as the fantasy pick.”

The new Spanish zombie chapter Apocalypse Z: New World is timed for a Halloween rollout under Amazon’s banner, and it doesn’t look anything like the usual stateside apocalypse. The action rips through Galicia and the Canary Islands, built around a “living infected” concept that puts speed and raw panic front and center.

Instead of shambling corpses, the franchise’s fictional TSJ Virus keeps its hosts alive and feral. Victims run, climb and swarm, turning every stairwell and alley into a sprint-for-your-life set piece.

What sets it apart

• Locations: Spain’s Galicia and the Canary Islands stand in for the end of the world, not a familiar U.S. cityscape.
• Everyman lead: Manel is a grieving lawyer, not a soldier or survivalist superhero.
• Unexpected heart: his Persian cat, Lúculo, becomes an unlikely emotional anchor amid the chaos.
• Texture: practical action and European backdrops give the set pieces a more grounded feel.

Amazon laid out why it’s leaning into this flavor of horror during a featured panel at the Iberseries & Platino Industria event in Madrid, arguing that Spanish creators shouldn’t cede big-scale genre to Hollywood.

“Well, first of all, because horror is a Spanish genre, and you need to democratize that as well, and you need to tell the bosses that it can be done,” Morganti said.

The sequel follows Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End, which became one of Prime Video’s top non-English titles—proof that a Spanish-language zombie story can travel. It also arrives from a country with deep horror roots (Spain’s Fantaterror tradition looms large), which is exactly the lane Amazon says it wants to widen.

Alongside the movie push, Amazon has renewed Apocalypse Z, keeping the franchise in active play. Apocalypse Z: New World lands just in time for Halloween.

One of Pappy's best pilots flies in the season one finale and simply doesn't exist in season two — and the real explanation lives entirely off camera.

Every Black Sheep Squadron rewatch hits the same speed bump. Season one ends, season two begins, and Captain Jim Gutterman — James Whitmore Jr.'s cocky, seasoned wingman, one of the most prominent pilots in Pappy Boyington's outfit — has evaporated. No death scene, no transfer, no toast at the bar. Fans have been comparing notes on this for decades, and the conclusion is always the same, as one put it flatly:

"The departure of Gutterman was never explained on the show."

You didn't skip an episode. There isn't one.

Blame the cancellation nobody remembers

The explanation is pure 1970s network chaos. NBC cancelled Baa Baa Black Sheep after its first season — then reversed itself, reviving the show as compensation for axing the sitcom Off the Wall, complete with a new title, Black Sheep Squadron. By the time the un-cancellation came through, actors had reasonably assumed they were unemployed and moved on to other work. The squadron reassembled with holes in the roster, and the writers never bothered to patch them. A reported tie-in novelization did offer a housekeeping line — Gutterman's tour of duty was up — but nothing of the sort ever made it to air.

Gutterman wasn't even the only ghost. The roster attrition, episode by episode:

• Capt. Jim Gutterman (James Whitmore Jr.) — gone between seasons, zero acknowledgment.
• Lt. T.J. Wiley (Robert Ginty) — vanished after the sixth episode of season two, when the show retooled.
• Lt. Bob Anderson (John Larroquette) — same exit, same episode, years before Night Court made him famous.
• Sgt. Hutchinson (Joey Aresco) — the rare exception: killed off on screen in season one, an actual explained departure.

Read more: The 1970s Sitcom That Changed TV Comedy Forever, and You Can Stream All 200 Episodes Now

That season-two retool cut deeper than pilots: the final seven episodes added a teenage flyer and four nurses to the island, a cast overhaul that fans on the boards diagnose without sentiment —

"They were hemorrhaging cast members."

Where Gutterman actually flew off to

The funny part is that Whitmore Jr. never really left television — he took over more of it. After a few more acting years (The Rockford Files, Hunter), he pivoted to directing in the '80s and became one of the most prolific episodic directors in the business: Quantum Leap, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and a mountain of NCIS, among many others. At 77, he's still working. The man who disappeared from one show without a word spent the next four decades running hundreds of them from behind the camera.

Earlier we wrote: The Real Reason NCIS: Hawaii Was Canceled Is Actually Pretty Simple

Onstage at the Zurich Film Festival on Monday, Casey Affleck said he once pulled out his phone mid–school run to settle a family argument about the plot mechanics of Tenet—by dialing Christopher Nolan himself. In hindsight, he admitted, that impulse was “probably a mistake.”

“We got him on the phone and asked him something that we could have easily looked up on Reddit. Once he said it, it sounded so obvious I felt embarrassed.”

Affleck recalled that after Nolan laid out the answer, the whole thing felt painfully clear. He joked they haven’t spoken since, quipping that the director might get him back by calling to critique his own movie, Company, and ask what he was thinking.

On Nolan’s sets

Affleck, who worked with Nolan on Interstellar and Oppenheimer, described being on the filmmaker’s sets as an honor. He praised Nolan’s approach as inclusive and precise, saying the director gives sharp, minimal direction and consistently lifts everyone’s work.

Praise for Nolan — and Ben

The actor, who has directed three films himself, said he admires Nolan’s artistic integrity—making massive, wildly successful blockbusters driven by personal curiosity rather than by career calculus or pandering. Affleck added he’d be lucky to emulate that kind of uncompromising philosophy behind the camera.

He also pointed to his brother Ben Affleck as someone who chooses projects with intelligence: strategic about commercial prospects but never chasing trends. Ben’s next directing gig, Animals, is coming soon to Netflix.

In the first trailer for The One About Matthew Perry, Matthew Perry’s sister, Mia Perry Bowick, puts hard numbers and real emotion to the struggle her brother carried alongside Chandler Bing’s jokes. The three-part Netflix docuseries includes Bowick speaking directly about the cost of his recovery efforts and the emptiness he battled even at the height of his fame.

“My brother would talk about that feeling of emptiness or loneliness that he couldn’t quite fill.”

“He spent $7 million trying to get sober. That’s how seriously he took his disease.”

The trailer also nods to how performing grounded Perry through the worst of it, a throughline he often shared publicly. Over the years, he said he’d been to treatment 15 times, and he used his platform to push for recovery resources and help others navigate addiction.

Perry died on October 28, 2023, at 54. The medical examiner ruled the death an accident, citing the acute effects of ketamine; drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine were listed as contributing factors.

Who you’ll hear from

• Mia Perry Bowick — Matthew Perry’s sister
• David Pressman and Roger Castillo — close friends
• Several of Perry’s ex-girlfriends
• Warren Littlefield — former NBC president, sharing the story of Perry’s Friends audition
• Jeff Strauss — Friends season-one writer, on the making of Chandler Bing

Directed by Emmy winner Mary Robertson (Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV; June), the docuseries is pitched as an unvarnished, personal portrait built from the people who knew Perry on and off set. Expect fresh behind-the-scenes stories from the early Friends days and candid accounts of his long fight with substance use.

The One About Matthew Perry is a three-part series streaming on Netflix starting October 27, timed to the three-year mark of Perry’s passing.

The new trailer for The One About Matthew Perry opens on Perry himself, young and hungry, remembering the phone call that turned him into Chandler Bing — and the void fame couldn’t fill. His voice sets the tone before the footage cuts to people who were in the room for those early days, including Friends writer Jeff Strauss and former NBC president Warren Littlefield, who frame how quickly he rocketed to sitcom superstardom.

“I said, ‘God, you can do anything you want to me. Just please make me famous.’”

From there, the trailer moves inward. Perry’s younger half-sister Mia Perry Bowick appears alongside lifelong friends David Pressman and Roger Castillo with the kind of memories you only hear from family — not just the jokes and the charm, but the loneliness, the generosity, and the push-and-pull of trying to get sober. The doc leans on personal archives and earlier interviews to bring Perry back into focus as the people closest to him narrate the highs and the wreckage.

“All great stories have comedy and tragedy in them, and that certainly was Matthew’s story,” Bowick says in the trailer.

Who we hear from

While the show revisits Friends, the talking heads aren’t limited to Central Perk. The trailer highlights voices from Perry’s wider life and career:

• Mia Perry Bowick — younger half-sister
• Jeff Strauss — Friends writer
• Warren Littlefield — former NBC president
• David Pressman — lifelong friend
• Roger Castillo — lifelong friend
• Kevin Pollak — actor and colleague
• Jonathan Lynn — director
• E. Martin Estrada — former U.S. Attorney

The final stretch pivots to the legacy Perry wanted to leave as an advocate for people battling addiction. The trailer pairs his own words with recollections from those he helped, while former U.S. Attorney E. Martin Estrada addresses the circumstances around Perry’s death. It closes on Perry’s voice — simple, direct, and gutting.

“I miss you guys. I miss all of you.”

About the Friends cast

Netflix hasn’t confirmed any newly filmed interviews with Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, or David Schwimmer. The trailer does include the five through archival footage, behind-the-scenes material, and classic Friends clips. For now, their participation appears limited to those archives.

The One About Matthew Perry is a three-part documentary streaming on Netflix starting October 27, 2026 — timed just ahead of the third anniversary of Perry’s passing.

Prime Video's assassin buddy comedy plants one genuinely soft thing in the middle of all the gunfire — and then shows you exactly why it did that.

Billy Donovan, played by Ed Skrein, enters Ride or Die from the wrong side of the ledger: a crime syndicate man tangled up in the stolen £24 million that Judith (Hannah Waddingham) and Debbie (Octavia Spencer) spend the season running from and after. He should be a complication. Instead, over eight episodes, he defects — first into a reluctant ally, then into something the show hadn't given its retired assassin before: a real romantic possibility. By episode 7, Billy is offering to disappear to Cambodia with Judith once the mess is settled.

Which is precisely what gets him killed.

Read more: Who Ana Is in Ride or Die Will Click Instantly for Blade Runner Fans

The Geneva Convention, and why it ends in a throat-slit

Episode 7 stages the season's big set piece: a Geneva bank heist meant to extract the Albanians' money and lure Ana — the vengeful assassin on Judith's trail — into a trap. The trap works in the sense that Ana shows up. It fails in every other sense. In the crossfire between Albanians, Interpol, and local police, Ana runs the table, and the episode's recap reads like a checklist of worst outcomes:

"Ana kills Billy, leaves a Black Mark for Debbie and kidnaps her."

The logic of the kill is the point. Ana's revenge on Judith isn't a bullet — it's subtraction. Billy was, as one reviewer put it, the one man Judith seemed to be forming a genuine attachment to, so Ana slits his throat and moves on to demolishing the other attachment: she shows the kidnapped Debbie proof that Judith originally picked her up as cover, deleted her law-firm acceptance letter, and once called her "a valuable cover" on tape. Episode 7 ends with Judith's love interest dead and her best friendship poisoned — both by design, both because of who Billy had become to her.

What it sets up

• The finale's real villain reveal: with Ana rampaging, the show pivots to Bill Nighy's Director and the Agency's practice of recruiting orphaned children — the machine that built both Judith and Ana.
• The reconciliation: Judith and Debbie's blowup over the tape becomes the finale's spine, resolved with a Thelma & Louise homage the Variety review had already invited by calling the show "no Thelma & Louise."
• Nothing further: despite a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score, Amazon canceled the series in September after one season — so Billy's death at the end of episode 7 stands as the show's one irreversible swing, in a story that only got to tell itself once.

Earlier we wrote: How Tall Is Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham? Rebecca Fans, We Finally Have the Answer

Tom Holland says a single joke from The Lego Batman Movie became the compass for Peter Parker’s off-duty life in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. He sent director Destin Daniel Cretton the clip where Gotham assumes Bruce Wayne is living it up — smash cut to him microwaving lobster alone — as the vibe check for a quieter, lonelier Peter back in Queens.

“When they think ‘Batman must be going home and having parties with all his friends and dating supermodels’ and then it cuts to him in his house alone,”

“I remember sending that to Destin being like ‘we should do something like this.’”

Holland said that in an interview with Accion Cine Series.

This time around, Holland wasn’t just the guy in the suit — he was in the room shaping it. He took a real turn in the writers’ room, pitching ideas pulled from places fans actually live with Spider-Man.

• Fan feedback
• Classic comics
• Insomniac’s PlayStation games
• Earlier Spider-Man suits

A lonelier Peter Parker

Brand New Day picks up after No Way Home’s memory wipe, where the world no longer knows Peter Parker. MJ and Ned moved on without him, and he’s patrolling New York solo. That’s where the Lego Batman inspiration lands — not as a gag, but as a rhythm: a hero everyone assumes is thriving, who goes home to a one-bedroom and dead silence.

What’s next for Spidey

The quieter tone didn’t slow the movie down. Brand New Day opened to $360 million domestically, edging past the Avengers: Endgame benchmark, and hit $932 million worldwide in three days. The global haul has since crossed $2.4 billion.

There’s no release date yet for a fifth Spider-Man, but Marvel boss Kevin Feige told Variety there are always plans in motion — and that Holland and Zendaya will get a well-earned breather after the press blitz. Feige also noted the next stretch of the Multiverse Saga needs to land before Spidey swings back in.

• Avengers: Doomsday — due this December
• Another Avengers film — December 2027
• Sony’s animated Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse — June 2027
• Spider-Man 5 — release date TBA

Holland has said he wants to play Peter as long as he can — and that there’s already a plan for the eventual handoff when the time comes.

Two seasons of banners and TikTok team wars have been building to an answer George R.R. Martin wrote down years ago — and it's designed to humiliate both sides.

The show is racing toward an ending that already exists on paper. House of the Dragon adapts the Dance of the Dragons section of Martin's Fire & Blood, and the book is unambiguous about how the war ends — just deliberately cruel about what "winning" means.

The short version, for anyone who picked a team: neither monarch survives, and neither side gets what it fought for.

What the book says happens

• Aegon II wins the battle for Rhaenyra — she's captured at Dragonstone and executed in front of her son, fed to the king's dragon Sunfyre.
• Aegon II loses everything else. Broken, dragonless, and hated, he's poisoned by his own people barely half a year later, before the war even formally ends.
• The throne goes Black: Rhaenyra's son is crowned Aegon III. Dynastically, her line wins — every Targaryen after flows from her.
• The principle goes Green: Aegon III is a boy king married off to Aegon II's daughter Jaehaera to stitch the family back together, and Westeros goes right back to passing over daughters. The Greens' entire casus belli — no woman on the throne — becomes settled custom for generations.
• The dragons lose most of all. The war butchers them faster than they can hatch; within a generation, the last dragon dies, and the family superpower is extinct.

Read more: Greens vs Blacks: Who Has More Dragons in House of the Dragon? Full List

Add it up and the scoreboard reads like a prank:

The Dance has no victory condition. The Blacks get the bloodline, the Greens get the precedent, and the realm gets a pile of dead dragons. Whoever you're rooting for, the book already ruled against you.

The show knows exactly what it's selling

This isn't accidental ambiguity — it's the design. Showrunner Ryan Condal has spent the season 3 press rounds refusing to canonize either side, pointing out that even Rhaenyra's applause moments are catastrophes in disguise:

"Rhaenyra has done this thing that everybody applauds, but she's put three strangers in charge of nuclear weapons."

This summer's Season 3 — which opened with the Battle of the Gullet and which Condal calls the show's "biggest, most massive season by a wide margin" — pushed the war into its ugliest stretch, and Season 4 has been confirmed as the last. Which means the endgame above isn't speculation. It's the destination, two seasons out, with the fandom's team-war merch aging badly by design.

Earlier we wrote: House of the Dragon Season 3 Trailer Unleashes Fire, Treachery and All-Out War

In a new interview ahead of the movie’s release, author Tomi Adeyemi said she hasn’t seen a frame of Children of Blood and Bone and doesn’t plan to. She also made clear that the creative calls on the film weren’t hers — even though she shares a screenplay credit with director Gina Prince-Bythewood.

“The whole journey of the trilogy and the adaptation felt biblical … It took all of me.”

Speaking to The Guardian, Adeyemi declined to detail what went wrong during production. Back in July, she called making the film her “worst experience yet” in a viral TikTok, describing hyperventilating and crying on set and saying the panic attacks and physical pain followed her home to the U.S. Asked about the casting of Amandla Stenberg, she said that on a film, the director makes the decisions, not the author — and she’s keeping her distance.

“So there’s nothing for me to add, other than the clarity that these aren’t my choices.”

The movie rolling out

Paramount Pictures is set to release Children of Blood and Bone in theaters on January 15, 2027. Prince-Bythewood directs and co-wrote the script with Adeyemi. The production leaned on practical sets and Yoruba-inspired costuming, with filming across South Africa and Nigeria; the first teaser uses Beyoncé’s “Energy.”

The cast includes:

• Thuso Mbedu — Zélie Adebola
• Damson Idris — Crown Prince Inan
• Amandla Stenberg — Princess Amari
• Tosin Cole — Tzain
• Chiwetel Ejiofor — King Saran
• Viola Davis — supporting role
• Regina King — supporting role
• Idris Elba — supporting role
• Cynthia Erivo — supporting role
• Lashana Lynch — supporting role

The project reunites Prince-Bythewood with Mbedu, Davis and Lynch after The Woman King; she’s even likened the stacked ensemble to the 1996 Chicago Bulls. Adapted from Adeyemi’s 2018 bestseller — the first book in her Legacy of Orïsha trilogy — the story follows Zélie as she races to restore magic to her homeland before the summer solstice.

Children of Blood and Bone opens in theaters January 15, 2027.

On a recent SiriusXM spot, Alan Cumming said Marvel’s tight-lipped ways left him working largely in the dark on Avengers: Doomsday—even as he steps back into the blue as Nightcrawler. Most of his scenes were shot on empty stages against blue screens, he explained, with little sense of how the larger crossover fit together.

“I don’t fully understand the plot.”

Cumming described one rare day on a backlot when a crew member started walking him through an effects-heavy sequence with giant robots. He waved off the explanation and asked for the basics: where to look, where to move. The job, as he put it, was to hit marks and sprint, not memorize lore on the fly.

That patchwork approach tracks with how this movie is being built. Joe Russo recently said the script kept changing as they filmed, calling it a “living organism.” Cumming also ran into one of the odder side effects of that secrecy at the Emmys, where he joked to Florence Pugh that she had apparently lain on top of him for a shot—only for them to realize they’d each filmed with the other’s body double and never actually met on set.

The Spider-Man question

One mystery Marvel die-hards won’t let go: whether Andrew Garfield swings through Doomsday. Marvel hasn’t announced him, and in a GQ interview Garfield flatly said no. Fans haven’t forgotten, though, that he denied returning before Spider-Man: No Way Home—right up until he appeared alongside Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire. As Variety noted, that history makes his latest denial harder to take at face value.

None of that means Garfield is secretly in this one; his involvement is unconfirmed. He has, however, said he’d be open to playing Spider-Man again if the idea felt worth doing.

When Sylvester Stallone finally watched a clip of actor Anthony Ippolito playing him, he did a double take. From a couple of angles, the younger performer’s stance and voice were so dead-on that Stallone briefly thought he was looking at old footage of himself.

“Then I saw this video of this kid [Ippolito]. I actually thought it was me the first moment.”

He also admitted the whole idea of a biopic while he’s still around felt a little premature. Speaking onstage at 92NY, Stallone said he had mixed feelings about seeing someone else live out his origin story.

“Kind of mixed because I’m going, ‘I’m not dead yet. Aren’t we jumping the g** a little bit?’”

Stallone stressed he wasn’t involved with the production of I Play Rocky beyond telling Ippolito he was welcome to call with questions. Watching the impersonation, he joked, finally made him understand how he actually sounds to other people.

The film at a glance

• Director — Peter Farrelly
• Stallone — Anthony Ippolito plays a young Sylvester Stallone
• Story — the turbulent making of 1976’s Rocky

The missed bell on Rocky

In a separate interview with The New York Times tied to his memoir, The Steps, Stallone shared a messier memory from the original set: he cast his father as the ringside timekeeper for the climactic fight. The bell didn’t ring on cue, and the carefully choreographed bout lost its rhythm as Rocky Balboa kept throwing punches.

Carl Weathers, who played Apollo Creed, was left wondering why the action kept going when the bell should have sounded after four counts. Stallone said the slip led to an altercation off camera and reflected a father-son relationship he’s described as strained; they warmed somewhat before Frank Stallone Sr. died in 2011.

I Play Rocky premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month.

In an SEC filing, Paramount–Skydance laid out a plan to raise $44 billion in new debt to help fund its proposed $110 billion combination with Warner Bros. Discovery. The package splits into $32 billion in investment‑grade debt and $12.4 billion in high‑yield bonds, to be paired with outside investor money and existing cash.

If the deal closes, the merged company would carry roughly $80 billion in total debt, according to TheWrap. David Ellison has said the combined company could generate about $6 billion in cost “synergies,” a target that typically reflects consolidation across overlapping divisions.

What the states got

California and 11 other states that sued to block the deal have reached a settlement in principle, Bloomberg reported, with terms that also address concerns raised by the Writers Guild of America. As part of the agreement, the company committed to several concrete guardrails:

• Set up independent editorial boards for CBS and CNN.
• Distribute at least 30 films theatrically each year.
• Face significant penalties if those commitments are not met.

“We have complete clearance for this merger and look forward to putting these commitments into action.”

That statement came from David Ellison in a press release, as reported by the BBC. Even so, the multistate settlement still needs sign‑off from U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez‑Olguín before it takes effect.

How they’ll pay for it

The new borrowing would be one part of the financing stack alongside equity from investors and company cash to complete the $110 billion transaction. The court’s decision on the states’ settlement will determine the next step in the timeline.

Netflix's Texas soap spent a whole season pointing its grieving rancher at a mystery truck — and the trail was rigged from the moment it went underground.

The wound driving Josh Duhamel's Staten Kirkland through Ransom Canyon Season 1 is simple: his teenage son Randall died in a car crash, run off the road by a blue pickup that vanished into the night. What Staten spends the season chasing is the truck. What he finds first is a lie built by three men and buried — literally — to protect one woman.

The trail, as Staten walked it

• The crash: Randall's car went off the road with the blue pickup involved; the driver never stopped, and the truck never surfaced. The sheriff's investigation stalled, leaving Staten to grind on grief and suspicion.
• The burial: the truck didn't surface because it was disposed of. Reid — with help — hid the vehicle so no one could find it, which is why all Staten ever had was fragments.
• The unearthing: when a buried piece of the pickup finally comes to light and Reid cracks, the confession chain points straight at Kit — who gets arrested and, crucially, doesn't fight it.
• The tell: an innocent man usually protests. Kit instead settles into the cell, even signing Lucas's emancipation papers from jail, like a man planning to stay a while.

Read more: What Happened to Randall in Ransom Canyon? His Death Is the Lie Half the Town Helped Bury

That silence is the season's real clue, and it reframes the whole arrest:

Kit isn't covering for himself. He's covering for the person he loves — which is why the evidence trail Staten follows works perfectly and still delivers the wrong man.

The right answer is worse

The finale hands the truth to the one character least equipped to survive it: Sheriff Brigman. The driver of the blue pickup was Margaret Brigman — the sheriff's own estranged wife, driving impaired that night after leaving her lover. Her lover being Kit, who was with her around the accident and chose prison over exposing her. The sheriff arrests his own wife; Kit walks free, having lost the woman he took the fall for; and Staten finally gets a name — just not closure, since the person who killed his son was hiding inside the town's most trusted household all along.

Netflix's own ending explainer confirms the show closes that mystery completely — then immediately opens another, with a stranger appearing at Ellie's wedding claiming to be Yancy's wife. That cliffhanger, not the truck, is what Season 2 runs on.

Earlier we wrote: Ransom Canyon Season 2: Who's Back and the Fresh Faces Joining the Cast

Asked point-blank about the role he didn’t take, Josh Brolin confirmed he’d been in talks to play Hal Jordan during a 2024 ComicBook.com interview promoting Brothers with Peter Dinklage — then immediately threw his support behind the guy who did get the job.

“I love him as an actor. I think he's wonderful actually”

Brolin didn’t get into why his deal never happened, but he did leave the door cracked on doing something in DC “down the line.” He’s already logged major comic-book time as Thanos in the MCU and Cable in Deadpool 2.

Chandler’s Hal, on screen

The early chatter around Lanterns has zeroed in on Kyle Chandler’s take — a cocky, veteran space cop whose bravado hides a rattled, complicated man. Reviews have praised the show’s detective bent and Chandler’s chemistry with Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart; a Rotten Tomatoes roundup spotlights both performances, while The Hollywood Reporter singled out the vulnerability Chandler threads into Hal.

There’s a twist to how viewers are getting Hal, too. Through Episode 7, Hal is still dead in the show’s 2026 timeline. Chandler keeps appearing in flashbacks and as the “Halogram” stored inside John’s ring, which lets the series dig into Hal’s life and the mystery around his death without bringing him back — at least not yet.

Season 2 status

HBO hasn’t announced a renewal, but work toward a continuation has quietly inched forward. In July, reports said a writers’ room for a possible Season 2 had assembled and begun writing; later, showrunner Chris Mundy told THR the team was in the “breaking-story stages.” None of that equals a green light.

• No official renewal from HBO
• Writers’ room reportedly started in July
• Showrunner Chris Mundy: “breaking-story stages”

As for Chandler’s future, it’s up in the air. James Gunn has defended the choice to kill Hal and hinted the circumstances are more complicated than they seem, which keeps multiple paths open — more Halogram scenes, earlier timelines, or a reveal that reframes Hal’s fate. Chandler hasn’t been confirmed for any potential second season.

John Cusack says he never turned down Pulp Fiction — because he never got an offer. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he recalled Quentin Tarantino acting out the entire movie for him at a Denny’s, and despite chatter he was the top choice for the part that ultimately went to Eric Stoltz, nothing formal ever came his way.

The meeting was pure Tarantino theater: no boardroom, no slideshow, no script — just a booth and a one-man performance. Cusack added the conversation drifted into home-tech talk about a new TV and a screening room, with the director geeking out over the setup.

“I do remember meeting with him about that movie, and you know, we went to a Denny’s,” Cusack recalled on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.

“He was like kind of geeking out on that stuff and so I thought he was I thought he was it was cool story.”

Host Josh Horowitz noted the long-standing rumor that Tarantino had Cusack atop his list for the role Stoltz played; Cusack emphasized there was never an offer to accept or decline. Horowitz joked Tarantino probably still has Cusack’s number saved, waiting on a callback.

Cliff Booth rides again

While that ’90s diner meeting is a Hollywood what-if, Tarantino’s next move is very concrete: he’ll publish The Adventures of Cliff Booth through HarperCollins on December 8, 2026. The novel — his third — follows the stuntman played by Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and arrives far quicker than the 2021 novelization that trailed the film by two years.

The book pairs with a film sequel focused on the same character. The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth shares the novel’s 1977 timeline, with Tarantino writing the script and David Fincher directing.

• November 25, 2026 — The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth opens in IMAX theaters.
• December 8, 2026 — The Adventures of Cliff Booth hits shelves via HarperCollins (13 days after the theatrical debut).
• December 23, 2026 — The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth streams on Netflix.

Asked point-blank which artist he’d spoof if he made an album designed to mock someone, Todd Rundgren didn’t pause. In a new interview with Vulture, he zeroed in on Taylor Swift and dropped a grad-school zinger while he was at it.

“To me, Taylor Swift is the apotheosis of mediocrity.”

He doubled down a beat later: “There’s an argument to be made that she ruined music. It’s an understandable phenomenon.”

Rundgren sketched out that “phenomenon” as a ’90s market shift: boys, he said, started spending more on video games than music, so labels chased the listeners still shelling out their allowance—teen girls—and built the modern pop machine around them. In that frame, it’s no surprise to him that the biggest acts today are women, but he argued Swift isn’t exceptional at any one thing—beyond, as he put it, her image.

He contrasted her with Lady Gaga, whom he praised as a real musician, and pointed to his own history of pointed pastiche. Rundgren recalled producing Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” with a winking nod toward Bruce Springsteen—proof, in his telling, that he’s no stranger to taking the air out of an icon by turning their sound against them.

• Called Swift “the apotheosis of mediocrity”
• Said “there’s an argument” she “ruined music”
• Blamed a ’90s pivot to video games for labels courting teen girls
• Knocked Swift’s artistry while praising Lady Gaga
• Cited “Bat Out of Hell” as a past example of playful provocation

Swift’s playbook for critics

Swift hasn’t addressed Rundgren’s volley, but she’s been open about how she handles detractors. In a recent Grammy Museum Icon Sessions talk, she said she largely dodges the comments section and sometimes fires back in the music itself—leaning on razor-edged lyrics and even the occasional ten-dollar word to make critics reach for a dictionary before they clap back.

That approach has already shown up on tracks like “Blank Space” and “Anti-Hero,” which flip media caricatures into pop hooks. As Rundgren debates the state of pop from the road, Swift’s method remains the same: turn the noise into a chorus and move on.

Rundgren made the remarks in his interview with Vulture.

Per court documents cited by the Daily Mail, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge has approved a petition for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s daughter to legally drop her father’s surname. After a hearing on Sept. 28, 2026, she is now officially Zahara Marley Jolie, with Judge Virginia Keeny signing off and no objections recorded.

The name change was approved Sept. 28, 2026, in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Zahara had already been using “Jolie” in public milestones: she was listed as Zahara Marley Jolie during her Spelman College graduation in Atlanta in May, and she used the same name when she was inducted into Alpha Kappa Alpha in November 2023.

Siblings following suit

She becomes the third of Jolie and Pitt’s six children to make the switch official, part of a pattern that’s unfolded over the past couple of years.

• Shiloh Jolie — Stopped using “Pitt” after turning 18 in 2024 and later formalized the change, becoming the first sibling to do so.
• Maddox Jolie — Adopted by Jolie in 2002 and later by Pitt; he finalized removing “Pitt” earlier this month, per the Daily Mail.
• Zahara Marley Jolie — Legal change approved on Sept. 28, 2026.
• Vivienne Marcheline Jolie — Has filed to drop “Pitt”; a court hearing is set for Nov. 2.

Jolie adopted Zahara in 2005, and Pitt subsequently adopted her as well. The family’s personal matters have played out publicly since the couple’s split in 2016, while the children have increasingly used “Jolie” in school and public settings before codifying those choices in court.

Next up is Vivienne’s petition: if no one objects at the Nov. 2 hearing, she could become the fourth sibling to have the name legally changed.

During a profile tied to his new memoir, Roll the Calls, Ari Emanuel didn’t sidestep the Meghan Markle question. He confirmed that WME and Meghan Markle ended their relationship in 2025—and that whatever comes next for her won’t involve him.

“Here’s the great thing. I don’t have to think about that any more,”

he told the UK’s The Sunday Times when asked where Markle’s career is heading.

The remark effectively puts a bow on months of whispers. In February 2025, Page Six reported WME had dropped Markle—a claim the agency denied at the time. That report also said Emanuel hadn’t met with her since January 2024, leaving day-to-day reps to steer the relationship. Emanuel now says the split did, in fact, happen last year.

• April 2023 — Markle signs with WME
• January 2024 — Emanuel last met with Markle (per Page Six)
• February 2025 — Report claims WME dropped her; agency denies
• 2025 — Emanuel confirms they parted ways

Markle’s WME chapter began with a high-profile team and a crowded slate meant to translate her post-royal ambitions into Hollywood projects. Whether that slate survives under new representation remains to be seen; Emanuel made clear it’s not his concern anymore.

Box-office reality check

The timing of Emanuel’s candor lands as the couple’s Hollywood draw faces fresh scrutiny. Cookie Queens—a documentary about four kids selling Girl Scout cookies—opened to about $354,262 its first weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. Commentator Kinsey Schofield noted to Fox News Digital that even CatVideoFest 2026, a compilation of viral cat clips, outgrossed it, and argued the Sussexes’ names no longer guarantee curiosity like they once did. She also suggested a breather from headlines, since being ubiquitous doesn’t always translate to ticket sales.

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams told Fox News the couple’s biggest pop-culture moments leaned into their rift with the Royal Family, while later lifestyle-leaning projects didn’t bite as hard. His scorecard:

• Breakout draws: the Oprah Winfrey TV interview, Netflix docuseries, Prince Harry’s memoir Spare
• Softer interest: With Love, Meghan and Polo

Per Box Office Mojo, Cookie Queens grossed roughly $354,262 in its opening weekend.

The HBO series Lanterns has already snuck in a couple of deep-cut Corps gags that hint at just how weird the Green Lantern universe can get. In Episode 7, John Stewart tells a story about Hal Jordan’s funeral that includes a guest who couldn’t possibly have been there — Mogo — and Hal busts him immediately for an obvious reason: Mogo is a planet. Earlier, Episode 4 drops a casual nod to a Lantern who looks like a woodland critter, with Hal dryly noting one member is a “squirrel.”

That’s the fun of the Corps in DC lore: the ring doesn’t only pick square-jawed humans or humanoids. Across the comics, Green Lanterns have included a sentient world, a microscopic life-form, beings who navigate entirely by sound, and even living geometry. If the DCU leans into that variety, here are five gloriously odd Lanterns ready-made for on-screen storytelling.

Leezle Pon is a super-intelligent smallpox virus — and a Green Lantern.

Five gloriously weird picks

• Leezle Pon — Introduced by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in Green Lantern #188 (1985), Leezle Pon serves as the Lantern of Sector 119 and is, no joke, a super-smart smallpox virus. During the Sinestro Corps era, Leezle Pon fought the fear corps’ bio-weapon Despotellis after Despotellis infected Guy Gardner. Soranik Natu literally injected Leezle Pon into Guy’s bloodstream, turning the rescue into a microscopic power-ring duel inside his body — and Leezle Pon won. On screen, you wouldn’t need a costume or performer at all; the character could show up as medical imagery, a ring visualization, or a crisis that shrinks the action down to cellular scale.

• Mogo — Also created by Moore and Gibbons in Green Lantern #188, Mogo is a sentient planet and canonically the Corps’ largest member, able to display the green insignia across his own surface. Beyond the Episode 7 name-drop joke in Lanterns, Mogo has serious history: after the destruction of Oa, DC notes the Corps used Mogo as a home base. He’s a character and a setting in one.

• Rot Lop Fan — Dreamed up by Alan Moore and Bill Willingham in Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #3 (1987), Rot Lop Fan hails from the Obsidian Deeps, a region without light. His species can’t perceive color, so Katma Tui reframed the entire Lantern concept through sound. Rot Lop Fan hears the power as an F-sharp tone, serves in the F-Sharp Bell Corps, and wears a bell symbol. He even got a CGI background cameo among aliens in the 2011 Green Lantern movie — a premise this strange deserves center stage, not just a crowd shot.

• Ch’p — From the planet H’lven and Sector 1014, Ch’p is the chipmunk-like Lantern comic readers immediately thought of when Hal mentioned a “squirrel” in Episode 4. Created by Paul Kupperberg and Don Newton, he first appeared in Green Lantern #148 (1982). The visual is disarming, but in DC lore Ch’p is a capable officer whose look underlines how broad the Corps truly is.

• B’ox — First seen in Green Lantern Corps: Recharge #5 (2006), B’ox is exactly what the name suggests: a sentient rectangular solid whose surfaces carry the Corps colors and logo. He’s no prop — B’ox fought the Spider Guild’s invasion of Oa, took part in the Battle of Mogo at the start of the Sinestro Corps War, kept serving through later cosmic dust-ups, and teamed with Stel and B’dg to form an enormous construct against Infinity Man.

Between a planet with a power ring, a virus that can duel inside a hero’s bloodstream, and a Lantern who hears in F-sharp, the bench is deep — and the show has already winked at both Mogo and Ch’p. Rot Lop Fan has even appeared once before via CGI among the aliens in the 2011 Green Lantern film.

One of Firehouse 51's originals died in the season 8 premiere, and the explanation behind the choice is more brutal than the fire that killed him.

Brian "Otis" Zvonecek died in the Season 8 premiere, "Sacred Ground," from injuries sustained in the mattress-factory blaze that ended Season 7 on a cliffhanger. And no — Yuri Sardarov didn't quit, wasn't feuding with anyone, and hadn't lined up another job. The exit was the show's idea, and showrunner Derek Haas has been unusually candid about the logic.

The one reason

When Haas sat down with head writers Andrea Newman and Michael Gilvary to decide who wouldn't survive the factory fire, the criterion wasn't contract status or storyline fatigue. It was damage. They wanted the death that would hurt Firehouse 51 — and the audience — the most. The writers' room actually considered killing Ritter instead, and Haas rejected it in terms that explain everything:

"It wouldn't have the same impact. It's almost like pulling your punch if it were Ritter."

Otis, by contrast, was maximally load-bearing:

• An original. One of the last remaining day-one cast members, on the truck since the 2012 pilot.
• Wired into everyone. As Haas put it: "Otis is beloved, and he lives with Cruz and is best friends with Cruz and Brett" — kill him, and the grief spreads through every corner of the firehouse.
• The comic relief. The elevator enthusiast, the trivia guy, the one viewers filed under "safe." Which was precisely the point.

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Haas, who'd known Sardarov since before the show, called the writing of it tough, and Dick Wolf's advice was simply that honest writing would carry the audience through.

"Never asked to go" — with an asterisk of grace

Sardarov himself has confirmed the decision wasn't his request, though he described the conversation with Haas at the end of Season 7 as open on both sides — he'd started at 22, was 31, and didn't fight the creative call. His read on the choice is basically the showrunner's, from the other side of the table:

"What better way to do that than to kill someone so beloved and someone so warm and sweet and funny? I think in many ways, Otis is the one character that people don't expect to die. It was difficult, but it was also necessary."

The death itself was staged for maximum quiet devastation: Otis's last words to Cruz, in Russian — "Brother, I will be with you, always" — a line Cruz later has translated, and which follows him for seasons. The show built a memorial plaque for Otis outside 51, Cruz named his son Brian in his honor, and the sight gag budget never fully recovered. As NBC's own postmortem confirms, it remains one of the franchise's few deaths chosen purely because it would be the hardest one to take.

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On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast in September 2026, John Cusack finally laid out how he got Bruce Springsteen to stroll into his character’s head in High Fidelity. There was no studio campaign, no agent relay. He already had Springsteen’s number — so he called.

“It was basically a Hail Mary,”

Cusack said he opened with an apology for the weirdness of the pitch, then asked Springsteen to play himself inside Rob Gordon’s imagination — the Boss as an inner voice steering a guy through a romantic tailspin. After a beat, Springsteen’s answer was as simple as it was shocking.

“Sounds good.”

The cameo lands in the 2000 Stephen Frears film as Rob imagines Springsteen offering blunt, funny advice about love and accountability — a rare scripted-movie appearance for the rock icon that became one of the movie’s great music-nerd jolts. Cusack had previously described the outreach as a “Hail Mary pass” and said Springsteen asked to see the script; Frears has also recalled Cusack making numerous calls while trying to bring him aboard.

Beyond the cameo

Springsteen’s relationship with the screen has since grown. Scott Cooper’s recent film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere cast Jeremy Allen White as the musician during the making of Nebraska, with White doing his own singing and guitar after months of prep.

• White trained for five to six months to sing and play before performing Springsteen’s material himself.
• The film drew a 61% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
• It earned about $45.2 million worldwide at the box office.

Cooper has said he and Springsteen have talked about other chapters of the musician’s life that could head to the screen next, adding that Springsteen enjoyed the process and seemed “ready for more.” No sequel has been officially greenlit.

On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, John Cusack said the marching orders he got at home shaped every choice he made once the spotlight hit. Asked how he handled attention so young, he credited his upbringing — and one blunt mantra from his dad — for keeping him focused on the work, not the noise.

"I think my my father was always like he just said, 'to be a celebrity is death for an artist. He was always about like what's the script, what's the part, what's this thing saying, right? And so, like he was wasn't impressed by any of that. So, I think that rubbed off on me," he said.

That filter, Cusack explained, is why he chased material across genres rather than cling to teen-idol status. He’s now logged more than 90 films, moving from 80s romances into darker dramas, thrillers and offbeat character work.

• The Sure Thing — Rob Reiner’s 1985 road-trip romance that helped launch him
• The Grifters — the 1990 noir drama
• The Paperboy — Lee Daniels’ 2012 Southern Gothic
• High Fidelity — the 2000 music-shop classic that earned him a Golden Globe nomination

Almost in The Breakfast Club

Horowitz also pressed him on a long-circulating rumor: was he ever set for The Breakfast Club? Cusack said he was “almost” in the John Hughes movie and really liked the script, but the role slipped away late in the process.

As Horowitz noted on the show, Cusack had been in the mix for John Bender — the rebel who anchors the Saturday detention dynamic — before the part ultimately went to Judd Nelson.

Josh Hartnett says the toughest early critic of his Verity casting came from inside the family. On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the actor recalled breaking the news to his 12-year-old goddaughter — a superfan of Colleen Hoover’s thriller — and getting a hilariously savage reply.

"You cannot be Jeremy. You are like a thousand years old,"

Hartnett laughed as he retold her verdict, adding that she had a very specific idea of who should play Jeremy Crawford and he wasn’t it.

The feature-film adaptation teams Hartnett with two Oscar nominees, with each taking on one of Hoover’s slippery, secret-keeping leads. Here’s who’s playing who:

• Josh Hartnett — Jeremy Crawford
• Anne Hathaway — Verity Crawford
• Dakota Johnson — Lowen Ashleigh

Hoover’s story centers on Lowen, a struggling writer brought in to finish a hit book series for injured author Verity Crawford. While working in the Crawford home, Lowen stumbles on disturbing pages that upend what she thinks she knows about the family — and about Jeremy.

That ending everyone argues about

Appearing on This Morning on September 25, Hartnett said the movie leans into the book’s push-and-pull over what’s true and what’s manipulation — right through the final moments.

“And the point is it’s kind of an ambiguous ending. So you get to debate with your friends afterward, who you believe, which is fun. You don’t get that often in a Hollywood film,”

he said, promising plenty to chew on when the credits roll.

The movie adapts Hoover’s bestseller for the big screen with Hartnett as the embattled husband, Hathaway as the enigmatic author, and Johnson as the outsider pulling at the thread. Hartnett shared his goddaughter’s reaction on Fallon and teased the ending during his September 25 morning-show stop.

The biggest show on Prime Video comes from a stack of airport paperbacks with a very specific measurement problem — one its author spent a decade apologizing for.

Reacher is based on Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels — nearly 30 of them since 1997's Killing Floor, all following the same drifter: an ex-Army military police major who wanders America with a folding toothbrush and no luggage, finding trouble in one small town after another. No comic, no true crime, no IP machine. Just a Brit named Jim Grant who got laid off from Granada Television at 40, bought some paper, and invented a franchise now selling in the hundreds of millions.

Each season adapts one novel, and the show has been picking freely from the shelf rather than going in order: Season 1 took Killing Floor, Season 2 jumped to Bad Luck and Trouble, Season 3 grabbed Persuader — and the spinoff Neagley, currently camped near the top of Prime's charts, spun Reacher's right hand into her own series.

Read more: Alan Ritchson Drops Major Reacher Season 4 Update After Neighbor Altercation

The measurement problem

On the page, Reacher is a specific piece of hardware: 6'5", 250 pounds, hands like dinner plates, a man other characters describe as a condensed wardrobe. Which is why the 2012 film Jack Reacher — based on the ninth novel, One Shot — detonated its own fanbase before opening weekend. Tom Cruise is 5'7". Child defended the casting at the time, arguing the character's size is really a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise could play by other means. Two films later (Never Go Back followed in 2016), the author stopped defending and started conceding — flatly, on the record:

"He is not huge and he's not scary. So the readers were terribly upset about it and I think, ultimately, the readers were right."

That's the original explaining, in one sentence, why the movies capped out. Reacher's size isn't a stat. It's the plot: entire books run on people underestimating a man they physically cannot underestimate on screen when he's the shortest person in the frame.

The correction

The Amazon series is essentially the apology tour made canon:

• Alan Ritchson is a legitimate 6'2"-plus wall of a man, cast after Child reclaimed the rights and insisted the next Reacher match the spec sheet.
• Child's verdict on the recast, per Collider: "Alan was born to play Reacher and I think he knows that."
• The author stays in the building — Child executive-produces the series, and his brother Andrew Child now co-writes the novels, so the source material keeps refilling faster than Amazon can film it.
• Season 4 is already shot and in post, with the book selection guarded as usual.

The Cruise films aren't erased, for what it's worth — they made over $380 million combined and Child has said the first one is a well-made thriller in its own right. It just wasn't Reacher. The show's entire pitch, down to the casting call, was the difference.

Earlier we wrote: James Bond vs Reacher vs John Wick: Who Reigns Supreme in Modern Action

Most murder mysteries make you wait for the name. This one gives it up in episode 2 and then makes you watch the wrong person get arrested.

The killer is Dennis, played by Murray Bartlett. He is introduced as the older boyfriend of Trevor (Brandon Flynn), the camboy whose murder starts the series — and he is also a professional, working for someone whose identity the season keeps back. He killed Trevor and then had a hard drive full of compromising videos and photographs wiped. The relationship was cover for a cleanup.

That reframes the whole show. Paula Saunders (Tatiana Maslany), a divorced fact-checker in Queens, watches Trevor get attacked mid-session, receives ransom demands, finds his body, panics, runs, and becomes the prime suspect. The audience already knows she didn't do it and already knows who did. What they're watching is the distance between those two facts closing, slowly, at her expense.

Read more: Ransom Canyon: what did Kit do? Even his own brother had the wrong idea

How early it comes out, exactly

Viewers learn Trevor's murderer in episode 2. Episode 3, "Chunnel," fills in the method and connects the online scammer to Trevor by the end of the hour.

Rather than withholding the killer's identity, the show reveals it in episode two, TellTale TV noted in its 2026 review — a structure that prioritizes information asymmetry over plot mechanics.

The episode 3 sequence is where the show's tone gets established, and it's largely procedural:

• The tissue — Paula left one at the crime scene. Dennis traces it back to a pizza restaurant, and from there to nearby schools.
• The pink cleats — he plants tracking devices inside cleats at those schools, then waits for Paula's daughter Hazel to pick up a pair.
• The wrong woman — the tracker moves. Dennis follows Mallory (Jessy Hodges), Hazel's mother and the wife of Paula's ex-husband Karl, tries repeatedly to hit her with his car, and finally forces her off her bicycle.
• The tattoo — he checks her for a butterfly tattoo, the only marker he has for Paula, doesn't find one, takes her jewelry and cash, and stages a mugging.

What Dennis does with the rest of the season

He keeps cleaning. Frank Budkins, a private investigator Mallory hired to build a custody case against Paula, photographs Dennis entering Paula's apartment and assumes he's her secret boyfriend. Dennis kills him to keep the photograph out of evidence.

Paula eventually shoots Dennis in the head after he abducts her. He survives it. Whoever he works for then throws him off a roof and stages the fall as a suicide, leaving a note confessing to the murders of both Trevor and Sky — which is what finally exonerates Paula. Detective Gonzalez (Dolly de Leon) doesn't believe any of it and has nothing to charge her with. Paula wins the custody trial.

Who hired Dennis is never named. The season points at a blackmail operation with real money behind it and stops there.

The twist that isn't about Dennis at all

The finale's last move flips the premise. Paula gets a video message containing footage from Portland two years earlier, showing her hitting her neighbor Caleb with her car. The audio includes Caleb shouting "I vouched for you!" — which turns an accident into a question.

She is cleared of the murder she didn't commit and blackmailed over the death she may have.

Created by David J. Rosen, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed ran ten episodes of 28 to 40 minutes on Apple TV from 20 May 2026, finishing at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes across 58 reviews and 72 on Metacritic. Rosen was still publicly hoping for a renewal after the finale aired. As of 23 September 2026, Apple hasn't announced one.

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Tom Clancy wrote The Hunt for Red October at night while running an insurance agency in Owings, Maryland. The closest he had come to the intelligence world was selling policies to people who worked near it.

Clancy was born in Baltimore on 12 April 1947, went to Loyola High School in Towson, then to Loyola College, where he switched from physics to English and graduated in 1969 with a 1.9 GPA. He joined Army ROTC and was disqualified from service by myopia severe enough to require the thick glasses he wore for the rest of his life. He took insurance and business certifications, worked for a firm in Hartford, and in 1973 joined the O.F. Bowen Agency in Owings, buying it outright in 1980 from his wife's grandmother. He started the novel in 1982 and sold it to Naval Institute Press in 1984 for $5,000 — the first fiction that publisher had ever put out.

The half that's autobiography

Character sketches later surfaced by the U.S. Naval Institute show how carefully Clancy assembled Ryan, and how much of the assembly was his own life reorganized into a better version.

Read more: Why did The Right Stuff bomb? It won four Oscars — and still couldn't earn back its budget

Ryan is born in the 1950s to a Baltimore Irish Catholic family, with a homicide detective father and a nurse mother. He attends Loyola High School in Towson — Clancy's own school — then takes an economics degree at Boston College. He earns a doctorate at Georgetown and teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy. He makes money as a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch's Baltimore office, ending up with roughly $8 million, topped up by an insurance settlement after his parents die in a plane crash.

And he gets the military career Clancy was refused. Ryan is commissioned as a Marine second lieutenant and serves three months before a helicopter goes down during a NATO exercise over Crete and a back injury ends it. The service is real enough to matter and short enough not to define him.

Clancy's technical detail came from his customers. A substantial number of his insurance clients were former nuclear submariners, officers and enlisted, and he worked them systematically for material.

The half that's a real intelligence officer

The career arc belongs to Robert Gates, who rose through the CIA as an analyst rather than an operations officer and went on to run the agency.

"You know, for the first several novels, I pretty much modeled Ryan's career on yours," Clancy told Gates.

That single decision is why the character works. Ryan is not a field operative who happens to read well; he's a desk analyst who keeps getting dragged out from behind the desk, which is a structure Clancy borrowed from a man who actually did the analytical job.

The plot wasn't invented from scratch either. Red October is built on the 1975 Storozhevoy incident, in which the political officer aboard a Soviet frigate led an attempt to take the ship out of Soviet control in the Baltic.

Five actors, one analyst

• Alec Baldwin — The Hunt for Red October, 1990.
• Harrison Ford — Patriot Games, 1992, and Clear and Present Danger, 1994.
• Ben Affleck — The Sum of All Fears, 2002.
• Chris Pine — Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, 2014.
• John Krasinski — the Prime Video series from 2018, and Jack Ryan: Ghost War in 2026.

Ghost War premiered in New York on 15 May 2026 and hit Prime Video worldwide on 20 May, directed by Andrew Bernstein from an original story by Noah Oppenheim and Krasinski rather than a Clancy novel. It opens with Ryan back in civilian finance before a Dubai job pulls him into a resurrected black program called Project Starling. Critics weren't kind: 43% on Rotten Tomatoes, 38 on Metacritic.

For the record: the version of Ryan sitting at a finance desk is the one closest to Clancy's original notes. It's also the one reviewers complained had the least to do.

Earlier we wrote: What happened to Val Kilmer? His final film was the one he'd waited 36 years to make

Looking back 38 years after Rain Man hit theaters, director Barry Levinson says one thing about making the movie still surprises him: how naturally Tom Cruise could wing it on set alongside Dustin Hoffman. In a new conversation with People, Levinson said the actors often built moments between Charlie and Raymond on the fly.

“And the two of them were wonderful together, Dustin and Tom, because we had to do a lot of improvisational things as we went along, and Tom was not known for that, but was exceptionally good,” he said.

The road-movie structure gave them room to discover the brothers’ rhythm scene by scene. As Charlie and Raymond crisscrossed the country, Levinson leaned into that freedom so their guarded, prickly bond could evolve into something more like family — and he credits the performances for making that shift feel unforced.

Cruise, off the cuff

Cruise’s improv chops didn’t start or end with Rain Man. On Risky Business, the script only said Joel would dance in his underwear. Cruise built the entire routine himself — sliding in socks, strumming a candlestick “guitar,” hopping on furniture — turning a throwaway beat into an era-defining scene.

There’s a famous on-the-spot save in Top Gun too: after forgetting a line opposite Kelly McGillis, Cruise stayed in character and kissed her. The unscripted move worked so well it made the final cut, a neat example of his instincts sharpening a moment rather than derailing it.

Rain Man’s run

In Rain Man, Cruise plays Charlie Babbitt, a grasping car dealer chasing a $3 million inheritance who initially treats his autistic savant brother Raymond (Hoffman) like a problem to solve. Over the cross-country trip, Charlie’s slick bravado cracks as the brothers’ connection deepens — the kind of gradual shift Levinson says was fueled by those improvised beats.

The movie didn’t just land emotionally; it dominated commercially and at the Oscars. Made for $25 million, Rain Man grossed more than $350 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1988. At the Academy Awards, it took home four trophies:

• Best Picture
• Best Director (Barry Levinson)
• Best Actor (Dustin Hoffman)
• Best Original Screenplay

For U.S. viewers in 2026, Solar Opposites is easy to find: all six seasons are streaming on both Hulu and Netflix. Hulu remains the show’s original home, while Netflix licensed the series and now carries Seasons 1–6 as well. If you prefer to own episodes, you can also buy them à la carte or by season through Amazon Prime Video.

As for the show’s future, Hulu has wrapped the series with Season 6, which serves as the final run. That full season is included on both streamers in the U.S.

Since landing on Netflix, the show has notched 111 million global viewing hours, according to What’s on Netflix.

The cast

Across its run, the series has fielded a stacked voice lineup for the Shlorp squad and their human neighbors:

• Justin Roiland — Korvo (early seasons)
• Dan Stevens — Korvo (from Season 4 onward)
• Thomas Middleditch — Terry
• Sean Giambrone — Yumyulack
• Mary Mack — Jesse

Notable guest voices have included:

• Kieran Culkin
• Sutton Foster
• Andy Daly
• Tiffany Haddish
• Christina Hendricks
• Alfred Molina
• Charlotte Nicdao

What it’s about

Created by Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan, the adult animated comedy follows a family of aliens who flee the destruction of Planet Shlorp and crash into suburban America. Their long-term mission is to keep the tiny, inscrutable Pupa safe until it’s ready to terraform Earth — but day-to-day life with humans keeps getting in the way.

All six seasons of Solar Opposites are streaming now on Hulu and Netflix in the U.S., with digital purchases available via Amazon Prime Video.

Landman doesn't bury its setting under an invented county name the way most oil dramas do. It says Midland, and then films about 300 miles east of it.

The series is set in Midland, Texas, and neighboring Odessa — the twin cities at the center of the Permian Basin, the oilfield that made West Texas the most productive petroleum region in the country. Billy Bob Thornton's Tommy Norris works for M-Tex Oil, a fictional company headquartered in Midland. The setting is not incidental to the premise; it is the premise. The show came out of Boomtown, the Texas Monthly podcast hosted by Christian Wallace, who co-created the series with Taylor Sheridan and reported the original series in the Permian. Texas Monthly is credited as an executive producer.

Where the cameras were

Fort Worth. The production office sits there, and the overwhelming majority of both seasons was shot inside the city limits or in small towns within an hour of it. The drive from the Fort Worth production base to the real Midland is roughly five hours on I-20.

• M-Tex Oil headquarters — Frost Tower, downtown Fort Worth.
• Midland Hospital — a building on Chisholm Trail in Jacksboro, about 70 miles northwest.
• The nursing home — Western Skies in Weatherford, with a separate field-trip sequence shot at Rick's Cabaret on Calmont Avenue.
• The deposition — the actual headquarters of the American Association of Professional Landmen on Fournier Street, the real trade body for Tommy's real job.
• The country club scenes — River Crest Country Club and The Resort Golf Club.
• The track meet — TCU's Lowdon Track Complex.
• Private jets — Meacham Airport and Perot Field.

Season 2 widened the map without leaving town: the Stockyards National Historic District, the White Elephant Saloon, Cattlemen's Steak House, Will Rogers Memorial Center, Bowie House and SGS Studios in the Alliance Corridor. The oil derricks, pump jacks and wind turbines were shot around Cresson, Jacksboro and Weatherford — real petroleum infrastructure, just several hundred miles from the basin it's meant to represent.

Read more: Why are Landman seasons so short? The man who gave Yellowstone a 14-episode season keeps this one at ten

Why Fort Worth and not the Permian

Sheridan's operation is based in the area, the crew infrastructure and stages are there, and Fort Worth has the two things Midland can't supply on demand: a downtown that reads as oil money, and enough hotel rooms for a Paramount+ production.

"If I had to pick a city in the United States where I feel most comfortable, it's Fort Worth, Texas," Thornton said in a 2025 interview with Visit Fort Worth.

The Permian's actual working towns are also, practically speaking, booked. Housing in Midland and Odessa tracks the rig count, which is the subject of the show.

What that means on screen

Mostly nothing, because North Texas and West Texas share flat horizon, mesquite and pump jacks. What's missing is scale — the Permian's oilfield sprawl doesn't have a stand-in within an hour of Fort Worth, so the industry arrives in the show through dialogue, interiors and rig sets rather than through landscape.

The most authentic location in the entire production is a trade association office building, and it's playing itself.

For the record: season 1 ran ten episodes from 17 November 2024 to 12 January 2025 and finished 2024 as the third most-watched original streaming show worldwide, at 9.9 billion minutes viewed. Season 2 ran 16 November 2025 to 18 January 2026 and opened to 9.2 million global views in 48 hours, the biggest premiere in Paramount+ history. Season 3 was ordered in December 2025, with filming expected to start in May 2026 — in Fort Worth.

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Production planted its flag in Australia. According to the film’s IMDb page, Street Fighter shot across a handful of Sydney standouts, mixing studio work with real-world backdrops fans will recognize once the punches start flying.

• Disney Studios Australia — soundstages for the tournament-scale builds
• Luna Park — the harborside amusement park
• Maroubra Beach — coastal stretches tailor‑made for wind‑swept showdowns
• Carriageworks — the industrial arts complex

Filming ran August 18 through November 12, 2025, in and around Sydney, Australia.

Story-wise, the movie brings estranged sparring partners Ryu and Ken Masters back together when Chun‑Li recruits them for the World Warrior Tournament—only to uncover a hidden conspiracy that pits them against enemies and each other.

Early trailers lean hard into game-accurate techniques, flashing staples like the Shoryuken, Dhalsim’s aerial Yoga Mummy, Chun‑Li’s Hundred Lightning Kicks, Balrog’s Buffalo Headbutt, the Dragonlash Kick, and E. Honda’s Hundred Hand Slaps.

Who’s in the fight

• Andrew Koji — Ryu
• Noah Centineo — Ken Masters
• Callina Liang — Chun‑Li
• David Dastmalchian — M. Bison
• Jason Momoa — Blanka
• Roman Reigns — Akuma
• Cody Rhodes — Guile
• Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson — Balrog
• Orville Peck — Vega
• Andrew Schulz — Dan Hibiki
• Vidyut Jammwal — Dhalsim

Kitao Sakurai directs, with the screenplay credited to Dalan Musson, Gary Dauberman, and T.J. Fixman. Posters and teasers have already offered first looks at the cast’s game-to-screen transformations.

Street Fighter opens October 16.

On Late Night with Seth Meyers, Ethan Hawke said he’d made it all the way to a final screen test for Titanic with James Cameron and Kate Winslet — and then talked himself right out of the job. He described being so amped about the opportunity that he couldn’t stop filling the room with chatter.

"I completely blew it..because I couldn't shut up," Hawke said.

Hawke recalled riffing to Cameron about how he pictured Titanic as a giant, throwback spectacle in the vein of 1970s disaster epics — he even name-checked The Towering Inferno. He could practically hear a voice in his head telling him to be quiet, but by then, he said, the damage was done.

He’d already survived multiple rounds of auditions, and a screen test meant he was very close. Still, he laughed off the misstep, suggesting the role of Jack Dawson probably belonged to someone else all along.

DiCaprio’s very different read

Hawke contrasted his chatty audition with how Leonardo DiCaprio approached the same room. Cameron has said DiCaprio initially balked at reading opposite Winslet — reportedly telling the director, “Oh, I don’t read” — fresh off the heat of Romeo + Juliet.

According to Cameron, once DiCaprio realized the part wasn’t guaranteed, he agreed to read. When the director called “Action,” the attitude vanished and DiCaprio snapped into Jack. Cameron later described it as a “ray of sun” lighting up the character on the spot, the moment the casting clicked.

As Hawke put it, it felt like the cinema gods had already picked their Jack Dawson — and they picked DiCaprio.

Gunsmoke premiered in 1955 and didn't shoot a frame in color until 1966. Both halves of that sentence come down to money, and only one of them is about cameras.

The numbers are lopsided. Across 635 episodes, 233 were half-hours and 402 ran an hour. Of the hour-longs, 176 were still black and white. That puts 409 episodes of Gunsmoke in monochrome against 226 in color — most of the most-broadcast Western in American television history was never shot for color at all.

CBS had no reason to spend the money

In 1955, color television barely existed in American homes. Sets cost a fortune, broadcasts were rare, and the economics behind them belonged to one company. RCA owned NBC and manufactured the receivers, which meant every color broadcast NBC aired was also a hardware advertisement. CBS made nothing on sets. Color stock and processing simply cost more per episode, and Gunsmoke was cranking out 39 episodes a season in its early years.

Read more: Gunsmoke: what happened to Thad? He was written in as insurance in case CBS lost Matt Dillon

Then there was the ratings argument, which didn't exist either. Gunsmoke was the number one program in the United States for seasons 3 through 6. Nobody at CBS needed to improve it.

Season 12 changed the film stock

The first color episode is "Snap Decision," broadcast 17 September 1966, opening season 12. CBS had moved to a nearly all-color schedule for the 1966–67 season, and Gunsmoke went with it. The production adjustments were cosmetic and immediate: Amanda Blake's hair was pushed brassier, Kitty Russell's crimson dresses gave way to jewel tones, and the opening sequence was reshot in color.

The switch to color did not produce a ratings turnaround. Season 12 ran 29 episodes from 17 September 1966 to 15 April 1967 and failed to make the Nielsen top 30.

The cancellation, and the reversal

On 23 February 1967, the New York Times reported that CBS intended to cancel Gunsmoke. The show was still pulling a substantial audience share, and the decision produced enough internal and external pushback to be reversed. William S. Paley, the CBS chairman who had greenlit the Gunsmoke radio version back in 1951, pushed to keep it, with reporting crediting pressure from his wife Babe. To clear the schedule, CBS dropped two other programs: Gilligan's Island, and a new comedy called Doc.

The survival came with a condition — a different night. For season 13, starting 11 September 1967, Gunsmoke moved from Saturdays at 10 p.m. to Mondays at 7:30 p.m. Eastern.

The move worked immediately. Gunsmoke jumped to number 4 in the Nielsen ratings and stayed in the top ten for six more seasons.

What the color actually bought

Eight more seasons of it, running through 24- and 26-episode orders until the series ended on 31 March 1975 — cancelled that time without a reprieve, and without CBS telling the cast in advance.

For the record: the problem was never the film stock. CBS tried color first and it did nothing. What fixed the show was moving it two and a half hours earlier in the week.

Earlier we wrote: How did Festus from Gunsmoke die? Ken Curtis spent his last day at a rodeo

The funding stack behind this merger just swelled again: Paramount Skydance is taking out another $7.5 billion loan to help pay for its planned purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal pegged at roughly $111 billion. The new cash is a senior secured Term Loan B, layered on top of an already pricey tab that includes a $2.8 billion termination fee tied to an earlier Netflix deal.

This latest borrowing is only one slice of a very big pie. Paramount Skydance also plans to raise about $44.4 billion in additional secured debt — a mix of investment‑grade and high‑yield bonds — alongside previously committed financing.

Money math, fast

• Deal value: about $111 billion (enterprise value)
• New loan: $7.5 billion Term Loan B
• More borrowing planned: roughly $44.4 billion in secured debt (bonds and more)
• Projected net debt after closing: $77.2–$80 billion
• Proceeds: fund the purchase and pay down certain high‑interest debt
• Planned new name for the combined company: “WarnerMount”

Why the rush

A major legal roadblock just came off the board. Paramount Skydance settled an antitrust lawsuit brought by 12 state attorneys general, led by California, and the Writers Guild of America, avoiding a trial that could have pushed the merger into mid‑2027. With litigation resolved and financing lining up, there’s a hard deadline looming.

$7 million per day — that’s the fee owed to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders if the deal isn’t closed by October 1.

That ticking meter helps explain the scramble to lock down the extra $7.5 billion. Paramount Skydance has also brought in Elon Musk to help syndicate equity investors, signaling the company still wants to balance the pile with fresh cash that isn’t debt.

If the merger closes as pitched, the combined company would start life carrying $77.2 billion to $80 billion in net debt. Paramount Skydance says part of the new money will also retire some of its higher‑interest IOUs.

Next up: finalize the new loan, move the broader bond sales to market, clear remaining approvals — and hit that October 1 finish line.

Deputy Thad Greenwood spent two seasons standing at Matt Dillon's shoulder and then simply stopped turning up in Dodge. Gunsmoke never explained it on screen, because the explanation was sitting in a CBS conference room.

Roger Ewing was 23 and barely a year into his screen career when Gunsmoke found him. He'd made his debut in Ensign Pulver in 1964, then guested in the season 10 episode "Song for Dying" in 1965 as a character named Ben Lukens. Producers liked him enough to build him a regular. He joined season 11 as Clayton Thaddeus Greenwood, introduced in an episode carrying his own name: a young man who rides into Dodge hunting four vandals whose stunt caused his father's fatal heart attack. Once that's settled, Dillon pins a deputy's badge on him. The slot had just opened up — Burt Reynolds had played blacksmith-deputy Quint Asper from 1962 to 1965 and left.

What CBS was actually buying

James Arness was in a contract dispute with the network in the mid-1960s, and Arness was not a cast member so much as the entire proposition. Gunsmoke had already proven it could absorb a major loss — Dennis Weaver walked away from Chester Goode after season 9 in 1964 and the show didn't dip. Matt Dillon was a different problem.

The network wanted Ewing available as a potential replacement for Arness during the negotiations, and positioned him as the younger addition to the cast, MeTV reported in 2026.

So Thad was built the way a young lead gets built: a personal motive, a proper introduction episode, screen time next to the marshal. Arness and CBS came to terms. Arness stayed.

Read more: How did Festus from Gunsmoke die? Ken Curtis spent his last day at a rodeo

What happened to the character

Nothing happened to him. Ewing appeared in more than 50 episodes across seasons 11 and 12 and was written out in 1967, once the contract question was closed. There is no exit episode, no departure scene, no line covering it. Season 12 ended on 15 April 1967, and when the show came back on 11 September 1967, Buck Taylor was in the cast as Newly O'Brien — deputy marshal and Doc Adams' apprentice — and Thad was not mentioned.

The deputy bench over twenty years looked like this:

• Chester Goode (Dennis Weaver) — 1955 to 1964, the original sidekick, gone after nine seasons.
• Quint Asper (Burt Reynolds) — 1962 to 1965, blacksmith and part-time deputy.
• Festus Haggen (Ken Curtis) — 1964 to 1975, the one who lasted.
• Thad Greenwood (Roger Ewing) — 1965 to 1967, the insurance policy.
• Newly O'Brien (Buck Taylor) — 1967 to 1975, the replacement for the replacement.

Where Ewing went

He kept working for another five years — Bewitched, Rawhide, scattered guest roles — and took his last credit in the 1972 film Play It as It Lays. Then he left acting for professional photography. He settled in Morro Bay, California, and ran for city council there in 2003.

Ewing died on 18 December 2025 at 83. The news didn't surface publicly until weeks later, in January 2026.

For the record: the contract dispute Thad was hired against was settled, and Arness went on to play Matt Dillon for another eight seasons, through the final episode on 31 March 1975. Ewing's 50-odd episodes were the ones nobody ever had to write an exit for.

Earlier we wrote: How does the Lonesome Dove series end? Four parts, and the last one is simply called "Return"

Announcing it on Instagram, Macklemore is spinning the week’s drama into a new run he’s calling the Free Palestine Tour, billed as “Macklemore and Friends.” He says 100% of ticket sales and tour proceeds will go to a dozen humanitarian, medical and advocacy groups supporting Palestinians. The first shows are set for Europe, with more cities and U.S. dates to be revealed.

The move follows a fast-escalating fallout around Ed Sheeran’s U.S. Loop Tour: after venues objected to Macklemore’s spot on the bill over his pro-Palestinian remarks, he was removed from the remaining U.S. dates. In the days after, several acts pulled out of Sheeran’s tour in solidarity.

• Finneas — withdrew from the remaining U.S. dates
• Lukas Graham — withdrew
• Aaron Rowe — withdrew
• Beoga — withdrew

“What happened to me is bigger than one artist or one stage. When the billionaire class can decide which voices are allowed on stage and which ones are too dangerous to hear, everyone should be paying attention.”

Macklemore added that he’s been reaching out to performers who’ve publicly supported Palestine to join him on the road; guests will be announced closer to the shows. The tour will operate under the “Macklemore and Friends” banner.

First stops

• October 26 — Dublin
• Paris — date TBA
• London — date TBA

He also said additional U.S. dates are in the works.

Who’s backing him

Musicians and public figures have rallied around Macklemore since the Sheeran shake-up, amplifying his posts and, in some cases, matching his relief donations.

• Garbage — called his removal “sheer madness” and “wildly unjust.”
• Kneecap — shared photos with Macklemore and a message of support.
• Zara Larsson — publicly amplified his stance.
• CMAT — publicly amplified his stance.
• Bob Vylan — publicly amplified his stance.
• Paloma Faith — publicly amplified his stance.
• Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) — reshared anti-censorship messages.
• Ms. Rachel — pledged $1 million to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund after Macklemore announced his own $1 million donation to Gaza relief organizations.

Specific venues, guest lineups and the full slate of European and U.S. dates will be announced on Macklemore’s channels.

That gasp you remember from San Diego Comic-Con Hall H wasn’t a fever dream. On July 27, 2024, the mask lifted and it was Robert Downey Jr. staring out as Doctor Doom—a whiplash turn from his Iron Man farewell in Endgame and the spark for Marvel’s next team-up, Avengers: Doomsday.

Why he said yes

Downey unpacked the decision on the studio’s Countdown to Avengers: Doomsday Official Podcast, a special tied to Avengers: Endgame, in a conversation with Ms. Marvel’s Iman Vellani. Asked what pulled him back into the MCU for a villain role, he didn’t hedge.

“What brought me back was the opportunity to redefine the genre of superhero movies.”

He said the creative bet is one he’s making alongside Marvel chief Kevin Feige.

“We love a challenge and we figured, ‘Wow, let’s mix it up and see if we can get ourselves excited.’ Because if we’re excited, the audience will soon follow.”

A bet against burnout

Downey also nodded to the well-documented superhero fatigue after a run of underperformers, even as recent bright spots like Spider-Man: Brand New Day popped. Early signs are promising here: Marvel says Doomsday pre-sales are already breaking records ahead of release.

Behind the scenes, Feige has adjusted course, trimming the number of projects between Doomsday and the next mega-event, Avengers: Secret Wars, to refocus attention on the tentpoles.

Endgame back on the big screen

To crank up anticipation for Downey’s turn as Victor Von Doom, Marvel is sending Avengers: Endgame Encore back into theaters with brand-new teases and exclusive footage tied directly to Doomsday. The re-release is pitched as both a victory lap for the Infinity Saga and a first look at how Doom factors into what’s next.

Avengers: Endgame Encore opens in theaters on September 25, 2026.

Ten episodes in 2024, ten in 2025, and season three not arriving in 2026 at all. The constraint isn't the network's appetite.

Landman premiered on Paramount+ on 17 November 2024 and ran ten episodes through 12 January 2025. Season 2 ran ten more, from 16 November 2025 to 18 January 2026. Paramount+ renewed it in December 2025. The show is a hit — season 1 opened at 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, season 2 improved to 83%, and it has spent most of two years on the service's most-watched lists.

Sheridan's own ceiling is ten

Taylor Sheridan gave Yellowstone a 14-episode fifth season, the longest order of his career — and it took two years and a split to deliver it. Eight episodes aired between November 2022 and January 2023. The remaining six aired from 10 November to 15 December 2024, almost two years later. The full series ran 53 episodes across five seasons.

Read more: Hell on Wheels: what happens to Mickey? Phil Burke says everyone expected him to die in season one

The rest of his catalog sits at or under ten per season. That number is not a creative preference so much as an arithmetic consequence of how he works.

"For me, writers rooms haven't worked," Sheridan said in 2023, when the WGA pushed for minimum staffing. He also told The Hollywood Reporter that year: "The freedom of the artist to create must be unfettered."

His producing partner David Glasser has put the output in plainer terms — "Taylor writes scripts like you or I have a cup of coffee" — and puts the Yellowstone total alone at 60 scripts. Billy Bob Thornton, who carries Landman as Tommy Norris, told the same story from the other side in December 2025: "We don't understand how he writes so much and so quickly."

One writer, several shows running concurrently, ten episodes each. The math closes.

The heat is a hard production limit

Landman shoots on location in Texas, around working rigs and open ground, and it releases in November. That combination forces production into the hottest months of the year.

"Twelve-hour days in 100-plus degree weather," co-creator Christian Wallace said of the shoot. "That's the big struggle from a production standpoint for us being on set every day."

A longer order would extend that window further into the Texas summer, with a cast and crew already working outdoors in triple digits.

What the season 3 delay confirms

The third season was originally set to film in spring 2026. It slipped to a September 2026 start, with production running into the first quarter of 2027 — which ends the show's annual November cycle and pushes the season to 2027. Cast member James Jordan attributed the postponement to Sheridan needing more time to finish the scripts himself.

Sheridan also stepped back from directing on season 2, having directed on season 1. A few other data points sit alongside it:

• Co-creation — Landman is credited to Sheridan and Christian Wallace, built from Wallace's Texas Monthly podcast Boomtown.
• Cast growth — season 2 added Sam Elliott and Andy Garcia to a roster already carrying Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, Ali Larter, Jon Hamm, Jacob Lofland and Michelle Randolph.
• The exception — Sheridan is planning to write with other people for the first time on the Yellowstone spin-off Marshals.

That last one is the thing to watch. If the no-writers-room rule breaks anywhere, the ten-episode ceiling is the first number that moves.

Earlier we wrote: How does the Lonesome Dove series end? Four parts, and the last one is simply called "Return"

On the Outlaws with TS Madison podcast, celebrity stylist Law Roach laid out his playbook for handling questions about Zendaya and Tom Holland: if you’re digging for personal details, he’ll happily send you in circles. Roach acknowledged he recently helped whip up marriage chatter about the couple — and then yanked it back — because, as he put it, he’s fine being an unreliable narrator when the topic is her private life.

Roach said on the Outlaws with TS Madison podcast that he’s willing to mislead to protect Zendaya’s privacy.

According to Roach, Zendaya wasn’t upset about the marriage tease; she thought it was funny. He also signaled he has no intention of giving straight answers on their relationship status anytime soon, preferring to keep the speculation humming rather than open a door the pair has kept closed.

Guarding Zendaya’s privacy

Roach explained that when people ask about Zendaya, he wants it to be about how she’s doing or what she’s working on — not an interrogation about her love life. That’s where the misdirection comes in: better to muddy the water than feed the rumor mill.

• He admitted to stoking — and then retracting — marriage rumors about Zendaya and Tom Holland.
• He said Zendaya laughed off the chatter rather than taking issue with him.
• He plans to “keep people guessing” instead of confirming or denying anything personal.
• He’d rather field questions about her well-being and work than her private world.

Roach has long been one of Zendaya’s closest creative partners and fiercest protectors on and off the red carpet, and his posture here tracks with how the pair has operated for years. Zendaya and Holland share selectively and keep the rest off-limits, which is why even basic questions about their relationship tend to boomerang back into speculation.

The bottom line from Roach’s appearance: if you’re looking for definitive answers about Zendaya’s personal life, you won’t be getting them from him — by design.

One day out from its U.S. bow, Primetime is sitting at an 89% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes from 98 reviews, a surge powered by its Venice premiere and weeks of chatter about Robert Pattinson transforming into TV figure Chris Hansen. Early write-ups keep zeroing in on Lance Oppenheim’s aggressive visual choices and a lead turn that pushes Pattinson into prickly, uncomfortable territory.

Primetime is at 89% on Rotten Tomatoes from 98 reviews the day before its September 25 theatrical release.

Directed by Oppenheim in his narrative-feature debut, the drama reimagines the rise of Hansen’s controversial NBC segment To Catch a Predator, with Pattinson playing the host as the show becomes a ratings force. The film widens its lens beyond the sting operations themselves, picking apart how TV manufactures spectacle, how fame feeds on it, and why audiences tune in to real-life wrongdoing as entertainment.

Pattinson’s performance has been the headline, but the broader critical consensus points to the movie’s nerve: it’s a media story that refuses to play nice, and the actor leans into that unease rather than smoothing it over.

Pattinson’s scorecard

While Primetime’s pre-release number is strong, it isn’t the highest Tomatometer entry tied to Pattinson’s name. His recent track record shows how wide he now swings between bold indies and big studio worlds.

• The Boy and the Heron (voice of the Gray Heron) — 96%
• Good Time — 91%
• The Lighthouse — 90%

That turn to stranger, riskier projects has been building since the post-Twilight pivot, with stops in Cosmopolis, The Rover, Good Time, The Lighthouse and, on the blockbuster side, The Batman. Primetime lands squarely in the first camp—and arrives with the kind of reviews that make a film feel like an event before the first showtime.

Primetime opens in theaters on September 25.

Season 3 adapts Persuader, Lee Child's seventh Jack Reacher novel, published in 2003. Season 2 had adapted his eleventh, which means the show has now moved backward four books to get here.

The running order on screen is 1, 11, 7, 13. Season 1 took Killing Floor (1997), the novel that introduced the character. Season 2 took Bad Luck and Trouble (2007) because it is the book that assembles Reacher's old army unit, which gave the show a way to build an ensemble. Season 3 takes Persuader. Season 4, which ran from 12 August to 16 September 2026, took Gone Tomorrow (2009), the thirteenth.

Why Persuader was worth going back for

Persuader is one of the Reacher novels written in the first person, and it is the one that spends the most time in his military past. The present-day plot puts Reacher undercover inside the household of a suspected drug smuggler on the Maine coast, working with a DEA agent running an unsanctioned operation. The reason he takes the job is Francis Xavier Quinn, a former military intelligence officer Reacher believed dead, who murdered an MP colleague of his named Dominique Kohl ten years earlier.

The book is a revenge story wearing an undercover operation as a disguise. That is also exactly what the season is.

For a show whose lead has no home, no possessions and no ongoing relationships, a novel carrying a decade-old grudge and a dead colleague is more useful than most of the books that came before it in the sequence.

Read more: Reacher: what happened to Hubble? Everything traces back to a confession he gave for a murder he didn't commit

What season 3 put on screen

Eight episodes, released 20 February 2025 with the first three at once and the rest weekly through 27 March, under showrunner Nick Santora. The cast:

• Alan Ritchson — Reacher, going undercover as a bodyguard after staging a kidnapping rescue.
• Sonya Cassidy — DEA agent Susan Duffy, running the off-book operation.
• Anthony Michael Hall — Zachary Beck, the rug importer whose business is not rugs.
• Johnny Berchtold — Richard Beck, the son Reacher pretends to save.
• Brian Tee — Francis Xavier Quinn, the reason Reacher is there at all.
• Olivier Richters — Paulie, the bodyguard who is physically larger than Reacher, which the books almost never allow.
• Maria Sten — Frances Neagley, carried over from seasons 1 and 2.

Critics registered it as the strongest run yet: 98% of 46 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were positive.

What the pattern is actually for

Child has been relaxed about the out-of-sequence adaptations, and the logic is visible in the results. The Reacher novels are standalone by design — he arrives, he leaves, nothing carries over — so publication order carries no story debt. What the books do have is wildly different structures, and the show picks the structure it wants for a given season.

Twenty-nine novels, no continuity between them, and a lead who takes nothing with him from one to the next. The order is a shelf, not a timeline.

For the record: Persuader is set on the Maine coast, and season 3 shot in and around Toronto and Ontario in winter, which is why the Atlantic in it looks the way it does.

Earlier we wrote: Ransom Canyon: what did Kit do? Even his own brother had the wrong idea

After months of talks with a special committee of MGM Resorts International’s board, Barry Diller’s company People Inc. has yanked its cash bid to take the casino-hotel operator private. The offer had been set at $48.30 per share; Diller will keep his sizable position in the company — about 27%, or roughly 66.8 million shares.

For anyone mixing up their MGMs: this is the Las Vegas operator behind the Bellagio fountains and the MGM Grand on the Strip, not the Hollywood studio now owned by Amazon. The pulled bid doesn’t affect the resorts, casinos, or live entertainment they run day to day.

• Offer announced: June 2026
• Price: $48.30 per share in cash
• Implied value: north of $18 billion
• Current position: People Inc. holds ~27% (66.8 million shares)
• Status: Proposal withdrawn; no new bid announced

Diller leaves the door open

“There are lots of ingredients that go into a proposal of this kind on its way to completion. We didn’t feel the mix was coming together in the way we had hoped and have decided not to pursue taking the company private at this time,”

Diller said in a statement. He also signaled he isn’t done looking at ways to work with MGM Resorts beyond an outright buyout.

“We at People Incorporated remain open to and interested in the possibility of a strategic transaction with MGM Resorts and look forward to considering a range of alternatives.”

People Inc. says it remains confident in MGM Resorts’ management and prospects. While the go-private plan is off, Diller’s stake keeps him a major voice in the company as consolidation continues to reshape the Vegas market.

No replacement offer, revised price, or alternate deal structure has been put on the table.

The new and final trailer for Clayface puts Tom Rhys Harries front and center in a gnarly, R-rated origin story for Gotham’s shape-shifting villain. It frames Matt Hagen as a scrappy kid who claws his way from the streets to Hollywood leading-man status, only to be disfigured by a crime boss and pushed toward an experimental fix that turns his body — and mind — to clay.

What starts as a miracle treatment restores Hagen’s looks, then warps his biology and shatters his grip on reality. The footage leans hard into body horror as his flesh turns malleable and he discovers the power to morph, kicking off a revenge path aimed at everyone who left him broken.

From West End to Gotham

Harries has been building to a breakout like this. He made his West End debut in 2014’s Mojo alongside Rupert Grint and Ben Whishaw, popped up in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, and grabbed wider attention with Netflix’s White Lines in May 2020. In June 2024, his guest spot in Doctor Who’s “Dot and Bubble” lit up X and TikTok, turning him into a trending name overnight.

His jump to the DCU became official in 2025, when he was introduced as Matt Hagen at San Diego Comic-Con with director James Watkins onstage. Since then, he’s been the question mark at the heart of one of DC’s riskiest swings in years.

The movie’s pitch-black take

DC is billing Clayface as its first R-rated body-horror thriller, pushing the character as a tragic figure whose cure curdles into a curse. The plot tracks Hagen’s fall from a rising Hollywood lead to a vengeful shapeshifter after an attack leaves him mangled — and desperate enough to try anything to get his face, and career, back.

• Tom Rhys Harries — Matt Hagen/Clayface
• Director — James Watkins
• Writer — Mike Flanagan

“After a long and incredibly exhaustive search, we finally have our DCU Clayface in Tom Rhys Harries. Both Matt Reeves and I were just blown away by this guy, and can't wait for you to see this film, directed by James Watkins and written by Mike Flanagan.” — James Gunn on X, June 17, 2025

Gunn’s shoutout underscores the creative pedigree here: Watkins (The Woman in Black) steering a psychological descent, and horror specialist Mike Flanagan scripting the spiral that turns Hagen into a walking, seething special effect.

The final trailer is out now, with Clayface set to hit U.S. theaters soon.

Annie Jacobson flies to Canada expecting to inherit half an island with her twin brother. The lawyer's paperwork says two-thirds, and the missing third has a name on it.

That name is Ramona, a 16-year-old played by Amélie Hoeferle, and she has been living on Sterling Point the entire time. Gordon, the twins' grandfather, raised her there. Annie has never heard of her.

The connection is through the mother, not the grandfather

Annie and Connor Jacobson (Ella Rubin and Keen Ruffalo) are biological twins who were adopted as small children by Goldie and Steven Jacobson and raised in New York. Ramona is Goldie's biological daughter — born after the twins came into the family, and born at the cost of Goldie's life. Goldie died in childbirth.

Read more: Who is Ramona's dad in Sterling Point? A cassette tape and a case of colour-blindness point in two different directions

That makes Ramona the twins' sister by their adoptive mother and nobody's blood relation to Gordon, who is Annie and Connor's biological grandfather. He raised her anyway, in the cottage on the island, for sixteen years.

Gordon left the twins two-thirds of Sterling Point and Ramona the remaining third. The will is the first time Annie learns she exists.

What the season does with her paternity

Ramona's biological father is the season's running mystery, and the show points hard at the wrong man for most of it. Joe (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the local boat builder and father of Annie's love interest Ellis, had a relationship with Goldie years earlier, which would make Ramona and Ellis half-siblings — and would make Annie's romance with Ellis considerably more complicated.

A DNA test rules Joe out. Ramona's biological father is Steven Jacobson (Jay Duplass), Annie's own adoptive father, who has spent the season quietly sitting on a set of letters Gordon left behind.

Steven hid the letters. Annie's investigation is, in the end, an investigation into the man who raised her.

Where she lands

Ramona spends most of eight episodes as the hostile party to an inheritance dispute and ends them somewhere else entirely. She leaves Muskoka for New York City — Annie's old life — while Annie stays on the island with Ellis. Bo Bragason plays Oona, Ramona's best friend and her one fixed point on the lake.

The series is the creation of Megan Park, released all eight episodes at once on Prime Video on 5 August 2026, and holds 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and 76 on Metacritic. Slate's Rebecca Onion called it "deep, funny, and unexpectedly moving" and argued it would outlast Prime's other young-adult romances. Amazon renewed it for a second season on 20 August 2026, fifteen days after it premiered.

Earlier we wrote: What happened to the mom in Sterling Point?

Kelli Giddish did not quit. That distinction is the entire story, and it took until May 2025 for the show to formally undo it.

Giddish joined Law & Order: SVU in season 13 in 2011, arriving in the reshuffle that followed Christopher Meloni's departure. She announced in August 2022 that she was leaving, and Amanda Rollins was written out on 8 December 2022, midway through season 24 — married to Carisi, off to teach at Fordham, given a send-off scene with Benson rather than a body bag.

The decision came from above the cast

Giddish learned she was going before season 24 started shooting and worked with producers on the exit storyline. Her public framing at the time was about the character reaching a stopping point.

"Playing Rollins has been one of the greatest joys and privileges of my life," Giddish said in her August 2022 departure statement, marking 12 years in the franchise.

Mariska Hargitay was considerably less diplomatic when Variety asked her about it in 2024. She confirmed she had lobbied against the decision and lost, and that Dick Wolf made the final call.

"Kelli is my favorite actor to work with. Kelli is my heart. It's a sore subject," Hargitay told Variety in 2024, adding: "I have a lot of say on the show, but I didn't have enough there... I don't like not being listened to, especially when I'm right."

She also described Benson and Rollins as "one of the most powerful relationships in television" — the working argument for why removing one half of it was a mistake.

Read more: Why did Jonny leave 2 Pints of Lager? Ralf Little gave his reason on This Morning in 2007

What happened in the gap

Rollins never fully left the building. Across seasons 25 and 26 Giddish came back six separate times as a guest, keeping the character in circulation while the show moved on without her:

• The marriage — Rollins stayed married to Carisi, who remained a series regular as an ADA, which gave the writers a standing reason to bring her back.
• The teaching job — the Fordham position kept her in New York and out of the squad room.
• The guest run — six appearances over two seasons, enough to keep the character's status current.
• The promotion — she returned in season 27 as a sergeant, commanding the NYPD's Intelligence Unit rather than working under Benson.

That last detail matters. Rollins did not come back to her old desk; she came back outranking the position she left.

Who gets the credit

Deadline broke the news in May 2025 that Giddish would be a series regular for season 27, which ran from 25 September 2025 to 14 May 2026 across 21 episodes under Michele Fazekas, the first woman to run the show. Ice-T has been direct about the mechanics of it.

"No one really expected her to leave the show. We got blindsided by that," Ice-T told TVLine in 2025. "But the fans said they wanted to see Kelli back, so she's coming back."

For the record: the exit statement in 2022 and the return announcement in 2025 both came from the same network, about the same actor, in the same role. Nothing in between changed except the volume of complaints.

Earlier we wrote: Why did Deke leave 2 Broke Girls? Fans were still googling whether he'd even gone

The body turned up floating beside his own yacht with one bullet in the head, and NCIS got shut down over it. The man who eventually confessed walked out with immunity and nobody on the team looked satisfied.

René Benoit — code name La Grenouille, "the frog" — was an international arms dealer played by Armand Assante, introduced in season 4 as the target of an operation Director Jenny Shepard (Lauren Holly) was running without authorization. Her motive was personal: she held Benoit responsible for the death of her father, Colonel Jasper Shepard, whose death had been ruled a suicide. Tony DiNozzo spent most of a season undercover as "Tony DiNardo," dating Benoit's daughter Jeanne (Scottie Thompson), without being told why.

The confession that closed it

Benoit's body was recovered in "Bury Your Dead," the tenth episode of season 5, which aired 27 November 2007. Four episodes later, "Internal Affairs" turned the murder into an internal investigation with FBI Agent Tobias Fornell (Joe Spano) running it. The agency was shut down, the team was put in lockup, Jenny was suspended, and Leon Vance arrived as acting director — Rocky Carroll's introduction to the show.

Read more: Why did Jonny leave 2 Pints of Lager? Ralf Little gave his reason on This Morning in 2007

The case against DiNozzo built fast and then collapsed:

• Jeanne's statement — she told Gibbs she watched Tony kill her father.
• The recant — she admitted she hadn't seen the shooting at all.
• Kort's confession — CIA officer Trent Kort (David Dayan Fisher) took responsibility, framing it as an associate killing Benoit and inheriting his operation.
• The paperwork — Kort produced an eyes-only immunity document for Fornell and Vance and walked.

That closed the file. It did not close anything for Gibbs, who had already found a mark on Benoit's hand matching one on Jasper Shepard's body — physical evidence that whoever shot Benoit had been standing close enough to touch him.

Gibbs' exit line to Jenny in her office at the end of the episode was three words: "Long live the Queen."

What the shell casing was doing in his basement

The answer arrives in "Judgment Day Part 1," the 112th episode of the series and the first half of the season 5 finale. Abby had logged a distinctive scratch on the shell casing recovered from the scene. Gibbs sits in his basement with Benoit's autopsy file and a magnifying glass, comparing that casing to a spent round in his own possession — a round from ammunition he had given Jenny, which she had left on his desk.

The marks match. Jenny Shepard shot René Benoit.

The reveal is built entirely out of props the show had already put on screen and never explained: a handful of rounds, a casing, and a used bullet returned without comment.

Jenny never faces any of it. She dies later in the same two-parter, shot during a firefight at an abandoned desert diner, and Vance breaks up the team in the aftermath — DiNozzo to the USS Ronald Reagan, McGee reassigned, Ziva's liaison status revoked.

Why the season handled it this way

Season 5 ran only 19 episodes because of the Writers Guild strike, which opened a production gap between episodes 11 and 12. It was also Shane Brennan's first season as showrunner after Donald P. Bellisario's exit, and the La Grenouille arc was inherited business that had to be cleared.

For the record: Trent Kort's confession stayed on the books for years, and the character survived until May 2016, when the Major Case Response Team shot him after he drew on DiNozzo.

Earlier we wrote: Ransom Canyon: what did Kit do? Even his own brother had the wrong idea

On the set of Primetime, first-time feature director Lance Oppenheim routinely let scenes run past their scripted endpoints, refusing to call “cut” to see what might happen if the moment just kept breathing. Robert Pattinson says that unexpected extra beat is where some of the movie’s best surprises came from.

Let it roll

Pattinson told Film Updates that Oppenheim’s approach initially threw him, especially when a scene had a clear button on the page. But the director’s instinct to keep the camera rolling sometimes unearthed sparks no one planned for.

“The amount of times where Lance just wouldn’t cut at the end of the scene and he said, ‘I just want to see where it goes.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, it’s not gonna go anywhere. It’s literally, that’s the end of the scene.’ But sometimes, weirdly, it suddenly would.”

He added that playing past the boundary turned into a kind of on-set game—awkward at first, then oddly freeing—often yielding an unguarded reaction that made the final cut. For Oppenheim, known for vérité-leaning documentaries, it’s a natural extension of his style in his first narrative feature.

Early reviews

That gamble appears to be paying off. With initial reactions in, Primetime is sitting at 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising the film’s sharp craft and Pattinson’s shape-shifting turn as a fictionalized riff on “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen.

Reviewers have singled out the movie’s distinctive look and the way Pattinson’s performance locks into it—an unusual pairing that many say clicks precisely because of choices like the ones Oppenheim made on set.

Skyler Gisondo says he actually scheduled the moment he’d stop calling Robert De Niro “Mr. De Niro” and start going with “Bob.” While shooting Focker-In-Law, he waited until a Friday to try it — on purpose — figuring a weekend buffer might soften any awkwardness if it landed wrong.

Sharing the story on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Gisondo admitted he spent days keeping it formal around the two-time Oscar winner.

“The first week of filming went by like Monday, Tuesday, and I am saying, ‘Good morning, Mr. De Niro,’”

Over those first few days, he picked up that De Niro seemed to prefer a looser vibe on set, even if the legend never told him to drop the “Mr.” That’s when Gisondo drew up a small plan.

“I was nervous to call him Bob, so I made a game plan,”

He chose Friday, waited until wrap, and went for it.

“All right, bye. Thank you for a great week, man,”

Gisondo said he clocked a subtle reaction that made him think De Niro appreciated the switch.

The Fockers are back

Focker-In-Law is positioned as the fourth movie in the Meet the Parents franchise, reuniting Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller as Jack Byrnes and Greg Focker. Gisondo joins the chaos as Greg’s son, adding a new generation to the long-running Byrnes–Focker family standoff.

• Robert De Niro — Jack Byrnes
• Ben Stiller — Greg Focker
• Skyler Gisondo — Greg’s son

Plotwise, the film leans into multi-generational family friction: younger relatives with modern views banging up against Jack’s old-school expectations, plus the franchise staples — Jack’s surveillance streak, Greg’s best-intentions-gone-wrong, and social blowups that spiral from awkward to catastrophic. Wedding prep and complicated family get-togethers provide the setup for the new round of disasters.

Looking to watch it at home? As of now, The Rivals of Amziah King isn’t included with any subscription streaming service. It’s a premium on-demand rental for $19.99 on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV after its U.S. theatrical run in August 2026.

Written and directed by Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), the film follows Amziah King, a beekeeper played by Matthew McConaughey, and Kateri, his foster daughter, who returns to his honey farm after her mother’s death. They reconnect over bluegrass and small-town life until a dangerous turn pulls them into a thriller plot.

• Matthew McConaughey — Amziah King
• Angelina LookingGlass — Kateri
• Kurt Russell
• Rob Morgan
• Cole Sprouse
• Owen Teague

That no-CGI bee scene

One of the movie’s most-talked-about moments has McConaughey holding a swarm of bees in his bare hands — done for real, with no digital trickery. He told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that he trained for weeks with a queen bee and even got stung while practicing; he also said he’s allergic to stings. The key, he explained, was keeping the queen calm so the hive stayed calm.

“I'm holding the queen bee. And if you hold the queen bee, the rest of the hive will come to protect her. If the queen bee is not irritated. They will not be irritated.”

The scene was ultimately filmed without CGI, and McConaughey said that by the time cameras rolled, he was able to handle the bees without getting stung.

Where to watch: Rent The Rivals of Amziah King for $19.99 on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV. No U.S. subscription streaming date has been announced.

She was hit in the face during a group number, and the medical team wouldn't clear her to dance. The part that needed explaining afterward was why a portion of the audience decided none of it was real.

Natalie Jolley, a 20-year-old ballroom dancer from New York, was competing on Dancing with the Stars: The Next Pro, ABC's spinoff in which twelve dancers live and train together in Brisbane, Australia, competing for a slot on the main show's professional roster. Robert Irwin hosts; Mark Ballas and Shirley Ballas judge, with rotating guests including Derek Hough and Witney Carson. It premiered July 13, 2026.

During rehearsals for episode three, fellow contestant Stephani Sosa caught her in the face — a combination of hand and hair, at speed, in choreography. Jolley was dizzy and in tears on camera. The medical assessment came back as a black eye and a concussion. She was not cleared, and she exited the competition on July 27, 2026, the third dancer out that season.

Read more: Big Brother: how are Have-Nots chosen?

Why viewers didn't buy it

The skepticism came from a specific detail: Jolley appeared on stage for the elimination looking considerably less damaged than the footage suggested she should. From there the objections multiplied.

• The makeup — her eye read as barely marked under stage lighting and full television makeup.
• The medical logic — commenters argued that being slapped doesn't produce a concussion, since concussions come from the brain moving inside the skull.
• The response — the ambulance on site struck some viewers as disproportionate to what they'd seen.
• The timing — an injury exit in episode three, in a competition built around weekly eliminations, invited the obvious suspicion.

What she posted

Jolley answered on TikTok with photographs taken during treatment, showing the bruising without broadcast makeup on it.

"Never thought I would need to prove to the internet that I did indeed get smacked hard enough to get a black eye and concussion... for those saying it didn't look bad from the show, they covered it up with makeup!" she wrote, adding that people should "be kind and respectful, especially when you don't know the full story behind the scenes."

Two days after the elimination, on July 29, she posted a longer statement on Instagram saying she had done everything in her power to stay in, and that the decision belonged to the medical team rather than to her.

"If there's one thing this experience has taught me, it's to do the scary thing," she wrote.

Where it left everyone

Stephani Sosa apologized off camera and again in a confessional. Her brother, DWTS pro Ezra Sosa, publicly backed her, pointing out that rehearsal collisions are routine in this line of work, and the siblings filmed a joint TikTok about it. A share of commenters remained unconvinced regardless of the photographs.

The season ran to its finale on August 31, 2026, with Adele, AJ Pritchard, and Selena Hamilton as the final three.

For the record: Jolley left the show attached to Jake Monreal, a fellow contestant who had been eliminated back in episode one. He was gone first; she was gone third; they both got something out of Brisbane.

Earlier we wrote: What happened to Josh Harris from Deadliest Catch? He was gone before the season aired

On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Skyler Gisondo flashed back to being nine years old on a TBS soundstage, taping in front of a crowd and shadowing his older TV “siblings.” He says he and Jennifer Lawrence had the kind of bond that comes with spending every week together on a multicam set.

“I remember we like, I think, fought like brother and sister,” he said. “We were like very close.”

The gig was The Bill Engvall Show (2007–2009), a traditional Friday-night tape with a live audience — catnip for a kid who loved the rush.

“I lived for the Friday nights,”

he added, calling the weekly performance energy “so exciting.”

Part of what clicked on the show was the Pearson kids’ easy rhythm. In case you watched back then and are connecting the dots:

• Jennifer Lawrence — Lauren Pearson
• Graham Patrick Martin — Trent Pearson
• Skyler Gisondo — Bryan Pearson

Lawrence and Martin were a few years older, which made them heroes in Gisondo’s eyes when the cameras weren’t rolling.

“I just thought her and Graham were like the two coolest people in the world,”

he said. The timeline also caught Lawrence right before liftoff: during the sitcom’s run she took on Winter’s Bone, a stark indie role that couldn’t have been farther from the family-comedy vibe they were making together.

From Pearson to Olsen

Gisondo’s now part of James Gunn’s connected DC universe as Jimmy Olsen, first in Superman — due in 2025 — and then headlining the Max series The People v. Gorilla Grodd. The show is framed as an investigative procedural built around the telepathic gorilla villain, keeping Jimmy’s reporter instincts front and center while pulling in metahuman weirdness.

The setup also means DC is sticking with the same actors across film and TV — so the Jimmy you meet in theaters in 2025 is the one leading the case on Max after that.

On the latest episode of Chicks in the Office, Rob Lowe went long on why the 1980s still own his heart. While promoting his new movie, The Musical, the actor said the era wasn’t just career-defining — it was flat-out the most fun he’s ever had, thanks in part to a world without social media or camera phones.

“It was an incredible time to be in the business. It was an incredible time to make movies. It was an incredible time to party. It was an incredible time to be single. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

He doubled down on the sentiment later in the conversation, adding:

“In the totality of humanity, if I could have lived in any time, that would have been it.”

Lowe explained that life as a young star felt looser back then — no endless recording of every moment, no instant backlash loop. Even something as simple as a night out had a thrill to it because you genuinely didn’t know who would make it or where the night would go.

Cue up St. Elmo’s Fire

If Lowe’s nostalgia has you craving a rewind, his 1980s breakout St. Elmo’s Fire — directed and co-written by Joel Schumacher — is a coming-of-age drama about a tight friend group trying to figure out adulthood right after college: careers, relationships, mistakes, the works.

• Rob Lowe
• Emilio Estevez
• Andrew McCarthy
• Demi Moore
• Judd Nelson
• Ally Sheedy
• Andie MacDowell

St. Elmo’s Fire is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.

A banker walks into a police station in Margrave, Georgia, and admits to a killing nobody has accused him of. It takes Oscar Finlay one question to establish he's lying, and the rest of the season to establish why.

Paul Hubble, played by Marc Bendavid, is the second name the show gives you. His phone number is found on the body of the man shot dead by the highway in episode one — a body that turns out to be Joe Reacher, Jack's older brother. Hubble is brought in, sees a black sedan idling outside the window, and confesses on the spot.

Finlay tests it by asking him something about the cause of death that Hubble gets wrong. That's the whole interrogation. The confession collapses, and the question becomes who Hubble was buying time for.

Read more: Ransom Canyon: what did Kit do? Even his own brother had the wrong idea

What he was doing for Kliner

Hubble managed currency for Kliner Industries, and the operation he was pulled into is the engine of the entire season:

• The product — Kliner bleached one-dollar bills and reprinted them as hundreds, producing counterfeit "superbills" good enough to pass anywhere.
• The destination — the bills went to Venezuela as hard currency, which let the Kliner Foundation run a cash pipeline without touching drugs or weapons.
• Hubble's job — sourcing pristine one-dollar notes in volume from cash-heavy businesses, which is a task that requires a banker and no criminal instincts whatsoever.
• The leverage — Kliner made sure Hubble had seen what happened to people who talked. His wife Charlie, played by Kristin Kreuk, and their two daughters were the collateral.

A coerced accountant who confesses to a murder is not protecting himself. He's buying forty-eight hours for his family.

He is the reason Joe Reacher was in Margrave

This is the part that makes Hubble structural rather than incidental. Hubble contacted the Secret Service to inform on the operation in exchange for immunity. The Secret Service already had an agent on counterfeiting: Joe Reacher.

KJ Kliner, played by Chris Webster, found out about the contact, and Joe was killed to shut the investigation down before it reached the Foundation. So the murder that opens the series, the murder Hubble falsely confesses to, happens because of a call Hubble made.

Where he ends up

Hubble is held in the same prison as Jack Reacher and survives an attack there only because Reacher intervenes. Released, he vanishes — hiding out in South Carolina while Reacher, Finlay, and Roscoe Conklin cover his family in Margrave. KJ and Mayor Teale eventually collect the whole Hubble family as leverage, treating Paul as the last loose end.

In the finale, "Pie," Reacher burns the Kliner factory as a distraction and gets Hubble out. Hubble is not a bystander in the assault — he fires on one of the antagonists himself — and he walks out of the building with Charlie and both daughters.

He survives the season. In Lee Child's Killing Floor, the 1997 novel the season adapts, that is not how it goes.

Reacher kills KJ, buries his grandfather's World War II medal at the spot where Joe died, and leaves town. All eight episodes dropped on Prime Video on February 4, 2022.

Earlier we wrote: What happened to the mom in Sterling Point?

File this under “DCU curveballs”: the new spin-off The People v. Gorilla Grodd is a true-crime style mockumentary centered on Jimmy Olsen and the Daily Planet crew probing whether DC villain Gorilla Grodd got a raw deal. The series, set in the same world as 2025’s Superman, is being developed for Max and marks the DCU’s first stab at a mock-doc format, with American Vandal duo Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda steering the show.

• Skyler Gisondo — Jimmy Olsen
• Beck Bennett — Steve Lombard
• Mikaela Hoover — Cat Grant
• Wendell Pierce — Perry White

How it started

Gisondo said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that the Grodd idea was in the mix long before cameras rolled on Gunn’s Superman. He also noted James Gunn’s plan from the jump was to frame it like a mockumentary.

"I guess like it was one of the first ideas early even before the movie."

The actor added he’d heard about the project early and was into it, but tried not to get attached until it was official. Gunn has said he and DC Studios co-chief Peter Safran had kicked around pitches for Lanterns and this Grodd offshoot before they formally took over the DCU slate.

Story-wise, the show puts Olsen in front of the camera as the host of a true-crime series inside the series, with fellow Daily Planet reporters helping him dig into Grodd’s conviction. With Perrault and Yacenda at the helm and several Superman faces returning, it’s a left-turn genre play designed to widen the DCU around Metropolis’ newsroom.

Ten minutes into the finale and the walls are already melting: Stuart, Bert, Denise and Kripke step through a doorway and find themselves in front of a live studio audience, watching a curtain call for a show called Stuart Fails to Save the Universe—with their own real names being announced. They flee the stage and land on Stage 25 on the Warner Bros. lot, the same soundstage where The Big Bang Theory once shot.

How they got there is its own weird breadcrumb trail. A canned laugh track only Kripke hears at first, sudden blasts of blinding light, and a petty relationship spat (Denise is furious Stuart forgot her birthday and won’t tell him why) all stack up until Kripke connects the dots: they’re literally inside a sitcom. The second he says it out loud, a portal opens like the universe saying “You rang?”

The episode doesn’t save its lore dump for last either. Before the meta spiral, Kyle lays out who’s been wrecking their reality-jumping mission: an ancient, omnipotent consciousness called The Adversary that predates the Big Bang and prefers the silence before existence. It’s the same force that had Stuart committed back in Episode 4 and trapped the gang inside a comic book earlier this season. Now their comic shop is floating in a void outside time and space—no streets, no sky, just nothingness as far as they can see.

TV, but not ours

The Warner Bros. reveal comes with another curveball: this dimension’s TV slate isn’t one-to-one with ours. Where we’ve got Young Sheldon and Two and a Half Men, billboards here tout Young Leonard and Two and a Half Women. It’s a tiny swap with big implications—the multiverse here isn’t just bent, it’s reprogrammed.

• Kevin Sussman — Stuart
• Brian Posehn — Bert
• Lauren Lapkus — Denise
• John Ross Bowie — Kripke
• Ryan Cartwright — Kyle

Kyle’s cliffhanger

While the quartet takes the leap into the studio world, Kyle stays behind, too rattled by the Adversary—and the smoky nothingness beyond the door—to follow. He tidies up the wrecked shop for a beat of normalcy, and that’s when the Adversary shows up. Kyle’s failure to keep the group contained mirrors Trevor’s earlier mistake, which ended with Trevor being torn apart by the same entity. Whether Kyle gets the same fate or a second chance is the finale’s nastiest unresolved question.

Episode 10, “Spoiler: Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience,” pulls the curtain back on Warner Bros.’ Stage 25.

Even with cosmic stakes on the table, the show keeps Stuart on brand. He rallies the group with a half-joke that the answers might be “out there” in Burbank or Studio City—then undercuts the moment with an IBS overshare as the tag button. The season closes on that blend of gross-out humor and reality-warping high concept that’s defined the HBO spinoff’s first run.

When Paul Thomas Anderson FaceTimed Skyler Gisondo to offer him a spot in Licorice Pizza, the director had one follow-up: could he play piano? On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Gisondo said he answered yes — even though he’d never touched the keys.

"It would have been a lie to be like, 'yeah, I play a little bit.' But I swung for the fences. Yeah, dude. I said, 'I've been playing my whole life,'" he said.

Crash-course piano

The bluff got real fast when Anderson told him the scene would require Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer. Gisondo had 10 weeks before filming, so he started from zero and built a routine to get there.

He said he practiced for hours every day, battling nerves the entire time.

"I played legitimately probably like 5 hours a day every day. The whole time thinking like waking up in cold sweats like I'm not. Today's the day I call him and come clean and like tell him I can't," he recalled.

According to Gisondo, the grind worked: he performed the piece for the scene. He also said he told Anderson’s wife about the original lie — and that she urged him to come clean — but he believes Anderson himself still might not know.

Then the edit

After all that, Gisondo said a later call from Anderson brought a twist: the piano bit didn’t make the final cut. The scene was dropped in editing, though Gisondo kept the role in the film.

Gisondo shared the whole story during his appearance on Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast.

The exit everyone remembers as a firing was technically a resignation, and the thing that triggered it happened a full season earlier. The distinction matters more than it sounds.

Vicki Gunvalson was one of the five original Housewives when The Real Housewives of Orange County premiered on Bravo on March 21, 2006 — running Coto Insurance, living in Coto de Caza, married to Donn. She stayed full-time for thirteen seasons and 250 episodes. Then, for season 14, Bravo moved her from full Housewife to "friend of the Housewives," which in franchise terms means fewer episodes, no orange in the opening titles, and no taglines.

She lasted one season in that role.

Read more: Big Brother: how are Have-Nots chosen?

The announcement

On January 24, 2020, Gunvalson confirmed on Instagram that she was done.

"It's been an incredible ride for 14 years and I want to thank all of you for your support, for your love and for 'whooping it up' with me along the way," she wrote.

The line that got quoted everywhere was the other one: she would always be the OG of the OC. Andy Cohen replied publicly with "OG" and a string of orange emojis. Tamra Judge announced her own departure days later, which made January 2020 look from the outside like a clear-out rather than two separate decisions.

What the demotion was actually about

Gunvalson's own position was that the reduced role was untenable rather than insulting on its own terms — at the season 14 reunion she described feeling like a has-been next to the women who still had full status. Bravo has never issued a detailed rationale. What's on the record is the surrounding context:

• Season 10, 2015 — her boyfriend Brooks Ayers built a season-long storyline around a cancer diagnosis, then admitted he had fabricated medical documents to support it.
• Seasons 11 through 13 — she stayed full-time throughout, so the scandal did not cost her the job directly.
• Season 14, 2019 — the demotion, with no on-air explanation given to the audience.
• January 2020 — the exit, by her own announcement rather than a network statement.

The practical read is that Bravo wanted the franchise's center of gravity to move and used the friend designation to do it without firing an original cast member. She declined to sit in the smaller chair.

She has the orange back

The story didn't end in 2020. Gunvalson guested in seasons 17 and 18, in 2023 and 2024, mostly reconstituting the Tres Amigas with Tamra Judge and Shannon Beador. She headlined season 2 of The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip in 2022 and returned for season 5 in 2026.

Then, at BravoCon in November 2025, Andy Cohen offered her the orange back on stage. She took it.

Season 20 premiered on Bravo on July 9, 2026, with Gunvalson as a full-time Housewife for the first time since season 13.

The season-20 lineup puts her alongside Tamra Judge, Heather Dubrow, Shannon Beador, Gina Kirschenheiter, Emily Simpson, Jennifer Pedranti, and newcomer Carmella Garcia, with guest appearances scattered through from Jeana Keough, Lauri Peterson, Jo De La Rosa, Lizzie Rovsek, and Elizabeth Lyn Vargas.

For the record: the gap between her demotion and her reinstatement ran six and a half years, and the show spent most of it without an original cast member in the opening credits.

Earlier we wrote: What happened to Josh Harris from Deadliest Catch? He was gone before the season aired

It started with a TikTok. After posting a deadpan riff on Riverdale, Jack Martin got a message from someone who knew the show a little better than he did: Lili Reinhart. That online meet-cute quickly jumped offline; within months, the pair were photographed kissing outside LAX in April 2023, then made it Instagram-official that July.

Their first major step onto the world stage came soon after, when they turned up hand-in-hand in Italy, all smiles and zero theatrics. The attention came whether they leaned into it or not, and they’ve largely opted for a low-key approach.

They made their red carpet debut at the Venice Film Festival in September 2023.

Since then, they’ve kept the commentary minimal and the support visible. Reinhart has credited Martin with steadying her through chronic health challenges, and he’s publicly praised her character, describing how grateful he is to have her in his life. The relationship chatter tends to live in the margins of their work, which is exactly how they seem to prefer it.

From TikTok to TV

Before any premieres, Martin was just John Martin from Columbia, Maryland, raised in McLean, Virginia. He enrolled at Georgetown University to study political science and graduated a year early in December 2019, but a single semester of acting grabbed his attention hard enough to change course. He sharpened his craft with time at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and NYU Tisch.

Meanwhile, his phone camera became a launch pad. Snarky sketches about prep-school culture and corporate life piled up hundreds of millions of views on TikTok, and industry attention followed. When the TV roles came, they came fast.

• La Brea (NBC) — Josh Harris, series regular across three seasons (2021–2024)
• Not Suitable for Work (Hulu) — Josh Teitelbaum in Mindy Kaling’s comedy, premiered in 2026 and canceled after one season
• The Rookie — guest appearance
• All Rise — guest appearance
• Films: Senior Prank (2025); Pizza Movie (2026, Hulu)

As Reinhart’s The Love Hypothesis recently rolled out, Martin’s own resume kept expanding alongside it — from his breakout turn on a broadcast drama to a Hulu comedy and a pair of mid-’20s film releases. On TV, his most recent series, Not Suitable for Work, bowed in 2026 and ended after a single season.

On the Kelce brothers’ New Heights podcast, Matthew McConaughey said he’ll never tire of strangers greeting him with the same three words — and then walked through exactly how those words landed him on the map. The actor traced it back to an Austin night in 1992, when he met producer Don Phillips at a bar, a chance encounter that led to the Dazed and Confused script and, eventually, his breakout as David Wooderson.

Once he got to set, McConaughey said he was asked to improvise as Wooderson by locking onto the character’s simple obsessions. He boiled it down to three things:

• the car
• getting high
• rock and roll

From that headspace came the line that stuck — and his very first on-camera words.

“All right, all right, all right. First three words I ever said. First three words I ever said on film. What I thought might be a hobby turned out to be a career,” he said.

Decades later, he told Jason and Travis Kelce he hears the catchphrase constantly and doesn’t mind it one bit. The line, he added, still feels connected to the moment he found his footing as an actor.

Back to Rust Cohle?

Asked by Esquire which past project he’d revisit, McConaughey didn’t hesitate: True Detective. “I think if we got it right, it would be fun to go back to Rustin and Marty, True Detective,” he said — even punctuating the thought with Rust Cohle’s unmistakable whistle.

The idea isn’t out of nowhere. Creator Nic Pizzolatto has previously said he had another story in mind for Cohle and Hart, and both McConaughey and Woody Harrelson have been part of conversations about a potential reunion.

For now, the longtime friends are back on screen together in Brothers, which premiered on Apple TV+ on September 23, 2026.

AMC's Western got the phrase from the Union Pacific's construction camps, which is correct as far as it goes. The trouble is that the Union Pacific didn't invent it either.

Between 1863 and 1869, the crews building the transcontinental railroad west across the plains were followed by a portable town: saloons, gambling houses, dance halls, and brothels in canvas tents and board shanties, packed up and moved every thirty to sixty days to stay within walking distance of the railhead. That town had a name before it had an address.

What the camps actually were

The moving settlement wasn't one place. It reassembled under a series of names, each of which had a few weeks of being the most dangerous address in the country:

• North Platte, Nebraska (1866) — the first terminus to take the shape, and where the phrase got attached in print.
• Julesburg, Colorado (1867) — Henry Morton Stanley, then a reporter, dismissed it as "an overdone town, a played out place."
• Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming (1867–68) — both survived the railroad and are still there.
• Benton, Wyoming (1868) — lasted roughly ten weeks and is now a ghost town.
• Corinne, Utah Territory (1869) — generally counted as the last of them.

Army surgeon Major Henry C. Parry, passing through, described the inhabitants as "having a good time gambling, drinking, and shooting each other."

Read more: Hell on Wheels: what happens to Mickey? Phil Burke says everyone expected him to die in season one

The man who got the credit was quoting someone else

Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican in Massachusetts, is routinely named as the man who coined the phrase. He published it in his 1869 travel book Our New West, describing the camps as populated by "restaurant and saloon keepers, gamblers, desperadoes of every grade, the vilest of men and of women." On Benton he was blunter, writing that it festered "in corruption, disorder and death," averaging roughly a murder a day.

But read his own sentence and the credit falls apart.

"This 'Hell on Wheels,' as it was most aptly termed," Bowles wrote in Our New West, 1869.

That construction does one thing: it reports a phrase already in circulation. Bowles heard it on the line and put quotation marks around it. He popularized it for an East Coast readership. He did not make it up.

It was in American print before the railroad

The phrase predates the Union Pacific entirely. Etymology records trace it to 1843, as a mock name for a Mississippi River steamboat — the joke being a floating hell with paddle wheels on it. It resurfaces in an 1863 anti-Lincoln editorial, describing forces that "run with fire and fury, like a hell on wheels — to blast and burn."

The railroad didn't coin the phrase. It gave the phrase a permanent job.

By 1868 the usage had narrowed to the vice towns, and that meaning stuck hard enough to survive everything since. The U.S. Army's 2nd Armored Division took it as a nickname in World War II.

What AMC built on it

Hell on Wheels ran on AMC from November 6, 2011 to July 23, 2016 — five seasons, 57 episodes, created by Joe and Tony Gayton, and filmed in Calgary rather than Nebraska. Anson Mount played Cullen Bohannon, a former Confederate soldier working the line; Colm Meaney played the real-life Union Pacific financier Thomas "Doc" Durant; Common played freedman Elam Ferguson. The series covers 1865 to 1869, which is almost exactly the working life of the real camps.

Count from the 1868 railroad usage to the AMC premiere and the phrase was 143 years old when the show took it. Count from the steamboat and it was 168.

Earlier we wrote: How does the Lonesome Dove series end? Four parts, and the last one is simply called "Return"

On SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live this week, Rob Lowe revisited his infamous 1989 Academy Awards opener and admitted the 2022 telecast briefly took some pressure off him. Lowe said that when the Will Smith–Chris Rock confrontation erupted on stage, he had a very specific, very un-Hollywood reaction.

"When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, I was the only person happy. Because I was like, 'Oh, good. So now that's the worst moment in Oscar history,'"

That relief didn’t last. Lowe told Cohen that despite everything that’s happened since, his much-mocked duet with a Snow White impersonator—complete with “Proud Mary”—still gets trotted out as a cautionary tale every awards season.

"But it turns out not really. Turns out I still am dragged, dragged every year,"

The 1989 opener has lingered so stubbornly in Oscar lore that producers still reference it as the example to avoid, Lowe said, even as he’s long since moved on with a busy TV and podcast life.

Rock keeps it moving

In a new September interview with Variety, Chris Rock said he wishes the onstage altercation had never happened, but he isn’t letting it define him. Asked about the incident, he kept it brief and put it in perspective.

He described his bad day as “not that important.”

Rock steered the conversation to his next project, Misty Green, his first feature as a director since 2014’s Top Five. Rosalind Eleazar leads the cast as the title character, with Rock also appearing alongside a stacked lineup:

• Rosalind Eleazar
• Chris Rock
• Anna Kendrick
• Adam Driver
• Daniel Kaluuya
• Topher Grace

He also suggested his Oscar-hosting days may be behind him, praising Conan O’Brien’s monologue and saying he’d only return to the ceremony under very specific circumstances.

The finale changed the rules of the show mid-episode, flipping from its usual single-camera sci‑fi chaos to a full-on multi-camera sitcom — laugh track and all — and staging it on Warner Bros. Stage 25, the longtime home of The Big Bang Theory. The gag wasn’t just cosmetic: Stuart and company literally found themselves inside a sitcom version of their own story.

• Stuart Bloom
• Denise
• Bert
• Kripke

There were audience risers and a control booth built for the taping, but the laughs you hear aren’t from a live crowd — Chuck Lorre said the track was pulled from old Big Bang Theory audience recordings. For the creative team, walking back into that room after 12 years on Big Bang carried real muscle memory.

“We were shot at Stage 25, which was obviously the Big Bang stage,” “I found it very surreal, personally, to walk onto stage 25 with all that muscle memory of the years of Big Bang. 12 years there,”

Bill Prady told Deadline.

How they pulled it off

According to Deadline, production actually built the comic shop set twice — once for the show’s standard single-camera scenes and again for the multi-cam sequences, complete with audience risers, a sound booth and camera alleys. That meant the crew had to re-stage jokes and blocking to play to cameras on both versions of the set.

Zak Penn said nearly one-third of the episode had to be filmed in both formats, making it one of the season’s most demanding shoots across its 10 episodes.

Lapkus on the stunt-heavy shoot

On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Lauren Lapkus — who plays Denise — said the spinoff often feels closer to an action movie than a traditional sitcom. Fallon even showed a photo of her rigged to wires over a massive fan for a sequence where the gang plummets through a void.

Lapkus confirmed the fall set piece combined physical stunts with comedy beats, a level of on-set intensity far beyond anything required during the original Big Bang tapings.

He outlived Gunsmoke by sixteen years, finished one more Western with Sam Elliott, and went to a rodeo on a Saturday. Nothing about the weekend suggested it was the last one.

Ken Curtis died on Sunday, April 28, 1991, at his home in Fresno, California. He was 74. His wife Torrie found him in bed that morning; he had suffered a heart attack in his sleep. UPI, reporting the death two days later, noted that the cause had not yet been determined and that Curtis had appeared to be in good health — he had been at a rodeo the previous afternoon. His ashes were later scattered over the Colorado flatlands he grew up on.

He had been working right up to it. His final role was cattle rancher Seaborn Tay in Conagher, the 1991 TV movie starring Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross, which also featured his old Gunsmoke castmate Buck Taylor.

Read more: How does the Lonesome Dove series end? Four parts, and the last one is simply called "Return"

The voice came from a man in his father's jail

Curtis was born Curtis Wain Gates on July 2, 1916, in Lamar, Colorado. His father, Dan Sullivan Gates, was sheriff of Bent County from 1926 to 1931, and the family lived in the jailhouse.

"Our living quarters were on the ground floor and the cells were upstairs," Curtis told UPI. "Mother used to cook the meals for the prisoners."

One of the regulars upstairs was a cedar fence-post cutter named Frederick Munden, known locally as Cedar Jack. Curtis built Festus out of him — the speech, the stubbornness, the general disinclination to be hurried. The nasal twang was manufactured for the part and had nothing to do with how Curtis actually spoke, which is why people who met him in person tended to be thrown.

He was a band singer first, and a Ford in-law second

Festus was the third act of a long career. Curtis started as a professional vocalist:

• Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, 1941 — he came in as a featured vocalist, temporarily filling the slot Frank Sinatra had been occupying.
• The Sons of the Pioneers, 1949–1953 — the group Roy Rogers came out of, with a Carnegie Hall date on the résumé, plus more recording with them from 1955 to 1957.
• Columbia Pictures, from 1945 — singing-cowboy leads in low-budget musical Westerns alongside the Hoosier Hot Shots.
• The Shep Fields band and the Pied Pipers — earlier stops on the same circuit.

"I started my career as a pop singer... I've sung a lot of nights, and there were [times] I sung all night long, but I don't remember none of them," Curtis said in a 1969 interview.

Then came the marriage that changed his filmography. From 1952 to 1964 he was married to Barbara Ford, which made him John Ford's son-in-law, and Ford put him in The Quiet Man, The Searchers, Rio Grande, and The Alamo. On the side, he produced two of the strangest credits on any Gunsmoke résumé: The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster, both 1959.

Eleven years in Dodge

Curtis first turned up on Gunsmoke in 1959 as a cowhand named Phil Jakes. He joined the regular cast in 1964 as Festus Haggen, taking over the deputy slot Dennis Weaver had vacated as Chester Goode. He stayed until the show ended in 1975 — 304 episodes, more than any of the five deputies who worked for Matt Dillon across twenty years.

After Dodge he voiced Nutsy the vulture in Disney's Robin Hood in 1973 and spent 1983 and 1984 on the Western series The Yellow Rose.

For the record: he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame in 1981, and there is a bronze of him as Festus on Pollasky Avenue in Clovis, California, the town he spent his last years in. The man in the statue is the character. The man who died in Fresno sang for Tommy Dorsey.

Earlier we wrote: What happened to Val Kilmer? His final film was the one he'd waited 36 years to make

He shows up with a fresh commission, a questionable birth certificate, and about six weeks of airtime ahead of him. Nothing in the show kills him off.

Second Lieutenant Jeb Pruitt, played by Jeb Stuart Adams, arrives in "Forbidden Fruit," which aired February 22, 1978 — episode 7 of the second season and episode 31 of the series. The hook is his age. He's a gifted flyer whose paperwork does not survive a close reading, and Pappy Boyington has to decide what to do about a teenager in a Corsair.

He was one of two additions in that episode. The other was Lieutenant Samantha "Sam" Greene (Denise DuBarry), General Moore's daughter, arriving as a nurse.

Read more: How does the Lonesome Dove series end? Four parts, and the last one is simply called "Return"

Why he arrived so late

By late 1977 the show was not the show it started as. NBC had already canceled it once, brought it back, and renamed it from Baa Baa Black Sheep to Black Sheep Squadron to get distance from the nursery rhyme. The second-season retool leaned into a new ensemble:

• Pilots dropped — T.J. Wiley (Robert Ginty) and Bob Anderson (John Larroquette) both left after the sixth episode of season 2.
• Gutterman gone without a word — James Whitmore Jr.'s Captain Jim Gutterman simply doesn't appear in season 2, with no explanation on screen. He'd taken a role in The Boys of Company C, shot in the Philippines, and then an offer to work opposite James Garner on The Rockford Files.
• Nurses added — four of them across the final seven episodes, including head nurse Dottie Dixon (Katherine Cannon), who is killed in action.
• Jeb added — the young pilot, slotted into the same batch of new faces.

The Black Sheep got a teenager and a nursing station in the same episode, which tells you roughly what the network thought the problem was.

What he actually did

Jeb flew in five of the last seven episodes: "Forbidden Fruit," "Fighting Angels" (March 1), "The Iceman" (March 8), "The Show Must Go On... Sometimes" (March 23), and "A Little Bit of England" (April 6).

That last one is the series finale. Bob Boyle gets shot down and is sheltered by an English coastwatcher, the episode ends, and Black Sheep Squadron ends with it — 36 episodes across two seasons, September 23, 1976 to April 6, 1978.

So the answer is that nothing happened to Jeb. He was introduced six weeks before cancellation and simply stopped existing along with everyone else. No death scene, no transfer, no final flight.

Robert Conrad's Boyington had a technical advisor on the payroll: the real Gregory Boyington, who called the show "inaccuracies, hogwash, and Hollywood hokum."

For the record: Jeb Stuart Adams is the son of actor Nick Adams, and Nancy Conrad — one of the season 2 nurses — is Robert Conrad's daughter. The final stretch of Black Sheep Squadron was, in several senses, a family operation.

Earlier we wrote: Why did The Right Stuff bomb? It won four Oscars — and still couldn't earn back its budget

Euphoria's most-hated character got the season's longest sendoff, and it wasn't a fight or a confession. It was a hole in the ground and a delivery problem.

Season 3 premiered on HBO on April 12, 2026 and ran eight episodes through May 31, picking up five years after high school. Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi) spends it trying to revive his father's construction company, which is how he ends up owing money to people who don't do payment plans. He is attacked and loses a toe and a finger before the season is halfway done.

The episode

It happens in episode 7, "Rain or Shine," which aired May 24, 2026, written and directed by Levinson and running 77 minutes. Nate is buried alive in a coffin at a construction site by Naz. A breathing pipe is drilled down to him. The loan sharks give Cassie three days to produce the money.

Read more: Why did Jonny leave 2 Pints of Lager? Ralf Little gave his reason on This Morning in 2007

A rattlesnake goes down the pipe. It bites him repeatedly, and he dies before anyone gets to him. Maddy and Cassie are present when the coffin comes back up.

The decision was made first

Levinson has been direct that this was not a late-season improvisation. He built the season around it, including the stretches that ask the audience to feel something for Nate.

"How can I give them what they want, but make it so horrific and anxiety-inducing that by the time it happens, the audience isn't so sure they wanted it?" Levinson said in 2026.

His reference point was The Candy Snatchers, a 1973 exploitation picture that buries a character alive with an air pipe. The snake came later, as a fit for the season's Western styling. The original plan had Nate dying of suffocation or heat.

Six weeks in a box

Elordi has described the shoot in blunt terms, and the production details back him up:

• The location — Lancaster, California, with real rattlesnakes on set and the nearest hospital an hour and a half away.
• The substitution — for the shots with Elordi, a boa constrictor with a fake rattle attached stood in.
• The snake's performance — Elordi described it as "real cuddly" and also "real sleepy."
• The safety rig — stunt coordinators kept oxygen on hand and limited how long he stayed in the coffin.
• The night shoot — Alexa Demie has said she was freezing during the 4 a.m. filming of the reveal.

Elordi's own verdict: "That was a cool way to go. Nate was someone who has made so many mistakes and made so many dark choices."

Where it left the show

"Rain or Shine" drew 308,000 linear viewers and is the highest-rated episode of season 3 on IMDb at 7.7. The season as a whole did not fare as well — 44% on Rotten Tomatoes, 56 on Metacritic — with the acting and cinematography praised and the writing not.

HBO confirmed on May 31, 2026, the day the finale aired, that Euphoria was finished after three seasons. Nate's exit is the last major thing the show does with a character it had been building since 2019.

Earlier we wrote: Why did Deke leave 2 Broke Girls? Fans were still googling whether he'd even gone

The series tells you Hal Jordan is dead in the first episode and then makes you wait. Six episodes in, the case has a body, a method, and an awkward witness list of one.

As of September 23, 2026, the answer is not on screen. Lanterns premiered on HBO on August 16, 2026, runs eight episodes weekly, and has two left — episode 7 on September 27 and the finale on October 4. What follows is what the show has confirmed.

The crime scene

Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) is found in Rushville, Nebraska, on the bleachers of the high school football field — the same place where his 2016 case with John Stewart began. He's frozen, shot in the head at close range, and his ring is gone. Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) calls John (Aaron Pierre) to the scene and gives him until Monday before the press finds out.

Read more: What happened to Val Kilmer? His final film was the one he'd waited 36 years to make

The missing ring turns out to be a dead end as evidence. Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion) explains that the Guardians locked Hal's original ring away on Oa and issued a new one when Guy took the Earth posting.

The witness problem

Here is why the question in the headline isn't rhetorical. Shortly before Hal turned up dead, John met him at a coffee shop. The meeting went badly enough that John broke his nose. Nobody was supposed to know about it.

In episode 6, "Bad Optics," a café waitress named Maggie (Hannah Christine Shetler) turns up and demands $314,536.27 from John to keep quiet about it. She is implied to be one of the children who survived the 2016 disaster that leveled part of Rushville.

The last confirmed person to see Hal Jordan alive is the man running the murder investigation, and somebody has receipts.

Who else is in the frame

Rushville has no shortage of people with reasons. Hal served prison time over what happened there in 2016 and came back trying to make amends, which did not land.

• Billy Macon — lost his father Will and his stepmother Zoe in the 2016 fallout, and his ex-wife Kerry to Hal. He confronts John directly in episode 6. The physics are against him: an unarmed Hal is still Hal.
• Noah Macon (Shea Pritchard) — Billy and Kerry's son, unnervingly composed, with political ambitions. Zoe's parting instruction to him was to see without being seen.
• Maggie — victim, blackmailer, and someone who was evidently watching John closely enough to catch a private meeting.
• The town — the show has spent six episodes establishing collective grievance rather than a single motive.

The witness who isn't dead

John exhumes Hal's grave and takes the ring back off the body. Inside it is a recorded backup of Hal's consciousness — a hologram of an older version of him. Its first reaction on being activated is "goddammit," which reads as a man who had already worked out that something was coming for him.

Whether an out-of-date copy of the victim can identify his own killer is the question the last two episodes exist to answer.

Lanterns was created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King, with Mundy as showrunner. The premiere pulled 9.3 million viewers worldwide across three days, HBO Max's biggest DC Studios launch, and the season sits at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Earlier we wrote: Why did Deke leave 2 Broke Girls? Fans were still googling whether he'd even gone

The show spends five episodes pointing at one man and then hands the answer to a laundry habit. The tape is a real clue. It's just a clue to a different question.

Prime Video dropped all eight episodes of Megan Park's series on August 5, 2026. Ramona Campbell (Amélie Hoeferle) is 16, an heir to the Muskoka island at the center of the plot, and does not know who her father is. Her mother Goldie died shortly after an emergency C-section. Joe (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) was there when it happened.

What the cassette says

In episode 3, Annie Jacobson (Ella Rubin) finds an old recording Goldie made for Joe. It establishes that Goldie and Joe had an affair, both of them married at the time, and that Joe was present at the delivery and the death. For most of the season that is the working theory, and Joe does nothing to dispel it.

Read more: What happened to the mom in Sterling Point?

What the socks say

The turn comes in episode 7. Annie mentions, in passing, that she used to sort her father Steven's socks for him because he's color-blind. Ramona is color-blind. She goes and reads up on how the condition is inherited, and the arithmetic is not friendly to the Joe theory.

Red-green color blindness sits on the X chromosome and is recessive. A boy needs one copy to have it. A girl needs two — one from each parent — which means a color-blind daughter's biological father is always color-blind himself. Joe isn't. Steven Jacobson (Jay Duplass) is.

Ramona brings Steven a DNA test at the end of the episode. It comes back confirming him.

The show had been showing the answer the whole time. Ramona's mismatched socks were written into the scripts as a running visual hint.

The costume designer told Elite Daily in 2026 that she only learned about the twist midway through production, but that some of Ramona's color-coordinating choices work in hindsight as exactly what a color-blind teenager would put together.

What it actually changes

Steven is Annie's father. That makes Annie and Ramona half-sisters, which reframes the entire inheritance plot they've been arguing over all season, and it means the island's two heirs were related before either of them knew it.

The finale has them trade lives. Annie stays on the island with Ellis. Ramona goes to New York to spend time with the father she has just acquired. Her relationship with Oona ends on a first kiss and a stated wish to see something other than Muskoka at 16.

The season declines to settle one thing: whether Goldie herself knew which of the two men it was.

What's left for season 2

The series was renewed, and the final scene loads the next gun. Connor Jacobson gets a call from an adoption agency — his biological mother wants contact — and he hasn't told his sisters. Whether "sisters" now includes Ramona is the point.

For the record: Sterling Point shot in the Muskoka Lakes region near Toronto from June to October 2025, runs eight episodes, and holds 91% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 76 on Metacritic. Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage share showrunner credit with Park, which explains the vintage Roxy top the costume department put on Annie in episode 4 as a deliberate nod to Marissa Cooper.

Earlier we wrote: Ransom Canyon: what did Kit do? Even his own brother had the wrong idea

The show is set in Atlantic City and almost never went to Atlantic City. The boardwalk you see in every establishing shot stood for four years on a vacant lot in north Brooklyn.

HBO built it in Greenpoint, on an empty parking lot near the corner of Commercial and Clay Streets, a few blocks from the East River. The run of boardwalk was 300 feet long, with full period facades — the Ritz-Carlton where Nucky Thompson keeps his suite, the storefronts, the railings. Production designer Bob Shaw's crew put it up for the pilot, and it was the first outdoor standing set constructed in New York City since the local film industry packed up in the 1910s. Google Street View caught it mid-build before the production screened it off.

The money

Martin Scorsese directed the pilot and wanted a real boardwalk rather than a green-screen floor. That decision is a large share of why the episode cost $18 million, against a series average of roughly $5 million per episode afterward. The boardwalk alone accounted for about $5 million of it.

Scorsese had the standing to insist the thing get built, and it got built.

New Jersey never had a serious shot at the production. New York's film tax credit was the deciding factor, and the show went on to employ hundreds of New Yorkers across its first season alone.

Read more: Why did The Right Stuff bomb? It won four Oscars — and still couldn't earn back its budget

What was real and what wasn't

About ten feet. That's roughly how far the practical set extended past the boardwalk railing into the sand. Everything beyond it — the beach, the surf, the piers, the crowds in the middle distance — was added later. The blue screen behind it was mounted on a 40-foot tower of stacked shipping crates that walled off the entire ocean side of the lot.

The shooting pattern was fixed: two days per episode on the Greenpoint boardwalk, ten days everywhere else.

Where everywhere else was

Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard served as the production base, including the two-story Onyx Club built for the later seasons. The rest of Atlantic City was assembled out of real New York buildings:

• Commandant's House, Vinegar Hill — Nucky's house interiors, in a residence designed around 1805 by Charles Bulfinch.
• Veterans Room, Park Avenue Armory — the Commodore's house in seasons 1 and 2, decorated by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Stanford White.
• Montauk Club, Park Slope — Lolly Steinman's casino, in a Venetian-palazzo-styled clubhouse.
• Sylvan Terrace, Washington Heights — the row of houses used as "whore row."
• Poppenhusen Institute, College Point, Queens — the Women's Temperance League hall.
• 387 St. Paul's Avenue, Staten Island — a 24-room Queen Anne mansion from 1887, whose owners watched their living room be redressed as a dining room.
• Rockaway boardwalk, Queens — a second, separate boardwalk built for the 1884 and 1897 flashbacks in season 4.

Interiors were chosen for original moldings and tin ceilings, then dressed; a Williamsburg clothing store became a speakeasy. Visual effects mostly went on removing window air conditioners.

The set survived being blown up. On August 16, 2012, the production staged a controlled explosion on the Greenpoint boardwalk in front of a crowd of neighborhood spectators.

Boardwalk Empire ran five seasons and 56 episodes on HBO from 2010 to 2014, created by Terence Winter. The Greenpoint lot was decommissioned after the series wrapped, and there is nothing to visit there now.

Earlier we wrote: How does the Lonesome Dove series end? Four parts, and the last one is simply called "Return"

The punishment has been fairly consistent since 2009. Who gets it has been decided four different ways, and the difference matters more than the slop does.

The short version is that Big Brother moved the decision from luck to power. For the first decade it was a competition result. Since 2014 it has mostly been one person's choice, which turned a dietary inconvenience into a weekly strategic weapon.

Before there was slop

Big Brother 2 through Big Brother 6 ran a food competition each week. Houseguests competed individually or in teams for access to specific foods, with the Head of Household usually hosting and eating regardless of the outcome. Whoever lost was restricted to peanut butter and jelly for the week. There was no Have-Not room, no cold showers, and no branding around it.

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The competition years

Two changes arrived in stages:

• Big Brother 7 (All-Stars, 2006) — slop replaced peanut butter and jelly as the punishment food, but the food competition format stayed.
• Big Brother 11 (2009) — the food competition was renamed the Have/Have-Not competition, and the full package arrived: slop only, cold showers, metal beds in a purpose-built Have-Not bedroom, and one weekly food restriction voted on by viewers.
• Big Brother 11–15 — competition performance alone decided the split. Losing meant a week of it; winning meant nothing but comfort.
• Big Brother 16 (2014) — the Head of Household got the job instead.

That last change is the one that reshaped the game. From Big Brother 16 on, the CBS format description reads plainly.

"The reigning HoH also earns the right to name the 'Have-Nots' for the week, forcing the chosen HouseGuests to eat solely 'Big Brother slop' along with a weekly food restriction (chosen by the viewing public)."

Why that one change mattered

An HOH picking Have-Nots is picking people to weaken, insult, or leave alone, in front of the entire house, on top of two nominations. It generates its own grudges, and it costs nothing to use.

Losing a competition is bad luck. Being named by a person is information about where you stand.

The exceptions that keep turning up

The four systems above are the spine, but the show keeps bolting extras onto it:

• Volunteers — houseguests offering themselves, usually to buy goodwill from an HOH.
• Endurance forfeits — dropping out of a competition in exchange for accepting Have-Not status.
• Veto punishments — the Power of Veto competition handing out Have-Not weeks as a penalty.
• Never-Not passes — an earned exemption that makes a player ineligible for the designation.
• Seasons that skip it — Big Brother 21 ran Have-Nots for only two weeks, and neither Celebrity Big Brother season used it at all.

Big Brother 28, which premiered on 9 July 2026 with Julie Chen Moonves hosting a "Time Trip" theme, opened on the competition model rather than the HOH one: Devens' group — Chuk, Drew, Haley and Taylor — finished the first Head of Household competition with the fewest pieces on their platform and became the season's first Have-Nots.

A Have-Not sentence lasts one week, ending when the next batch is chosen. For the record: the Head of Household has never been eligible, under any of the four systems.

Earlier we wrote: Prime Video’s new fake-dating experiment ‘The Love Hypothesis’: inside the cast

Four minutes of fresh footage are reportedly being slotted into a new theatrical cut of Avengers: Endgame, and the additions aren’t throwaway tags. Think Loki in a Time Variance Authority jumpsuit crashing Steve and Peggy’s dance, a TVA control-room panic over an incursion, a post‑credits Bruce Banner standoff that tees up Doctor Doom, and a final clang that echoes Endgame’s original coda — only this time it’s Doom forging his mask.

The re‑release, said to be titled Avengers: Endgame Encore, was reportedly filmed alongside Avengers: Doomsday and features Tom Hiddleston back as Loki, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, and — in a twist sure to set message boards on fire — Robert Downey Jr. appearing as Doctor Doom.

What’s reportedly new

• Loki interrupts the “happily ever after”: During Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter’s closing dance, Loki arrives in a TVA uniform, potentially addressing how Steve’s time-hopping created an unstable branch of the multiverse.
• Incursion alarm at the TVA: Mobius, Casey, Ouroboros and Miss Minutes watch two Earths collide — an incursion event that sparks a cascading multiversal collapse.
• Banner’s post‑credits cliffhanger: Set after events tied to Spider‑Man: Brand New Day, where Jean Grey reportedly triggered a Hulk transformation, Bruce works in an underground bunker on a serum to suppress the other guy. Doom breaches the facility, Banner Hulks out — smash to black.
• Doom’s mask, Endgame’s echo: A final tag shows Doctor Doom forging his metal mask to the same metallic clanging that closed the original Endgame, hinting at a mirrored “man in a suit” mythology — even more eyebrow‑raising with Downey Jr. linked to both legacies.

That TVA incursion scene is also being read as the on‑ramp for characters from Fox’s X‑Men universe to cross into the main MCU timeline. The report specifically flags:

• Professor Xavier
• Magneto
• Cyclops
• Mystique
• Nightcrawler
• Gambit

Why it matters for Doomsday

The connective tissue is the point. Endgame’s epilogue moments reportedly now point directly at Avengers: Doomsday — from Loki and the TVA’s multiversal triage to Doom stepping out of the shadows. Stitching those beats into Endgame reframes the Infinity Saga curtain call as the first domino for Marvel’s next crossover.

Secret Wars buzz

The same report also floats where this is all heading: Avengers: Secret Wars. In the comics, the omnipotent Beyonder builds Battleworld from fragments of broken realities and forces heroes and villains to fight. With “Brand New Day” reportedly teasing characters stepping into a new universe — possibly Battleworld — the Beyonder is being talked up as the end‑boss after Doom.

Avengers: Doomsday is reportedly set for December 18 in theaters.

If you’ve ever wanted to watch the chaos of the MTV VMAs from the floor instead of your couch, this is the year to try. The show is opening up fan spots in Los Angeles — including those coveted seat filler positions — with specific call times, age rules and a strict dress code handled through 1iota, MTV’s audience partner.

How to get in

• Red Carpet Fans — check-in starts 1:00 PM PT
• Pit Fans (18+) — entry from 2:00 PM PT
• Seat Fillers (21+) — report by 2:30 PM PT

Seat fillers are the folks production moves into open chairs between segments so the arena looks full on TV. Expect to be directed by staff, shift sections quickly, and stay the entire event. Attire is typically formal — think cocktail or better — and phones stay pocketed when you’re on the floor.

Why this year matters

The 2026 VMAs are stacked: Snoop Dogg is hosting, Madonna is slated to perform, and Taylor Swift heads in positioned for a record-stretching night. MTV will also present Swift with the inaugural Artist-Director Award, recognizing her long-running impact on music videos.

Swift is nominated across headline categories — including Video of the Year, Best Pop and Best Direction — and already holds the all-time VMAs wins mark. She’s also set to premiere the music video for “Patient Zero” during the broadcast.

The 2026 VMAs air Sunday, Sept. 27 on CBS and stream on Paramount+.

The fan entry windows above are tied to the live production, so arrivals are early and call times are firm. Registration for all fan spots runs through 1iota, and applicants must commit to the full taping and follow onsite instructions once inside.

Asked what Marie Laveau is cooking up this time, Angela Bassett didn’t hold back. The Oscar nominee confirmed she’s stepping back into the shoes of the New Orleans Voodoo Queen for American Horror Story Season 13 and promised the character’s swagger and sorcery are dialed way up.

“We can expect all the fierceness that is Marie Laveau the voodoo Queen. All the fierce! the fight ! the spunk! the attitude! the magic! the spirituality, the mysticism. All of that, you know, it's Gumbo,”

she told Entertainment Tonight. Bassett’s Marie Laveau last loomed over the franchise in Coven and returned in Apocalypse; this time, she says, the spirit and the bite are very much intact.

Details on the plot are still sealed, but co-creator Ryan Murphy is treating the thirteenth outing like an event. He’s stacking the season with returning players and, in some cases, having them slip into multiple familiar roles from across the anthology’s past.

All-star returns

• Angela Bassett — back as Marie Laveau (Coven, Apocalypse)
• Jessica Lange — returning after originating the show’s first-season matriarch
• Evan Peters — playing five characters this season, Murphy told Vogue
• Sarah Paulson — reprising six of her previous roles, per Murphy
• Emma Roberts
• Billie Lourd
• Gabourey Sidibe
• Leslie Grossman

Murphy said he set out to make Season 13 feel big — superstition and all — and the first call he made was to Lange, whose early turns helped define the show’s voice.

“I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that I could only do it with Jessica,”

he told Vogue. According to Murphy, Lange had been feeling nostalgic about the series when they met for dinner; he pitched the idea, she said yes, and the rest of the alumni quickly fell into place.

American Horror Story Season 13 will air on FX.

On the red carpet for her upcoming Verity, Dakota Johnson couldn’t hide how much fun she had shooting Taylor Swift’s new music video Patient Zero—and doing it with a close friend. Johnson said the collaboration clicked immediately because of how long they’ve known each other and how naturally they work together.

“Working with your friends is like the most fun thing on the planet because we’ve known each other for so long, we respect each other’s creative minds,” Johnson said.

She doubled down on that vibe on Ambar Lee and Leah Briars’ Fangirl Nation podcast, adding that this was one of those rare times when teaming up with a pal felt effortless.

“Normally I would say ‘Don’t work with your friends,’ but we work really well together. It was so fun. So fun. It was the best. We just had the best time,” she said on the podcast.

Who’s involved

• Taylor Swift — director and star of Patient Zero
• Dakota Johnson — co-star
• Colin Farrell — co-star
• Emmanuel Lubezki — cinematographer; the three-time Oscar winner behind Gravity, Birdman and The Revenant

Swift offered a first look on September 24 with a 13-second teaser that flashes moody, puzzle-piece images: Swift and Johnson by a bathroom sink, submerged in water, and standing at what appears to be a gravesite. Colin Farrell also turns up in the quick-cut footage, but the actual storyline remains tightly under wraps.

Release plan

• September 25 — Patient Zero is set to release as part of The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore
• September 27 — the full music video makes its world premiere during the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards, where Swift will also receive the first-ever Artist-Director Award

Sitting down with Kid Cudi on his Big Bro podcast, Willow Smith pulled back the curtain on how her dad thinks about work when it could affect life at home. She said Will Smith will pass on roles if the character’s darkness feels like something that could seep into the family’s day-to-day.

“My dad has specifically said no to certain roles,” Willow said, explaining that he weighs the emotional cost before he says yes.

“because he felt like the energy was too heavy to be bringing into the house.”

The moment came after Kid Cudi shared his own struggle with keeping heavy on-set energy from following him home, setting off a conversation about boundaries and what artists bring back to their families after work.

Beyond the set

Willow connected that idea to her own career. Over the last year she’s leaned hard into music as a multi-instrumentalist, writing and producing most of her tracks and recently touring as a support act — a hands-on approach that mirrors the discipline she says her family practices offstage.

• Willow Smith — musician and producer focused on self-made studio work and a recent support tour.
• Jaden Smith — splits time between film and music, and co-founded the environmental company Just Water.
• Trey Smith — works in music as DJ AcE, keeping a lower profile while producing and performing.

Willow’s comments were made during her appearance on Kid Cudi’s Big Bro podcast, in a conversation sparked by Cudi’s own experience with “heavy” roles and how to leave that weight at the door.

At the Zurich Film Festival, Tom Hiddleston pulled back the curtain on the earliest days of playing Loki, recalling an early sit-down with Marvel boss Kevin Feige that framed the role as a long-term commitment across multiple projects. He said that outlook shaped how he approached the character’s layers over the years—especially Loki’s bruised but persistent ties to family.

“I never expected to be playing the character for this long. But he’s a brilliant character of such depth and dimension … I knew where we had started in ‘Thor,’ and I wanted to get back to his capacity for love and his belonging to his family.”

Speaking to the crowd (via Variety), Hiddleston described feeling grateful for the runway to track Loki from archvillain to complicated antihero, and said he actively searched for the most satisfying way to land the character’s arc after more than a decade on screen.

The long game

Hiddleston’s run spans the early MCU movies through two seasons of his own Disney+ series. Here’s the quick map of where he’s popped up—and how the God of Mischief kept evolving:

• Thor (2011) — Loki’s debut as Thor’s volatile brother
• The Avengers (2012) — full-on Big Bad in the Battle of New York
• Thor: The Dark World (2013) — schemer turned uneasy ally
• Thor: Ragnarok (2017) — reluctant teammate with a heroic streak
• Avengers: Infinity War (2018) — a fatal stand against Thanos
• Avengers: Endgame (2019) — a variant Loki slips away with the Tesseract
• Loki season 1 (2021) on Disney+ — the TVA, timelines and Loki vs. Loki
• Loki season 2 (2023) on Disney+ — a cosmic, character-driven culmination

Asked about what’s next, Hiddleston didn’t tip his hand on future Avengers plans, keeping any potential return under wraps.

Off-screen brothers

He also singled out his bond with Chris Hemsworth as one of the best parts of the job. The two met as fresh faces on Thor and quickly became friends, trading notes as Marvel’s then-new experiment in a connected universe gathered steam. Hiddleston said being fans of those first movies made joining the world feel like a wild, once-in-a-career ride.

For now, Loki’s most recent chapter lives on Disney+, and Hiddleston’s festival comments suggest any future mischief—if it happens—will come when there’s a story worth telling.

In a new conversation with Variety timed to his first feature, 22-year-old Deacon Phillippe didn’t dance around the obvious: having Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe as parents opened doors. He said that out loud — then made clear what he plans to do about it.

“I acknowledge that I’m extremely lucky, but you know, at the same time, I hold myself to a standard,”

“All I can do is do my thing, and show that I want to work extremely, extremely hard.”

That honesty arrives as Phillippe steps into his feature debut with Brother Save Us, an indie sci‑fi thriller where he plays a farmer fighting to protect his family — and his younger brother — during an AI-driven takeover. It’s his biggest acting swing yet after a handful of on-screen appearances.

Beyond the last name

Per Variety, Phillippe graduated in May from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he studied recorded music at the Clive Davis Institute. That training isn’t just a line on a résumé — he also helped shape the movie’s sound.

He co-wrote and recorded the end-credits song for Brother Save Us with two college friends, extending his footprint on the project beyond the lead role.

• Education — NYU Tisch, Clive Davis Institute (recorded music)
• Music — co-wrote and recorded the film’s end-credits song with two classmates
• Previous screen credits — Never Have I Ever (two episodes); a brief appearance in Motorheads

Phillippe’s parents are Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, a fact he says he won’t pretend isn’t an advantage — but one he’s intent on matching with work. Alongside Brother Save Us, he also has a role lined up in Better Than the Movies.

In a new chat with Hits Radio, Lili Reinhart said she’s been quietly developing a film based on a queer vampire novella — and running into brick walls while trying to get it made. The Riverdale alum didn’t mince words about the response she’s heard so far from would‑be backers.

“People are too afraid to make that. So, if you work at a studio and are watching this video, I don’t know why you wouldn’t make that in this day and age.”

Reinhart didn’t share the title she’s pursuing, only that it’s a lesbian vampire romance she’s eager to sink her teeth into. For now, there’s no studio attached.

Carmilla chatter

Fans quickly started guessing in the interview’s comments, with many pointing to Carmilla, the 1872 novella by Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu about a young woman stalked by a mysterious female vampire. Reinhart hasn’t confirmed the pick, but the classic has long been a go‑to for queer gothic adaptations.

Fresh off The Love Hypothesis

Reinhart just led and executive produced the book-to-screen romance The Love Hypothesis, which gave her a front‑row seat to the pressure cooker of adapting a fan‑favorite. Speaking to India Today, she acknowledged the nerves that come with stepping into a character readers already love.

“Some people just aren’t going to love your specific interpretation, and that’s okay. I think a lot of actors probably don’t take the role sometimes because they’re afraid of the backlash.”

She added that excitement won out this time, and as an EP she “definitely” gave notes on the script — working with the team for roughly a year before cameras rolled. Now that the film is out, response has been mixed: some viewers feel the adaptation does right by the novel, while others have pushed back on changes and the script’s choices.

As for the vampire project, Reinhart says she’s still looking for a partner to get it out of development and into production. No title, cast, or timeline has been announced.

The couch moment that’s still ricocheting around stan Twitter didn’t stop at the studio doors. After her Season 33 sit-down with Graham Norton, Taylor Swift echoed the exact setup in a later music video, sparking a wave of “wait, which came first?” posts and fresh eyeballs on the show in the U.S. That viral boomerang is a big part of why BBC America has ordered two more seasons as Season 34 arrives next week.

The Swift factor

Swift’s episode paired her with a murderers’ row of guests. The couch looked like this:

• Taylor Swift
• Cillian Murphy
• Domhnall Gleeson
• Greta Lee

When Swift later released a video that reunited the same group, some fans assumed the clip had been shot before the show taped. According to Variety, Graham Norton knocked that theory down — the talk show came first, the video followed — and he dismissed the idea that the twin moments were a coordinated promo stunt.

“The Swifties know the show because she’s been on multiple times. They’re not going to ignore a show that she’s on, so they all knew who I was.”

Beyond the viral crossover, viewership for The Graham Norton Show climbed across its U.S. homes. Variety noted that Acorn TV’s audience for the series rose year over year, while AMC+ more than doubled its streaming numbers compared with the prior season.

The new two-season order keeps Norton’s red couch on BBC America through at least Season 35. Season 34 kicks off next week on BBC America, with new episodes available to stream in the U.S. on AMC+ and Acorn TV.

Thirteen presenters are locked for the 2026 MTV Video Music AwardsPeacock Theater in Los Angeles, a mix of music powerhouses, TV fixtures and a couple of freshly minted Moon Person winners. It’s a lineup built for crossover moments, with actors from the Yellowstone universe sharing the stage with artists who are still in the hunt for trophies this year.

Teyana Taylor arrives with bona fide awards heat — she’s Oscar-nominated for One Battle After Another — underscoring the VMAs’ habit of blurring music and film. Charli XCX is juggling double duty as a presenter and four-time 2026 nominee (including Best Pop and Best Art Direction for SS26), after a 2024 run that featured nods for Best Direction (“360”), Best Editing (“Von Dutch”), Best Art Direction and Best Trending Video.

Two names are completing neat VMA arcs onstage: Tyla, who won Best Afrobeats in both 2024 (“Water”) and 2025 (“PUSH 2 START”), and Alex Warren, who performed “Ordinary” and “Eternity” and grabbed Best New Artist in 2025. Both return this year not as nominees, but as presenters.

The TV-and-film contingent brings plenty of face recognition: David Corenswet (Superman), Jeff Probst (Survivor), Rachel Dratch (Saturday Night Live), Yellowstone-verse alums Brandon Sklenar (1923) and Isabel May (1883), plus Ciara Miller from Summer House. Off Campus co-stars Belmont Cameli and Ella Bright round out the scripted side. MTV hasn’t assigned specific categories to each presenter yet.

Presenters at a glance

• Teyana Taylor — Oscar-nominated this year for One Battle After Another; music-dance-fashion-film multi-hyphenate.
• Charli XCX — Four 2026 nominations (Best Pop, Best Art Direction for SS26); four 2024 nods including Best Direction for “360.”
• David Corenswet — Superman star adding big-screen wattage.
• Jeff Probst — Survivor mainstay built for live-room chaos control.
• Tyla — Back-to-back Best Afrobeats winner (2024 “Water”; 2025 “PUSH 2 START”).
• Troye Sivan — “Rush” was up for Best Choreography in 2024; now on presenter duty.
• Alex Warren — 2025 Best New Artist; performed “Ordinary” and “Eternity” last year.
• Belmont Cameli — Off Campus lead, appearing with his co-star.
• Ella Bright — Off Campus co-star joining Cameli.
• Brandon Sklenar — 1923 standout from the Yellowstone world.
• Isabel May — 1883 alum continuing the Western thread.
• Ciara Miller — Summer House favorite bringing reality-TV sparkle.
• Rachel Dratch — SNL veteran and sketch ringer.

The night’s big swings

Madonna is opening the broadcast, with Snoop Dogg taking on his first VMA hosting gig. Two marquee honors are set: Nirvana will receive the Video Vanguard Award, and Taylor Swift is being celebrated with the inaugural Artist Director Honors.

Live September 27 from Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater.

Performers announced for the show include:

• LISA
• RAYE
• Shaboozey
• Gunna
• Sienna Spiro
• GENER8ION
• Yung Lean

The 2026 MTV VMAs air live on September 27 from Los Angeles.

Hell on Wheels had a body count and a reputation for using it. The character nobody would have put money on outlasted the railroad.

Mickey McGinnes appears in 50 episodes across all five seasons of a show that ran 57 in total, from 6 November 2011 to 23 July 2016. He arrives as a supporting piece — one half of an Irish double act with his brother Sean (Ben Esler), running a magic lantern picture show out of a tent — and leaves as one of the last people standing.

Read more: Carol Ferris explained: Hal Jordan’s recurring love — and foe — in HBO’s 'Lanterns'

Why everyone assumed he was disposable

Phil Burke has been open about the odds. Asked by AMC in June 2016 how the character had lasted, he described the general expectation around the role when the show began.

"Most people thought my character would die, get murdered or get horribly run over on the train tracks in a drunken stupor," Burke told AMC in 2016.

Mickey was written as small, Irish, mouthy and frequently drunk, in a camp where those were all liabilities. He was also born with twelve toes, emigrated from County Wicklow having stowed away on a ship with Sean, left behind a mother and four siblings, and arrived in America with unfinished business in Boston that neither brother wanted to discuss.

What he does instead of dying

The arc is a steady climb through increasingly disreputable businesses:

• Seasons 1–2 — the magic lantern show, then boxing promotion and whatever else the camp will pay for.
• Season 3 — proprietor of the Phoenix Saloon, with the brothel attached.
• Season 3, the turn — Mickey shoots Sean inside a church tent after Sean threatens to confess their involvement in Senator Metcalf's death.
• Season 5 — established in Cheyenne with the saloon, and in a relationship with Eva.

The Sean killing is the point at which Mickey stops being comic relief, and Burke has drawn the distinction between the brothers plainly.

"Mickey is a survivor... Sean always tried to control the situation and be a mastermind. It didn't work out for him and he wasn't able to adapt to his surroundings," Burke said in the same 2016 interview.

The finale

"Done" aired on 23 July 2016. Mickey takes a payment from Thomas Durant and leaves for San Francisco to start a new business, throwing away mementos of the camp on his way out. Eva turns down a memoir deal and rides off on her own, telling him they're bad for each other.

He gets neither a death nor a reckoning. He gets a buyout and a train ticket, which for this show counts as an unusually clean exit — Cullen Bohannon sails for China, Durant delivers an unrepentant monologue about how the railroad could not have been built without him, and nobody comes out of the series with a tidier arrangement than the saloon keeper.

Burke called the character's development miraculous, which is a fair description of a man who arrived with a magic lantern and left with Durant's money.

Earlier we wrote: Before 'Star Wars': George Lucas' childhood and the dyslexia question

In Lindsey Anderson Beer’s gothic thriller Hollow for Sony Pictures, Sydney Sweeney will play Katrina Van Tassel opposite Belmont Cameli as Brom Bones — the swaggering suitor pulled from the Sleepy Hollow legend. Deadline reported Cameli’s casting, noting Beer is directing and adapting the script from her forthcoming novel of the same name.

That pairing links Sweeney’s movie slate to the breakout Off Campus universe: Cameli plays Garrett Graham in the upcoming series. It’s the second time Sweeney’s next projects intersect with that ensemble — she’s also set to co-star with Stephen Kalyn, another Off Campus lead, in The Housemaid’s Secret, the follow-up to her 2025 thriller The Housemaid.

Two Off Campus crossovers

• Hollow — Sweeney as Katrina Van Tassel; Belmont Cameli as Brom Bones; directed and written by Lindsey Anderson Beer, who’s adapting from her forthcoming novel; a Sony Pictures release.
• The Housemaid’s Secret — Sweeney set to star opposite Stephen Kalyn; based on Freida McFadden’s follow-up novel; Paul Feig returning to direct; new cast includes Kirsten Dunst and Paul Anthony Kelly.

The timing lines up with fresh momentum for Sweeney’s R-rated thriller The Housemaid, which became a major theatrical success. The film has a streaming date that keeps the franchise in front of viewers as the sequel moves ahead.

The Housemaid starts streaming on Max on October 9, 2026, according to ScreenRant.

As for Hollow, Beer’s film is a moody, modern spin on Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow, with Sweeney stepping into Katrina’s orbit and Cameli as the formidable Brom. Deadline notes Beer is not only directing but also adapting the tale from her own forthcoming novel — a rare book-to-film twofer built by the same storyteller.

Sweeney’s recent choices have zigzagged across genres — rom-com (Anyone But You), horror (Immaculate), true-life drama (Reality) and survival thriller (Eden) — while she’s taken on more producing duties and lined up work on Gundam. With The Housemaid’s Secret adding Dunst and Kelly and Feig back in the director’s chair, and Hollow now locking in Cameli as Brom Bones, her next stretch keeps widening the lane.

Asked in a new interview whether his brooding Bruce Wayne could ever rub shoulders with the brighter, shared world James Gunn is building, Robert Pattinson didn’t slam the door — but he did explain why it’d be a tough fit. Speaking to LADbible while promoting his movie Primetime, the actor said Reeves’ Gotham gets under your skin in a way that doesn’t easily translate to another corner of the DC map. He even laughed about spending months shooting in darkness and how that mood lingered long after cameras stopped.

“I think it would be kind of tough to have this version of Bruce outside of that world.”

Pattinson added that the film’s vibe is so specific it becomes second nature on set.

“It’s such a specific kind of [style], the tone of it gets inside you.”

He joked that if this Bruce suddenly wandered into another DC movie, he’d probably hide behind his hands. The bit landed even better because Pattinson was sitting next to Skyler Gisondo — who plays Jimmy Olsen in David Corenswet’s Superman — and the two riffed about how his ultra-serious Dark Knight might accidentally drag everyone else’s tone down a notch.

For now, Gunn has already made clear that Pattinson’s Batman lives outside the new DCU, while Matt Reeves’ films continue on their own track. That separation mirrors the creative gap Pattinson described: a rain-soaked, detective-story Gotham versus a growing interconnected universe where Corenswet’s Superman will set the tone.

Next up: Part II

Pattinson isn’t done with Reeves’ corner of Gotham. The Batman Part II is on the calendar for February 18, 2028, with familiar faces returning and a couple of intriguing additions whose roles are still under wraps.

• Robert Pattinson — Bruce Wayne / Batman
• Colin Farrell — Oswald Cobblepot / The Penguin
• Jeffrey Wright — Jim Gordon
• Andy Serkis — Alfred Pennyworth
• Scarlett Johansson — role undisclosed
• Sebastian Stan — role undisclosed

Pattinson has teased the sequel as a “real left turn” from the first movie — a hint that Reeves is steering deeper into his own Gotham rather than merging it with somebody else’s mythology.

The Batman Part II is currently set to open February 18, 2028.

For most of season 1, the show lets you assume the obvious thing about Kit Russell, and so does the person who knows him best. The obvious thing is wrong, and the truth isn't much better.

Kit (Casey W. Johnson) is Lucas Russell's older brother and legal guardian, which in practice means he is a twenty-something with a taste for drinking who is also the only adult in a teenager's life. April Blair's adaptation of Jodi Thomas' novels launched on Netflix in April 2025 with ten episodes, built around a single unanswered question: who killed Randall Kirkland, son of rancher Staten Kirkland.

The money, and what Lucas made of it

The first thing that puts Kit under suspicion is cash. In episode 3 he turns up flush despite not showing up for work, and when Lucas asks where it came from, Kit says he has a side hustle. Lucas doesn't believe him. By episode 4, Reid Collins has told Lauren Brigman that Kit phoned him the night Randall died.

That is the entire evidentiary trail the audience gets for several episodes: unexplained money, a phone call, and a brother who won't answer a direct question.

Read more: On the brink, Alex juggles love, life, and ambition in 'Youth' episode 2 recap

What he was actually doing

Kit was having an affair with Margaret Brigman — the sheriff's wife, Lauren's mother. Margaret was drunk behind the wheel of a blue Ford pickup when she hit Randall's vehicle and killed him. Kit wasn't driving. What he did was clean it up.

He called in a favor. Reid and Tim owed him for getting them out of trouble over a drug buy in Bandera, so Kit had them take the truck back out to Bandera, scrub the VIN, and get rid of it. Months later, Reid is the one who tells the sheriff's department, and in episode 8, "The Bad Seed," officers take Kit out of his trailer.

Kit offers a full confession to a fatal hit-and-run he did not commit, in exchange for a reduced sentence. Sheriff Dan Brigman works out he's lying because Kit can't supply details only the driver would have.

Where his brother lands

Lucas believes it. He believes it enough to offer to take the charge himself — he's younger, his record is clean — and Kit turns him down flat, on the grounds that Lucas is the one who gets to leave town. Staten fires Lucas over the arrest, which makes bail impossible. Lucas visits the jail and asks for the truth outright. Kit keeps covering for Margaret.

He is only released after Margaret confesses and Dan arrests his own wife. Lucas signs emancipation papers by the finale.

The part that comes back

Season 2 premiered on Netflix on 23 July 2026 with eight episodes, and Johnson was upgraded from recurring to series regular. The show puts Kit into a romance with Lauren Brigman — the daughter of the woman he was sleeping with and went to jail for — and stages a kiss for Lucas to walk in on.

"Lauren is really caught in a pull between two young men," showrunner April Blair told Deadline in 2026, describing the brothers as two different versions of a future.

For the record: Kit spends season 1 protecting a woman who lets him do it, and season 2 dating her daughter. The show has not yet decided whether that is a redemption arc.

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There was no storyline, no falling-out and no cliffhanger. The explanation showed up on a sofa on ITV, roughly eighteen months after his last episode aired.

Ralf Little played Jonny Keogh from the first series in February 2001 through the sixth, which ended on 30 April 2006. Susan Nickson's sitcom ran for nine series and 80 episodes between 2001 and 2011, moving from BBC Two to BBC Choice to BBC Three, and Little's departure came at the point where he had been doing it for five years straight.

What he actually said

In a September 2007 interview on This Morning, Little confirmed he would not be returning, and gave his workload as the reason — he had more commitments than the schedule could absorb. The character was killed off as a result.

Read more: At last: Frank Welker names his favorite Scooby-Doo mystery after 57 years

It wasn't a bluff. His credits from that stretch are dense:

• Robin Hood (2007) — a guest turn as Joseph in "The Angel of Death."
• KateModern (2007) — the Bebo web series, as Gavin Taylore.
• Massive (2008) — six episodes on BBC Three as Danny Stewart.
• Marple (2008) — Sergeant Pickford in "A Pocketful of Rye."
• The Waiting Room (2008) — a feature, as Stephen.
• The Bush Theatre — 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover in 2008.

He was also still Antony Royle, a role he played across The Royle Family and its specials from 1998 to 2010, and he narrated Last Man Standing and Monkey Life. Death in Paradise, where he took over as DI Neville Parker from 2020 to 2024, was more than a decade away.

How the show got rid of him

Jonny dies off-screen between series. The series 7 opener, "When Jonny Met Sharky," aired on 13 January 2008 and opens with the news that he has been eaten by a shark in Hawaii, having won a shark-jumping competition. The second episode of the series is his funeral.

The premiere was broadcast live from BBC Television Centre, with 897,000 people watching it go out. The script was written to make that harder rather than easier — deliberate tongue twisters and physical stunts, on the theory that a live episode should carry actual risk.

Nickson wrote her lead character's death as a shark-jumping accident, which is the industry term for the moment a show goes over the top. In case anyone missed it, Janet gets to say "Aaay!"

What it set up

Jonny's exit reorganized the rest of the series. Janet (Sheridan Smith) spent series 7 and 8 working through his death and toward Gaz (Will Mellor), who had already fathered her son Corinthian during a one-night stand — a paternity fact Jonny had discovered during the labour and kept to himself. Luke Gell joined as Tim Claypole from 2008.

The show outlived him by three series. It didn't outlive him by much else: Smith and Kathryn Drysdale both left after series 8 in May 2009, and series 9 in 2011 was effectively a new programme with new writers.

Little never came back, not for the funeral, not for a flashback, not for the 2011 finale.

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For a third of a season, Max Black had a boyfriend. Then she didn't, and the sitcom never got around to saying so out loud.

Deacon "Deke" Bromberg, played by Eric André, turned up in "And the First Day of School" on 25 November 2013 and appeared in eight episodes of season 3 — episodes 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 20. His last is "And the Not Broke Parents," broadcast 24 March 2014. There are four more episodes of that season after it, plus three further seasons of the show, and his name comes up in none of them.

Who he was, before the money turned up

Max and Deke met at the Manhattan School of Pastry, where she caught him injecting insulin and assumed he was using. He lived in a dumpster by choice, which earned him the nickname the show used more than his actual one. The joke was that he was slumming: the Bromberg family made its fortune in elevators and was sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars. David and Genet Bromberg were his parents, with Sheryl Lee Ralph playing a mother who had been a stripper before she married in.

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That setup — a rich kid voluntarily broke, dating a woman who had never had the option — was the entire engine of the relationship, and it ran for four months of airtime.

The episode that ends it

"And the Not Broke Parents" does a lot of work in twenty-one minutes:

• The school closes — Chef Nicholas has to go back to France after his affair with Caroline reaches his wife, and the Manhattan School of Pastry shuts.
• Deke proposes a rescue — his parents could buy the place, which requires Max and Caroline to have dinner uptown.
• The dinner detonates — neighbors arrive who lost their penthouse to Caroline's father, Martin Channing, and Max defends her friend at length.
• Max talks too much — she lets the mother's stripping past slip in front of the guests, and the Brombergs cut Deke off financially.
• Max sends him home — she decides he can't survive being poor the way she can, and pushes him back to the Upper East Side.

That's it. No breakup scene, no argument, no conversation between Max and Caroline about it afterward. Max's next romantic storyline arrives in season 4, with a dishwasher named Nashit played by Austin Falk.

Why people keep searching for a confirmation

The confusion was documented at the time. Reviewing the season 3 finale in 2014, Culture War Reporters noted the search traffic landing on the site — people typing variations of "did max break up with her boyfriend on two broke girls" — and pinned the blame on the writing rather than the audience.

"What I can't accept is how poorly it was done," the site wrote in 2014, arguing the breakup had been sitting there as an obvious emotional climax for the finale and was spent on a subplot instead.

Two storylines closed in that same episode — the pastry school and the relationship — and the show went into its last four episodes with neither.

Eight episodes is a third of a season. Deke got less of a send-off than a wedding cake customer.

What was never said off-screen either

There is no exit interview here to point at. CBS never announced a departure, André has not publicly discussed the role at length, and the trade press treated him as what he was on paper: a recurring guest star whose arc ended. He was already running The Eric Andre Show on Adult Swim, whose second season aired during his 2 Broke Girls run, and he had come off Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23.

For the record: 2 Broke Girls ran 138 episodes across six seasons before CBS canceled it in May 2017. Deke appears in eight of them, and is never mentioned in the other 130.

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The first season will close with a full stop, not a tease. Co-creator Damon Lindelof says the finale of Lanterns lands October 4, 2026 on HBO and wraps its central mystery cleanly. There’s no official order for Season 2 yet, but behind the scenes the creative team is already sketching out where the Green Lantern story could head next.

“But I think Chris Mundy has already started a new writers’ room, figuring out what new stories could be for ‘Lanterns’,” he said.

Lindelof shared the update in a ScreenRant interview, adding that a renewal will come down to how the show performs. The series has clicked out of the gate — audiences pushed it to an 8.0 on IMDb soon after premiere — with a thriller setup that pairs John Stewart and Hal Jordan inside James Gunn’s DC Universe.

DCU crossovers

John Stewart isn’t staying confined to TV. Aaron Pierre, who plays the character on the show, is set to suit up again in Gunn’s Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow. Pierre recently described how the series became a months-long boot camp for the role before cameras roll on the movie.

“I can't say much, but what I can say is what a gift it was to have had six months consecutively of six day weeks and a minimum of 12 hour days to live with John and excavate his character before going into Man of Tomorrow,” he said.

Elsewhere in the Corps, Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner is already bouncing around the DCU. He appears in the 2025 Superman movie and turns up again in Peacemaker Season 2, with more cameos expected as Gunn’s connected slate rolls on.

For now, October 4, 2026 is the circle date: that’s when Season 1 signs off on HBO. A second season remains unannounced as the team waits on the network’s call.

Guitars blaring and a sea of red-and-white lights, 16-year-old Nene Royal ripped through “Seven Nation Army” in the live finale and walked off with $1 million on September 23. The Phuket, Thailand teen capped a season of arena-size rock covers with a finale performance that had the room on its feet before the confetti even started falling.

Her sprint to the finish was fueled by a midseason boost: Mel B’s Live Golden Buzzer in the quarterfinals, which sent Royal straight to the finale. She’s been playing guitar since she was seven, and it showed—every round leaned into heavy riffs and big-voice choruses that turned the AGT stage into her own club gig.

Her road to the crown

• Audition — The Cranberries’ “Zombie” (punk rock cover)
• Judges’ Callbacks — Muse’s “Hysteria”
• Quarterfinals — Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” (earned Mel B’s Live Golden Buzzer)
• Finale — The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” (standing ovation)

“The biggest, most talented, most viral talent to be on that stage,”

judge Howie Mandel said after her finale turn.

Backed by family

Born Nong Praew Rattikarn Amlai, Royal had visible support in the crowd all season from her father, Narong Amloy, while her mother, Chuanpit “Mae Oom” Poonkerd, cheered from home in Thailand. On Thairath TV Channel 32’s Khao Sai Khai program, Royal and her dad video-called her mom, who beamed with pride and urged Thai viewers to keep backing her daughter.

Music runs deep in the household. Royal’s father introduced her to the guitar and even built a rehearsal space at their home, according to the Bangkok Post.

The cattle drive that gives Lonesome Dove its plot is finished well before the story is. What the fourth part is about is a journey in the opposite direction, undertaken by one man for no practical reason whatsoever.

CBS aired the four parts across consecutive nights from 5 to 8 February 1989 — 384 minutes total, directed by Simon Wincer on a $20 million budget, with roughly 44 million people watching the premiere. It took seven Emmys. The final part is titled "Return," and the title is literal.

Getting to the last part

Three of the major deaths happen before "Return" opens or early inside it, and each one costs Call something specific:

• Jake Spoon — falls in with a gang that murders wranglers and farmers in Kansas. Call's posse catches him, and his old friends hang him. Jake decides he'd rather be hanged by friends than strangers, and spurs his own horse.
• Joshua Deets — killed in Wyoming Territory during a confrontation over stolen horses, speared by a tribesman who misreads him trying to help a blind child. He dies in Gus and Call's arms.
• Blue Duck — captured in Santa Rosa, New Mexico Territory. On the way to the gallows he grabs Deputy Robert Hofer and throws them both out a window.

Read more: Running out of time, George Lucas chose his museum over three more Star Wars films

Gus makes the request

Scouting ahead of the herd in Montana, Gus McCrae takes arrows in the right leg. A doctor in Miles City amputates it. When the same doctor tells him the left leg has gone septic and needs to come off too, Gus refuses, on the grounds that he'd rather be dead than legless. He asks Call for two things before he goes: bury him in the orchard in Texas where he courted Clara Allen years earlier, and acknowledge Newt as his son.

Call agrees to one of them.

What "Return" is

Call loads the body onto a wagon and hauls it roughly 3,000 miles south, through blizzards, broken axles and a winter, to bury Gus in the orchard. The drive to Montana took a season and built a ranch. The trip back accomplishes nothing except keeping a promise to a dead man, which is the point — it's the only unambiguous act of love Woodrow Call performs in six and a half hours of television.

He gives Newt his horse, his rifle and his father's pocket watch. He does not say the word.

Everything else lands where it lands. Lorena stays in Nebraska with Clara. July Johnson stays too. Newt keeps the Montana ranch with the hands, and the acknowledgment he wanted never arrives.

The last scene

Call rides back into Lonesome Dove, where a newspaperman has been waiting to interview the famous Texas Ranger who drove cattle to Montana and carried a corpse back. The man calls him a man of vision.

"Yeah. A hell of a vision," Call answers, and keeps moving.

For the record: the follow-ups kept coming — Return to Lonesome Dove (1993), Streets of Laredo (1995), Dead Man's Walk (1996) and Comanche Moon (2008) — and Larry McMurtry only wrote two of them.

Earlier we wrote: CGI overload? Ethan Hawke says Hollywood’s reliance “just cheapens the whole thing”

On the Versailles set of her 2006 movie Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola’s mother, documentary filmmaker Eleanor Coppola, rolled cameras for an estimated 80–100 hours, capturing the controlled chaos and craft behind the confection-box visuals. Two decades later, that footage has been shaped by Sofia into a feature-length documentary titled Making Marie Antoinette, a project she took over after Eleanor’s death in 2024 and discussed on Happy Hour with Ina Garten.

The film promises a rare look at how Coppola and her crew pulled off on-location shoots inside the Palace of Versailles and built the movie’s pastel world, with the cast — led by Kirsten Dunst — navigating court rituals, towering wigs and dawn calls in gilded rooms. It’s also a snapshot of a production that slowly grew into a cult favorite for its modern soundtrack and candy-colored take on royal adolescence.

From Eleanor to Sofia

Eleanor Coppola, the Emmy-winning filmmaker behind Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, originally planned to turn her set footage into its own movie. When she couldn’t finish it, her daughter stepped in to complete what she started.

“She really wanted to have it made into a film. She passed away a few years ago and I I finished it for her this past year … I’m really glad to finish this work.”

In the same conversation, Sofia revisited the spark that guided Marie Antoinette in the first place: Antonia Fraser’s biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Learning the future queen arrived at Versailles at 14, Coppola zeroed in on the emotional reality of a teenager dropped into court life — the angle that shaped everything from the needle drops to the costumes and may get fresh texture in the new footage.

Making Marie Antoinette will first screen at the New York Film Festival before heading to theaters via MUBI on October 23, 2026.

Chatting on Happy Hour with Ina Garten, Sofia Coppola copped to the one title in her filmography she’s never fully embraced: her 2013 crime drama The Bling Ring. The twist that made her laugh? It’s the one her kids love most.

“I was always kind of ashamed of that movie because it's so kind of trashy. But then it's like my kids favorite and I was like really that one?”

Coppola said she struggled to connect with the movie because she didn’t care for its aesthetic, which kept it from resonating with her the way her other work has. The Oscar winner behind Lost in Translation, The Beguiled and Priscilla wrote and directed the film.

Inspired by a Vanity Fair article about a real group of teens who broke into the homes of Hollywood celebrities, the movie follows fame-obsessed friends as their robberies escalate from thrill-seeking to headline-making. Reviews were mixed, but it still pulled in about $20 million worldwide.

• Israel Broussard — Marc Hall
• Katie Chang — Rebecca Ahn
• Emma Watson — Nicki Moore
• Taissa Farmiga
• Claire Julien
• Carlos Miranda
• Gavin Rossdale
• Leslie Mann

How to watch in the U.S.

The Bling Ring isn’t currently streaming on Netflix. It’s available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.

The next voice behind Dick Grayson is set: Mason Thames will play the character as Robin in DC Studios and Warner Bros.’ animated feature Dynamic Duo, per TheWrap. The confirmation followed an earlier industry report that initially framed Thames as “Nightwing,” and the actor fanned the chatter by posting Nightwing comics on Instagram — but that’s speculation. There’s no announcement tying him to a live-action Nightwing in the DCU.

Inside Dynamic Duo

The movie centers on Dick Grayson and Jason Todd during their younger years, reimagining their origin: the boys start as orphaned childhood friends whose lives split in different directions — Dick becomes Batman’s Robin, while Jason gets pulled toward the Red Hood Gang.

• Mason Thames — Dick Grayson/Robin (confirmed via TheWrap)
• Logan Kim — Jason Todd (reported by The InSneider; not officially announced)
• Lee Pace — member of the Red Hood Gang (attached)
• Steve Buscemi — member of the Red Hood Gang (attached)

Dynamic Duo is currently dated for September 22, 2028.

What about live-action Nightwing?

DC Studios’ upcoming Batman film, The Brave and the Bold — directed by Andy Muschietti — spotlights Bruce Wayne and his son Damian Wayne as Robin and will include members of the wider Bat-Family. That setup naturally has fans wondering about Nightwing, Red Hood and more, but DC hasn’t named a live-action Dick Grayson, and Thames’ casting is specific to the animated film.

Separate from the DCU plans, The Batman: Part II is slated for 2028 under Matt Reeves. DC has not announced a release date for The Brave and the Bold; reports have floated 2029 timing, but nothing official.

Deadliest Catch has a long habit of explaining its absences on screen, sometimes in the most painful way available. Josh Harris got no explanation at all.

He arrived on the show in season 3 in 2007 as a deckhand on his father's boat, the F/V Cornelia Marie. When Phil Harris suffered a stroke during opilio season on 29 January 2010 and died on 9 February, Discovery aired it: "Redemption Day" ran on 13 July 2010 to 8.5 million viewers, a network record at the time. Josh stayed on, took the Cornelia Marie's wheelhouse alongside Casey McManus from season 10 in 2014, and ran up more than 200 episodes plus a spinoff, Deadliest Catch: Bloodline, which ran three seasons.

What ended it

In September 2022, RadarOnline published court records from a case in the late 1990s in which Harris, then 16, pleaded guilty to reduced charges — fourth-degree assault and communicating with a minor for immoral purposes — and was sentenced to 30 days' confinement on each count plus 24 months of supervision.

Read more: What happened to Jake Harris from Deadliest Catch? The internet keeps killing him off

Discovery's response was immediate and short.

"We've been made aware of this issue. Josh will not appear in future episodes of this series," a Discovery representative said in 2022.

Bloodline was pulled from Discovery+ entirely, all three seasons, and has not returned to streaming.

The boat and the co-captain went too

The network declined to renew contracts across the board, which took out people who had nothing to do with the reporting. Casey McManus said so on Twitter in December 2022.

"Discovery did not renew contracts with the boat, nor Josh, nor I. It was a bummer deal, but there's no crab to catch anyways."

That last clause is doing real work. Alaska had closed the Bering Sea snow crab fishery in October 2022 for the first time in its history after a population collapse, so the fleet the show films was already facing a season with nothing to pull. McManus moved to tugboats and posted about it on Instagram: "The new job is bigger than just running a boat... It's a new world, but a boat is a boat, and I know boats."

What the show did about it on screen

Nothing. Season 19 premiered in 2023 with no Cornelia Marie in the fleet, no reference to why, and no farewell package of the kind the series had built for Phil. Harris's last appearances are in season 18. He deleted an Instagram account with more than 130,000 followers and has kept out of public view since; he is married with a daughter.

• Seasons 3–18 — Josh Harris on screen, deckhand to captain.
• September 2022 — the reporting, and Discovery's statement.
• December 2022 — McManus confirms the boat and both captains are out.
• 2023 — season 19 airs without them.
• May 2026 — season 22 premieres with the Cornelia Marie back in the fleet, under a different captain.

That last one is the detail worth sitting with: the boat got a second act. Jake Anderson runs it now.

Earlier we wrote: MasterChef season 7: where are they now? A decade after the DJ beat the teacher and the poker pro

Asked on Capital Buzz to rank all seven seasons of Riverdale, Lili Reinhart didn’t hedge: she put them in straight chronological order — Season 1 at the top, Season 7 at the bottom — and said the show drifted far from where it started on The CW.

“I do think quite literally we may have lost the plot as time went on,”

Reinhart added that her criticism was about the storytelling, not her time on set or her co-stars.

“Not that to say I didn’t have fun doing every single one,”

Her season order

• 1. Season 1
• 2. Season 2
• 3. Season 3
• 4. Season 4
• 5. Season 5
• 6. Season 6
• 7. Season 7

Reinhart played Betty Cooper for the show’s entire run (2017–2023), starting in a noir-tinged high school murder mystery before the drama swerved into cults, superpowers, and even time travel. Over those seven seasons, Betty faced serial killers, briefly trained with the FBI, and navigated increasingly wild twists as the Archie Comics adaptation pushed into the surreal.

Reinhart was on Capital Buzz while promoting her new Prime Video rom-com The Love Hypothesis. Amazon is also developing a feature adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s Love, Theoretically, with author Colleen Hoover producing alongside Heartbones Entertainment and Magic Hour Entertainment.

At the Variety Power of Women event, Bryce Dallas Howard zeroed in on the slide in women directing features and TV, arguing the industry’s well-meaning mentorship programs aren’t moving the needle. Her pitch: shift time and money toward true sponsorship — the kind that pays filmmakers between gigs and backs them while they’re developing what comes next.

“The numbers are an indication of something real, so whatever is currently being done is not enough. I think that there’s been a lot of focus on mentorship. Focusing on sponsorship is crucial,” she said.

Howard also laid out the economic pinch many directors feel once the cameras stop rolling — especially those without a financial cushion to survive the long wait to the next job.

“It’s really difficult to get paid to do the thing that you want to do in this business and so that the amount of time between jobs is so significant that unless you come from privilege or you have another job that somehow allows you to be flexible in some way shape or form,” she explained to Variety.

She pushed for support that extends past a single greenlit credit and into the unglamorous, day-to-day grind of building a career.

“There must be more. It’s got to continue on to sponsorship it has to,” Howard stated, pointing toward research, development, workshops and exploratory work as areas where emerging filmmakers need backing.

New project on deck

Howard has also lined up a new role, joining Aaron Paul in Anything But Ghosts, the mystery feature from writer-director Curry Barker and writer-star Cooper Tomlinson that wrapped production earlier this month. Plot details are still under wraps.

• Bryce Dallas Howard — cast (role not disclosed)
• Aaron Paul — cast
• Cooper Tomlinson — writer and star
• Curry Barker — writer, director, and appearing in the film

The filmmakers say Anything But Ghosts is set in the Obsession universe — the breakout phenomenon that was the talk of the Toronto International Film Festival and scored the fest’s biggest sale. Obsession has since reached $300 million worldwide off a tiny budget.

Behind the camera

Howard’s call for sponsorship comes with her own track record in the director’s chair on Disney’s Star Wars slate:

• The Mandalorian — director, multiple episodes
• The Book of Boba Fett — director, episode
• Ahsoka — director, episode
• Skeleton Crew — director, episode

On the acting side, she’s kept one foot in big-screen genre fare:

• Jurassic World trilogy
• Rocketman
• The Village
• Argylle

In a recent sit-down on Happy Hour with Ina Garten, Sofia Coppola traced her take on Marie Antoinette back to one startling detail she first heard from a friend: the future queen was just 14 when she arrived at Versailles. That sent her to historian Antonia Fraser’s biography and reframed the movie as a story about a teenager dropped into a royal machine.

“I had no idea that she was so young and so then it made me curious,” she said. “I read her (Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette: The Journey) book and it was so interesting to me that made her human and showed her all these details of her as a young girl.”

Among the small, piercing moments Coppola said stuck with her: Marie Antoinette’s pet dog was taken from her as she crossed into French court life — a ritual detail that helped strip away the myth and make the character feel like a kid in over her head.

The focus of the film

Rather than retracing every political beat, Coppola’s 2006 film leans into mood and emotion: the loneliness of a teenager stranded in a palace, the rituals that close in, the sweetness and sting of first freedoms. The gauzy pastels and party scenes are there, but they play against a steady sense of isolation.

That choice drew mixed reviews and plenty of pushback on release; over time, though, the film’s candy-colored look and coming-of-age perspective have turned it into a word-of-mouth favorite. A big part of the spell: Coppola filmed inside the real Palace of Versailles, with access to bedrooms, gardens, and other storied rooms.

Where to watch

If Coppola’s comments have you queuing it up again, here’s where to find Marie Antoinette now in the U.S. — the film is 20 years old this year:

• Netflix — streaming
• Apple TV — streaming
• Amazon Prime Video — rental from $3.99

A film can be the best-reviewed release of its year and still end a studio. The Right Stuff managed both inside about four months.

The numbers are not close. The Ladd Company spent $27 million adapting Tom Wolfe's 1979 book about the Mercury Seven; the film grossed $21.1 million domestically. It premiered at the Kennedy Center on 16 October 1983, opened in limited release on 229 screens five days later, and took $1.6 million on its opening weekend, finishing seventh. A wide expansion to 627 theaters on 17 February 1984 added roughly the same amount again, and that was that.

The running time

192 minutes, with no intermission and no way around it. A three-hour-twelve-minute film cuts the number of daily showings an exhibitor can run, which halves the revenue ceiling of every screen it occupies before anyone buys a ticket.

Read more: Failure to deliver on its 30-movie promise could cost Paramount 'Scream', 'Scary Movie', and more

Nobody on the poster was a movie star

The cast reads like a hall of fame now — Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, Fred Ward, Barbara Hershey — and in 1983 not one of them opened a picture. There was no name above the title to sell a three-hour ensemble drama about test pilots to an audience that had Terms of Endearment, Sudden Impact, and Return of the Jedi to choose from.

The John Glenn problem

This is the part people forget. John Glenn, played in the film by Ed Harris, was running for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination while the movie was in theaters. The press covered the release as a campaign event.

Newsweek ran a cover asking: "Can a Movie Help Make a President?"

That framing turned an ensemble film about seven astronauts into a suspected political operation. Audiences who didn't want to buy a ticket to a campaign ad stayed home, and Glenn's candidacy collapsed anyway — he withdrew in March 1984.

What it won, and what it cost

The film took eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture, and won four: Film Editing, Original Score for Bill Conti, Sound, and Sound Effects Editing. Best Picture went to Terms of Endearment. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel each named The Right Stuff the best film of 1983. It sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and entered the National Film Registry.

The Ladd Company did not survive it. Combined with the failure of Twice Upon a Time the same year, the loss ended the company's run, and Warner Bros. wound down the partnership — even though the outfit released Police Academy in 1984 and made $150 million on it.

Home video rescued the reputation but not the ledger. Disney+ tried a series version in 2020; it ran one season.

Earlier we wrote: Martin Scorsese spotlights the George Lucas brilliance that doesn’t get enough credit

Hours after landing the NBC late-night job while he was still writing at The Simpsons, Conan O’Brien says he got a curveball: fly to New England and do a set at a birthday party for a powerful NBC exec. The room was small, somewhere in Connecticut. Almost nobody knew who he was. And sitting about 15 feet away, watching the whole thing, was Johnny Carson.

“He said, ‘Just be yourself, that’s the only way it can work.’”

O’Brien told the story on Tuesday’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon—only his second time as a guest since leaving as Tonight Show host in 2010. He admitted he was petrified to perform with the late-night legend in the room, describing Carson as the most famous person in America throughout his childhood.

The set was a surreal scene: a then-unknown writer trying to win over a crowd of industry power players while the man who defined the job looked on. That quick backstage chat with Carson afterward stuck, O’Brien said, and it’s the line he returned to as he figured out the version of himself audiences came to recognize—right down to the hair that became part of the brand.

About that hair

After a summer of headlines about his slicked-down look, O’Brien—now set to host the 2026 Oscars—finally explained what happened. It wasn’t a reinvention or a lost bet; it was a scorched scalp. He said he attended an Obama library event in Chicago, slathered on sunscreen, skipped the hat, and paid for it.

He joked that his complexion is so pale you could see his “entire circulatory system” without makeup, which is why sun protection is non-negotiable. The temporary change set off a wave of online reactions: some people swore he looked like a New York cab driver, others claimed AI had generated his face, and a few wondered if a doppelgänger had taken his place.

O’Brien added that the towering red swoop started as a high-school gambit to get noticed—a hook for show business. Even before people knew his name, they knew him as “the guy with the hair.”

James Gunn’s DC Universe has been threading old and new from the jump, so a Gotham-set horror origin like Clayface lands in a world that already knows capes, aliens, and government black ops. If you want the connective tissue before the villain takes center stage, here’s the handful of films and shows that actually matter to this continuity — and why.

The essential watchlist

• The Suicide Squad (2021) — The handoff point. Amanda Waller’s Task Force X mission to Corto Maltese introduces (and, crucially, preserves) players who survive into the DCU. You get Bloodsport, Peacemaker, King Shark, Harley Quinn and Rick Flag back in action, a secretive Project Starfish and a towering Starro cover-up. The choice that echoes: Peacemaker kills Rick Flag to keep the U.S. secret, then gets shot by Bloodsport — and lives, as revealed in the post-credits. That death also ties Peacemaker to Rick Flag Sr., a thread that keeps running through Creature Commandos, Superman and Peacemaker Season 2.
• Blue Beetle (2023) — The carryover hero. James Gunn and Peter Safran kept Xolo Maridueña’s Jaime Reyes as canon for the DCU, positioning the film as continuity-light so you don’t need homework. The gist: college grad Jaime bonds with alien Scarab Khaji-Da, which builds a sentient suit around him. It underperformed theatrically at $130.8 million worldwide on a roughly $120 million budget, but Jaime’s survival into the DCU makes the character matter going forward.
• Peacemaker (Seasons 1–2) — The bridge and the reset. Season 1 picks up after The Suicide Squad with Christopher Smith on Project Butterfly, hunting alien parasites alongside Emilia Harcourt, John Economos, Leota Adebayo and Vigilante, while confronting his father, white supremacist supervillain Auggie “White Dragon” Smith. The finale’s Justice League cameo is recontextualized as the Justice Gang in the DCU. Season 2 drops Peacemaker into a new status quo: he tries out for Maxwell Lord’s Justice Gang with Guy Gardner and Hawkgirl; Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr. hunts him over Rick Jr.’s death; and an alternate dimension forces Chris to face another version of himself.
• Creature Commandos — The animated opening salvo of the DCU. Gunn wrote all 7 episodes, which follow Waller’s monster squad Task Force M into Pokolistan to shield Princess Ilana Rostovic from Circe. The team: Frankenstein, the Bride, Nina Mazursky, Doctor Phosphorus, G.I. Robot and Weasel. Their messy histories complicate the mission as Ilana’s true ambitions surface; Circe’s warning proves right, Nina dies trying to stop catastrophe, and Rick Flag Sr. is cemented as a major DCU mover — exactly the kind of animation-to–live action crossover DC Studios has been promising.
• Superman (2025) — The theatrical foundation of the new universe. David Corenswet’s Clark Kent has already been Superman for three years, with a Fortress of Solitude, a Daily Planet desk, a relationship with Lois Lane and a world used to metahumans. The conflict escalates when international tensions rise and Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor manipulates events using political clout, advanced tech and a secret pocket universe housing the Engineer and Ultraman. Allies include Lois, Mister Terrific and Krypto. The film launches the Justice Gang (Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, Mister Terrific) bankrolled by LordTech, ties in Rick Flag Sr. as head of A.R.G.U.S., and even nods to Gotham on a roadside sign — with Batman notably absent.
• Supergirl — Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor‑El expands the DCU off-world in a violent, grief-driven story drawn from Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. Traveling with Krypto, Kara meets Ruthye Marye Knoll, who seeks vengeance on Krem of the Yellow Hills for her father’s murder; Krem poisons Krypto, pulling Kara in. Her memories of Argo City set her apart from Clark, and Jason Momoa’s Lobo crashes the chase as a brutal wildcard. Reception was mixed — 53% on Rotten Tomatoes, 50 on Metacritic (from 56 reviews) — and the film reported $72.3 million domestic, but it crucially widens the DCU’s cosmic ceiling before Gotham turns the lights down again.
• Lanterns — A grounded murder mystery with space rings. Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart investigate a killing in rural America, peeling back Corps mythology through a detective lens. We track John’s childhood and bond with Hal to the town of Rushville, and the fallout from a destructive incident neither shakes. By episode 6 — a decade after John’s first showdown with Hal — John is an architect, Hal has done prison time, and Hal is mysteriously killed after returning to Rushville, leaving John his mentor’s ring and a guide called the “Halogram”. Cameos and teases connect the dots: Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner ties to the Justice Gang, Carol Ferris enters, and the case keeps pointing toward Sinestro.

As of September 24, 2026, six of the eight Lanterns episodes have aired; two remain.

All of this sets the table so Gotham doesn’t have to explain superheroes from scratch — Superman already did that heavy lift — and lets Clayface dive straight into a villain’s terrifying transformation against a city that knows the score.

Val Kilmer played Tom "Iceman" Kazansky in 1986 and again in 2022, with nothing in between and a great deal in the way. The gap between those two performances is the story.

Kilmer died on 1 April 2025 in Los Angeles, at 65. The cause was pneumonia, with respiratory failure and squamous cell carcinoma listed among underlying causes. His daughter Mercedes confirmed the death. He had been living with the consequences of throat cancer for a decade by then.

The diagnosis he spent years not naming

Kilmer noticed a lump in his throat in 2014 and did nothing about it until he began vomiting blood. He was hospitalized in January 2015. A lifelong Christian Scientist, he described what he had publicly as "the suggestion of throat cancer" and initially denied having had a tumor at all. He went through chemotherapy and two tracheotomies anyway, at his children's insistence.

Read more: Fans’ AI videos draw rebuke from Robin Williams’ daughter: 'Have some shame'

The second procedure damaged his vocal cords. From then on he spoke through a valve in his trachea, covering the opening with a finger to force air through, and ate through a feeding tube. By 2020 he had been cancer-free for four years.

• I'm Your Huckleberry (2020) — his memoir, titled after the Doc Holliday line from Tombstone.
• Val (2021) — a documentary assembled from decades of home footage he shot himself, narrated by his son Jack in an approximation of his father's voice. It premiered at Cannes and won two Critics' Choice Documentary Awards.
• Top Gun: Maverick (2022) — his last film, released 27 May 2022, 36 years after the original.

Who got him into the sequel

Not the studio, at first. Kilmer wrote in his memoir that producers hadn't contacted him, and that he considered Iceman and Maverick inseparable — the two "went together like salt and pepper." The push came from the lead actor.

"He said, 'We have to have Val, we have to have him back. We have to have him in the film,'" producer Jerry Bruckheimer told Fox News in 2022. "Tom was really adamant that if he's going to make another 'Top Gun,' Val had to be in it."

How the scene works

The film writes his condition into the script rather than hiding it. Iceman, now a four-star admiral with throat cancer, communicates by typing on a computer screen, and speaks only a handful of words out loud — including the line that ends the scene, telling Maverick it's time to let go.

The voice audiences hear was reconstructed. The London company Sonantic built an AI model of Kilmer's speech from archival recordings of him at full strength, producing lines he could no longer physically produce himself. Spotify bought Sonantic in June 2022, weeks after Maverick opened.

Kilmer's son Jack, quoted by Fox News in 2022: "They honor the legacy of Iceman, and he was so stoked by it."

Top Gun: Maverick grossed over $1.4 billion. It was the biggest hit of Kilmer's career, and he is in it for roughly three minutes.

Earlier we wrote: ‘Hell no — I couldn’t keep up’: Brad Pitt on Tom Cruise’s action stunts

Skin care is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Personal Day, the line Lili Reinhart launched in October 2024, tallied an estimated $10 million in its first year and, about 14 months in, was pegged at roughly a $40 million valuation. The brand rolled into about 700 Ulta locations and nearly half the line reportedly sold out in its first month on shelves—rare air for a newcomer priced mostly under $40.

Reinhart built the label around her own acne-prone, sensitive skin and chose not to splash her name across the packaging, betting the products could move without a celebrity crutch. TikTok has been a workhorse—affiliate creators and TikTok Shop have kept the standouts in steady rotation.

• Trust Me On This — hypochlorous acid spray
• Everybody Stay Calm — recovery mask
• Unplug — blackhead‑melting nose strips

Personal Day was valued around $40 million roughly 14 months after launch.

Riverdale money, then some

Before serums and sprays, there was Riverdale. From 2017 to 2023, Reinhart played Betty Cooper across roughly 100 episodes. In later seasons she reportedly earned about $40,000 per episode, and the run came with Teen Choice wins and other nominations—visibility that opened doors and padded savings.

As for what it all adds up to, most outlets peg Lili Reinhart’s net worth around $6–$7 million, with some estimates creeping to $8–$9 million. Those are estimates, not audited figures; the sky‑high claims circulating online into the tens or hundreds of millions don’t hold water.

Producing streak and new roles

• Hustlers (2019) — appeared alongside Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu in the box office hit
• Chemical Hearts (2020, Amazon) — starred as Grace Town and took her first executive producer credit
• Look Both Ways (2022, Netflix) — starred and executive produced
• Small Victory Productions — her banner inked a first‑look with Amazon Studios in 2021, focused on YA voices
• American Sweatshop (2025) — executive producer
• Hal & Harper (2025, miniseries) — executive producer
• The Love Hypothesis (2026, Prime Video) — stars as PhD candidate Olive Smith opposite Tom Bateman, directed by Claire Scanlon; also executive produces; arrived September 23, 2026

Endorsements and extras

• CoverGirl (2019)
• American Express Green Card relaunch (2019)
• Armani Beauty (around 2022)

Her poetry collection Swimming Lessons (2020) became a bestseller, a rarity for a celebrity poetry debut. On social, Reinhart’s Instagram following is often cited at over 20 million, with earnings estimates in the $90,000–$124,000 per month range. She also bought a 4,170‑square‑foot home in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley in 2020 for about $2.7 million, a five‑bedroom with a pool and a wine room.

Onstage at the San Sebastián Film Festival, Brad Pitt walked through how he and the trainers turned every shooting day into “play” for his German Shepherd co-star, Uber, on Heart of the Beast — and how the dog’s off-script instincts kept making the final cut. Pitt called the experience “really moving,” praising Uber’s expressions and in-the-moment choices.

“We tried to make every day a play day for him. There were times he would do things that were just amazing that were not in the script that you see in the film, and his expressions still really move me,”

Filmed in New Zealand, the shoot sounded as rugged as the movie’s backdrop. Pitt said the rough conditions forged a kind of field-camp camaraderie with the crew — and that sharing it with a “beautiful beast” added something he hadn’t felt before.

“Being out there with this beautiful beast was pretty special… it was really kind of beautiful,”

He painted a picture of long, spartan days built around the work, not the comforts.

“We’re out in this beautiful location. We’re wet, we’re cold, 12 hours a day. We don’t have trailers. We’re sitting out on logs, but everyone’s kind of up for the task,”

Pitt added that Uber doubled as a morale officer. The second the dog padded onto set, he said, the energy lifted — a noticeable jolt that kept spirits high through the cold and rain.

Indie energy

Pitt, who’s also producing Heart of the Beast via his Plan B banner, used the festival stop to talk up the state of independent filmmaking. He said today’s distribution paths are pulling bigger audiences toward creator-driven stories, creating a climate he feels rivals the creatively electric ’90s.

Director David Ayer echoed him, pointing to YouTube and other digital platforms as the new pipeline feeding fresh voices into features — spaces that used to sit outside the studio track now serving as real incubators. Heart of the Beast is set to open September 25, 2026.

The settlement that lets the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger move forward in California tucks in a very specific indie-film mandate: the combined studio must set aside $5 million a year to buy completed movies made outside the major-studio system and commit to releasing at least four independent films annually, according to the California Attorney General’s office. The fund runs for five years, totaling $25 million.

The combined studio will spend $5 million a year on acquiring completed independent films — $25 million over five years.

Per the state’s settlement document, that money targets finished features built on original screenplays or projects from producers outside the big Hollywood companies — not titles originating at Paramount, Disney, Universal, Sony, or similar studios. In other words, it’s earmarked for truly independent cinema.

The indie carve-out sits alongside much larger commitments attached to the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, valued at $111 billion including debt. The same settlement requires $1.5 billion in additional domestic film and TV production over five years and creates a $47.5 million Workforce Fund for displaced employees. It also outlines theatrical targets that, if missed, can trigger $30 million per film penalties, per the AG’s filing, while the combined company manages a reported $77 billion debt load.

Indie guardrails

The indie-purchase cap applies to completed movies from outside the studio system — a bid to ensure the merged company keeps room for films that don’t originate within its own pipelines. Releases can be theatrical or otherwise; the requirement is that four indie titles make it out each year under the new regime.

Paramount’s indie history

Paramount has been here before. In 2023 it revived Republic Pictures as an acquisitions label and brought a handful of festival discoveries into its orbit:

• BlackBerry
• Self Reliance
• The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
• September 5

Go back further and the Paramount Vantage era punched above its weight with prestige titles and buzzy buys:

• No Country for Old Men
• There Will Be Blood
• Into the Wild
• Hustle & Flow — acquired at Sundance for a then-record $9 million
• Smoke Signals

The new $5 million-a-year allocation arrives amid a moment when smaller productions can break big — recent indie wins like Obsession and Backrooms have shown there’s noise to be made outside the studio tentpoles.

With California’s sign-off in place, the indie fund spans five years and the merged studio is obligated to release at least four independent films annually.

After a flurry of social posts claimed otherwise, Mark Ruffalo has been telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s not part of Marvel’s next Avengers movie. While doing press with Chris Hemsworth for their new project, Crime 101, Ruffalo said the fifth Avengers film isn’t on his calendar and that he won’t appear as Bruce Banner or the Hulk in Avengers: Doomsday.

Mark Ruffalo says he is not in Avengers: Doomsday.

The actor also poked fun at his own reputation for spilling Marvel secrets on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, joking that his spoiler habit might be scarier than the Hulk. That gag spiraled into a separate “was he fired?” rumor online, but Ruffalo has continued to state plainly that he’s not in Doomsday.

Part of why this keeps resurfacing: the movie is stuffed with heroes. By some counts, roughly 36 characters are in the mix, pulling together core MCU Avengers, the new Fantastic Four, and legacy X-Men from the Fox era — and yet the Hulk has been missing from early promo footage. That absence has become its own storyline for fans combing through every frame.

Rumor mill

Even with Ruffalo’s denial, a cottage industry of speculation has tried to slot Hulk back in. Here’s what’s been circulating — with no official confirmation from Marvel:

• The Hollywood Handle on X claimed Ruffalo had “joined” Doomsday.
• Reports around a possible Avengers: Endgame: Encore re-release suggest a new post‑credits scene where Doctor Doom approaches Hulk to recruit him.
• Industry scooper Alex Perez has said Ruffalo is planned for Doomsday and Secret Wars.

Fans have also spun theories linking Bruce Banner’s post–Spider‑Man “Brand New Day”–style status to a potential showdown with Doom — essentially, that the villain might have a reason to seek him out. None of that has been acknowledged by Marvel Studios, and Ruffalo himself keeps waving the “not this one” flag.

What he isn’t doing is slamming the door forever. Ruffalo has said he’d gladly come back to the MCU if there’s a fresh angle for Hulk. For now, though, Marvel hasn’t announced him for Avengers: Doomsday or Secret Wars, and that rumored Endgame: Encore tag with Doom and Hulk remains unconfirmed.

Circle the calendar: September 25, 2026 is now pulling double duty. Marvel is sending Avengers: Endgame Encore back to theaters with a sliver of new footage, the same day Taylor Swift drops an expanded edition of her 2025 album, The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore, with four brand-new tracks.

Swift’s surprise add-on

Swift announced the “Encore” edition on Wednesday morning, just a day after unveiling her new single “Patient Zero.” Pre-order listings reveal the full slate of additions and where they land on the new tracklist.

• “Patient Zero” — new single
• “Cleveland!”
• “Pink Clouding”
• “Babylon”

Those four songs are listed as tracks 13–16 on the updated album, which arrives the same day it hits streaming and retail.

What Marvel added

On the movie side, Avengers: Endgame Encore tacks on four minutes of previously unseen material, nudging the runtime to 3 hours and 5 minutes. It’s a tiny addition with a big job: setting up this December’s Avengers: Doomsday.

The Russo brothers confirmed the plan at April’s Sands Film Festival, framing the re-release as connective tissue between Endgame and the new film.

“It’s critically important to re-release the movie, and, in fact, we’ll be re-releasing the film with footage that is set in the Doomsday story that we have added to Avengers: Endgame,” Joe Russo explained.

Russo said the added scene functions as a narrative bridge into Avengers: Doomsday and that Endgame’s massive reach made a theater return the clearest way to get that story beat in front of audiences ahead of the December rollout.

Both drops land September 25, 2026: Endgame Encore returns to theaters, and The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore arrives on streaming and for purchase the same day.

At the San Sebastián International Film Festival while promoting his new feature The Debut, Jesse Eisenberg finally explained why he walked away from Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to The Social Network. He said the project didn’t match where he wants to go creatively — and, after years of being linked to the Facebook founder, he no longer wanted his face tied to Mark Zuckerberg. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sorkin spent three days trying to change his mind; Eisenberg still passed.

“It just didn’t feel like something I wanted to act in again,” Eisenberg said, per THR.

Eisenberg also made a point of endorsing the new direction. Jeremy Strong is stepping into the role of Zuckerberg, and Eisenberg said he’s all for it.

“The movie will be a great movie, and Jeremy Strong will be amazing in the movie. I’m sure,” he said, as reported by THR.

What the follow-up covers

The Social Reckoning shifts from Facebook’s origin story to the fallout. The movie opens with whistleblower Frances Haugen (played by Mikey Madison), a data engineer in Facebook’s civic integrity unit who discovers internal research showing the company put profits ahead of user safety.

Haugen then works with Jeff Horwitz (portrayed by Jeremy Allen White), an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal, to expose the platform’s role in teen anxiety and depression and in fueling political polarization around the world. Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg, defending Facebook in the wake of the leak.

• Jeremy Strong — Mark Zuckerberg
• Mikey Madison — Frances Haugen
• Jeremy Allen White — Jeff Horwitz

The film released a first teaser over the summer and is set for a wide theatrical release on October 9, 2026.

All five movies in The Twilight Saga land on Netflix US the same day — October 1 — so you can binge the entire Bella–Edward–Jacob saga in order without hopping between apps. The films arrive as a set, making it easy to start in biology class in Forks and end with that wild Volturi face-off.

The five-film binge

• Twilight (2008)
• The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)
• The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011)
• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012)

Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, the franchise turned misty Pacific Northwest vibes, immortal romance and very intense staring contests into a pop-culture moment that defined late-2000s teen movies. If your fall tradition involves vampires, werewolves and a lot of rain, this drop pretty much programs itself.

The saga has rotated in and out of streamers over the years, so having the complete run in one place is the win here — no rental gaps, no missing middle chapter. Line them up, press play, and you’ve got the full Forks experience ready for a long weekend.

If you want something in the same vein to queue up around it, two Netflix options scratch the itch: First Kill (a teen vampire–hunter romance with dueling families) and Night Teeth (a neon-noir L.A. thriller about a chauffeur who realizes his passengers are very not human).

All five Twilight movies hit Netflix US on October 1.

The films arrive October 1 on Netflix US.

Major theater chains in Kuwait have yanked all showtimes for Avengers: Endgame Encore and issued automatic refunds after the film was blocked by the country’s censors, according to local outlet 2:48AM. Exhibitors VOX Cinemas and Cinescape confirmed the cancellations and apologized to customers, but no official reason for the ban was given.

It’s the second time the Avengers finale has run into trouble there: the original Endgame release was reportedly barred in Kuwait in 2019 over “objectionable scenes,” then later played with cuts. This new re-release adds only about four minutes of fresh material, and it’s unclear whether those additions triggered the decision.

Kuwait’s major theater chains canceled all screenings and processed automatic refunds.

What’s in the re-release

Marvel has positioned the Encore cut as an on-ramp to December’s Avengers: Doomsday, with new material meant to tee up that storyline. While the studio hasn’t detailed the plot beats, here’s what’s confirmed for the package:

• About four minutes of new footage connecting to Doomsday
• A new post-credits scene
• An exclusive preview of Avengers: Doomsday
• A fresh color grade
• A confirmed runtime of 185 minutes

Specifics on the added scene(s) are still under wraps. There are plenty of rumors about how the footage bridges to the next Avengers movie, but nothing official has been disclosed.

Outside Kuwait, the Encore cut is set to hit theaters on September 25.

Asked in an Esquire sit-down which past project he’d actually revisit while out promoting Brothers with Woody Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey didn’t pick a movie at all — he went straight to Rust Cohle and Marty Hart. Then he punctuated it with a little Rust-style whistle. Harrelson tried to match it and came up short, turning the moment into a quick, goofy echo of their old dynamic.

“I think if we got it right, it would be fun to go back to Rustin and Marty, True Detective,”

Season 1 of True Detective is still the touchstone for many fans — a Louisiana murder case that kept ballooning into cult symbols, the Yellow King and a rotten web of power, all anchored by two detectives who couldn’t quit each other or the job. That specific atmosphere — humid, haunted, and personal — is what McConaughey seemed to be pointing back toward.

Where Pizzolatto stands

According to Pizzolatto’s own comments, the creator has already kicked around how a Rust-and-Marty return could work. As of 2025, he said he’d discussed getting the band back together with McConaughey and Harrelson, with a character-first idea that would put the original detectives back in each other’s orbit.

McConaughey’s stance hasn’t wavered: if Nic Pizzolatto brings him a script that’s undeniable, coming back would feel, in his words elsewhere, like it “must happen.” The swing factor is Harrelson — the Esquire reunion shows he’s game to reminisce, but whether he’ll actually sign on as Marty again remains the open question.

• McConaughey floated a return during an Esquire interview tied to Brothers.
• He even dropped a Rust Cohle–style whistle; Harrelson’s attempt couldn’t quite match it.
• Creator Nic Pizzolatto has discussed a character-driven reunion for Rust and Marty and, by 2025, had a next-chapter idea in mind.
• McConaughey says the right script would make it feel inevitable; Harrelson’s commitment is the piece still in play.

True Detective is an HBO crime anthology; any Rust-and-Marty revival would run through Pizzolatto and the duo before landing there.

The MPA's rating card for The Running Man fits on one line. What that line is covering runs 133 minutes and includes a wood chipper.

Edgar Wright directed, Glen Powell stars as Ben Richards, and Paramount released it on November 14, 2025 in the US after a London premiere on November 5. It's adapted from Stephen King's 1982 novel, published under the Richard Bachman pseudonym, and it sticks far closer to that book than the 1987 version did — a dystopia in which a blacklisted laborer enters a televised manhunt and has to survive 30 days for a $1 billion prize.

The MPA's wording, in full

Rated R for strong violence, some gore, and language.

Three descriptors. Note what isn't there: no sexual content descriptor, no drug descriptor, despite both appearing in the film.

What "strong violence, some gore" is covering

• A man fed into a wood chipper — blood spray included.
• Multiple shootings — shown in detail rather than cut away from.
• People set on fire — along with electrocutions, beatings, and a character run over.
• A decapitation — the British board lists slashing and stabbing in the same breath.
• A woman and a child killed on screen — both flagged by Kids-in-Mind.
• A plane crash — staged as a set piece.

Kids-in-Mind scored the film 3.7.9 out of 10 across sex/nudity, violence/gore, and language respectively.

The "language" half is doing more work than it looks

Kids-in-Mind counted roughly 41 uses of the F-word, around 45 scatological terms, more than 25 anatomical references, and six obscene gestures across the runtime. That 9 out of 10 is the highest of the three categories — higher than the violence score that most of the coverage fixated on.

The British board listed a fourth thing

The BBFC classified it 15 rather than 18 on October 21, 2025, at a cinema runtime of 132 minutes and 52 seconds.

strong bloody violence, language, brief sex references

Its fuller notes add pole dancing, brief marijuana use, a passing suicide reference, and a hospitalized child with cancer — the last of which is the plot engine, since Richards enters the game to pay for his daughter's medication. The MPA folded none of that into its card, which is how two boards watching the same film arrive at three descriptors and four.

Was the 1987 one R as well?

It was. Paul Michael Glaser's version with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Dawson, and Jesse Ventura ran 114 minutes, opened November 13, 1987, and carried an R. Feature adaptations of King's work tend to land there as a matter of course.

Read more: CGI overload? Ethan Hawke says Hollywood’s reliance “just cheapens the whole thing”

King saw Wright's version before release and posted his verdict alongside the trailer: "I've seen it and it's fantastic. DIE HARD for our time. A bipartisan thrill ride." It then grossed $69 million worldwide against a $110 million budget, which is a rating problem of an entirely different kind.

Earlier we wrote: Amid backlash, Kit Harrington defends the Harry Potter show and why he joined the cast

In February 2026, longtime Marvel scooper MyTimeToShineHello claimed on X that Lady Gaga met with Kevin Feige to talk about a “big role” in the MCU. Since then, there’s been no confirmation from Marvel Studios or from Gaga’s camp, and no project or character name has been attached to the rumor.

Marvel Studios has made no official casting announcement for Lady Gaga.

The chatter lands in a franchise that loves its secrecy, which only fuels speculation. But absent an on-the-record announcement, this one sits firmly in the unverified column. Think of it as fan-fueled buzz until Marvel (or Gaga) says otherwise.

Why Gaga keeps coming up

Fans have been fancasting Gaga into Marvel roles for years, especially X‑Men characters who match her high-glam persona. Two names pop up again and again:

• Emma Frost — the telepathic, diamond-hard White Queen
• Dazzler — the disco superstar who turns sound into light

Her superhero-adjacent résumé

Even without an MCU credit, Gaga’s already lived in comic-book worlds and genre sandboxes:

• Joker: Folie à Deux — played Harley Quinn opposite Joaquin Phoenix
• Machete Kills — appeared as La Camaleón in Robert Rodriguez’s pulpverse
• Sin City: A Dame to Kill For — cameoed as Bertha
• American Horror Story: Hotel — as the near-immortal Countess, complete with a weaponized stiletto gauntlet
• Fame: Lady Gaga — the biographical comic book about her rise
• A noted DC Comics homage to her pop iconography

That history is why the rumor sticks: she fits the vibe, she’s proven on screen, and the MCU is always hunting for bold, conversation-starting casting.

What would make this real? An official Marvel release, a studio panel reveal, or a title-card credit tying Gaga to a specific character. None of that has happened yet. For now, the trail leads back to that single February 2026 X post — and stops there.

Starting now, Disney+ Premium costs $21.49 a month for new sign-ups, a $2.50 jump from $18.99 that lands as a sharp 13% increase. The change kicked in on Wednesday, September 23, moving the ad-free tier past a price point many streamers have been trying to avoid.

The ad-free tier now costs $21.49 a month — Disney+’s first time over $20.

It’s the fourth Disney+ price bump in four years, following hikes in October 2024 and October 2023. With this move, Disney’s premium plan is firmly in a new bracket — and no longer the relative bargain it was a year ago.

What you pay now

• Disney+ Premium (ad-free) — $21.49/month (was $18.99)
• Disney+ with ads — $12.49/month (was $11.99)
• Disney+ + Hulu with ads — $12.99/month (unchanged)
• Disney+ + Hulu ad-free — $21.99/month (was $19.99)

The increases arrive as Disney keeps pushing its streaming business toward higher revenue and profitability. For U.S. viewers, Disney+ remains the streaming home for Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic, plus long-running staples like The Simpsons, with Hulu inside Disney+ for bundle subscribers and ESPN available through bundle options.

What’s new to watch

The timing lines up with a big library drop: Toy Story 5 began streaming on Disney+ on September 23, reuniting Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Jessie for an adventure that pits the toys against new tech threatening their place in Bonnie’s life.

This month also brings Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu to Disney+, paired with a new LEGO special revisiting the original series. September’s slate rounds out with fresh seasons of Chad Powers and other returning shows.

Existing subscribers will see the new Disney+ charges reflected on their next monthly bill.

Speaking with Variety alongside director Michael Showalter, Colleen Hoover finally addressed the off‑screen fallout around It Ends With Us and where it left her as the book’s author. She said she watched a finished cut before any tensions surfaced and that the work itself remains what she holds onto.

“I feel for everyone, you know? As the author, I was — and am — so proud of that movie. I think they did a great job.”

Hoover also singled out the film’s leads for praise, noting that Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni and Brandon Sklenar “all delivered” in their performances. As she put it, she first saw the movie without any awareness of what was brewing behind the scenes — and her feelings about the film haven’t changed.

“I saw the completed film before any of that happened, or I knew it was happening, so I was proud of the film! And I still am,” she said, adding that she focuses on its status as a massive box‑office hit.

The comments come after the legal fight between Lively and Baldoni — co‑stars on the adaptation — was settled earlier this year. Despite the headlines, the movie drew huge crowds, a point Hoover returned to as she reflected on the experience.

Looking ahead, Hoover described a very different headspace for her next adaptation, Verity, saying she feels closure from the last rollout and pure excitement about the new one — not nerves.

The next adaptation

Showalter is directing Verity, a psychological romantic thriller based on Hoover’s bestseller. Here’s who’s playing whom:

• Dakota Johnson — Lowen, a struggling writer
• Josh Hartnett — Jeremy, who makes Lowen a life‑changing offer
• Anne Hathaway — Verity Crawford, a famed author left in a wheelchair after an accident

In the film, Lowen is hired to finish Verity’s hit book series after the accident — until a hidden manuscript suggests Verity may have done something far worse than anyone imagined. The project leans into throwback erotic‑thriller territory, with Hoover closely involved from script to set.

Showalter said Hoover was instrumental in refining the screenplay and compared her behind‑the‑curtain guidance to “the Wizard of Oz,” noting they were in constant contact during pre‑production and filming to unpack character psychology — work he says comes through in the footage.

The trailer is out now, and Verity opens October 2.

The Conjuring: Unspoken is headed to Netflix’s cloud gaming lineup in October, timed for Halloween, according to What’s on Netflix’s October newsletter. The horror title will stream to TVs and web browsers, with your phone working as the controller — no console required.

The Conjuring: Unspoken is set to hit Netflix’s cloud gaming service in October.

Although the newsletter initially filed the game under Netflix’s standard mobile offerings, the outlet reports it will debut as a cloud release. That means you’ll launch it from the Netflix app on compatible devices and play with a paired smartphone, the same setup the service has been rolling out for its bigger interactive pushes.

Inside the game

Per the official logline cited by What’s on Netflix, players become paranormal investigators delving into the haunted Red Lion Inn — a fictional location rooted in The Conjuring lore. You’ll sweep rooms for supernatural anomalies and piece together the tragic past of a grieving family, leaning into moody exploration and mystery-solving over jump-scare button mashing.

Netflix hasn’t named the developer, and it hasn’t said how closely the story will connect to the films beyond the shared universe touchpoints.

Netflix’s horror test run

The move follows Netflix’s earlier interactive horror short, Unhinged, developed by its in-house studio Night School Studio (of Oxenfree fame). Released on June 30, the roughly 30-minute thriller stranded players in a storm-battered apartment building and cleverly turned the user’s real phone into both a flashlight and a lifeline.

• Zoë Kravitz
• Sadie Sink
• Troy Baker

Praised for blending real-time choices with phone calls and text threads to feel more like an interactive movie than a typical mobile game, Unhinged set the template Netflix is now applying to a marquee franchise with The Conjuring: Unspoken. The new game is slated to roll out via Netflix cloud gaming in October.

Mahershala Ali says he spent more than a year in intensive physical prep and sword work for Blade — a movie that never shot a frame. In a new GQ chat, the two-time Oscar winner sounds genuinely baffled that Marvel couldn’t get the reboot off the ground after it was announced and hyped, despite him being under contract and ready to go.

“To this day, I don’t know why it didn’t happen. I just know that it was—Kevin, he said it was the biggest failure of his career and I agree”.

Earlier this year on the podcast Happy Sad Confused, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige said he felt like a “gigantic loser and failure” for not making the reboot happen. Ali now publicly agrees with that assessment, adding that with Marvel’s resources — including a bankable lead who’d already cleared his schedule — it shouldn’t have been so hard.

Ali first pitched his take right after winning his second Oscar in 2019, and Marvel made it official at San Diego Comic-Con 2019. He envisioned a version with cultural impact on the level of Black Panther. He’s also said he was against announcing it so early — a splashy reveal that backfired when the script kept changing and the movie stalled.

How it unraveled

• 2019 — Marvel unveils Blade at Comic-Con following Ali’s post-Oscar pitch.
• Marvel taps writer Stacy Osei-Kuffour and director Bassam Tariq; Tariq later exits over creative differences.
• Yann Demange steps in as director roughly two months before a planned 2022 start of filming.
• The script changes hands, with Michael Starrbury among those taking a turn.
• Hollywood’s 2023 strikes pause development yet again.
• 2024 — Demange also departs; trade reports indicated Marvel moved to line up another director.
• After Wesley Snipes briefly reprises Blade in Deadpool & Wolverine, Disney removes the standalone Blade from its theatrical release calendar.

Through the stops and starts, Ali kept training anyway. He told GQ earlier this year he’d officially moved on, arguing the movie would have been made if Marvel had truly committed to it with the time and money it routinely marshals elsewhere.

As of now, Blade isn’t dated — it’s off Disney’s schedule with no new release plan announced.

The change quietly surfaced in recent Companies House filings tied to LuckyChap Entertainment, the Los Angeles–based banner Robbie co-founded. In those documents, she’s listed under her married name, Margot Ackerley — a legal update coming nearly a decade after her private wedding to producer Tom Ackerley in Byron Bay in December 2016. On screen, she’s expected to keep the marquee name audiences know: Margot Robbie.

LuckyChap launched in 2014 with Robbie, Ackerley, and partners Josey McNamara and Sophia Kerr, and has since stacked an eye-catching slate: Barbie, Saltburn, I, Tonya, Birds of Prey, and Netflix’s Maid. The new filing simply updates Robbie’s legal status inside the company’s paperwork while the professional credit “Margot Robbie” continues to front its projects.

The Ocean’s prequel is dated for June 25, 2027.

Next up: an Ocean’s caper

Robbie is set to headline and produce, via LuckyChap, a Warner Bros. Ocean’s prequel directed by and co-starring Bradley Cooper. Set within Steven Soderbergh’s heist universe, the movie pairs Robbie and Cooper as parents schooling their kids — younger versions of Danny and Debbie (originated by George Clooney and Sandra Bullock) — in the art of high-end thievery. A first-look image has already been released.

The ensemble includes:

• Vicky Krieps
• George MacKay
• Omar Sy
• Monica Barbaro
• Josh Gad
• Lauren Ridloff
• Wagner Moura — the film’s central villain

Written by Carrie Solomon with additional co-writing from Cooper, the production is underway in Monaco. Warner Bros. has set the theatrical release for June 25, 2027.

The Seinfeld writers had a problem in 1996: George was engaged, and nobody on staff could see a married George working. The fix took about nine seconds of screen time and has been generating apologies ever since.

"The Invitations" aired May 16, 1996 as the season 7 finale, written by Larry David and directed by Andy Ackerman. It was the last episode David wrote before stepping away from the writing staff. Susan Ross, played by Heidi Swedberg, had been in and out of the show since season 4 and engaged to George for most of season 7.

How Susan actually dies

George, trying to save money, picks the cheapest wedding invitations in the shop. Susan licks hundreds of the envelopes, collapses, and is pronounced dead at the hospital; a doctor explains the adhesive was toxic. George had floated using a glue instead. Susan waved it off. Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer take the news in the waiting room and visibly fail to be upset by it.

TV Guide ranked the moment No. 8 on its 2005 list of the 100 most unexpected moments in television history. NBC quietly pulled the episode from syndication after the 2001 anthrax attacks and put it back in the summer of 2002.

The real reason was chemistry, and Jason Alexander said so on air

On the Howard Stern show on June 3, 2015, Alexander explained that he had never been able to make scenes with Swedberg land. "I couldn't figure out how to play off of her," he said, adding that "her instincts for doing a scene, where the comedy was, and mine were always misfiring."

He also described his own reaction when Larry David told him George would be getting engaged — a flat "Oh great, who's going to play George?"

"Don't you wanna just kill her?"

By Alexander's account, the thing that settled it was that Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus eventually got extended scenes with Swedberg too, and hit exactly the same wall. At a dinner afterward, Louis-Dreyfus said the line that ended the character.

"Don't you wanna just kill her?" — Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Larry David's answer, per Alexander: "Ka-bang!"

David has separately defended the ending on its own terms: all four leads are self-centered, so George reacting to his fiancée's death with relief is the only consistent thing he could have done. It also solved a structural problem no fourth option covered — the writers didn't want a wedding, a divorce, or a breakup.

The apology landed the next day

On June 4, 2015, Alexander posted a long statement to Twitter and Twitlonger. He said he'd told the story in a way that made it sound like the show was putting a heavy burden on Swedberg, called her generous and gracious, insisted the decision to kill the character had been creative rather than personal, and put the failure on his own insecurity at the time and his unwillingness to sit down with her and work the scenes out.

"I feel officially awful." — Jason Alexander, June 4, 2015

Heidi Swedberg was fine

Swedberg has said she wasn't offended by any of it, pointing out that the show's humor "is based on the fact that the main characters are not nice people." She also largely left acting — Hot Shots! and Galaxy Quest are on the résumé — and became a ukulele musician and teacher instead.

Read more: 2019 Charlie’s Angels reboot woes traced to ‘girls didn’t get along,’ says Jaclyn Smith

She fronts Heidi Swedberg and the Sukey Jump Band, whose debut Play! came out in 2009, followed by My Cup of Tea. She teaches beginners, mostly children, and turns the cardboard boxes ukuleles ship in into cases her students decorate themselves. She got her first ukulele at five in Hawaii; her left-handed mother taught her C, F, and G7. Her line to Ukulele magazine: "It's far more important to make music than to be good at making music."

For the record: George Steinbrenner's scenes were cut from the same episode for time. Susan made the final cut.

Earlier we wrote: At last: Frank Welker names his favorite Scooby-Doo mystery after 57 years

The Shards spends a 600-page novel and nine hours of television assembling a serial killer, then declines to hand him over. Both men responsible have now explained why, which is arguably more than the book does.

The setup is the same in both versions: Los Angeles, 1981, a 17-year-old named Bret Easton Ellis in his senior year at the elite Buckley prep school. A new student, Robert Mallory, arrives. At the same time a killer the press calls the Trawler is working his way through the city, and the two facts start to look related. Ellis published the novel through Knopf on January 17, 2023. The FX and Hulu adaptation, created and run by Ryan Murphy with Ellis, premiered August 5, 2026 and closed with its ninth episode, "Stairway to Heaven," on September 9 — Igby Rigney as Bret, Homer Gere as Robert, Kaia Gerber as Susan Reynolds, Hayes Warner as Debbie Schaffer.

The method is the one thing nobody disputes

The Trawler doesn't simply kill people. He runs a sequence first, and it's the sequence that makes the book work:

• The furniture moves — a victim comes home to find things rearranged, slightly.
• The pets vanish — always before the person does.
• The calls start — hang-ups, timed to be noticed.
• Then the break-in — abduction, then murder.
• Then the assemblage — the body staged alongside what's left of the animals.

Matt Kellner disappears after his pets go missing and his furniture shifts, and is found dead with their remains. Debbie Schaffer gets the silent calls, then her horse is mutilated and killed, then she's attacked in her own pool. Susan Reynolds and Thom Wright — homecoming queen and king — are attacked by a masked man.

What the novel actually establishes

Robert Mallory is the suspect the book pushes hardest. He arrives as the killings escalate, he admits to prior psychiatric hospitalization, and he is sleeping with Susan behind Thom's back. He also dies during a confrontation with Bret, well before the killings stop.

The murders that follow are eventually claimed by people who describe them not as crimes but as sacrifices to Robert, whom they call "the God." That resolves the plot mechanics without resolving the question, because it leaves everything before Robert's death unaccounted for. Bret, meanwhile, is carrying a bite mark on his arm that matches the one left on Susan's attacker. Two decades later, Thom tracks down the now-famous novelist at a book signing and asks him outright whether he did it. Bret says no.

Every detail about the Trawler reaches the reader through a 17-year-old who is lying to everyone around him about almost everything else, and who is on a great deal of cocaine for most of the book.

The four readings that survive the last page

• Robert did it — the reading the novel dangles most obviously, and the one most readers discard on a second pass, because the suspicion tracks Bret's paranoia rather than the evidence.
• Bret did it — he does most of what he accuses Robert of doing, including stalking and lying, and the bite mark is the book's single hardest piece of physical evidence.
• Someone unconnected did it — an outsider fixated on Robert, with no link to Buckley at all.
• Nobody did it — the murders are largely Bret's invention, or a figure for his own fragmentation. Notably, almost nobody Bret raises the Trawler with seems to know what he's talking about.

What the FX series put on screen

Not the answer. The finale builds to producer Terry Schaffer going over a second-floor banister during a Halloween party and refuses to confirm who pushed him, routing Bret, Robert, Debbie, her mother, and Susan through police interrogation and leaving every one of them viable. Thom proposes to Susan. Susan becomes a target. The Trawler is never named.

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Critics split roughly down the middle: 56% on Rotten Tomatoes from 57 reviews, 55 on Metacritic. FX has not announced a second season.

Why neither of them would answer it

Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter in September 2026 that he and Ellis never discussed it — "We never spoke about that. We never talked about the identity of the killer" — and that the killer functions as a stand-in for something else entirely. The show is set in 1981, at the front edge of the AIDS crisis, and Murphy has described his own adolescence as one where intimacy was intertwined with death and trauma.

"The Shards is a whodunnit. But I really understood, 'Wait, why are people I love dying?'" — Ryan Murphy, The Hollywood Reporter, September 2026

For the record: Ellis co-created and co-ran the adaptation of his own novel, which gave him nine hours and total authority to settle the thing. He spent them not settling it.

Earlier we wrote: Before 'Star Wars': George Lucas' childhood and the dyslexia question

Seven shows, 53 seasons, and enough episodes that watching them end to end would eat the better part of a month. CBS is not slowing down, which makes this a reasonable moment to ask which of them were any good.

The franchise passed 1,000 original episodes in April 2024 and now sits north of 1,120 across all series. An eighth, NCIS: New York, premieres October 6, 2026. Two notes on method before the list: Rotten Tomatoes publishes no series-level critic score for any NCIS show, so season-one Tomatometer figures are the only comparable critic numbers available, and all viewership figures below are per-season averages from the same source, not premiere-night ratings.

Seventh, sixth, and fifth: the ones that ran out of road

• 7. NCIS: New Orleans (2014–2021) — Seven seasons, 155 episodes, Scott Bakula as Dwayne "King" Pride. Season 1 averaged 17.42 million viewers; season 7 averaged 7.22 million, a collapse steep enough that CBS pulled the plug on February 18, 2021. Season 1 holds 62% with critics. It also had the roughest behind-the-scenes run in the franchise: creator Gary Glasberg died in September 2016, and showrunner Brad Kern was fired in October 2018 after harassment investigations. First NCIS series to end.
• 6. NCIS: Sydney (2023–present) — Three seasons, 38 episodes, and two genuine firsts: the first NCIS made outside the United States and the first Australian series to air in US prime time. Season 1 scored 73% with critics and 33% with audiences, the widest split anywhere in the franchise. Season 3 averaged 2.89 million, down 30% on season 2. Renewed for a fourth season as a midseason entry.
• 5. NCIS: Hawai'i (2021–2024) — Three seasons, 54 episodes, Vanessa Lachey as Jane Tennant, the franchise's first female lead. Season 1 sits at 60% with critics. Its season 3 average of 7.79 million was actually up on season 2's 7.53 million, and CBS cancelled it anyway on April 26, 2024, with Origins arriving that fall. A Change.org petition gathered 5,500 signatures and changed nothing.

Lachey found out at roughly the same time the fans did.

"Gutted, confused, blindsided. Grateful, confident, beloved fans!" — Vanessa Lachey, Instagram Stories, April 27, 2024

Fourth and third: the long-hauler and the expensive experiment

4. NCIS: Los Angeles (2009–2023) ran 14 seasons and 323 episodes, second only to the flagship, with Chris O'Donnell, LL Cool J, Daniela Ruah, and Linda Hunt. Season 1 scored 70% with critics. The 2009 premiere drew 18.73 million and season 4 peaked at a 17.31 million average; by season 14 that was 6.42 million. CBS announced the end on January 20, 2023, with the budget cited as the deciding factor.

3. NCIS: Tony & Ziva (2025) is the odd one. Ten episodes on Paramount+, shot in Budapest and Spain, reuniting Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo on screen for the first time in 12 years — and scoring 82% with both critics and audiences, the second-best reviews in the franchise. It logged 371 million viewing minutes in its premiere week, good for eighth on Nielsen's streaming chart, and then fell out of the top 10 and stayed out. Cancelled December 19, 2025.

"Tony & Ziva, unfortunately, for the cost, it did not make sense with the viewing." — Jane Wiseman, head of originals at Paramount+, to Deadline

Second: Origins, which the critics liked more than any of them

NCIS: Origins premiered October 14, 2024 and has run two seasons and 36 episodes, with Austin Stowell playing a 1991 Leroy Jethro Gibbs at the NIS office at Camp Pendleton. Mark Harmon narrates as the older Gibbs and executive produces alongside his son Sean. Its season 1 score of 88% is the highest critic number any NCIS show has recorded, and season 2 averaged 4.15 million viewers, up 7% year over year. Season 3 premieres October 6, 2026 with a reduced episode order and Harmon moving from voice-over to on-screen.

Harmon on the casting, to TV Insider: "I felt the room jump a little when Austin came in, before he said anything."

First: the one that made all the others possible

The flagship has 23 seasons and 507 episodes behind it, has been CBS's top broadcast drama for five consecutive complete seasons, and peaked at a 21.34 million average in season 10. Season 23 still averaged 10 million. It survived Mark Harmon's exit in season 19 — Gibbs stays in Alaska, hands the badge over, and doesn't come back — with Gary Cole taking the desk as Alden Parker. Season 23 then killed off Rocky Carroll's Leon Vance after 18 years, in the show's own 500th episode, "All Good Things."

Read more: Martin Scorsese spotlights the George Lucas brilliance that doesn’t get enough credit

Season 21's "A Thousand Yards," airing April 15, 2024 to 6.70 million viewers, was the franchise's 1,000th original episode. Its season 1 Tomatometer, for the record, is 61% — the weakest opening-season critic score of any show on this list.

What lands next

October 6, 2026 gives CBS an all-NCIS Tuesday: the flagship at 8, NCIS: New York at 9 with LL Cool J's Sam Hanna alongside Scott Caan and Jennifer Beals, Origins at 10. NCIS: Sydney returns midseason. And Michael Weatherly is back as Tony DiNozzo on the flagship for a season-long arc, his first extended return since 2016.

Asked by Deadline in April 2026 whether CBS had considered rescuing Tony & Ziva, network entertainment president Amy Reisenbach answered a slightly different question: "We really wanted to bring the Sam Hanna character back."

Earlier we wrote: Running out of time, George Lucas chose his museum over three more Star Wars films

Annie and Connor Jacobson were raised on a single explanation for their mother's death, and it takes them one summer in Muskoka to find out who wrote it. The people who did are still in the room.

Megan Park's eight-episode series premiered on Prime Video on 5 August 2026, and the setup is an inheritance: 17-year-old Annie (Ella Rubin) and her twin brother Connor (Keen Ruffalo) inherit their estranged grandfather's island in cottage country, and discover there's a third heir they've never met. Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle) has lived at Sterling Point her whole life. She is also their sister.

The story the twins were told

Cancer. That's the cover the family settled on, and it held for seventeen years because the two men who built it — the twins' father Steven (Jay Duplass) and their grandfather Gordon — both had reasons to keep it standing.

Read more: On Prime Video, The Love Hypothesis honors the plot but the romance wobbles

What actually happened to Goldie

Goldie Campbell died in childbirth, delivering Ramona, on the island. The route there:

• The adoption — Goldie and Steven adopted the twins, Annie and Connor, and raised them in New York.
• The summer at Sterling Point — Goldie went back to her father's island, reconnected with her high school boyfriend Joe (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and decided she wasn't returning to her marriage.
• The lawyers — Steven arrived with legal representation once he understood she intended to stay and keep the twins. Her affair and her plan to withhold the children weighed against her, and custody went his way.
• The pregnancy — she was too far along to travel. Labor brought complications, then an emergency C-section, and she died during it.
• The story — Steven and Gordon agreed on the cancer explanation and stuck to it.

The parentage twist the finale saves for last

For most of the season the show lets you assume Joe is Ramona's father, which is the reading the island itself encourages — he's there, he loved Goldie, and his son Ellis is the boy Annie falls for. The finale reveals Steven is Ramona's biological father, which reframes the custody fight as something closer to a man trying to hold a family together and losing anyway. Brit + Co's 2026 breakdown called the switch "shock value" compared with the Joe version, which is a fair complaint — it also explains why Ramona was raised on the island by a grandfather rather than collected by a parent.

"It's not just mourning the past; it's mourning all the moments you're going to miss in the future," creator Megan Park told TheWrap in 2026, describing Annie's grief sequence.

Where that leaves all three of them

Connor wants to sell. Annie, after recovering a memory of her mother that turns out to be real — a moment from when Goldie was pregnant with Ramona — refuses. The season ends on an exchange: Ramona goes to New York with Connor and Steven, and Annie stays at Sterling Point with Ellis.

"A pretty bold choice for both of them," Park said of the swap in the same 2026 interview.

Amazon renewed the show on 20 August 2026, fifteen days after it premiered, off reviews that landed at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and 76 on Metacritic. The Los Angeles Times credited it with "a rare, real, unhurried sense of time."

For the record: the island scenes were shot in Muskoka, Ontario, which is where the show is also set — unusual for a Canadian shoot doubling for nowhere.

Earlier we wrote: How does Jack Ryan season 3 end? Everything comes down to two warships facing off in the Baltic

Four episodes, four neighbor disputes, four sets of people who ended up in front of a judge. Netflix dropped the lot on July 1, 2026, and then left the question of what happened afterward entirely to you.

The series comes from director Cynthia Childs, produced by ITV America and Blumhouse Television with Jason Blum among the executive producers — the same production line that gave Netflix Worst Roommate Ever. All four cases are criminally closed. Three of the four principals are still incarcerated. The fourth died in prison eight years ago.

Frances Zaayer: 35 years, parole in 2038

Zaayer was an old friend of Shawna and David Scott before she was a neighbor. She stayed at their Mount Sterling, Kentucky home while renovating her own place across the street, and the relationship curdled from there — a driveway built over the property line, false reports about Shawna's employment, assault charges filed after a scuffle that left no documented injuries, and a running habit of filming the family.

On May 26, 2018, the Scotts' own exterior camera recorded Zaayer walking across the yard toward the house. She shot Shawna in the face and shot David, a 47-year-old Montgomery County deputy jailer, in the chest. He died. Shawna survived, losing sight in one eye and hearing in one ear, and has since had 16 facial reconstruction surgeries.

Zaayer pleaded guilty on January 12, 2022 to murder, second-degree assault, and first-degree wanton endangerment, and was sentenced on February 15 to 35 years. She is at the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women in Pewee Valley. Parole eligibility: May 4, 2038. Maximum expiration: May 4, 2053.

"I do not forgive you, I don't want to forgive you, and I'm never going to forgive you." — Haley, Shawna's daughter, at sentencing

Richmond Hill: two life sentences, one 50-year deal, and one death in custody

On November 10, 2012, a gas explosion tore through the Richmond Hill subdivision on the south side of Indianapolis with a force investigators compared to roughly three tons of TNT. It killed next-door neighbors Jennifer and Dion Longworth and damaged or destroyed dozens of homes. It was insurance fraud: Monserrate "Moncy" Shirley's homeowner's coverage had been raised to $300,000 shortly beforehand at the urging of her boyfriend, Mark Leonard. Investigators found the water pressure regulator and a fireplace valve removed, plus a microwave rigged with a metal container and a delayed start.

• Mark Leonard — convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole plus additional time. Died in prison in January 2018.
• Bob Leonard — Mark's half-brother, convicted of murder, also serving life without parole.
• Monserrate "Moncy" Shirley — pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson and cooperated with prosecutors. Fifty years, at Indiana Women's Prison, earliest release December 2037.
• Gary Thompson — convicted of murder, 30 years with 10 suspended.

Jamal Thomas got life, and Oakland paid $2.4 million

Thomas had been squatting in a vacant house beside Miles Armstead's East Oakland property since August 2019. From December 2019 the harassment escalated: rocks through windows at least 15 times, threats to burn the house down, a brick thrown at Armstead in April 2020. The family called Oakland police at least 22 times.

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Thomas was arrested on February 26, 2020 for making criminal threats and released two days later on his own recognizance over prosecutors' objections. A judge described him as a chronic nuisance and let him go anyway. On May 1, 2020, he approached Armstead — 44 years old, preparing the house for sale — and shot him repeatedly as he ran.

Officers had told Melina Armstead there was nothing they could do about the rocks. It was vandalism, and vandalism was a property matter.

Thomas was convicted of first-degree murder in July 2024 and sentenced in April 2025 to life with parole eligibility after 28 years and 8 months — February 2040. He is at High Desert State Prison. In 2023 the Armstead family settled a federal suit for $2.4 million: $450,000 from the city of Oakland, $1.95 million from Alameda County.

Caroline Herrling owes $3.8 million and isn't out until 2039

In Beverly Glen, Los Angeles, Herrling declared herself trustee of 71-year-old recluse Charles Wilding's estate, forged the paperwork, and drained his accounts. To keep the fraud running she needed the body gone, and attempted chemical dissolution before resorting to dismemberment and disposal. Police also found she was operating a purported sober living facility where they turned up drug dealing, counterfeit police badges, and weapons.

She pleaded guilty in 2024 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud: 20 years, plus $3.8 million in restitution, currently served at FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, with an earliest release of March 2039. Matthew Jason Kroth — a career criminal who found Wilding's decomposed body during a burglary and stayed to help — got 16 years and 8 months for conspiracy to commit wire fraud plus methamphetamine charges.

For the record: Netflix's "Worst ___ Ever" shelf now holds roommates, exes, and neighbors. Landlords should probably start checking their voicemail.

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CBS answered the question in January, then answered it differently in April. Anyone who wrote the fall lineup down the first time had to start over.

As of September 2026, four NCIS series are alive: the flagship, the prequel, the Australian spinoff, and a brand-new one nobody had heard of when the first round of renewals went out. One series was canceled outright, and two of the survivors are coming back smaller than they were.

What's renewed and when it airs

• NCIS, season 24 — Premieres Tuesday, October 6, 2026, at 8 p.m., anchoring a three-hour NCIS block.
• NCIS: Origins, season 3 — Also premieres October 6, with a reduced order of 10 episodes, down from 18.
• NCIS: New York, season 1 — New for this fall, premiering October 6.
• NCIS: Sydney, season 4 — Held for midseason, with a premiere reported for January 2027, also cut to 10 episodes from 20.

The January 22, 2026 announcement covered the first, second, and fourth of those, alongside Tracker, Elsbeth, Matlock, Fire Country, Survivor, Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage, and The Amazing Race. The rest arrived three months later.

Tony & Ziva didn't make it

NCIS: Tony & Ziva ran 10 episodes on Paramount+ from September 4 to October 23, 2025, and was canceled in December after a single season. Fans organized campaigns; Michael Weatherly responded to one by saying it "nudged my tear ducts."

"We feel incredibly lucky to have had the chance to play these characters once again and to tell the next chapter of Tony and Ziva's story," Weatherly and Cote de Pablo said in a joint statement. "Most of all, we want to thank the fans around the world who joined us on this adventure and finally got to see Tony and Ziva find their happily ever after."

When CBS then announced a different new spinoff in April, Deadline asked the obvious question. CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach's answer was about casting, not creative:

"We really wanted to bring the Sam Hanna character back. LL is like a member of our family at CBS, he's done pop-ins on NCIS the last two years since LA ended, and it's been really successful. Plus, there is a huge port and Navy presence in New York — I cannot wait for the premiere party on the Intrepid."

The new one

NCIS: New York comes from The Pitt creator R. Scott Gemmill and Byron Balasco, and sends LL Cool J's Sam Hanna home to the city he's from after NCIS: Los Angeles ended in 2023. Scott Caan plays his new partner, with Jennifer Beals, Jacqueline Byers, Shane Harper, and Devin Druid rounding out the cast. It takes the slot that Origins' shortened order left open, with Sydney sliding into the same real estate at midseason.

What's different on screen

Season 23 did a lot of damage on its way out. The 500th episode, "All Good Things," aired March 24, 2026, and killed Leon Vance after 18 years — Rocky Carroll is off the regular cast, though he's staying on as a director. The finale, "Sons and Daughters," ended May 12 on an unresolved gunshot between Nick Torres and McGee's son Mateo.

Two familiar faces are coming back to fill the gap. Michael Weatherly returns to the flagship as Tony DiNozzo in a season-long arc, having filmed his first scenes on July 14, and he's said the arc won't retcon anything that happened in Tony & Ziva. On Origins, Mark Harmon steps in front of the camera as Gibbs in a season-long storyline after two seasons of narrating it.

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For the record: the flagship has now outlived four of its own spinoffs — Los Angeles, New Orleans, Hawai'i, and Tony & Ziva.

Earlier we wrote: Georgia lands 'American Idol' as Los Angeles’ production scene takes a hit

The latest clip making the rounds is billed as a “private video” of Robin Williams. His daughter Zelda Williams jumped on X to shut it down, saying it’s an AI fake and asking people to stop passing it off as her father.

“Anyone who claims to be a fan who believes it clearly listened to his movies on mute because that voice is robotic and terrible.”

In a follow-up post, Zelda called out the accounts pushing the video and reminded followers that her dad’s memory isn’t something for strangers to puppeteer.

“It’s mostly bots and people willingly being duped by bots at this point so not sure why I feel the need to come back to clarify, but I love him, so I will. Just because he’s gone does not mean he’s now your puppet. Have some shame.”

This isn’t her first warning about AI versions of her dad. More than a year ago, Zelda and her brothers, Zak and Cody Williams, revived their father’s official social media accounts to protect his legacy, and she’s repeatedly criticized attempts to digitally recreate deceased actors who can’t give consent.

Where the industry stands on AI

The fight over AI in entertainment is complicated by the fact that some studios are already using the tech behind the scenes. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos recently told Deadline that the streamer has leaned on generative tools to speed up certain visual work without, in his view, sacrificing quality.

“We’re leveraging Gen AI for really complicated shots and sequences… enhancing crowds, or historical battle scenes, those kind of things.”

• He said AI can help with expensive visual effects or sequences that might otherwise be cut for budget reasons.
• Sarandos framed it as a time-saver on large-scale shots, not a replacement for creative work.
• According to Sarandos, Netflix has used generative AI on nearly 300 titles this year.

Eight episodes of assassinations, a stolen warhead, and a fugitive CIA analyst running Europe without a badge all narrow to a single stretch of water. The finale, "Star on the Wall," spends its last half-hour on two ships pointing weapons at each other.

Spoilers from here. Season 3 premiered on Prime Video on December 21, 2022, and it's the season where the show finally went after the Russians — not Russia exactly, but a handful of Soviet-era holdouts operating without their own government's knowledge.

What Sokol is

"Sokol" is Russian for falcon, and it refers to both a Cold War project and the weapon it was meant to produce: a low-yield battlefield nuke invisible to radar and therefore untraceable. The plan around it was drawn from a real Soviet war game called Seven Days to the River Rhine — destabilize Eastern Europe with assassinations and disinformation, then detonate a deniable device and use the chaos as a pretext to reclaim territory.

The season opens in 1969 with Russian soldiers executing the Sokol scientists to bury the program. Luka Gocharov (James Cosmo) relays the order. One soldier, Petr Lebedev, refuses — not out of mercy, but because he believes in the weapon. Luka shoots him and leaves him for dead.

Petr survives, reinvents himself as Czech power broker Petr Kovac (Peter Guinness), and installs his own daughter Alena (Nina Hoss) as president of the Czech Republic so he can reactivate the plan. Another man in that room, Rolan Antonov, becomes a captain in the Russian navy.

The coup collapses in Moscow while Jack is still in the air

Defense Minister Alexei Petrov (Alexej Manvelov), who had Dmitry Popov assassinated to take his job, orders the destroyer Fearless into the Baltic alone with instructions to provoke the USS Roosevelt.

Two things unravel it. Greer (Wendell Pierce) stalls Petrov in person, offering him asylum and an apartment in New York or Miami, which buys time for Alena and Mike November (Michael Kelly) to reach President Surikov with Popov's widow and a recording of Petrov confessing to the murder. Surikov sends his guards, Petrov is shot dead, and the conspirators inside the government are rounded up.

That doesn't stop the ships. Petrov's orders are already at sea.

Nobody wins the standoff, which is the point

Jack (John Krasinski) can't get landing clearance on the Roosevelt, so he jumps into the sea from the helicopter, forcing the ship to retrieve him under maritime law. The captain listens but won't deviate from his rules of engagement: if the Russians fire, he fires.

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The Fearless launches a torpedo. It misses.

Jack's actual asset is aboard the other ship. Luka, held prisoner by Antonov, persuades the crew that their captain is acting on an illegitimate order. They arrest him, the second-in-command takes over, and Luka radios across. When Jack asks him point blank whether Russia is at war with the United States, Luka tells him that's up to Jack. The Roosevelt stands down. Barely a shot is fired in the entire finale.

Petr, meanwhile, is already dead — shot by Luka and then left to bleed out by Alena, who pulls the tourniquet off herself after learning he had her elected purely for access.

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What it costs, and what came next

Elizabeth Wright (Betty Gabriel) is named Director of the CIA and awards Jack and Greer the Intelligence Star, given for "voluntary acts of courage performed under hazardous conditions." Luka gets a letter to Jack and then a knock at his door from a man who has clearly come to kill him for what he did to his own country.

"Do not worry, I will not make this difficult," Luka tells him.

Season 4 premiered June 29, 2023, ran eight episodes through July 14, and added Michael Peña as Ding Chavez. The story then continued as a film: Jack Ryan: Ghost War opened at a Regal in Times Square on May 15, 2026, and hit Prime Video worldwide on May 20, running 107 minutes with Sienna Miller as MI6 officer Emma Marlowe. Critics were unconvinced. It sits at 43% on Rotten Tomatoes from 47 reviews, under a consensus that reads:

"Plowing through a routine globe-trotting with mechanical efficiency but little else, Jack Ryan: Ghost War reduces John Krasinski's once-compelling CIA operative to a personality-free action cipher."

Talking with Entertainment Tonight while promoting her next movie Verity, Anne Hathaway said the best part of a jam-packed year has been giving herself permission to enjoy it. At 43, she said she’s learned to put happiness first and lean on the people around her.

“I’ve just been able to have a great time and really enjoy it. And that’s one of the things I love about being 43. I’m out of stage in life, where I really value and prioritize my joy. And so I’ve just been able to live in that all year long. And what a gift that’s been.”

She also credited the support system that’s carried her through premieres and long days on set, adding that the gratitude extends well beyond work.

“I’m amazed that I’m on such an amazing team in every aspect of my life and my personal life,” she said.

On set of Verity

The first trailer for Verity leans hard into psychological-thriller tension, but Hathaway laughed that parts of filming were almost comically low-key. She told Extra that some days her assignment was basically to climb into bed and do nothing — on camera.

“I felt like such a cheat when I would go to work,” Hathaway told Extra TV. “My job that day was to like let my hair dry naturally, put on a nightgown, and get into bed and like stare vacantly.”

Even so, she said the downtime wasn’t exactly a nap — she was still running lines and thinking ahead to the next scene while the camera rolled.

The thriller pairs Hathaway with two familiar faces:

• Dakota Johnson
• Josh Hartnett

The Verity trailer is out now.

The movie opens exactly where readers remember: Olive, half-blind and battling her contact lenses in a Stanford lab bathroom, walks straight into Adam Carlsen. From there, the adaptation leans hard into déjà vu. It’s packed with page-to-screen echoes that feel like Easter eggs for anyone who dog-eared their copy.

The Love Hypothesis streams on Prime Video on September 23.

The fake-dating setup arrives with its academic stakes intact — Adam’s grant drama and Stanford bureaucracy — and even tiny flourishes make the jump. The film stamps the meet-cute’s date as October 24, hits the coffee-shop “practice” date, and trots out the no-nonsense ground rules. Friendship energy is there too, with Anh nudging Olive into situations she’d avoid and Malcolm bringing the chaos.

• The awkward handshake that seals the ruse
• The student–faculty picnic where Adam tries on “boyfriend” like a lab coat
• Olive’s sugar-bomb coffee order that stuns him
• That deeply unsexy forehead kiss
• Adam’s ridiculous fear of a flu shot — and Olive holding his hand
• Olive’s SBD presentation prep, with Adam quietly in her corner
• Tom Benton sliding into Olive’s research orbit
• Yes, the “edible” line lands on screen

Faithful — but different

Here’s the big shift: on the page, Adam’s been in love with Olive for years before the charade starts. On screen, we watch him fall. He softens beat by beat — showing up for her work, reading her nerves, trying (and often failing) to look like someone’s boyfriend. That change gives the character a visible arc, but it also swaps out the book’s pent-up tension for a slow-burn discovery. Less “a man sitting on a secret” and more “a man figuring it out in real time.”

It helps that the film lets Adam be spectacularly, endearingly awkward. The forced smile, the mangled compliments, the way every feeling seems to get peer-reviewed before it hits his face — those bits play. But without the knowledge that he’s been gone for her all along, the silence reads as shyness rather than pressure building under the surface.

Chemistry check

Rom-com math only works if the leads spark, and that’s where the movie wobbles. The much-memed book moment often dubbed “Chapter 16” shows up, right down to Adam calling Olive “edible,” but the temperature doesn’t spike the way readers will expect. The ingredients are present; the sizzle is faint.

There are tender grace notes — Adam coaching Olive through her presentation, sticking close when she’s overwhelmed, literally lending a hand at the clinic — yet the in-between spaces don’t hum. You want lingering looks, breath-catching pauses, that “oh, they’re done for” awareness. Instead, especially after the midpoint, the romance feels like it’s advancing because the plot says so, not because the room got warmer.

The final act compounds it by hustling through a lot of story without giving the emotions time to settle. In quick succession, the movie moves through:

• Tom’s escalating involvement in (and misconduct around) Olive’s research
• Adam heading out for a flight
• Malcolm’s dust-up — and détente — with Adam
• Olive searching for a new lab after Tom’s gross proposition
• Anh’s heart-to-heart with Adam
• Adam confronting Tom
• The inevitable confession and tidy happy ending

Individually, these beats work; strung together at speed, they play like a greatest-hits reel. The movie is remarkably faithful to the book’s moments but less sure about stitching them into a single, rising emotional line.

The Love Hypothesis arrives on Prime Video on September 23.

As Street Fighter promotion ramps up, Callina Liang has been sharing training clips and behind-the-scenes snapshots on Instagram. One thing you won’t find there: a partner. The rising star keeps her personal life off-grid, and she hasn’t posted anything that confirms she’s dating someone, which has only fueled curiosity as her profile soars.

There’s no public confirmation that Liang is in a relationship. For now, she appears locked in on work — and she’s built a reputation for easy chemistry with co-stars. Even musician Orville Peck joined the fun, joking he’d be perfectly fine with Liang kicking him in the face, a nod to her signature Chun-Li moves.

Street Fighter opens in theaters October 16.

Inside the reboot

The new film marks the third live-action take on Capcom’s fighting-game phenomenon. Set in 1993, it follows estranged fighters Ryu and Ken as Liang’s Chun-Li pulls them into the next World Warrior Tournament.

• Andrew Koji — Ryu
• Noah Centineo — Ken Masters
• Callina Liang — Chun-Li
• Jason Momoa — Blanka
• Roman Reigns — Akuma
• Cody Rhodes — Guile
• Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson — Balrog

It’s another big swing in a breakout year for Liang, who drew notice stealing scenes in Steven Soderbergh’s Presence and now steps into one of gaming’s most iconic roles. The ensemble is stacked, and she’s at the center of it.

Street Fighter opens in U.S. theaters October 16.

At Create & Cultivate’s “On Her Own Terms: Halle Berry on Menopause, Aging, & Women’s Health” event in downtown Los Angeles on September 20, Halle Berry opened up about her relationship with Zendaya — just six days after Zendaya nodded to Berry’s signature look at the 78th Emmy Awards. Berry said their connection isn’t just public shout-outs; they actually keep in touch.

“I do speak to her, and I have to say she is the sweetest and my little sweetheart.”

Berry told People she’d love to find the right project to work on with Zendaya and has repeatedly floated the idea of playing her mother on screen. The admiration has been mutual for years, but the recent Emmys homage put their off-screen bond back in the spotlight.

Zendaya’s 2026 streak

Zendaya’s schedule makes any potential pairing a high-wire act. This year alone, she’s been at the center of two box office behemoths:

• The Odyssey (directed by Christopher Nolan) — more than $1.7 billion worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day — over $2.4 billion globally, per Box Office Mojo

She’s kept her critical cred through TV work like Euphoria, and the big-screen run isn’t slowing down: Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Three is in production with an expected 2027 release.

After 21 seasons of taping in and around Los Angeles, America’s Got Talent is actively eyeing a move out of California. According to TMZ, producers are exploring new homes for the show’s next cycle, with Georgia and Nashville, Tennessee, in the mix for Season 22.

• Potential new locations: Georgia and Nashville (per TMZ)
• Why move: lower production costs, richer incentives and tax credits
• What would change: audience tapings and live shows would shift out of L.A. for the first time

The motivation lines up with a bigger trend. Other unscripted mainstays have already left California to chase cost savings and incentives; most recently, The Masked Singer shifted its production out of L.A.

All 21 previous seasons were shot in Los Angeles.

Idol already made the jump

The speculation around AGT intensified after American Idol confirmed it’s leaving Los Angeles to film in Georgia. Both series are produced by Fremantle (AGT is co-produced with Syco), making Idol’s relocation a notable signal about where AGT could land next.

AGT airs on NBC. No official decision has been announced on a new filming location; for now, producers are still scouting and weighing options, per the report.

She joined in November 2013 on a three-episode arc and stayed for 172. Then she posted a photo, thanked everyone, and disappeared from screens entirely.

Fans filled in the gap themselves, and the theory that stuck was the obvious one: Wickersham announced a pregnancy shortly after her exit, so the pregnancy must have been the reason. She let that sit for three years before correcting it, and the correction came in a strange setting — a rewatch podcast hosted by Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo, the two actors whose departures had defined the era before hers.

What she told Weatherly and de Pablo

On Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch in 2024, Wickersham laid out the sequence, and the order matters.

"I was ready to leave the show. It was time, and I was ready to move on to something else, and I guess this was the something else I was meant to move on to. So it was good."

The decision came first. The pregnancy came after.

"It took a while. I left the show, I found out I was pregnant a month later. So it was a combo of decompressing and trying to really relax and figure out how things were going to be without work. Because as you guys know, it's all consuming."

She described the period as "wonderful and weird." There was no dispute, no contract standoff, and no falling out — she was tired of an eight-season schedule and had decided to stop.

How the show wrote her out

Bishop's exit in the season 18 finale, "Rule 91," is one of the more elaborate in the show's history. To go undercover with CIA operative Odette Malone, she has to destroy her own reputation, so she confesses to leaking NSA documents and gets herself fired. She kisses Nick Torres on her way out the door, which the show had been building toward for years and then simply stopped.

Her Instagram farewell in May 2021 was more direct than anything she said on screen:

"Hanging this hat and jacket up. What a great ride it's been. This business is finicky and weird and consistency is a rarity. A moment in time I surely won't forget. Time goes fast. Eat it up but chew slowly."

Away from the show, she and husband James Badge Dale had son Cassius in December 2021 and a second son, Zephyr, in October 2024. She took no acting work in between.

The return, five years later

Bishop reappeared in the last shot of the NCIS season 23 fall finale, "Heaven and Nature," on December 16, 2025 — watching her old team from a parked car at a cemetery, having just been named Jessica Knight's first target for the new NCIS: Elite unit. The agent who replaced Bishop on the team was now hunting her.

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The payoff came in "Her" on March 3, 2026, with Bishop's hacker crew accused of leaking classified material and Bishop asking her former colleagues to clear her. Torres finally got to ask why she left.

Showrunner Steven D. Binder told TVLine the idea had been in the pitch since the start of the season, and that the logistics were the hard part: "She lives, you know, not here anymore, so that makes it difficult. But she was game." He also ruled out a longer arc — "We have no official plans right now to continue that storyline. So she's sort of back on the roster, so to speak."

Wickersham's own read, to TV Insider in February 2026, was less final: "The door's open. I love it there." On how the comeback happened, she was blunter — "They just asked me back."

Earlier we wrote: Guy Gardner enters Lanterns episode 6 as John Stewart probes Hal Jordan's death

If the newly combined Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery comes up short on its movie count, it’s not just paying a fine — it could be forced to sell Miramax, the storied label behind Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting. That’s the steepest hammer baked into a settlement with a coalition of 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America that clears a key hurdle for the merger.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta confirmed the terms: the merged studio must release at least 30 films a year for its first two years, then 32 films annually for the next three. For every title it falls short, the company owes a $30 million penalty — 90% of which goes to union healthcare and retirement funds — and it gets six months to make up the gap. If it can’t, Miramax has to be put up for sale within 12 months.

Miss the quota and Paramount could be forced to sell Miramax.

Paramount currently holds a 49% stake in Miramax, a library stacked with recognizable theatrical brands including Scream, Scary Movie and Spy Kids, alongside modern classics like Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting. Losing that stake would mean surrendering a well of ready-made franchises just as the company is being pushed to keep its release calendar packed.

The other strings attached

• Film quotas: 30 films per year in years one and two; 32 films per year for the following three.
• Penalties: $30 million for each missing film, with 90% funneled to industry worker benefits.
• Fix-it window: Six months to cure any shortfall before divestiture triggers.
• Miramax clause: If the deficit isn’t cured, Paramount must fully divest Miramax within 12 months.
• Cable carriage: Paramount and WBD’s basic-cable channels cannot be negotiated as a single package for five years.
• Free streaming: A no-cost, ad-supported service — e.g., Pluto TV — must maintain its current quality.
• Studio real estate: Both companies’ Los Angeles lots are locked from sale for five years.
• Worker support: A separate $47.5 million fund and independent oversight are part of the deal.

The $30 million-per-movie fine has already drawn public eye-rolls — actor Mark Ruffalo has openly mocked the figure — but the Miramax trigger raises the stakes far beyond a write-off on the balance sheet.

In practical terms, the settlement makes volume a mandate, not a strategy. It also all but guarantees the combined studio keeps a steady beat of titles flowing — because the cost of missing is more than money; it’s Miramax.

If the company still falls behind after that six-month grace period, the clock starts: it has 12 months to sell Miramax.

The latest wrinkle involves an Instagram handle — @bidness_nonya — that began posting critical comments about Zoë Kravitz and her fiancé Harry Styles. Fans noticed the account’s activity and, in screenshots circulating online, pointed out that Channing Tatum’s verified profile was reportedly the account’s only follower. Speculation that it was a burner tied to Tatum spread fast; he pushed back, denying he owns any burner and saying he has only one Instagram account.

It’s an abrupt coda for a romance that started long before the paparazzi shots. Kravitz and Tatum first crossed paths in the recording booth for The Lego Batman Movie in 2017 — she voiced Catwoman, he voiced Superman — then reconnected when she cast him as a darker kind of lead in her directorial debut, Blink Twice. By the time that movie was ramping up, their offscreen chemistry had become its own storyline.

Their soft launch turned into a hard launch in August 2021, when Kravitz was photographed riding on the back of Tatum’s BMX bike in New York City. They kept popping up — from Met Gala nights to a Halloween flex where they went Instagram-official in matching Taxi Driver costumes.

Things grew more serious in 2022 and 2023. Tatum joined Kravitz and Jason Momoa at The Batman premiere, and the pair spent months in Mexico filming Blink Twice together. By October 2023, they were engaged; Kravitz was seen after Kendall Jenner’s Halloween party wearing a striking 7-carat cushion-cut diamond, and her father Lenny Kravitz publicly showed affection for Tatum.

After promoting Blink Twice side by side in August 2024 — trading compliments in interviews — the couple quietly called it off in October. Reports at the time framed the split as a gradual growing apart, with different lifestyles and priorities reportedly factoring in rather than any dramatic blowup.

The engagement ended in October 2024, about a year after they got engaged.

How it unfolded

• 2017 — Voiced roles in The Lego Batman Movie (she as Catwoman, he as Superman).
• August 2021 — NYC BMX bike photo kicks off dating buzz; later, Met Gala sightings and matching Taxi Driver Halloween costumes make it Instagram-official.
• March 2022 — Tatum attends The Batman premiere with Kravitz and Jason Momoa; months of filming Blink Twice together in Mexico follow.
• October 2023 — Engagement after Kendall Jenner’s Halloween party; Kravitz wears a 7-carat cushion-cut diamond ring; Lenny Kravitz publicly shows Tatum love.
• August 2024 — Joint promo for Blink Twice, praising each other on the press trail.
• October 2024 — Engagement ends; reported to be an amicable separation.
• 2026 — After Kravitz and Harry Styles announce their engagement, a burner account dust-up draws Tatum back into the conversation; he denies owning any burner and says he has only one Instagram account.

As for the burner account flare-up, no additional comment from Kravitz or Styles has surfaced, and Tatum’s stance remains that he’s not behind it and only uses his verified Instagram.

On stage at a recent BAFTA event in London, Tom Cruise spent roughly six minutes making the case for keeping moviemaking rooted in people, not software. He stressed he isn’t calling for an all-out ban on AI, but he drew a hard line at using it to replace human craft — a stance that drew applause in the room.

“There is nothing like human,” Cruise said. “People want human experience,” according to Deadline.

He pointed to this summer’s crowd-pleasing blockbusters as evidence that audiences respond to work built by filmmakers and performers, not machine learning, per Deadline’s account of the speech.

Backing it up offscreen

Behind the scenes, Cruise pressed the issue during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA labor talks. He personally joined a Zoom session with negotiators and lobbied the studios’ bargaining group, the AMPTP, to protect stunt performers and coordinators from being automated or digitally duplicated out of jobs. It’s a cause that dovetails with his reputation for doing many of his own stunts rather than handing them off to doubles.

He’s been wary on-screen, too

Themes he raised in London have been threaded through his films for years:

• Mission: Impossible (most recent installment) — pits Ethan Hunt against a rogue, omnipresent AI that can outthink humans.
• Minority Report (2002) — explores the dangers of predictive algorithms and surveillance long before today’s AI boom.

Cruise’s remarks arrive as Hollywood continues to define how — and how far — AI fits into the business after the 2023 strikes placed the issue in the spotlight.

For Heart of the Beast, Brad Pitt didn’t just fake being cold and banged up. Director David Ayer put him in it: a survival saga that strands a former Special Forces vet and his combat-trained German Shepherd after a seaplane crash in the Alaskan wilderness. Ayer says a big chunk of the job was simply enduring what the story demanded.

• Bush-plane sequences and a staged seaplane crash
• Time on glaciers and mountainsides (with gear to haul)
• White-water work and underwater setups

No Cruise competition

Asked on Etalk if he feels any friendly pressure to match Tom Cruise’s death-defying streak, Pitt didn’t hesitate.

“No, hell no. I couldn't keep up with Tom. Anyway, no, I leave the tough stuff to him.”

He framed his new movie’s physical grind as storytelling, not one‑upmanship: a bruising shoot in service of a character and his bond with a dog fighting to stay alive.

“This was really about, you know, it's a survival story,” he explained. “But ultimately it was the love story underneath and where we get to in the end.”

Ayer on Pitt’s endurance

Pitt has called the production “probably the most I've ever taken on,” and Ayer backed that up, stressing how little of it could be faked.

“A lot of Brad's work wasn't acting. It was reacting to very, very tough, difficult environment,” Ayer said, describing how the actor was put through bush-plane sequences, glaciers, white water, mountainsides and underwater work, in addition to hauling equipment, and himself, down mountainsides.

“He's a caring, thoughtful actor who comes from a place of craft,” Ayer said of Pitt.

The conversation with Etalk came as Pitt and Ayer promoted Heart of the Beast, following Pitt’s recent stretch behind the wheel for his Formula 1 racing film and reuniting the pair nearly a decade after their World War II drama, Fury.

It aired on Fox between June 1 and September 14, 2016, and it broke the format's own rules by sending three cooks into the finale instead of two. Graham Elliot had left after six seasons, so Gordon Ramsay and Christina Tosi rotated a third chair through Wolfgang Puck, Aarón Sánchez, Edward Lee, Kevin Sbraga, Richard Blais, and Daniel Boulud.

The finalists were almost a setup for a joke: a nightclub DJ, a fifth-grade teacher, and a man who once finished second at the World Series of Poker Main Event. Ten years on, only one of them cooks for a living.

Shaun O'Neale won it, then kept going

O'Neale, 33 and 20 years into a DJ career on the Las Vegas strip, took the $250,000, the trophy, and the cookbook deal with halibut cheeks and vadouvan carrot purée, spice-rubbed venison with black truffle and fiddlehead ferns, and a salted caramel tart that Ramsay called "f---ing delicious" on air.

"The hardest thing about the whole competition was keeping it a secret, especially once I found out I won," he told CarterMatt the morning after it aired. "It's one of those things you want to scream at the top of a mountain."

His cookbook, My Modern American Table, followed, along with the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival and a Macy's partnership. He became co-owner of The Blind Pig in 2020, opened Larrea Las Vegas in 2021 and ran its kitchen until January 2022, then moved to Arizona. Since 2024 he has been executive chef at Three Thirty Three in Tempe, a modern Asian steakhouse on North Scottsdale Road serving wagyu with foie gras and coconut-lime injected king crab legs.

Brandi Mudd quit teaching and came back for more

Mudd, 27, from Irvington, Kentucky, won nine individual challenges — more than anyone else that season — and lost on her dessert. She left teaching, won the cooking competition on the MasterChef cruise, appeared at MasterChef Camp, and launched the catering business Southern Flair with Chef Brandi. She returned for MasterChef: Back to Win in season 12 and placed 10th.

David Williams went back to the cards

Williams had already won $3.5 million finishing second to Greg Raymer at the 2004 WSOP Main Event before he picked up a MasterChef apron. He has one bracelet, won in 2006 in $1,500 seven-card stud, and took the 2010 WPT World Championship for $1,530,537. His live tournament winnings now pass $9.5 million.

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He is also a serious Magic: The Gathering player, and that career has its own asterisk: he made the Top 8 at the 2001 World Championships in Toronto and was disqualified without prize for marked cards, then suspended for a year. He admitted the cards were marked and disputed that he'd done it deliberately.

"Right now I have lost a lot of my passion to cook so I've taken a break," he told CarterMatt two weeks after the finale. "I have had numerous investors approach me about opening my own restaurant or to print a cookbook."

He never took them up on it.

The other 17

• Tanorria Askew (4th) — Turned her private chef company Tanorria's Table full-time in Indiana, published Staples + 5 in 2021, and co-created the Black Girls Eating podcast.
• Manny Washington (15th) — Now a District Chief with his fire department in Orlando, placed third on Food Network Star season 14, and wrote Put Some Flames on Em!
• Andrea Galan (11th) — Moved to Barcelona, staged at three-Michelin-star ABaC, won an episode of Chopped, and opened Bar Lola and L'Espai.
• Katie Dixon (6th) — Opened Birdhouse Café in Hattiesburg in 2017 and published Be Nourished.
• Eric Howard (8th) — Back with FDNY, later a partner at Gramercy Ale House, now a private chef.
• Cassie Peterson (20th) — Opened a bakery, Bread & Buttercrème, in Iowa in August 2017; it closed in July 2019.
• D'Andre Balaoing (13th) — Pastry chef at Scarpetta Las Vegas, then a chef for Virgin Voyages.
• Dan Paustian (5th) — Runs Flavor City Catering and does stand-up.
• Alejandro Toro (12th) — Photographer, filmmaker, and the Spanish-language voice of South Park.
• Lisa-Ann Marchesi (16th) — Launched an olive oil brand, then appeared on TLC's You, Me & My Ex.
• Diamond Alexander, Diana Bilow, Nathan Barnhouse, Terry Mueller, Barbara Savage, Brittany Craig, and Bill Travers — Web design, digital marketing, a theater degree, contracting, gluten-free teaching, private cheffing, and retirement, respectively.

For the record: the season's audience peaked at 4.39 million for the two-part semifinal, higher than the finale itself.

Earlier we wrote: Rom-coms have missed this in recent years: ‘The Love Hypothesis’ press tour

On the Resident Evil premiere red carpet, Zach Cregger said his next movie, The Flood, is already casting and in “soft prep,” with full prep slated for February and cameras set to roll next summer. He described it as an original sci‑fi project he’s been itching to make.

“It’s science fiction, and it’s probably my most disturbing film.”

Cregger added that he “loves” the movie and considers it “really, really special.” He also noted it isn’t technically a horror film, though it will lean hard on horror elements.

What the movie is

Planned for theaters via Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, The Flood follows a deep‑space crew aboard the Spiritus Mundi as they chase a mysterious recurring signal to a far‑off planet. What they find starts to tear at their perception of time and reality — and at their sanity.

• Aboard the exploration vessel Spiritus Mundi
• A signal repeats from a distant world
• A strange alien artifact is discovered
• Time, reality and the crew’s grip on both begin to warp

Timeline and release

• Now: casting and “soft prep” underway
• February: full prep begins
• Summer: filming starts
• Theatrical release: August 11, 2028 (Warner Bros./New Line)

The update lands as Cregger rides a box‑office high: Resident Evil just opened to $108.3 million worldwide, smashing franchise records. Between Barbarian, Weapons and his zombie epic’s practical mayhem, “disturbing” has been his calling card — which makes his label for The Flood all the more intriguing.

Type his name into Facebook search and you'll find posts announcing his death outright, complete with a suspiciously smooth photo and a link to an obituary blog nobody has heard of. Type it into Google and the autocomplete tries to finish the sentence for you.

None of it checks out. No credible outlet has reported Jake Harris's death, and Discovery — which has publicly acknowledged every real loss among its cast, and there have been a lot of them — has said nothing, because there's nothing to say. The rumor mill runs on two things: a genuinely alarming stretch of his life that ended in an ICU, and the fact that he stopped speaking publicly four years ago.

He left the Cornelia Marie in 2013, and addiction was the reason

Jake joined the show in season 2 alongside his father, Captain Phil Harris, and older brother Josh. Season 6 caught the low point on camera: Phil, laid up with back pain, discovers his son has been stealing his painkillers. "You're a thief and a liar," Phil tells him. Jake answers, "I'm an addict."

Phil suffered a stroke that January while offloading opilio crab at St. Paul Island and died of an intracranial hemorrhage on February 9, 2010, at 53. Jake was 24, and the habit predated all of it.

"In high school I was a skater and it turned out I wasn't very good. I broke some limbs is how I got addicted to opiates. [I] got a big hole in my heart and tried to fill it up with everything that wasn't good for it," he told Dr. Drew Pinsky in 2011.

He left the franchise in 2013 hoping to enter rehab. "My brother's been going through issues. He's lost in drugs still," Josh told HuffPost at the time.

The 2016 attack that fuels most of the fake obituaries

In November 2016, Harris accepted a ride from a man and woman he'd met the night before while gambling at Quil Ceda Creek Casino in Washington. Court documents reported by the Daily Herald describe him being choked and beaten in the car, then left on the side of a road in Everett, where a passerby found him. He had a fractured skull, brain swelling, broken blood vessels in both eyes, and bruising around his throat. His wallet and $2,400 were gone.

Josh posted the news himself, which is how it reached fans — and why the version now circulating as "Jake Harris passed away after a brutal assault and robbery" sounds plausible to people who half-remember it. Everett police officer Aaron Snell told PEOPLE that medics found Harris "alert, conscious, answering questions and breathing." He recovered. Two suspects were arrested.

The legal record since

• May 2017 — A Maricopa County judge issued a bench warrant after Harris missed a court date in Phoenix on two felony drug possession charges involving meth and Xanax, Fox News reported.
• 2019 — Sentenced to 18 months on DUI and drug charges.
• May 2021 — Arrested in Washington State after being clocked at 86 mph in a 70 zone, and booked for felony DUI and driving on a suspended license.
• 2021 — Charged with intent to manufacture and distribute heroin.

Read more: The truth about Grant Gustin playing The Flash in James Gunn’s DCU

Where he actually is

He resurfaced twice: one episode of Deadliest Catch season 16 in 2020, then the April 20, 2021 premiere of Bloodline season 2, feeding Josh leads from their father's old Hawaii fishing charts, plus a few episodes of season 3 in 2022.

"He's doing really well. He has a new lady in his life, and she's got five kids, so he's a stay-at-home dad, which has been great for him," Josh told Patheos in 2021. "He's happy. He calls me three times a day."

In 2022 he announced the birth of his daughter, Tru, with his wife Shawna Brinkly, writing that it had been "the most memorable, enjoyable, suspenseful, and remarkable month of my existence." Reality Shrine reported in May 2026, citing a post by her brother, that Shawna died in August 2023. Jake's own last Facebook post was in 2022.

Josh, for his part, was cut from Deadliest Catch in 2022 before season 19 when a 1998 case resurfaced; he had pleaded to a lesser charge and served nine months in 1999. Neither brother is on the show now, which leaves the Harris name generating traffic with nobody attached to it — ideal conditions for a fake obituary.

Earlier we wrote: At Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding, Brad Pitt says he lost Ines De Ramon

The most eye-popping detail in the latest merger talks isn’t a casting move or a slate tease. It’s a reported penalty built into negotiations with California that would fine Paramount $30 million for every movie it falls short of a promised 30 theatrical releases per year. Bloomberg reports the clause is part of settlement discussions tied to Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, and there’s a big caveat: movies that Paramount distributes for other studios could count toward that total.

On paper, that turns what had sounded like a friendly “we love theaters” pledge into a costly obligation if the pipeline runs dry. In practical terms, it’s a push for more films on U.S. screens each year—whether produced in-house or acquired and released under the Paramount banner.

The 30-movie rule

• 30 theatrical releases a year — the target reportedly on the table in California settlement talks.
• $30 million — the fine for each film below that annual mark, per Bloomberg.
• Distribution counts — titles made by other companies can still qualify if Paramount distributes them theatrically.

Other conditions in play

The same round of talks reportedly includes several structural terms, again per Bloomberg: Paramount would keep its headquarters in California, sell off certain cable networks, and avoid bundling distribution deals across its channels. Where states are split is over news: some attorneys general want a full CNN divestiture, while a proposed “editorial monitor” for the network has met resistance.

All of this is happening as the larger, roughly $110 billion Warner Bros. deal sits in legal limbo. Variety reports settlement discussions with a coalition of state attorneys general have turned urgent because of a looming payment tied to the merger timetable.

The clock flips Oct. 1: Paramount would reportedly owe $7 million a day to Warner Bros. shareholders if there’s no deal.

Pressure campaign

Advocacy groups have staged rallies in Oakland, Los Angeles and New York, pressing California Attorney General Rob Bonta to reject what they call a weak settlement. Actor Mark Ruffalo added public pressure on social media, urging Bonta to hold the line against the acquisition.

The Writers Guild of America has its own separate case challenging the deal, and Paramount has asked the court to require Bonta and the guild to post a $1.88 billion bond to cover potential delay costs. If talks collapse, a trial is currently set for March 2027.

Tom Bateman says he didn’t clock the wild “Reylo” connection until after he’d already said yes to The Love Hypothesis. According to Bateman, director Claire Scanlon was the one who spelled it out for him once the deal was done. He remembered asking:

“What do you mean?”

As he tells it to ELLE, Scanlon replied with a twist he hadn’t considered:

“Well, not really you and this book. Your wife and this book.”

Here’s the kicker: before Ali Hazelwood’s story became a bestseller, it started life as Rey/Kylo Ren fan fiction. Rey was played by Daisy Ridley—who, off-screen, is married to Bateman. The real-life tie between the inspiration and the new movie’s leading man was, by all accounts, a happy accident.

Star and executive producer Lili Reinhart stresses the surprise was genuine. As she told ELLE:

“People genuinely think that Tom and Daisy knew about this. They did not know, I can tell you that with 100-percent certainty.”

Once Ridley heard about it, she was all for the full‑circle moment, calling it “very thrilling” that the hit romance was inspired by something she’d been part of.

Who’s playing who

Prime Video’s movie centers on a fake-dating setup that turns dangerously real between a grad student and the famously prickly professor who agrees to play along. Reinhart leads the cast as Olive, opposite Bateman as Adam.

• Lili Reinhart — Olive Smith
• Tom Bateman — Dr. Adam Carlsen
• Rachel Marsh — Anh Pham
• Nicholas Duvernay — Jeremy Langley
• Jaboukie Young-White — Malcolm Browne
• Arty Froushan — Dr. Thomas Benton
• Jeananne Goossen — cast
• Aladeen Tawfeek — cast

On their resumes

• Reinhart is best known for Riverdale and the films Hustlers and Chemical Hearts (she also serves as an executive producer here).
• Bateman’s credits include Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and the TV dramas Beecham House and Hedda.
• Marsh has appeared in Fallout and Adults.
• Duvernay’s recent work includes The White Lotus and Reminders of Him.
• Young-White has popped up in Rap Sh!t and Only Murders in the Building.

The Love Hypothesis premieres worldwide on Prime Video on September 23, 2026.

On CBS Sunday Morning, Norah O’Donnell put a pointed observation to George Lucas that she said came straight from Martin Scorsese: the thing that actually separates Lucas from the pack isn’t imagination — it’s follow-through. She relayed Scorsese’s take directly during their sit-down about Lucas’ newest passion project outside of filmmaking.

“Not only you’re a visionary or a dreamer, but what you may not get credit for is that you can execute too on that which is really the genius of George Lucas.”

Lucas didn’t disagree. He answered with a shrug of a line that sounds like a career motto:

“Well, I’m a contrarian. Everything I’ve ever done, everybody said you can’t do that.”

He also opened up about something he rarely discusses: dyslexia. Lucas said struggling with words pushed him to think in pictures early on. Writing never felt natural, so he leaned on illustrators to turn ideas into finished images — which is how Star Wars lived as storyboards and concept art long before a camera ever rolled.

Star power at the museum

That builder mindset was on full display at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, where Lucas and Mellody Hobson hosted a blowout event that looked more like an awards-night roll call than a museum gathering.

Event co-chairs included:

• Tom Cruise
• Steven Spielberg
• Greta Gerwig
• Guillermo del Toro
• Pharrell Williams
• Lewis Hamilton

Inside the galleries, film and TV heavyweights moved through the crowd:

• Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Samuel L. Jackson, Hayden Christensen
• Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Oprah Winfrey

Tech, media and pop-culture names were out in force too:

• Jensen Huang, Melinda French Gates, Evan Spiegel, Ted Sarandos
• Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Magic Johnson, Lindsey Vonn

The Black Eyed Peas performed live, capping an opening that underlined what Scorsese was talking about: the museum — a reported $1 billion project — is something Lucas didn’t just imagine. He built it.