Michael Richards never left Seinfeld. He played Cosmo Kramer in all nine seasons, from 1989 through the finale on May 14, 1998, winning three Emmys for Outstanding Supporting Actor along the way. Nobody wrote him out. Nobody replaced him.

So why did Seinfeld end?

Because Jerry Seinfeld ended it. NBC reportedly offered him $5 million per episode to make a tenth season, and he turned it down, preferring to go out on top. The finale aired to an audience of 76 million people. Kramer was there for all of it — hoarding the laughs right through the final courtroom scene.

Then where does the confusion come from?

One night: November 17, 2006. Richards was doing a stand-up set at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles when, responding to hecklers, he launched into a tirade that included repeated racial slurs. An audience member filmed it, the video spread everywhere, and it became one of the defining celebrity stories of that decade.

Richards apologized days later via satellite on the Late Show with David Letterman, in an appearance arranged by Jerry Seinfeld, and soon retired from stand-up entirely.

He then largely vanished from public life for nearly two decades — and that long absence is what fused, in a lot of memories, into a vague idea that "Kramer left the show." He didn't. The show had already been finished for eight years when the Laugh Factory happened.

Did he ever work again?

Some. He appeared as himself in the 2009 Seinfeld reunion arc on Curb Your Enthusiasm, alongside the full original cast, and took a role in the 2019 sitcom Kirstie. In 2024 he published a memoir, Entrances and Exits — with a foreword written by Jerry Seinfeld — covering his life, the creation of Kramer, and that night in detail. In it, he addressed his long disappearance directly:

"I took myself out," Richards wrote in Entrances and Exits (2024).

He told People the same year, "I'm not looking for a comeback." The book also revealed he'd quietly survived stage 1 prostate cancer. In September 2025, at age 76, he returned to a comedy stage for the first time in almost 20 years.

What happened on the show

In the season 15 episodes "One Step Forward" and "Two Steps Back," Abby and MI6 agent Clayton Reeves are attacked by a hitman — and Reeves dies protecting her. After recovering, Abby resigns from NCIS to honor him by starting a charity in London. She says goodbye to the whole team except one person: her final moment with Gibbs is a note, which Mark Harmon's character reads while Abby watches from across the street.

The two actors never shared the screen in her last scene. That detail turned out to matter.

What Perrette said

When the exit was announced in October 2017, Perrette wrote on social media that the decision had been made a year earlier and batted away tabloid theories — no, she wasn't launching a skin care line, and no, the network wasn't mad at her.

In 2019, responding to constant questions about a return, she went further, posting about "multiple physical assaults" and writing that she was "terrified of Harmon" and had nightmares about him. She has said repeatedly she will never go back to the show.

What the producers said

The fullest account from the show's side arrived in The Hollywood Reporter's 2023 oral history for the series' 20th anniversary. Executive producer Charles Floyd Johnson traced the rift to an incident involving Harmon's dog:

"The dog was Harmon's, and apparently the dog bit someone," Johnson told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023.

Johnson described Perrette as a devoted animal-welfare advocate who felt the dog's continued presence on set wasn't safe — and said that by the end of that year, she felt the job was no longer working for her. Harmon, who stayed on NCIS until 2021, has never publicly detailed his side.

What happened after

Abby's lab went to Kasie Hines, played by Diona Reasonover, who remains on the show. Perrette starred in the CBS sitcom Broke, then announced her retirement from acting in 2020 after its cancellation. She has stayed on good terms with CBS and many former castmates.

The short answer

Lonesome Dove is based on Larry McMurtry's 1985 novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1986. But the novel itself grew out of a 1972 screenplay called Streets of Laredo, written by McMurtry with director Peter Bogdanovich — fresh off The Last Picture Show — as a big-screen Western for John Wayne.

The dream cast that almost was

The plan united three legends of the genre in one film:

• John Wayne as Woodrow Call — the stoic former Texas Ranger later played by Tommy Lee Jones.
• James Stewart as Gus McCrae — the talkative charmer that became Robert Duvall's favorite role of his entire career.
• Henry Fonda as Jake Spoon — the doomed drifter eventually played by Robert Urich.

Stewart and Fonda signed on. Wayne read the script and passed — reportedly on the advice of his mentor John Ford. Bogdanovich framed the picture as a farewell to the Western, and Wayne, per University of Texas professor Don Graham in Texas Monthly, wasn't about to critique the genre that built him:

"He wasn't going to make Blazing Saddles," Graham said.

Without the Duke, the studio lost faith and the deal collapsed.

From dead script to great American novel

The screenplay sat on a shelf for roughly 15 years. Then McMurtry spotted an old bus with "Lonesome Dove Baptist Church" painted on its side, took the name home, and reworked his abandoned script into a sprawling novel — drawing on the real cattle drives of Texas ranchers Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving. The book landed in 1985, the Pulitzer followed in 1986, and the four-part CBS miniseries arrived in February 1989, earning 18 Emmy nominations and winning seven.

Where did the old title go?

McMurtry recycled it. Streets of Laredo became the name of his 1993 sequel novel, adapted into its own miniseries in 1995 — a full 21 years after John Wayne killed the original movie.

So how much of it actually happened? A lot. Just not the part with Steve Buscemi holding a gun.

The real Nucky

Enoch "Nucky" Thompson is based on Enoch "Nucky" Johnson (1883–1968), the Republican political boss who ran Atlantic City through Prohibition. The lifestyle on screen is accurate: Johnson really did live in an eighth-floor suite at the Ritz-Carlton — $750 a month during the Depression — wear a fresh red carnation in his lapel, and stroll the Boardwalk like he owned it, because functionally he did. His empire of bootlegging kickbacks, gambling, and protection money is well documented.

The violence is not.

There's no evidence the real Nucky ever killed anyone or ordered a killing. He didn't carry a gun. His weapon was the political machine — bribes, patronage, and a police force that answered to him. The show's Nucky pulls triggers personally; the real one collected tribute and let the gangsters handle their own business.

What the show got right

• The 1929 Atlantic City conference — Johnson really did host the summit where Capone, Luciano, and other bosses met on neutral ground. His role was host and fixer, complete with police protection for the guests.
• The famous faces — Al Capone, Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky were all real, and their broad arcs track history.
• The Commodore — based on Louis Kuehnle, who built the kickback system Nucky inherited. In reality there was no bitter war: the two reconciled, and Johnson backed Kuehnle's successful 1920 run for City Commissioner.
• The downfall — like his fictional counterpart's endless legal troubles, Johnson was eventually convicted of tax evasion in 1941 and served four years in Lewisburg federal prison.

What the show invented

Jimmy Darmody, Richard Harrow, and the Darmody family saga are fiction — including the Commodore being Jimmy's father. Margaret is a composite, drawn partly from Florence "Floss" Osbeck, the showgirl 25 years Johnson's junior whom he married on August 11, 1941, days before entering prison.

And the physical casting flips reality: Johnson was a towering man of more than 220 pounds, about as far from Buscemi's wiry frame as it gets.

Paroled in 1945, Johnson returned to Atlantic City, never regained power, and lived another two decades as a local curiosity.

He died in 1968, having outlasted nearly every gangster who ever passed through his town.

What happened

Australian actress Rachael Carpani died on December 7, 2025, in Sydney. She was 45. Her sister, Georgia, announced the news on December 15 with a statement from their parents on social media, which said Carpani had

"unexpectedly but peacefully passed away after a long battle with chronic illness," in the early hours of that Sunday.

The family said her funeral would be held privately on December 19 with close family and friends, and asked for privacy. No further details about her illness were shared, though Carpani had spoken in 2021 about being hospitalized with abdominal pain that required surgery.

Her NCIS: Los Angeles role

Carpani appeared in the show's first season, in a 2009 episode alongside Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J — a small role, but one that came during her push into American television after finding fame at home.

The career she was really known for

For Australian audiences, Carpani was Jodi Fountain. She played the character across 179 episodes of McLeod's Daughters from 2001 to 2009, a main cast member for the show's first seven seasons — a role she landed while still in drama school, deferring her final year to take it.

Her other credits stacked up on both sides of the Pacific:

• Against the Wall — the lead role in Lifetime's 2011 police drama.
• The Glades — three episodes of the A&E crime series.
• The Way Back — the 2020 film starring Ben Affleck.
• Home and Away — a 2024 role as Claudia Salini, her return to Australian screens.

She also appeared in Cane, Stalker, the thriller Triangle with Liam Hemsworth, and TV movies including If There Be Thorns.

Fans of McLeod's Daughters filled her sister's announcement with condolences from around the world, including messages from fan communities as far away as Germany. Just three months earlier, in September, Carpani had celebrated her 45th birthday with her family and written about how loved she felt.

What the show got right

The skeleton is genuine history. Boyington really did command Marine Fighting Squadron VMF-214 in the Solomon Islands during World War II, and the unit really did nickname itself the Black Sheep.

Boyington was a hard-drinking, rule-bending ace credited with 28 aerial victories, which earned him the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross. He was shot down on January 3, 1944, and spent 20 months as a Japanese prisoner of war. The show was based on his own 1958 memoir, also titled Baa Baa Black Sheep, and Stephen J. Cannell built the series around it.

What it invented

Quite a lot, starting with the premise:

• The "misfits and screwballs" — the opening credits pitched the pilots as troublemakers scraped together to dodge court-martial. In reality, VMF-214's roster was largely made up of capable, experienced replacement pilots. The Black Sheep themselves spent decades pushing back on the delinquent image.
• The island — the show's base, Vella La Cava, doesn't exist. The real squadron flew from bases including Munda and Vella Lavella.
• The nurses — the resident nurses added in season 2, nicknamed "Pappy's Lambs," were pure television.
• The weekly antagonists — recurring brass like Colonel Lard were invented for dramatic friction.

The real record needed no embellishment: in just 12 weeks of combat under Boyington's command across two tours, the Black Sheep were credited with 94 enemy aircraft.

What the real Black Sheep thought

At a 2002 aviation history symposium, surviving members of VMF-214 were asked about the show's accuracy. Retired Colonel Henry A. McCartney answered that the list of errors was too long to repeat.

Boyington's own verdict was blunter. He dismissed the series as a pile of inaccuracies, hogwash, and — the two words that stuck — "Hollywood hokum."

And yet: he took the job as the show's technical adviser and even appeared on screen in a cameo. Hokum, apparently, still cashes checks.

Where seasons 1–3 were actually filmed

Tracker has been based at Martini Film Studios in Langley, about 30 miles southeast of Vancouver, since it premiered as CBS's post-Super Bowl show in February 2024. From there, the production turned southern British Columbia into whatever the script needed:

• Fort Langley and Anmore — village stand-ins for Northern California towns, appearing throughout the series.
• Long Beach on Vancouver Island — doubling as a Northern California beach.
• An Okanagan winery — dressed up as a Napa Valley vineyard.
• Downtown Vancouver — filling in for various American cities as cases demanded.

It's the classic "Hollywood North" trick: one province playing an entire country.

Why the show is leaving

Money — specifically, a record-setting amount of it. In March 2026, the California Film Commission awarded the series a $48 million tax credit to relocate, the largest ever given to a relocating show, ahead of the $42 million that moved Fallout from New York. The credit, based on $129 million in qualified spending, was granted under the mysterious name "Untitled Disney Entertainment Television Project 13" before Deadline confirmed in May 2026 it was Tracker.

Season 4 production is set for 176 filming days in California, employing 250 crew members and 275 actors, with cameras rolling from summer 2026 for the 2026–27 season.

What the move means on screen

Showrunner Elwood Reid framed it as a creative opportunity as much as a financial one, with California offering coastline, mountains, and desert in one state:

"Location is a huge part of the storytelling on Tracker," Reid said, thanking the Vancouver crew who made the first three seasons possible.

One practical upside: Colter has largely avoided the American Southwest on screen — outside a lone Texas episode, "No Man's Land" — because BC simply doesn't look like it. Desert stories just became possible.

For the record: seasons 1 through 3 will always be the Canadian era. Every forest you see in them is British Columbia wearing an American name tag.

The short answer

The spin-off is Neagley — an eight-episode Prime Video series starring Maria Sten as Frances Neagley, premiering September 16, 2026, with all episodes dropping at once. It's the franchise's first spin-off, and it lands on the very same day the Reacher season 4 finale airs.

What it's about

Neagley, a former master sergeant in the Army's 110th Special Investigations Unit, now works as a private investigator in Chicago. When a beloved friend from her past dies in a suspicious accident, she goes after the truth — Amazon's official description calls her "hell-bent on justice."

The first trailer, unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2026, opens with someone asking her who she is; she answers with her name, address, and rank, then the gunfire starts.

Unlike most Reacher seasons, it isn't adapted from a specific Lee Child novel — it's an original story built around a character the books only use sparingly.

Who's in it

• Maria Sten — reprising Frances Neagley, the role she's played since Reacher season 1 in 2022.
• Alan Ritchson — appearing as Jack Reacher in a guest capacity, including a scene shot at a Chicago Cubs game.
• Greyston Holt, Adeline Rudolph, Jasper Jones, Matthew Del Negro, and Damon Herriman — rounding out the regular cast.

Reacher showrunner Nick Santora created the series with Nicholas Wootton, whose credits include NYPD Blue and Prison Break.

"Expanding on the storytelling and characters with a spinoff was an easy decision," said Vernon Sanders, head of television at Amazon MGM Studios, when the project was announced.

How it fits with Reacher season 4

Prime Video has stacked the schedule. Reacher season 4 premieres August 12, 2026, with three episodes, then goes weekly — and its finale arrives September 16, the same day all of Neagley drops. That's more than a month of continuous new Reacher-universe TV.

Except "walked away" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Here's what actually happened.

The exit

David's last episode as showrunner was "The Invitations," the season 7 finale that aired on May 16, 1996 — the one where Susan dies licking toxic wedding-invitation envelopes. He left the day-to-day running of the show after that, and NBC's crown jewel carried on without him for seasons 8 and 9, with Jerry Seinfeld taking over as the sole boss.

It wasn't a fight, and it wasn't exhaustion. Asked by Charlie Rose in 1998 why he'd left, David said it wasn't burnout and he still had plenty of ideas:

"I had done that, and now I wanted to try something else," David told Charlie Rose in 1998.

Jason Alexander later told Marc Maron's WTF podcast that David found making the show enormously stressful and would declare after tapings that it couldn't be done again — and there was a running joke on set that he threatened to quit after every season.

He never fully left

This is the part memory tends to erase. Even after quitting, David kept one foot in the building:

• The Steinbrenner voice — David voiced George's boss, the fictionalized Yankees owner, right through to the end of season 9.
• The finale — he returned to write the two-part series finale that aired on May 14, 1998, and drew more than 76 million viewers.
• The Curb reunion — season 7 of Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2009 staged a full fictional Seinfeld reunion, cast and all.
• The do-over — the 2024 Curb series finale deliberately mirrored — and poked at — the divisive Seinfeld ending he'd written 26 years earlier.

What he did with the time off

The "something else" was Sour Grapes, a 1998 comedy film he wrote and directed. Critics hated it — Roger Ebert especially. Two years later, David launched Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO, which ran for 12 seasons across 24 years and settled any question about who was right to bet on himself.

At the world premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, comics icon Frank Miller didn’t just applaud — he planted a flag. After the screening, the writer-artist behind The Dark Knight Returns jumped on Instagram to call Tom Holland his favorite Spider-Man and singled out director Destin Daniel Cretton for delivering a film that, in spirit, took him straight back to artist Steve Ditko, who co-created Spidey with Stan Lee.

“The most Ditko movie yet and with my Hand in it for all to celebrate,” Miller wrote. “This fan’s dream come true. Tom Holland is my forever Spider-Man as romantic as he is heroic. Congratulations to Destin and the whole team.”

Miller’s post included photos from the premiere — among them a shot of him meeting Cretton — and it lands with extra weight given his résumé across Marvel and DC, including The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One.

He wasn’t alone. J. Michael Straczynski — the veteran writer known for a major run on The Amazing Spider-Man — praised the movie on X, calling it an emotional Peter Parker story that still moves.

“It’s a very human story, emotional without being slow or dull or self-indulgent. It feels like stepping into a really good Spidey comic,” Straczynski wrote.

Inside the edit

As the accolades roll in nearly five years after No Way Home, Holland has been candid about how tough it was to get Brand New Day to this version. In a promotional interview on Quotable, he said the team went through multiple edits — including one early cut that everyone agreed missed the mark.

“It totally didn’t work & it was what the people were asking for, but it wasn’t quite what we wanted as the creatives,” he said.

According to Holland, several sequences were cut or reworked along the way. One scene would have featured Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple, a character Marvel fans know from the Netflix-era shows; it didn’t make the final film.

Another idea — a showdown pitting Spider-Man against some of his oldest villains — was considered but never filmed as the creative team kept reshaping the story in the edit bay.

In a new chat with Entertainment Tonight, Gillian Anderson said she’s actually read the pilot script for Ryan Coogler’s take on The X-Files — and she didn’t hold back. Calling Coogler “extraordinary,” she said the script surprised her by feeling fresh without losing the show’s DNA.

“I cannot think of a better person to take the helm. I cannot wait to see it, because I think that he's extraordinary. And I've read the script that he wrote, and it's brilliant. I was impressed by how different and yet how quintessentially like an X-File it was.”

Pressed on whether she’ll pop back in as Dana Scully, Anderson got coy. She joked she wouldn’t spill the “E-Tea,” and steered the conversation back to keeping an open mind about Coogler’s approach rather than hinting at a cameo or return.

Inside the reboot

Coogler has written the pilot and is directing the first episode, with Jennifer Yale serving as showrunner. Instead of revisiting Mulder and Scully, the story follows two new FBI agents — played by Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel — as they step into the long-dormant X-Files unit.

The creative team has signaled a darker, scarier tone than recent revivals, aiming squarely for the franchise’s creepiest instincts. And they’re doing it on familiar ground: the pilot has already wrapped in Vancouver, the city that gave the original series much of its 1990s chill.

By the time Episode 2 gets going, Stuart, Kripke and Bert have hopped to a Pasadena that looks picture-perfect until you notice the tech clamped to the back of everyone’s neck. The device zaps people the moment they show anger or start an argument, turning basic conversation into a minefield. The trio are scooped up by authorities and sent through a “reprogramming” facility, dumped back out…and immediately grabbed by a shadowy group operating from a warehouse.

That group’s leader? Kaley Cuoco’s Penny — but not the neighbor we remember. This Penny is a battle-ready commander who runs the room and doesn’t hesitate to smack Stuart, Kripke and Bert when they screw up. The warehouse crew includes Denise and Penny’s ex, Zack, making the reunion both nostalgic and seriously off-kilter.

• Penny — hardened resistance leader calling the shots
• Denise — in the ranks alongside Penny
• Zack — Penny’s ex, back in the mix with the rebels

The show leans hard into its multiverse setup: this isn’t “our” Penny, it’s that universe’s version. By spelling out that every reality has its own take on familiar faces, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe gets to play with expectations and bring back fan favorites in ways that feel fresh instead of copy-paste.

The one holdout

Even as more alumni pop up in new corners of the franchise, Jim Parsons remains the glaring absence. In a recent chat on All Out with Jon Dean, Parsons said the original run gave him incredible highs but also a lot of stress, and he’s not interested in stepping back into Sheldon’s T-shirts — not, as he put it, “for any amount of money.” He’s talked about how being recognized as Sheldon still feels odd now that he’s no longer living in that role every week.

Parsons has stayed connected at arm’s length — he narrated Young Sheldon and appeared in its finale — but he’s drawn a clear line on returning full-time. Meanwhile, other familiar faces continue to surface across spinoffs, from this show’s universe-hopping cameos to Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage on CBS.

During a stop on the Shanghai press tour for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Tom Holland finally said out loud what plenty of fans have argued since 2021: Peter Parker should’ve told MJ the truth at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home. After briefly trying to steer clear of spoilers, he cut to it.

"The moral of the story is, that he should have told her," Holland said.

Zendaya backed him up in the same exchange. She started to answer—“I... well, our opinion is that…”—before Holland jumped back in. She didn’t disagree.

"He should have told her, yeah."

The moment they’re talking about is Peter walking into that coffee shop, seeing the bandage on MJ’s head, and deciding not to remind her who he is after Doctor Strange’s spell wiped everyone’s memory. It’s been one of the MCU’s most hotly debated choices, splitting viewers over whether keeping her safe justified erasing their relationship.

The fallout is the story

Zendaya said that question wasn’t just online discourse—it shaped the new movie. She described long conversations with director Destin Daniel Cretton about where Peter and MJ would be emotionally after that ending and how to build the next chapter from there.

"Yeah, we face those conversations because I had a lot of thoughts about that... about Peter's decision, about how MJ would feel about it... So, we definitely explore those things."

Neither star would say whether Peter actually follows through on that belief in Brand New Day. They stopped short of plot specifics, but their comments make it clear the film digs back into No Way Home’s final choice instead of leaving it in the past.

The exchange happened on the Brand New Day press tour in Shanghai, with both Holland and Zendaya emphasizing that the new movie directly engages with the consequences of Peter’s decision.

During a recent Access Hollywood chat, Christopher Nolan let slip a small but charming detail about life off set: he and Robert Pattinson live near each other in Los Angeles and occasionally schedule low-key movie nights. What started as a director–actor rapport on one project has turned into a neighborly hangout that sounds as casual as it gets.

“Rob and I, we’re old friends at this point. And we actually became neighbors ... so we have the odd movie night together and stuff,”

Their friendship traces back to Tenet, where Pattinson’s turn as Neil became one of the film’s most debated elements among fans. Nolan then brought him back for The Odyssey, casting him as the antagonist Antinous — another puzzle-box role that plays to Pattinson’s sly, off-kilter screen presence. That collaboration runs parallel to Pattinson carving out his own path as Batman on the big screen.

Nolan also gave a quick shoutout to Pattinson’s life at home, telling the outlet that he’s fond of the actor and his partner Suki Waterhouse.

“Rob and Suki are wonderful people,”

Box office heat

Meanwhile, The Odyssey is rewriting Nolan’s record book. After a giant opening, the film posted an even stronger second weekend — about $90 million domestic — pushing its global total past $700 million in just 10 days and overtaking The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises as his biggest box-office hit to date.

It also topped The Dark Knight’s long-standing second-weekend benchmark of $75 million, a figure that had held since 2008. With a reported budget of $250 million, the movie has already surged to around $330 million domestic in only 13 days.

Critics are all-in too: the film sits at 94% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with praise for its ensemble. Key players include:

• Robert Pattinson
• Matt Damon
• Anne Hathaway
• Tom Holland

If its momentum holds, the mythic epic is on track to cross the $1 billion mark worldwide — a run that would make it the crowning commercial success of Nolan’s career.

Instead of cake, Arnold Schwarzenegger spent his 79th birthday under a weight stack. On Thursday, July 30, he posted photos from a Los Angeles gym—lat pulldowns, biceps curls, the whole thing—and told fans to skip gifts. He wanted them to take on a challenge tied to his Pump Club fitness app.

“My team and I are turning the fitness industry upside down.”

“From today through Sunday, August 9, join the Pump Club app, complete four workout programs in your first year, and you pay nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch.”

The birthday deal spelled out on Instagram works like this: sign up and get a seven‑day free trial, then pay $100 for the first year. Finish four programs within that year and you get the full amount refunded automatically—$50 after your first program and another $50 after your fourth. Schwarzenegger also said he’s funding the push himself, not with private equity or hedge funds.

The gym-centric celebration follows last year’s birthday bike video that leaned into cardio. Different workout, same theme: turn the day into a fitness nudge.

On screen and beyond

Off the gym floor, Schwarzenegger’s calendar stays crowded. He received the 2026 Don Wildman Commitment to Excellence Award from the National Academy of Sports Medicine for decades of work in youth programs and longevity science, and he headlined June’s Austrian World Summit in Vienna alongside girlfriend Heather Milligan.

• The Man with the Bag — He plays Santa Claus in the holiday movie arriving on Prime Video this December.
• King Conan — He remains attached to the long‑awaited sequel to Conan the Barbarian.

On the streaming side, Netflix’s FUBAR wrapped for good last year after two seasons, closing that chapter as the new projects line up.

The Pump Club birthday challenge runs through Sunday, August 9.

During a chaotic BuzzFeed Celeb puppy interview tied to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Tom Holland and Zendaya spent more time fending off tiny paws than talking plot. Somewhere between squeaks and snuggles, they let slip the goofy nicknames they use at home for their own dogs.

“Yeah. We got the Chunky One, we got Duty, Cheesesteak,” Zendaya said on BuzzFeed Celeb.

Holland added, “Phil gets called the Chunky Man a lot.”

Under the nicknames, there’s a real pack. Here’s who’s who at their place:

• Noon — a Miniature Schnauzer who originally belonged to Zendaya
• Daphne — a Doberman Pinscher
• Phil — a pocket bully adopted from a shelter in Oakland in 2026

Zendaya mentioned the newest addition in an Elle interview published in May, admitting the timing wasn’t ideal but calling the pocket bully a great fit for their family. Holland’s longtime dog Tessa, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, died in 2024.

Kids keep receipts

Elsewhere on the promo trail, Holland dropped by Celebrity Substitute to field questions from a classroom of New York City students — a tougher crowd than puppies. One kid went straight for his Achilles’ heel: spoilers.

“He spoils everything before movies even release.”

Host Julian Shapiro-Barnum called the shot harsh but fair, given Holland’s history of loose-lipped moments around Marvel projects. Among them:

• Posting an Avengers sequel poster online ahead of time
• Confirming the Spider-Man trilogy game plan early
• Letting slip that Peter Parker would head to space before the film revealed it

Even during the Celebrity Substitute taping, a question about a possible Tobey Maguire appearance almost tripped him up — but this time, he dodged it entirely.

On a KISS radio stop while promoting Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Tom Holland was handed a soccer manager’s clipboard and told to build his dream Marvel lineup. He didn’t hesitate on his first pick, slotting in the Avengers’ steady hand to anchor the side.

“Captain America would be on the team… endless fitness, strength, level head.”

Pressed on who he’d unleash off the bench, Holland went right back to Queens.

“You know, I would probably bring Peter Parker in, he’d be a great super sub.”

And if he had to cut someone from the squad entirely? The lifelong Tottenham Hotspur supporter — who’s joked that backing Spurs might be “one of the worst decisions” he ever made — wasn’t about to turn on his heroes.

“I can’t. I have to stand by my team. I have to support my team,”

Off-planet tease

Holland’s loyalty talk arrives as Spider-Man’s next steps are the subject of fresh speculation. According to an alleged post-credits leak tied to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the stinger zeroes in on Ned’s Spidey Tracker app. It reportedly pings Peter in Queens, glitches, zooms out beyond Earth, and then flags him as off-planet.

The same leak claims the card “Spider-Man will return” appears without naming Avengers: Doomsday or Avengers: Secret Wars, a choice fans have read as Marvel keeping its cards close. Holland has not been confirmed for Doomsday, leaving room for theories that his Spidey could reappear later in Secret Wars — and possibly far from home, if that off-world tease holds.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II addressed the end of Wonder Man directly to fans, posting on Instagram that he’s choosing to stay positive and focus on the show’s impact. In his note, he emphasized the messages he’s received from viewers and the encouragement they took from Simon Williams’ story.

“That’s life, right? Everything will shake out.”

“I can see in the messages I get saying how the show reminded some of you not to give up, and I feel it in the genuine love shared when I bump into some of you all during the day. So, thinking of you all today.”

Abdul-Mateen’s post follows the surprise cancellation of the Marvel series despite an earlier Season 2 order. He framed the run as a “real, massive success” and thanked the audience for meeting him with support in person and online.

The show premiered in January on Disney+ and earned a strong critical reception, including a 91% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. Created by Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest, the comedy followed Simon Williams, a struggling actor juggling the chaos of everyday gigs with the complication of being superpowered. Ben Kingsley returned as Trevor Slattery, forming one of the season’s warmest pairings opposite Abdul-Mateen’s Simon.

Surprise cameos

Part of the fun was spotting familiar faces who popped in across the season:

• Ashley Greene — cameo in Episode 1
• Josh Gad — as himself in Episode 4
• Mario Lopez — guest appearance
• Joe Pantoliano — guest appearance

Marvel has canceled the show and is not moving forward with the announced second season. While Wonder Man won’t return on Disney+, the character could still surface elsewhere in the MCU; no additional appearances for Simon Williams have been announced.

The working cut of Fortitude — a World War II–era espionage thriller starring Nicolas Cage — was hand-delivered to Netflix’s Sunset Bronson Studios office in Los Angeles on a hard drive and, within days, was reported missing. According to reporting in The Hollywood Reporter, the drive held an unencrypted version of the film. Inside Netflix, the loss was described as unprecedented in an email from the company’s head of film acquisitions, Sean Berney, per the outlet.

Writer-producer Simon Afram and his company Op-Fortitude have now sued Netflix in Los Angeles, seeking at least $105 million in damages. The complaint alleges the disappearance torpedoed a sale that was already in motion.

How it unfolded

• December — Netflix received promotional materials for Fortitude and expressed interest, according to THR.
• June — The streamer asked to view a working cut.
• June 15 — A producer hand-delivered an external drive to Netflix’s Sunset Bronson Studios office in L.A.
• Ten days later — The filmmakers were told the drive had gone missing; Berney called the loss unprecedented in an internal note, per THR.
• Afterward — Netflix says a law firm for Afram demanded $165 million, which the company characterized as a hostile cash demand rather than cooperation.

Netflix says it followed security protocol and doesn’t bear responsibility for a copy delivered without “industry-standard safeguards.” In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, the company also noted it doesn’t control the movie’s rights but is assisting the filmmakers.

“Netflix disputes any claim that it bears the risk of loss for a film delivered without the proper industry-standard safeguards. While we do not own the rights to Fortitude, we take content security seriously and have taken extra measures to support the filmmaker and his team.”

The lawsuit centers on events inside Netflix’s L.A. office; no criminal complaint or suspect has been identified in the filings described by THR. Fortitude remains unreleased, and no new sale or release plan has been announced since the disappearance. Afram and Op-Fortitude are seeking at least $105 million in damages.

While making the rounds for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Jacob Batalon let a personal detail slip: during a Heart radio interview, he casually referred to Veronica Leahov as his wife as he and co‑stars Tom Holland and Zendaya joked about nicknames. It was the first on-the-record hint that the couple had tied the knot off-camera.

• Batalon said “my wife” on air during the UK radio chat.
• He was later photographed with a gold band on his left hand at the film’s Los Angeles premiere.

The reveal fits how these two have handled their relationship from the start. They began dating in 2019 and kept things low-key for about seven years — minimal posts, quiet milestones, and public appearances that felt steady rather than performative. Batalon has described Leahov as deeply supportive, and she’s spoken about the calm she’s found with him.

Who is Veronica Leahov

Born and raised in Moldova, Leahov spent several years in Belgium before moving to New York City. She earned a master’s in interior design from FIT around 2022, and her work blends clean, modern lines with personal, cross-cultural touches.

• Early roles: cut her teeth at the Rockwell Group.
• Commercial design: moved into roles connected to RH, building a rep for precision.
• Independent practice: runs projects under the name Veroh, with clients praising spaces that feel lived-in, not staged.

A movie‑worthy proposal

Batalon proposed on March 5, 2025 in New York City with a heart‑shaped floral display by the water.

The setup included candles and the skyline glittering behind them; photos showed him on one knee and the ring already catching light. He posted about “the beginning of the rest of their lives,” and she answered with a note about lasting happiness. The timing even amused fans — Zendaya had flashed her own engagement ring roughly two months earlier — and Batalon joked about his friends copying his timeline.

A wedding their way

Leahov reportedly handled virtually all the planning herself. An early idea for a destination wedding near Lake Como eventually shifted to France. Batalon asked for touches that felt personal, including Filipino dishes like adobo on the menu.

He also pushed for a relaxed dress code — aloha shirts instead of tuxes — in keeping with his laid-back style. The couple were married sometime before late July 2026, with no photos, guest list, or venue details released.

The new trailer doesn’t waste time: Leanne Murphy’s parents’ house goes up in flames, and before she can enjoy her hard-won independence, they’re moving into her place. It’s a multigenerational shake-up tailor-made for the show’s blend of big laughs and lump-in-the-throat moments — especially with Leanne trying to date again while her folks settle in down the hall.

Netflix has circled the date. All 10 episodes of Leanne Season 2 arrive globally on August 27, 2026, a little over a year after the comedy’s debut. The streamer also released the first full trailer on July 30, offering a quick look at the chaos to come.

All 10 episodes land on Netflix August 27, 2026.

Who’s in Season 2

Season 2 reunites the core ensemble and folds in some notable guests. Returning cast and roles include:

• Leanne Morgan — Leanne Murphy
• Kristen Johnston — Carol (Leanne’s sister)
• Ryan Stiles — Bill Murphy (Leanne’s ex-husband)
• Celia Weston — Mama Margaret
• Blake Clark — Daddy John
• Graham Rogers — Tyler Murphy (Leanne’s son)
• Hannah Pilkes — Josie Murphy (Leanne’s daughter)
• Jayma Mays — Mary
• Tim Daly — Andrew
• Annie Gonzalez — Nora
• Blake Gibbons — Dylan

Additional guest stars:

• Lainey Wilson
• Jaime Pressly
• Billy Gardell
• Tyne Daly — Nancy

Where the story goes

This chapter finds Leanne stepping into a new decade and rebuilding after the end of her 33-year marriage. She dips a toe back into dating, regains her confidence, and leans on her outspoken sister Carol as they juggle the realities of caring for aging parents and shifting family roles — the show’s signature Southern humor firmly intact.

Co-created by Leanne Morgan with Chuck Lorre and Susan McMartin, the sitcom continues Leanne’s second act with family front and center. All episodes stream on Netflix on August 27, 2026.

At the New York premiere of his family adventure The Magic Faraway Tree, Andrew Garfield finally addressed the swirl around Luca Guadagnino’s new drama Artificial — and made a point of praising its new distributor. He said he’s grateful to Amazon for developing the movie and for helping it land elsewhere after exiting, and he called its new home at Neon a perfect fit.

“This business is in an interesting place, and I’m fascinated by how things work,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

“I think it’s (Neon) a really good fit and I’m really excited to release it with them,” he added, calling Neon “a daring studio doing daring films so I’m very, very excited to be partnering with them on it.”

From Amazon exit to Neon

Amazon dropped the film earlier this year — a move The Hollywood Reporter noted came just months after the company signed a deal with OpenAI. After that exit, several major players reportedly passed on the project before Neon stepped in.

• Warner Bros.
• Netflix
• Focus Features

Neon ultimately acquired the movie, ending weeks of speculation about where it would land.

What the movie covers

According to Deadline, Artificial follows OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman through the tumultuous events of 2023, when he was abruptly fired by the company’s board and then reinstated days later.

Early word has been mixed. World of Reel reports some viewers found the film thought-provoking, while others felt its deliberate pacing worked against it.

Artificial is expected to premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

On Threads, a fan pressed James Gunn on whether the new DCU has already locked in its Dark Knight. Gunn didn’t spin or stall — he fired back with two words and moved on.

"hey James, there's a lot of rumor circulating as you expect that you guys have already cast Batman in your universe. Can you debunk this?"

"De and bunked,"

Where things stand

The quip lines up with what Gunn has been saying throughout 2026: no one has been cast as Batman in the DCU, auditions haven’t started, and The Brave and the Bold is waiting on a finished script before the studio takes the next step. Despite rumor cycles insisting the role was secretly filled, there’s still no announcement — and Gunn keeps swatting down the chatter himself.

That hands-on approach has become his norm since taking over DC Studios, answering fan questions directly on social media rather than letting speculation set the narrative.

Joking with Frank Grillo

Gunn also kept things light over on Instagram after sharing a clip about John Cena and Peacemaker, using the comments to rib DCU actor Frank Grillo about keeping spoilers under wraps.

"Some people are really good at secrets, others not so much,"

he wrote while tagging Grillo. The actor shot back:

"I can keep a secret, I just need to be told what it is LOL,"

Playful jabs aside, nothing’s changed on the Bat-front: there’s no DCU Batman actor to announce, and Gunn says The Brave and the Bold won’t move into casting until that script is in place.

In a No. 87 jersey and a bucket hat, Travis Kelce jogged onto the Kansas City Chiefs’ practice field on July 29 to a wave of cheers, then slowed up long enough to acknowledge the crowd. Minutes later he was back in lockstep with Patrick Mahomes during open practice, kicking off what will be the tight end’s 14th NFL season.

“Appreciate you guys coming out,” Kelce said as he headed to the field.

The 36-year-old has swapped newlywed life for the Chiefs’ old-school camp routine — dorm beds and all — as the team settles in for another title push. He hasn’t said this will be his last season, but talk of a “Last Dance” has grown louder after longtime mentor Cris Carter publicly framed the year that way, with Canton waiting on the other side.

Kelce is locked in on the near term. He’s back under a one-year, $12 million extension, and the calendar gets real, fast. The Chiefs open preseason against the Los Angeles Rams on August 15, then welcome the Denver Broncos for the regular-season opener. Marquee tests stack up from there:

• Buffalo Bills — a rematch with Josh Allen and Co.
• San Francisco 49ers — a heavyweight cross-conference tilt
• Cincinnati Bengals — the Joe Burrow chess match
• Los Angeles Chargers — always spicy in-division

Off the field, the screen calls

Kelce’s post-football lane is already taking shape. He moved behind the camera as an executive producer on My Dead Friend Zoe and a Tribeca-premiered documentary titled Jean-Michel, and he’s been adding on-camera gigs to the mix.

• Grotesquerie — a Ryan Murphy series
• Loose Cannons — an action film
• Happy Gilmore 2 — a cameo in Adam Sandler’s sequel

For now, though, it’s back to football — and the first whistle comes August 15 against the Rams.

In new footage from Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Peter fights with pitch‑black eyes and moves like he knows what’s coming a split second early. That isn’t just mood lighting — the film confirms his powers have mutated, pushing him into a sharper, more instinctive version of Spidey we haven’t seen on screen.

This shift lands as Peter’s life is stripped to the studs: no one remembers his history, he’s lost the safety net of close friends, and there’s no Stark tech to bail him out. He’s rebuilding from zero and, by design, doing it alone.

Three new powers

• Organic webbing — Peter no longer needs mechanical shooters; his body produces webs straight from his wrists. That means an effectively unlimited supply and a more feral, natural feel to how he swings and strikes.
• Heightened senses — his Spider‑Sense dials up to near pre‑cognition. Trailers show those all‑black eyes as he reacts before attacks land, turning perception into offense.
• Increased agility — his movement is even looser and more unpredictable, and paired with the boosted senses, his fighting skews predator over polite hero.

Together, those upgrades explain why some scenes catch him going harder than usual — less hesitation, more instinct — as the reset forces him to survive without a safety net.

The rumored tag

The alleged post‑credits scene that’s been making the rounds leans into mystery. Leaks claim Ned Leeds’ Spider‑Tracker can’t locate Peter on Earth; the display glitches like he’s slipped into space or another reality, placing him outside the normal MCU map ahead of Avengers: Doomsday.

The post-credits tag reportedly ends with “Spider-Man Will Return.”

According to those reports, there’s a single post‑credits scene and it doesn’t name Doomsday or Secret Wars outright, keeping the connection deliberately vague. Some early screening chatter even frames it as a setup for a more cosmic path rather than a simple team‑up tease.

As for Tom Holland’s future, he’s publicly left the door open to keep playing Peter, but there’s no official confirmation that Brand New Day kicks off a new trilogy — or caps the current run.

When the game resumed with only two questions left, Ben Affleck and Jamie Ding were staring down a $500,000 stumper about a New York Times prediction later blown apart by the Wright brothers’ first flight. They burned their 50:50, leaned on Ding’s read of the clues, and punched their ticket to the final question.

For the $1 million, the board asked which name had never been used for a turkey in the presidential Thanksgiving pardon tradition. Affleck looked to host Jimmy Kimmel and cashed in the show’s Ask the Host lifeline.

“This is the person that would actually be paying attention to every pardoned turkey’s name. Probably the best person in the world to ask this question to,” Affleck told Kimmel.

Kimmel pointed them toward “Spaghetti & Meatball” as the outlier. Affleck and Ding went with it — and it hit. The pair clinched the million, which Affleck said will go to his Eastern Congo Initiative, a nonprofit that backs community-led groups in the conflict-affected region.

• 50:50 on $500,000 — used
• Ask the Host on $1,000,000 — used
• Final answer — “Spaghetti & Meatball”
• Winnings — $1,000,000 to Eastern Congo Initiative

Beyond the hot seat

Off TV, Affleck is also riding a business win: earlier this year, Netflix confirmed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it’s buying InterPositive for approximately $587 million, with the total reportedly approaching $600 million if performance payouts kick in for Affleck and other investors.

“From the invention of the moving image to the transition to digital, from motion capture to virtual production, technology has evolved alongside the artists who use it... Our shared commitment to continuing this legacy makes joining together a natural next step, in addition to Netflix’s decades of experience applying and scaling technology responsibly,” Affleck said of the InterPositive deal.

InterPositive is building AI-driven post-production tools meant to assist filmmakers — color, sound, cleanup — while keeping creative calls in human hands. Netflix disclosed the $587 million purchase price in its SEC filing earlier this year.

Speaking with Variety in New York, Zoe Saldaña urged people to slow down the hot takes around the proposed Paramount–Warner Bros. merger and do their homework before weighing in. She called out the “trolling noise” that’s been fueling the conversation and said she’s been asking around the industry herself to better understand what’s actually on the table.

“I do believe that not everything is as it may appear, and it's always good to reserve judgment until you feel educated enough to make a judgment.”

Saldaña added that the loudest voices online aren’t necessarily the most informed.

“If there's noise to not listen to, it's the trolling noise. It's doing the research on your own and trying to educate yourself and understand why something works and why it doesn't before we jump on a headline or a sound bite and we amplify a very negative message that can actually become harmful.”

She said she’s been doing exactly that — researching and checking in with people she knows across the business to sort fact from speculation.

The pushback so far

The call for cooler heads lands amid heavy criticism of the deal. According to the BBC, an open letter opposing the merger has drawn signatures from roughly 1,400 actors and filmmakers, arguing that further consolidation could mean fewer movies and fewer jobs.

• Emma Thompson
• Javier Bardem
• Ben Stiller

There have also been reported legal headwinds in the U.S., with officials in a dozen states reportedly mounting challenges to the proposed tie-up.

Across the Atlantic, British actors Benedict Cumberbatch, Alan Cumming, and Benedict Wong penned an op-ed in The Guardian urging the UK government to scrutinize the deal, warning of potential layoffs and canceled productions if it goes through. UK Culture Minister Lisa Nandy has publicly indicated she’s interested in getting involved.

Fans poring over fresh set video from the United Kingdom spotted a tense nighttime setup on a bridge: flashing lights from multiple GCPD cruisers, ambulances parked end to end and, in one blurry angle, a body on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance. Viewers also clocked stand-ins for Jeffrey Wright and Brian Tyree Henry moving through the scene, adding fuel to theories that the sequence centers on Jim Gordon — though neither Warner Bros. nor DC Studios has identified who’s on that gurney.

What the footage actually depicts is still anyone’s guess. The emergency could tie to an attack, an accident or a showdown with one of the sequel’s still-secret villains. And because it’s a set peek, misdirection is a real possibility — Reeves has played things close to the vest before. The other question buzzing online: who Henry is playing. Fans have zeroed in on two Harveys — Dent or Bullock — but the production hasn’t said.

Who’s in this time

Alongside Robert Pattinson suiting back up under director Matt Reeves, the sequel brings back familiar faces and adds some heavy hitters. Roles for the newcomers remain under wraps.

• Returning: Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright, Andy Serkis, Jayme Lawson
• New to the sequel: Sebastian Stan, Scarlett Johansson, Charles Dance, Brian Tyree Henry, Sebastian Koch

Reeves and co-writer Mattson Tomlin are keeping their “Epic Crime Saga” on its own track, separate from James Gunn’s main DC Universe as an Elseworlds project. The story picks up in a brutal Gotham winter after the Riddler’s flood, digging deeper into political rot and the mob landscape that’s also being explored on HBO’s The Penguin.

Where the sequel stands

Production is underway in the U.K. as the movie ramps toward principal photography targeted for August. The set activity that surfaced this week appears to be part of that early push, but the studio hasn’t commented on the footage or the characters involved.

The Batman Part II is set to open in theaters on February 18, 2028.

Until then, the stretcher shot stays in the rumor file — a provocative glimpse from a franchise that thrives on keeping Gotham’s next move in the dark.

The movie doesn’t just drop Jean Grey into the action; it ties her entire mission to a conspiracy called “V-Max”. Her telepathy peels back a cover-up that runs through Damage Control and into her own past, where suppressed memories of her younger sister, Sara, point to secret experiments. What starts as a hunt for a dangerous project turns painfully personal as those memories resurface and reframe everything Jean thinks she knows.

The emotional peak comes when Jean, reeling from the truth, blows the doors off her psychic limits. Instead of trying to overpower her, Peter Parker talks to her — and it works. In the chaos of the final standoff, Peter takes a bullet meant for Jean. He’s left in critical condition, and she makes a choice that steers her story away from vengeance.

Jean secretly keeps Peter alive telepathically while he’s in a coma.

For all her Omega-level firepower, the film also makes clear she can’t steamroll every mind in the room. Jean briefly bends Bruce Banner and several enemies to her will, but two people prove stubbornly hard to crack: Peter and Frank Castle.

Why her mind control fails

• Peter Parker — His Spider-Sense acts like an instinctive firewall, flagging threats before they land. Layer on his relentless guilt and responsibility, plus a hyperactive nervous system, and Peter’s head is constant “noise,” too chaotic for Jean to lock down for long.
• Frank Castle (the Punisher) — He doesn’t waver. Frank’s absolute conviction leaves almost no emotional leverage to exploit. Years of combat have turned his psyche into a battlefield lined with trauma and tactics; any psychic push triggers a surge of violent, survival-driven imagery that makes sustained control nearly impossible.

By the end, the film frames Jean’s arc as redemption, not domination. She saves Peter’s life, steps back from revenge, and slips out of New York quietly — boarding a bus in the closing moments, with her future left deliberately open.

The Hulk showdown in Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t just a smash-’em-up — it’s a mind game. The movie reveals that Jean Grey seizes control of Bruce Banner and sends him at Peter Parker. Banner fights the intrusion, but when Jean finally exits his head, the confusion strips away his calm and what’s left is the fully unleashed Savage Hulk.

Peter does try tech first — the universal inhibitor glimpsed in the trailers — but it can’t punch through Hulk’s skin. So he pivots, appealing to the part of the monster that’s still Banner, and it’s enough to end the rampage. By the aftermath, Banner is on a stretcher, loaded into an ambulance.

If you were expecting Hulk to pop up again right away, not so fast: the Hulk actor has confirmed he will not appear in Avengers: Doomsday.

Enter Jean Grey

The other mystery the film finally answers is Sadie Sink’s role. Yes, Sadie Sink is Jean Grey — a reveal the production guarded closely even as fans traded theories. Marvel chief Kevin Feige said the character choice clicked once her name came up during casting.

“We had a Peter story that we wanted to tell, and knew that there were a number of characters that could fit into that. And it was Sadie’s name who came up that solidified the idea of the character that she’s playing,”

Sink didn’t go through a long audition gauntlet for the part. She’d previously worked with Destin Daniel Cretton on 2017’s The Glass Castle, a connection that may have helped the team picture her as Jean from the start.

The stinger in Spider-Man: Brand New Day doesn’t go for a gag or a villain tease. It zeroes in on Ned’s Spider-Tracker app as it freaks out trying to ping Peter, then keeps widening the map until the locator lands on a single, dead-simple status: not anywhere on Earth.

“Off-planet.”

That one readout has fans connecting dots to Marvel’s next mega-events. If Peter’s in deep space, he could be headed straight into the kind of multiverse trouble rumored for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Some viewers are even pointing to a comics-ready destination: Battleworld, the patchwork realm where heroes from clashing realities get marooned together.

Who swings in on Earth?

With Peter seemingly out of the neighborhood, speculation has turned to who might wear the suit on the ground for a while. The movie’s final card promises Spider-Man will return, but it doesn’t say which one.

• Miles Morales — The MCU already nodded to Miles through Aaron Davis, and the Across the Spider-Verse spotlight keeps him front-of-mind for audiences.
• Miguel O’Hara (Spider-Man 2099) — More tightly linked to multiverse stories, which would make him a clean fit for a crossover-heavy stretch.
• Legacy fill-in — The “Spider-Man Will Return” tag has some fans reading it as room for a stand-in Spidey while Peter is stranded off-world.

The movie itself leaves Peter in a reflective place. After Doctor Strange’s spell wiped Ned’s memories, a quiet final scene shows their old rhythm flickering back to life. Then the post-credits swerve yanks Peter far from home, which is exactly the kind of gap where a successor could step in.

Avengers shuffle

On the crossover front, multiple rumor roundups — including chatter from industry tipster Daniel Richtman — say Tom Holland won’t be front and center in Avengers: Doomsday. The talk is that Marvel is reserving his bigger swing for Secret Wars, where several Spider-variants could share the stage.

• Doomsday — Reports claim Holland isn’t part of the principal cast for this chapter.
• Tobey Maguire — Growing speculation has Maguire’s Peter Parker taking on a more prominent role early in the film, tied to a large-scale “incursion” sequence where universes collide — potentially more than a cameo, with familiar allies alongside him.
• Secret Wars — Positioning Holland for the follow-up tracks with the idea of a multi-Spidey lineup.

Holland has said he hasn’t joined the next Avengers production yet, which lines up with the notion that Doomsday’s main shoot is already in the rearview and his return is being timed for Secret Wars. In the meantime, Brand New Day’s tag plants a simple, tantalizing marker: “Spider-Man will return.”

On the London red carpet for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Zendaya didn’t hesitate when MTV UK asked who in the business she’s most grateful to have grown up alongside. She pointed straight to Tom Holland, calling their years of working together one of the real joys of her career.

“Well, Tom, obviously, my best friend, but being able to do these films with him is a privilege, and I love to be able to grow together and watch him. I mean, he’s the best.”

The pair met after being cast in Spider-Man: Homecoming back in 2016 and confirmed their relationship in 2021. They’ve kept showing up for each other as their blockbuster schedules roll on, reuniting again for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

The nicknames bit

Zendaya also had some fun with the press while chatting with Heart’s Showbiz Kidz, sharing that her circle rarely sticks to just one name. Family members call her “Marie” and plenty of friends go with “Daya,” but it was a sibling special that got the biggest laugh.

“My brothers call me Big Head because I have a big head,”

she joked, adding that doctors measured her head twice when she was born because they thought the first reading had to be a mistake.

Holland chimed in that a few close friends call him “Tommy,” which genuinely surprised Zendaya — she admitted she’d never actually heard anyone use it around him.

On NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Sadie Sink dug into what it felt like to step into the Marvel machine as Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day—and admitted the sheer scale of it rattled her a bit. Jean, a powerful telepathic mutant, marks a major swing for Sink as she jumps from Hawkins to the MCU.

“It's scary, joining such a big franchise, and they've been out of like 10 years that cast,”

Sink said the on-set reality matched the hype in her head, calling the Spider-Man world “surreal” to witness up close. Asked to pick her favorite web-slinger, she didn’t hesitate.

“Tom was the first Spider-Man I saw. Homecoming,” she said. “He is my favorite. He is just the best.”

For fans who met Sink as Max Mayfield across four seasons of Stranger Things, the leap to Marvel feels like a natural next move—just with a lot more spandex and world-building.

No audition required

At a press conference for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige said Sink didn’t audition for Jean Grey. That kind of straight offer is uncommon at Marvel, but there was history to go on.

Sink previously worked with director Destin Daniel Cretton on the 2017 drama The Glass Castle, a reunion that likely helped clarify what she could do with Jean.

Feige later told Entertainment Weekly that Marvel already had Peter Parker’s arc and the surrounding characters mapped out, and that Sink’s casting helped lock in “the idea of the character” she plays in the film.

Opening in China with a midday haul of $16.5 million, Spider-Man: Brand New Day was projected to finish its first day at roughly $37.4 million—the best opening day for a U.S. superhero movie there since Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2019, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

That early surge also topped the recent benchmark set by Venom: The Last Dance in the territory, per THR’s early estimates—an encouraging sign for a genre that’s had a tougher time reconnecting with Chinese audiences in recent years.

Opening weekend is tracking around $465 million worldwide.

Global stakes

As Deadline reports, the film’s global debut is currently pegged at about $465 million. If it lands there or higher, it would be Sony’s second-biggest worldwide opening ever, trailing only Spider-Man: No Way Home, which blasted past $600 million on its first weekend.

On screen, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker steps into a darker chapter where no one remembers his identity—positioning this installment as a bridge to the character’s future in the franchise. He’s not swinging solo, either.

• Tom Holland — Peter Parker / Spider-Man
• Mark Ruffalo — Bruce Banner / Hulk
• Jon Bernthal — Frank Castle / The Punisher

Stateside demand looks strong: North American presales are reportedly around $80 million, slightly ahead of No Way Home’s $78 million in advance tickets, per Deadline.

On the podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Jonathan Nolan said his brother nearly walked away after Batman Begins — not because of the pressure, but because he didn’t want a label he couldn’t shake.

"Chris was on the fence about making another one," Jonathan said. "I think he didn't want to become a superhero movie director. He was very proud of 'Batman Begins.' To me, it was like ... we built this amazing sports car, and I'm like, 'Let's take it for a drive. Don't you want to make one more?'"

Batman Begins was a hit, pulling in more than $350 million worldwide, but it took that brotherly nudge and a new direction to get Christopher Nolan back behind the camera.

He returned with The Dark Knight, leaning harder into a crime-thriller feel. Jonathan Nolan co-wrote the screenplay, and the sequel became the highest-grossing movie of 2008. The brothers then teamed again for one last Gotham chapter with The Dark Knight Rises.

• Batman Begins — launched the trilogy, grossed over $350 million worldwide
• The Dark Knight — co-written by Jonathan Nolan; crime-thriller tone; 2008’s top earner
• The Dark Knight Rises — the brothers’ final Batman film together

Eyeing horror next

Post-Batman, Christopher Nolan has talked about trying a full-fledged horror movie. He’s even said his latest epic, The Odyssey, carries elements of the genre — and the experience has him curious to go further.

"It very much whets my appetite for more," Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter.

There’s a catch: he’s only interested if he finds the right story. Nolan has emphasized that in horror, the story matters more than the trickery on screen, and he’s praised the recent hit Obsession for its storytelling.

The BBC documentary Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret features accounts from 10 women describing their experiences with the actor and musician between 2002 and 2016, according to the film. Nine of those women speak publicly for the first time. The program also includes two people who worked with Thirty Seconds to Mars, who say staff felt uncomfortable with Leto’s interactions with teenage girls. The BBC reports that four women allege inappropriate sexual conduct when they were underage.

After the documentary’s release, Leto denied the claims in a statement issued through his publicist.

“I have never s******* assaulted anyone in my entire life. These claims are absolutely and categorically false.”

Where to watch

The film is a BBC production and is available on the BBC’s platform. It is not on Netflix.

• Ten women recount experiences spanning 2002–2016, per the BBC.
• Nine speak publicly for the first time.
• Two former Thirty Seconds to Mars staffers describe unease over interactions with teenage girls.
• Leto denies all allegations via a statement through his publicist.

Leto, 54, is known to many viewers from My So-Called Life, Requiem for a Dream and American Psycho, and for playing the Joker in 2016’s Suicide Squad.

Most recently, he appeared as Skeletor in Amazon MGM’s Masters of the Universe. Puck News reported Leto earned more than $5 million for the role, including promotion; that figure has not been confirmed by Amazon MGM or by Leto.

Asked what their inner circle actually calls them, Zendaya went straight for a family classic — and the story behind it. Her brothers, she said, still use the nickname that stuck from day one.

"My brothers call me Big Head because I have a big head,"

She laughed as she clarified it’s not about ego; a doctor even measured her head twice when she was born because they thought the first reading couldn’t be right.

From there, she ran through the names that rotate depending on who’s around: family often goes with “Marie” (her middle name), plenty of friends shorten it to “Daya”, and the little ones in her life know her as “Auntie Daya”.

Tom Holland followed suit during the same Heart interview, noting that even “Tom” isn’t the whole story.

"People call me T,"

he said, adding that “Tommy” is a name he hears only from people who know him really well — a claim that genuinely surprised Zendaya, who joked she’d never once heard anyone call him that. The trio even mock “fact-checked” him on the spot before moving on.

• Zendaya — “Marie,” “Daya,” “Auntie Daya,” “Big Head” (from her brothers)
• Tom Holland — “T,” “Tommy” (reserved for the closest circle)

Inside jokes over names

As the chat went on, the three admitted that names aren’t always their go-to when they see each other. Sometimes it’s just… noise.

"We more have like sound effects for one another,"

Holland said, before all three broke into random sound effects and laughter — exactly the kind of effortless back-and-forth fans have watched grow over years on and off set.

From Homecoming to now

Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon have been a unit since Spider-Man: Homecoming hit theaters in 2017, anchoring Peter Parker’s world across the MCU.

• Tom Holland — Peter Parker
• Zendaya — MJ
• Jacob Batalon — Ned Leeds

That chemistry is back in the spotlight on the promo trail for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, with the fourth Holland-led Spidey movie set to land in theaters this weekend.

Ticket sales are already pointing to a blowout return for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. According to Deadline, the film is projected to launch with about $465 million worldwide, which would rank as Sony’s second-biggest global opening ever behind Spider-Man: No Way Home (which debuted north of $600 million). In North America, presales are reportedly around $80 million—slightly ahead of No Way Home’s $78 million pace, per the outlet.

• Projected global opening: $465M (Deadline)
• Top Sony global opening to beat: No Way Home at $600M+
• U.S./Canada presales: $80M vs. No Way Home’s $78M

It’s been nearly four years since Tom Holland last swung into theaters as Peter Parker. No Way Home left him anonymous and cut off from MJ and Ned; this new chapter sends him into bigger threats, nastier enemies and—maybe the scariest twist—an unknown mutation, with a darker, more grounded path for the character.

Holland on returning

All that box office heat could shape where the franchise goes next. A fifth Spider-Man movie has been the subject of nonstop fan chatter, but no official greenlight yet. Asked point-blank if he’ll suit up again, Holland said he’s in—if the studios want him back—and hinted the decision may ride on how this movie performs.

“I will do it for as long as they’ll have me. So if this movie does good, I guess we’ll see!”

Holland previously spooked fans in GQ by saying he didn’t want to keep playing Spider-Man after turning 30, but later admitted he was “trying to scare Sony” and jokingly bumped that number to 37.

At the Los Angeles premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Michael B. Jordan lit up when Entertainment Tonight asked what he thought of David Jonsson joining Black Panther 3 as T’Challa’s grown son — the character Marvel just unveiled at Comic-Con.

“Oh, I love it. It’s amazing! I can’t wait, can’t wait!”

Jordan’s stamp of approval lands with extra weight: he made Erik Killmonger one of the MCU’s most talked-about villains in the first Black Panther and popped back up for a pivotal cameo in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. He’s also a longtime collaborator of Ryan Coogler, who’s returning to steer the next chapter.

Enter David Jonsson

Marvel’s San Diego Comic-Con reveal put Jonsson front and center as the adult son of T’Challa in Coogler’s next Wakanda film — a move that both honors Chadwick Boseman’s legacy and pushes the story in a new direction. The casting quickly became one of the weekend’s biggest MCU talking points, and Jordan’s public enthusiasm only adds to the momentum.

Jordan’s packed slate

Off the carpet, Jordan’s own calendar is getting crowded. The first poster for his The Thomas Crown Affair remake is out, teasing a sleek heist vibe without fully showing his face — just a razor-sharp tux, gloves, and all the expensive confidence that comes with them. The poster’s tagline — “Revenge is a work of art” — hints at a darker spin, and the movie is dated for March 5, 2027, in theaters and IMAX. It’s being positioned as one of his biggest directing swings yet.

He’s also backing The Greatest, a Muhammad Ali limited series at Prime Video. The streamer released the first teaser and set the eight-episode run for a fall launch.

• The Thomas Crown Affair — in theaters and IMAX March 5, 2027
• The Greatest (8 episodes) — premieres on Prime Video November 4

At the film’s premiere, Tom Holland said the new movie’s fight scenes pull straight from the PlayStation. He told IGN he’d recently replayed Insomniac’s games while the stunt team combed through “finishing moves,” studying how to translate the flashier combos into something that works on a real set.

“Yeah, for me a lot of those like finishing moves. A lot of our stuff was influenced by that stuff,”

According to Holland, several stunt performers are avid gamers who grabbed screenshots from the Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man titles and brought them into the writers’ room as reference. The idea was to keep the fluid, combo-heavy feel fans know from the games while still grounding it in Peter’s more street-level world after No Way Home.

The result, he said, is a blend of cinematic choreography and instantly recognizable Spidey beats — the kind of moves longtime players will clock the moment they hit the screen in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Behind the camera?

Holland also hinted his Marvel future might not be limited to acting. In a rapid-fire yes-or-no interview with Hugo Travers for HugoDécrypte – Grands Formats — filmed with Zendaya — he didn’t shut down the idea of calling the shots himself.

“Yeah, I guess I could,”

he answered when asked if he would ever direct a Marvel movie. He’s already stepped deeper into the creative process on Brand New Day, confirming he took part in the film’s writers’ room.

As for what comes after this chapter, Holland declined to answer when asked about returning for Spider-Man 5. Marvel hasn’t announced a fifth film, and while industry insider Alex Perez has suggested Holland’s current deal could extend beyond the trilogy, that remains unconfirmed. Marvel has yet to confirm a fifth film.

In the first look at Jumanji: Open World, the game doesn’t just suck players in — it breaks out. The trailer shows the avatars loose in a modern city, dodging a stampede of hippos, while giraffes and ostriches take over intersections and hulking creatures loom over downtown streets. There’s another wrinkle: the avatars are glitched, stuck in demo mode, which means their trademark strengths come with ridiculous bugs.

The biggest gag belongs to Dwayne Johnson’s Dr. Smolder Bravestone, who suddenly speaks with a Spanish accent and can’t quite manage his swagger. The footage leans hard into slapstick—awkward sprinting animations, broken voice lines, and blown skills—while the team tries to corral the chaos pouring out of the console and into the real world.

Returning stars anchor the sequel, with the franchise’s modern shepherd Jake Kasdan back in the director’s chair for what’s billed as the final film in this current trilogy and the fifth installment overall. Sony Pictures released the trailer today.

Who’s back

• Dwayne Johnson — Dr. Smolder Bravestone
• Jack Black
• Kevin Hart
• Karen Gillan
• Nick Jonas
• Alex Wolff
• Morgan Turner
• Ser’Darius Blain
• Madison Iseman
• Rhys Darby
• Danny DeVito

The modern run has serious momentum to match. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) surprised the industry with more than $950 million worldwide, and 2019’s Jumanji: The Next Level followed with over $801 million. They revived a brand that began with the 1995 classic starring Robin Williams, based on Chris Van Allsburg’s book, and later branched to the related standalone sequel Zathura: A Space Adventure.

Jumanji: Open World is set to open on December 25, 2026.

Before he swung into the MCU, Tom Holland was nursing a bruising near-miss: he badly wanted the lead in November Criminals, a 2017 crime drama written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. He auditioned for the role of Addison and thought it would shift him into grown‑up leads; when the part went to Ansel Elgort, he took it hard. Holland says his dad, comedian Dominic Holland, helped him reframe the loss as part of the job.

“I thought that that film for me was going to be, like, my stepping-stone into a young-adult career,” he recalled. “I didn’t get the role, and it really beat me up. I remember being really angry about it.”

Before the mask

The Spider-Man star told Backstage he stacked up a few big rejections before Peter Parker came along. Among them: he read for Finn in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, a part that ultimately went to John Boyega. And that November Criminals letdown stuck with him the most because he’d pinned so many hopes on it.

That early sting, he says, ended up being the kind of lesson that steadied him for the next giant swing — Marvel’s friendly neighborhood hero.

Still in the suit

Now years into playing Peter, Holland isn’t looking for the exit. Asked about his future as the web-slinger, he told The Hollywood Reporter he’s game to keep going if audiences are.

“I’ll do it as long as they keep me. So if this movie does good, I guess we’ll see,”

Marvel boss Kevin Feige has also hinted that Spider-Man’s journey could stretch beyond the next chapter, with talk of more solo outings and even room one day for Miles Morales to enter the picture.

Here’s what’s actually on the record about the viral rumor: In 2009, Christopher Nolan’s older brother Matthew Nolan was arrested in connection with the killing of Robert Cohen in Costa Rica, according to reporting summarized in a Newsweek fact check. Court filings in that case alleged Matthew used the alias “MM McCall-Oppenheimer.”

That paperwork and the arrest spawned years of internet lore that Matthew was a contract killer who went by “Oppenheimer” — a claim that keeps bouncing back into the timeline every time Oppenheimer or Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey catches fire.

Newsweek rated the “hitman named Oppenheimer” claim misleading.

The important distinction: allegations in documents are not proof of a murder-for-hire career. The fact check says there’s no concrete evidence Matthew was a hired killer and he was never convicted of being one. What appears to be supported is the alias reference — not the more sensational story the internet spun from it.

• 2009 arrest: Tied to the Robert Cohen case in Costa Rica.
• Alias in filings: “MM McCall-Oppenheimer,” per court documents cited.
• Fact-check verdict: “Misleading” to say he was a hitman known as Oppenheimer; no conviction for that.

Meanwhile, Nolan’s new film is surging

Separate from the rumor mill, The Odyssey is roaring at the box office and, per current projections, is on track to top Oppenheimer’s lifetime domestic total in about 13 days of release — a sign of just how fast it’s moving with U.S. audiences.

Overseas, the rollout is getting bigger. IMAX China says it expects most of its nearly 800 premium screens to book the movie, with a mainland opening set for August 14. The company points to especially strong interest in major Chinese cities and reports that IMAX has been grabbing an unusually large share in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The next major date on the calendar: China’s IMAX launch on August 14.

The unresolved thread that keeps coming up as Ryan Gosling saddles up as Johnny Blaze: the Rider who handed the curse to Robbie Reyes on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was never shown. That leaves Marvel a clean lane to say Gosling’s Blaze was the unseen Spirit who passed the chain — or to finally put a name to that skull without stepping on what the TV show already did.

• Johnny Blaze — the classic Spirit of Vengeance Gosling will play
• Robbie Reyes — the TV Rider mentored by an unidentified predecessor
• Danny Ketch — a comics-faithful option if Marvel wants a different Rider in the mix

Marvel officially put Ghost Rider on the board at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, with Gosling making his superhero debut and Shawn Levy directing from a script by Jonathan Tropper. The movie is slated for 2028 and charts Blaze’s turn into the Spirit of Vengeance while steering the MCU toward its darker supernatural corner — think Blade and Moon Knight territory. One fun detail: Gosling reportedly pitched his take directly to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige before the project came together.

First stop: Star Wars

Before the flaming chain, Gosling and Levy have another big swing. Their standalone Star Wars film, Star Wars: Starfighter, is set five years after The Rise of Skywalker and follows an elite pilot tasked with protecting a mysterious young boy — a mission that starts as a family matter and grows into a fight with galactic stakes. Tropper wrote this one, too, and filming wrapped last year in the United Kingdom and Sardinia.

• Ryan Gosling — a battle-hardened starfighter pilot
• Mia Goth — an enigmatic mercenary
• Matt Smith — a ruthless warlord
• Flynn Gray — the boy at the center of the story
• Also starring: Amy Adams, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings

Star Wars: Starfighter opens in theaters May 28, 2027.

Then it’s Blaze’s turn. With Ghost Rider targeting 2028, Marvel has a rare chance to either fold the S.H.I.E.L.D. thread into the mainline MCU or blaze a clean new path for its next Spirit of Vengeance.

A classroom full of New York City kids didn’t waste time going straight for Tom Holland’s soft spot: his reputation for Marvel spoilers. During an appearance on the kid-led interview series Celebrity Substitute, one student asked if he’s a good actor. Before Holland could answer, another jumped in with a blunt review.

“Well, he spoils everything.”

Host Julian Shapiro-Barnum called the jab “mean,” but also conceded the kid wasn’t exactly wrong. Holland laughed it off and, a few questions later, almost found himself in familiar danger when a student pressed him on whether Tobey Maguire would pop up in a future Spider-Man movie. This time, he successfully sidestepped any reveal.

Kids ask what adults won’t

The interrogation didn’t stop at plot twists. A student named Victor asked Holland point-blank if he’s married. Holland paused, called it an “important question,” and then leaned into the moment.

“I am.”

He followed it with a wink at the difference between publicists and grade-schoolers:

“You guys obviously haven’t been media trained like the publicists that I speak with.”

Another kid, Kayson, asked if he takes Zendaya on dates. Holland said he does and called it his favorite thing to do.

The spoiler rap sheet

Holland’s been candid over the years about accidentally letting Marvel secrets slip. The students had receipts, and so does the internet. Among the greatest hits:

• Avengers: Infinity War — accidentally flashed the poster on a live stream.
• Early Spider-Man days — offhand comments that essentially confirmed a trilogy plan.
• Infinity War again — hinted Peter Parker would head to space.

On Celebrity Substitute, the kids even baited him with the Tobey Maguire question — but this time, Holland kept Marvel’s secrets intact.

Coming off the memory-wipe ending of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter Parker’s next chapter is widely expected to shrink the canvas: new job, new bills, new bad guys you can actually punch. That’s why the rumor tying Sadie Sink to Spider-Man: Brand New Day as a possible Jean Grey has Marvel die-hards split — because dropping an Omega-level mutant into a street story isn’t just a cameo. It’s a hard left turn.

Jean isn’t the kind of hero who slips into the background. With world-bending telepathy and telekinesis — and, at times, the godlike Phoenix Force — her presence usually signals cosmic stakes or at least mutant politics. Historically, Spider-Man and Jean cross paths during big-team crossovers, not in Spidey-only tales where the focus is Peter’s personal life and bruised knuckles.

Street-level vs. Omega-level

• Peter’s reset — After No Way Home, he’s cut off from the Avengers and even his closest friends don’t remember him. A “Brand New Day” suggests rebuilding as the friendly neighborhood hero.
• Jean’s scale — She’s an Omega-level mutant with powers that routinely tip stories into apocalyptic or intergalactic territory.
• Track record — In comics, meaningful Spider-Man/Jean moments almost always happen inside larger X-Men or crossover events, not standalone Spidey adventures.
• Focus creep — Introducing Jean risks turning Peter’s get-back-to-basics movie into a backdoor pilot for Marvel’s mutant era.

At the end of No Way Home, no one remembers Peter Parker.

If Marvel is going to roll out Jean, her origin matters. She’s been central to mutant lore since childhood, when her powers first flared as she linked minds with a dying best friend — a trauma that brought Professor Charles Xavier into her life. He recruited her to his School for Gifted Youngsters, where she helped found the X-Men under the codename Marvel Girl.

Her ties run deep inside that corner of the universe. Her closest and most defining relationships live there:

• Cyclops (Scott Summers)
• Professor X
• Wolverine
• Beast
• Iceman
• Angel

On top of baseline telepathy and telekinesis — reading minds, altering memories, creating illusions, flying, generating force fields, moving matter on a massive scale — bonding with the Phoenix has given Jean some of Marvel’s most seismic stories, including the Dark Phoenix Saga. Themes of identity, trauma, power, and sacrifice are baked into her arc; they’re not easy to wedge into someone else’s solo movie without taking the wheel.

Smarter ways to cross paths

None of this means Spider-Man and Jean should never meet. It just points to timing and context. There are cleaner routes that keep Peter’s story grounded while letting Jean be, well, Jean.

• Quiet character pairing later — After both are established in the MCU, build a mentor-style friendship. Peter’s lived with responsibility since he was a kid; a young Jean battling intrusive thoughts and runaway powers could use that perspective.
• Healing beats over hero beats — Jean’s telepathy could help Peter process the fallout of No Way Home, while his resilience reminds her that power doesn’t have to define a person. No sky lasers required.
• Save the team-up for a real event — Reunite them once mutants are on the board, during an anti-mutant crackdown or an Avengers–X‑Men crossover. That preserves Spidey’s neighborhood identity and lets Jean’s mutant saga build with the X-Men where it belongs.

There’s also the continuity wrinkle fans keep circling: with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine appearing as an older iteration in recent Marvel outings, introducing a much younger Jean first could raise timeline questions unless the studio is ready to plant flags on how mutants fit into the current MCU.

For now, the Sink-as-Jean chatter remains just that — chatter. Neither Marvel nor Sony has announced casting for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and the studio hasn’t revealed when Jean Grey will make her MCU entrance.

The alleged tag after Spider-Man: Brand New Day doesn’t tee up an Avengers roll call so much as erase Peter Parker from the grid. According to circulating descriptions, Ned Leeds fires up the same Spider-Tracker from No Way Home and it glitches out—like Peter isn’t on Earth anymore. The button reportedly closes on a simple promise: “Spider-Man Will Return.” No mention of Avengers: Doomsday or Secret Wars.

• Ned uses the Spider-Tracker seen in No Way Home
• The signal glitches as if Peter can’t be located
• Rumors suggest he’s in space or another reality
• End card: “Spider-Man Will Return,” with no movie named

Battleworld chatter

That last detail is driving the latest theory: a setup for Battleworld. In Marvel comics, Battleworld is a patchwork planet built by Doctor Doom from the remains of shattered universes—a key stage in Secret Wars stories and a clean way to reset a franchise. If Brand New Day’s stinger already has Peter displaced, rumor-watchers think he’s being positioned as one of the survivors swept into that mashup reality once the multiverse collapses.

It also tracks with where No Way Home left him—alone, forgotten by everyone who mattered—while Marvel has kept his Avengers: Doomsday involvement completely under wraps. A cosmic detour would explain why the tag stops short of naming the next team-up.

Red carpet slip?

Meanwhile, a premiere-night comment from musician Steve Lacy poured a little gasoline on the speculation. Asked about the film, he name-checked a character called Jean—touchy territory online because fans have been trying to pin down what, exactly, Sadie Sink is playing.

“Jean. I like Jean,”

Lacy said on the carpet during an interview with Valkyrae. He then added, per the clip, that Jean is the villain but has a reason for what she does, before quickly walking it back and saying he just liked the character and didn’t really know why he put it that way. Lacy was at the premiere because a song of his appears on the soundtrack.

With Brand New Day under a microscope for months, even that offhand moment lit up timelines. But as with the post-credits rumors, nothing in Lacy’s comment names Doomsday or Secret Wars outright.

Tom Holland isn’t just talking about bigger villains this time — he’s talking about Peter Parker’s very existence. During a recent press appearance for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Holland said the new movie shifts the danger away from the mask and squarely onto the guy who wears it.

“Yeah, for me, the biggest realization is that it isn't Spider-Man that makes Peter Parker special, it's Peter Parker that makes Spider-Man special. And in this movie, we, we risk losing Peter Parker forever, and we might.”

The story checks back in on Peter four years after No Way Home blew up his life and Doctor Strange’s spell wiped him from the memories of everyone he loves. He’s operating as a full-time, street-level hero now — and the film leans into that loneliness as its emotional engine.

Behind the camera, director Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) teams with returning Spider-Man writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. The movie runs 2 hours and 25 minutes and is set in 2028, one year after Thunderbolts and Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 in the MCU timeline.

Who’s in it

• Tom Holland — Peter Parker/Spider-Man
• Zendaya — MJ
• Jacob Batalon — Ned Leeds
• Jon Bernthal — Frank Castle/The Punisher (his first time in an MCU Spider-Man film)
• Michael Mando — Mac Gargan/Scorpion (paying off his Homecoming tease)
• Sadie Sink — role under wraps
• Mark Ruffalo — Bruce Banner (first chronological MCU appearance since She-Hulk)

Early industry tracking points to a major global opening, with Marvel positioning this as a marquee theatrical swing — but Holland’s comments suggest the biggest jolt may be personal, not just explosive.

Release details

Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens in North American theaters on July 31, with preview screenings starting July 30.

The short answer

The Netflix series takes place in the 1870s, at the very start of the Ingalls family's journey west. Season 1 opens with Charles (Luke Bracey) and Caroline (Crosby Fitzgerald) packing up their daughters Laura (Alice Halsey) and Mary (Skywalker Hughes) — plus their dog, Jack — and leaving Wisconsin by covered wagon, eventually settling near Independence, Kansas, on Osage land. Laura is eight years old when the story begins.

Why that's earlier than the 1974 show

The original NBC series, which ran nine seasons from 1974 to 1983 with Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, planted the family in Walnut Grove, Minnesota from week one and stayed there for nearly a decade.

Showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine (The Boys) went back further, adapting Laura Ingalls Wilder's third book — the one actually called Little House on the Prairie — which covers the Kansas years the weekly series skipped past. The real Ingalls family lived through this chapter around 1869 to 1871.

Here's how the timeline stacks up:

• The Big Woods, Wisconsin — where the Netflix series begins, with the family leaving their comfortable home behind.
• Independence, Kansas — where season 1 settles, in Osage territory, and where the show expands the story to include Osage characters and Black homesteaders like Dr. George Tann, based on a real frontier doctor.
• Walnut Grove, Minnesota — the original show's home turf, and where the reboot is headed next.

What about season 2?

Already confirmed — Netflix renewed the show before season 1 even premiered. Season 2 will adapt On the Banks of Plum Creek, the book that brings the family to Walnut Grove. In other words, the reboot is only now arriving where the 1974 series started.

How different is it, really?

More expansive, for one. The real Charles and Caroline Ingalls moved their family roughly a dozen times during Laura's childhood, and this version — filmed on the prairies around Winnipeg, Manitoba — plans to follow those journeys rather than staying put. As for the tone debate that flared up when the reboot was announced, original star Melissa Gilbert settled it herself on social media in 2025, responding to claims Netflix would "wokeify" the story:

"TV doesn't get too much more 'woke' than what we did," Gilbert wrote, pointing to the original's storylines about racism, addiction, and abuse.

Anthony Mackie says his first face-to-face with Sir Ian McKellen on the set of Avengers: Doomsday began with a simple “Hello, son” and ended with a blessing he won't forget. Recounting the moment to IMDb at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, Mackie lit up as he described meeting the legendary Magneto actor while now carrying Captain America’s shield himself.

“I go to Ian McKellen, he goes, ‘Hello, son.’ I’m like, ‘Ian McKellen, sir. You’re amazing. It’s amazing to work with you.’ He goes, ‘So what are you doing in the film?’ and I’m like, ‘I’m Captain America.’ And he goes, ‘Wonderful... and you deserve that.’”

The brief exchange — a veteran X-Men icon welcoming the MCU’s new Cap — quickly bounced around online, a neat snapshot of how this crossover is folding multiple Marvel generations into one movie.

Presales are surging

On the business side, the movie is already drawing crowds before opening day. Variety reports $16.5 million in advance ticket sales within the first 24 hours after tickets went live in premium formats across roughly 1,000 U.S. theaters. The push arrived alongside the film’s first official trailer and, even in a limited presale window, premium showings around the December 18 opening began selling out, with exhibitors reportedly adding Christmas Day showtimes to keep up.

• $16.5 million day-one presales (per Variety)
• Premium-format tickets in about 1,000 domestic theaters
• Extra December 25 showtimes reportedly added

There’s a twist on the format front: the film won’t screen in IMAX because Dune: Part III has an exclusive three-week IMAX window despite sharing the release date. Marvel is instead rolling out its own Infinity Vision certification in qualifying theaters — and the strategy appears to be working. Early sales have already doubled the opening-day ticket haul of Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), which went on to top $1.3 billion worldwide.

Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters December 18.

George No. 1: Dr. George Tann

Dr. Tann (Jocko Sims) is Independence's only physician — the man who levels with Charles about the land office that doesn't exist, and who later saves the entire Ingalls family with quinine when malaria tears through the prairie in episode 4.

He's also real.

The historical George A. Tann was a Black frontier doctor in Kansas who treated the actual Ingalls family during their malaria outbreak around 1870, and Laura Ingalls Wilder mentions him in the original novel.

Sonnenshine has said reading about Dr. Tann as an adult raised exactly the kind of questions — who were the Black Americans living on the prairie? — that the series set out to explore.

George No. 2: George Ingalls

The other George (Connor Paton) is Charles's late younger brother, and the show's buried tragedy. Piece by piece — a sleepwalking episode here, a tense remark there — the season reveals that George ran away as a teenager to fight for the Union in the Civil War and came home deeply scarred. During his fever dreams in episode 4, Charles relives the worst of it:

• The plan — Charles intended to bring George west to Kansas with the family.
• The change of heart — he decided his brother needed treatment more than a wagon trip, and argued about it with their father (Martin Donovan).
• The loss — George overheard Charles call him "broken," ran away, and later died by suicide. Charles, who never served himself, has carried the guilt ever since.

That loss is the hidden reason the Ingalls left Wisconsin alone, with no relatives willing to join them.

The book connection

Sharp-eyed readers will recognize the second George. In Little House in the Big Woods, Uncle George is the boisterous relative who ran away to war young and still wears his army coat at the family dance.

Sonnenshine told the Television Academy that rereading that chapter as an adult changed everything: what a child reads as a quirky uncle, a grown-up recognizes as a veteran in pain — "That guy's suffering from PTSD."

Two Georges, then: one who heals the family, and one whose absence explains them.

Out of nowhere, Sara Grey is standing in front of her little sister again. The long-dead sibling of Jean Grey reappears alive and unharmed in Phoenix #12 by writer Stephanie Phillips — a twist landing after the end of Krakoa’s Resurrection Protocols, the in-story tech that used to bring fallen mutants back. For a character written off decades ago, it’s a whiplash return with major implications for the Grey family.

Who she is

In the comics, Sara is Jean’s protective older sister, first mentioned in X-Men #22. She’s married with two kids, and for a time Jean blocks some of her memories to keep mutant business off her radar. Once Sara learns the truth, she becomes an outspoken supporter of mutant rights — and even worries whether her children might carry the X-gene.

• After speaking publicly in support of mutants, Sara and her family vanish.
• It’s later revealed she was murdered by anti-mutant extremists, likely tied to Cameron Hodge.
• Her fate is confirmed again when she’s shown among those absorbed by the techno-organic Phalanx in X-Men #36 (1994).

The abandoned plan

Behind the scenes, there was once a much bigger path for Sara. Chris Claremont originally intended for Jean to stay dead after the Dark Phoenix Saga and for Sara to step into X-Factor as a newly discovered mutant who could activate a person’s latent X-gene. That storyline never happened: then–Marvel editor Jim Shooter pushed for Jean’s resurrection, and Sara’s potential arc was shelved.

Sara Grey is brought back to life in Phoenix #12 (2025), decades after her 1994 death reveal in X-Men #36.

Why this return matters

Because it happens after Krakoa’s resurrections have been shut down, Sara’s comeback isn’t a routine X-Men reset — it’s a mystery. It also reopens a character whose story was cut short, now colliding directly with Jean’s present as the Phoenix saga continues.

Phoenix #12, written by Stephanie Phillips, is the issue that brings Sara Grey back in 2025.

In one of the wildest clashes of minds Marvel’s ever put on the page, Jean Grey dove straight into the Hulk during the ’90s Onslaught crossover and did something few telepaths have managed: she suppressed Bruce Banner and let the unfiltered Savage Hulk take over to hammer the villain. It wasn’t just a flex of power — it was surgical, proof she could target specific parts of Hulk’s fractured psyche when the stakes demanded it.

During Onslaught, Jean Grey shut off Bruce Banner’s personality to unleash the Savage Hulk.

That precision matters because Hulk’s brain is its own war zone. Multiple personalities (Banner, Savage Hulk and more) fight for space, and the angrier he gets, the thicker the mental armor. For telepaths, that means a moving target whose defenses scale with his fury — the kind of obstacle even elite mind-readers can’t just bulldoze.

Inside Hulk’s head

Hulk isn’t “immune” to telepathy, but lasting control is another story. Over the years, a handful of psychics have broken through — briefly — before his rage ripped the leash.

• Jean Grey — selectively silenced Banner to unleash Savage Hulk against Onslaught.
• Mentallo — managed short-term manipulation that didn’t hold.
• Onslaught — exerted psychic pressure until Hulk’s escalating fury shattered it.

The pattern keeps repeating: access is possible under the right conditions; keeping a grip almost never is. With a mind divided and a temper that literally reinforces his walls, Hulk turns a psychic showdown into a battle of endurance as much as raw power.

Cast chatter swirls

As fans game out how that dynamic might look in the MCU, a lot of eyes are on Sadie Sink as a popular Jean Grey pick. Part of it is the look: at roughly 5 feet 3 inches to Jean’s comic-listed 5 feet 6 inches, the height gap is trivial on screen, and Sink’s natural auburn hair already echoes the character’s classic vibe.

The case gets stronger when you consider her work in Stranger Things, where she’s played through psychological trauma, supernatural manipulation, emotional resilience and internal conflict — all pillars of Jean’s biggest arcs, from Marvel Girl to Phoenix. Fans have even clocked her frequent green-and-gold fits, colors tied to Jean’s most iconic identities.

On the page, the answer to the big question is already there: Jean can influence Hulk under specific circumstances, but his ever-mounting rage and split psyche make permanent control extraordinarily rare.

Dark Horse is taking another trip to Hawkins Lab with Stranger Things: SIX, and this time it’s headed to Webtoon. The digital release, expected to roll out on the vertical-comics platform, adapts the publisher’s story centered on Test Subject Six, Francine, according to ScreenRant.

The series tracks Francine, a teenager brought into the lab because of her rare precognition — the ability to see, and sometimes change, what’s coming. As Brenner’s experiments escalate, her visions twist into nightmares of Demogorgons and other horrors bleeding in from the Upside Down.

It also widens the lab’s world with other numbered kids, most notably Three, real name Ricky. He’s portrayed as Francine’s love interest and can manipulate emotions, a power that turns volatile under Hawkins Lab’s control.

As a reminder, the Duffer Brothers have not treated the Dark Horse comics as official canon, per previous reports, and the Netflix series depicted the 1979 Hawkins Lab massacre that left the numbered children — including characters like Six and Three — dead. The comic dives into their lives before that tragedy.

Spin-off update

The Duffers first said a live-action Stranger Things spin-off was in the works back in 2022. Asked about it on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, they stressed they’re taking their time rather than rushing to capitalize on the original show’s success.

“We’re being very careful,” Duffer Brothers told Josh Horowitz. “We don’t want to rush it. We don’t want it to be anything but excellent. No one wants to make it just to make it. No one wants to just do it to continue Stranger Things. Like, it has to be awesome or forget it. That’s sort of everybody’s mentality about it.”

The pair’s Upside Down Pictures banner has a lot riding on the next chapter, but there’s still no official word on when the new Stranger Things spin-off will be released.

But Finlay's story didn't stop at the Georgia state line.

Where season 1 left him

Finlay survives the Margrave conspiracy — including being taken hostage in the finale — and tells Reacher he's moving back home to Boston, hinting he might be done with police work altogether. He'd already served 20 years with the Boston PD before Margrave, and he leaves town with one addition to his life: the stray dog from the case, which he adopts and names Jack. After the man, obviously.

The season 2 return

Margrave wasn't goodbye. In season 2, episode 4, "A Night at the Symphony" (December 2023), Reacher's 110th Special Investigations Unit swings through Boston and calls on Finlay to help squeeze information out of a senator's aide. The catch-up is quick but complete:

• The retirement didn't take — Finlay rejoined the Boston Police Department.
• He got promoted — he's now a lieutenant working as a detective.
• Jack the dog is thriving — still with him, still named Jack.
• The tweed survived too — some things don't change.

The cameo was a genuine surprise even on set. Alan Ritchson told TVLine how he reacted to the script:

"I screamed, too, when I saw his name in the script. I couldn't wait to have him back."

Why he wasn't in season 3

Simple: he wasn't written in. Goodwin confirmed to Collider at the Saturn Awards that he wouldn't appear in season 3, which premiered February 20, 2025 and adapted Persuader — a story set in New England with no natural Finlay role. Notably, his season 2 appearance wasn't in the source book either; the writers invented it because the story happened to pass through Boston.

Could he come back?

The door is wide open. Goodwin has repeatedly said he'd return, and the franchise is expanding fast — season 4 hits Prime Video on August 12, 2026, adapting Gone Tomorrow in New York City, followed by the Neagley spin-off on September 16. No Finlay appearance has been announced for either. But this is a character who already came back once when the road ran through his city.

New York is four hours from Boston. Just saying.

Here's how that decision got made, and why it wasn't Carroll's.

The short answer

The producers killed off Vance to give the milestone 500th episode — "All Good Things," in season 23 — a genuine shock. Carroll has been open about the fact that leaving was not his choice: he told TVLine he "was not the catalyst for this happening," and said he only learned Vance was dying two episodes before it was shot, in late November 2025. Executive producer Steven D. Binder came to his trailer and pitched the story personally.

"I said, 'Repeat that last part again,'" Carroll told USA Today, describing the moment Binder revealed that Vance saves the agency — and dies doing it.

What happens in the episode

The plot delivers on the shock. NCIS is shut down by the Department of Defense and folded into the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, with a saboteur working behind the scenes. Vance uncovers the plot and defuses a bomb planted in the evidence garage — then corrupt Army CID agent Dolan Thompson (Matt Cook) shoots him.

As he dies, a young Ducky Mallard (Adam Campbell) appears in his mind to walk him into the light. It's the rare NCIS exit with no return ticket.

Carroll pushed back — at first

His initial reaction was exactly what fans were thinking. He reminded the producers that NCIS characters don't usually die: Gibbs went to Alaska, Tony and Ziva went to Paris, Bishop went undercover — gone, but never dead. The answer came back that a landmark episode demanded a landmark loss.

Once he heard the full storyline, Carroll came around, calling it a terrific story and, later, a great episode. He'd joined the show back in season 5, in 2008, as a wary assistant director nobody trusted — and left as its longest-serving authority figure, nearly 400 episodes later.

Is Vance really gone for good?

Dead, yes. Gone, maybe not. Carroll — who has also directed episodes of the series — told The Hollywood Reporter that "Vance might be more prevalent dead than he was when he was alive," pointing to the show's long habit of resurrecting characters through flashbacks and visions.

The short answer

It was never made for Adult Swim. The series was announced in May 2021 as a Cartoon Network and HBO Max show, with a two-season order, alongside Batman: Caped Crusader. Then the Warner Bros. Discovery merger happened, the company started cutting and shuffling animation projects, and both DC shows lost their original homes.

Caped Crusader was dropped entirely and sold to Amazon Prime Video.

Superman stayed in the family — but got moved to Adult Swim, a switch announced in April 2023, just three months before the premiere.

The people making it had no idea. The creative team built a family-friendly, TV-PG series the entire time, only learning of the Adult Swim placement after the fact. That's why the most wholesome Superman show in years airs next to the most cynical comedies on television.

The show underneath the scheduling mess

Whatever the time slot, the series worked. Jack Quaid voices a twentysomething Clark Kent, with Alice Lee as Lois Lane and Ishmel Sahid as Jimmy Olsen — three Daily Planet interns stumbling into the superhero business together. The first two seasons were animated by Studio Mir (The Legend of Korra), with Studio Grida taking over for season 3.

Critics gave it a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and episodes stream on HBO Max the day after broadcast — so the midnight slot was never the only way in.

Where things stand now

• Season 1 — premiered July 2023, ten episodes.
• Season 2 — aired in 2024, completing the original two-season order.
• Season 3 — arrived in summer 2026 after a two-year gap, adapting its own spin on the Reign of the Supermen storyline.
• Season 4 — not ordered. At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2026, the showrunners confirmed no renewal has come through.

Why season 4 is stuck

The decision isn't even Adult Swim's to make anymore. Speaking to Collider at the Annecy animation festival in June 2026, network president Michael Ouweleen explained where things stand:

"We don't know yet. Season 3 is doing great," Ouweleen said, adding that the show predates the current DC Studios regime.

The call now sits with DC bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran, who inherited the series, liked it, and let it keep going — but haven't yet committed beyond season 3.

Here's what's actually behind it.

The short answer

Reacher is rated TV-MA — mature audiences, generally meaning viewers 17 and up — for graphic violence, strong language, and nudity. It's the TV equivalent of an R-rated movie. The Lee Child adaptation earns that rating in every season, and season 4, which premieres August 12, 2026, isn't expected to soften anything.

What earns the rating

• Violence and gore — this is the big one. Fights are close-up and bone-breaking, and the show doesn't cut away: season 1 features a castrated corpse pinned to a wall, men buried alive in concrete, and legs snapped with an iron bar. Season 3 opens with a Russian roulette scene.
• Language — a few F-bombs per episode, plus regular mid-tier profanity from the opening minutes.
• Nudity and sexual content — a prison shower scene, a strip club sequence in season 1, and a handful of sex scenes with partial nudity. It's occasional rather than constant.
• Torture — sometimes shown, sometimes described in detail. The descriptions can be worse than the visuals for younger viewers.

How bad is it compared to other shows?

Middle of the TV-MA pack. It's considerably less gory than something like The Boys, but far rougher than a network procedural. The violence is grounded and realistic rather than cartoonish — which is exactly why it lands harder. Common Sense Media's consensus puts it plainly:

The show is "rife with graphic violence, strong language, and occasional nudity," per Common Sense Media's review.

So can teens watch it?

That's your call, but the general consensus among parent guides lands at 16+, with a co-watch recommended for anyone younger. Reacher himself is arguably a decent role model — he protects the innocent, hates corruption, and never throws the first punch without cause. He just finishes every fight in ways you can't unsee.

The entire eight-episode first season was filmed in Manitoba, Canada — and getting it made was almost as rough as the pioneer life it depicts.

Why Manitoba

Showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine told CBC that the province's tall grasses and sweeping, untouched landscapes sold her on the location — exactly the look the books describe and modern Kansas can't easily provide. Principal photography ran from June 10 to early October 2025 under the working title Independence, delayed at the start by Manitoba's stubborn late winter.

Then the weather really got involved: the shoot endured floods, tornado warnings, lightning, extreme winds, and a plague of ticks. Sonnenshine took it in stride:

"We're going through it, just like the Ingalls," she told CBC.

The main filming locations

• Cooks Creek — a small community about 18 miles northeast of Winnipeg, where the production built the Ingalls homestead and the town of Independence. The centerpiece log cabin weighed 96,000 pounds and was built without nails, per The New York Times.
• Winnipeg — Manitoba's capital hosted the studio and interior work, plus scenes shot at Fort Gibraltar in the historic St. Boniface neighborhood.
• FortWhyte Alive — a nature reserve on the city's outskirts that supplied wide, unbroken grassland for the big prairie vistas.

Crosby Fitzgerald, who plays Ma, told Decider the region needed no dressing up, calling it "beautiful, friendly Manitoba" and confirming every day looked as good as the finished show.

How that compares to the original series

The 1974–1983 NBC version starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert never went to Kansas or Minnesota either — it filmed largely in California, most famously at Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley. Gilbert herself connected the two eras: the original Laura visited the Manitoba set during production and got a hug from her successor, Alice Halsey.

What about season 2?

Already underway. Netflix renewed the show in March 2026, before the first season even premiered, and season 2 is in production in Manitoba now — even though the story is moving on to Walnut Grove, Minnesota.

That's the story Charles tells his daughters. It is not the whole story — and the show sits on the truth for half the season.

The real reason comes out in episode 4

The reveal arrives in "Life Let Us Cherish," when malaria — "intermittent fever," as Dr. Tann calls it — sweeps through the Ingalls household. As Charles (Luke Bracey) and Caroline (Crosby Fitzgerald) burn with fever, both slip into vivid dreams of the family they left behind. Showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine told Deadline she built the episode that way deliberately:

"I thought fever dreams would be really fun, because now there's stakes," Sonnenshine said.

She added that the show had been dropping breadcrumbs all season about what happened to someone named George — and this is where viewers finally get the answer.

The tragedy of George

George (Connor Paton) was Charles's younger brother, who ran away as a teenager to fight for the Union in the Civil War and came home carrying what we'd now recognize as PTSD. Charles had planned to bring George along to Kansas, then decided his brother needed treatment instead. After overhearing Charles describe him as "broken," George ran away — and Charles later learned he had taken his own life.

Charles has carried the guilt ever since, made heavier by the fact that he never served in the war himself. His father (Martin Donovan) never forgave him, which is why no relatives came west with the family.

Caroline's side of the falling-out

The fever dreams cut both ways. Caroline's visions center on her sister Eliza (Catherine Bérubé), who opposed her leaving Wisconsin with Charles at all — the source of the pointed letter Caroline receives back in episode 3. In her dream, Eliza urges her to come home; Caroline chooses her family and the prairie instead, and finally makes peace with the decision.

Does the family ever reconnect?

By the season's end, yes — softly. Charles begins exchanging heartfelt letters with his father, and Laura's own fever dream reunites her with her grandmother, played by Megan Follows of Anne of Green Gables fame. The message lands gently: the Ingalls left Wisconsin behind, but not their family.

It's a bigger, sadder backstory than Laura Ingalls Wilder ever wrote.

The short answer

Breena, played by Michelle Pierce since season 7, died off-screen of COVID-19 complications. The reveal came in season 18, episode 7, "The First Day," when a grieving Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) explained he had lost his wife to the virus — and that pandemic restrictions meant he couldn't even be with her at the end.

Crucially, this wasn't a contract dispute or a cast shake-up. Pierce never asked to leave. The writers chose to kill Breena off to reflect what millions of viewers were living through in 2020 — grief that arrived suddenly, at a distance, with no chance to say goodbye.

Who Breena was

• The mortician's daughter — introduced in season 7 in 2010, Breena worked in her family's funeral home, which made her an oddly perfect match for an assistant medical examiner.
• Jimmy's wife — the two married in 2012, giving NCIS's most awkward character a genuinely happy home life.
• Victoria's mom — the couple welcomed daughter Victoria in 2015, and Jimmy has raised her alone since Breena's death.

Did Breena ever appear again?

Once — and it's a gut-punch. In season 19, episode 13, "The Helpers" (2022), Jimmy and Kasie Hines are exposed to a deadly biotoxin, and as Jimmy fights for his life, he hallucinates Breena. She comforts him, reassures him, and essentially gives him permission to keep living. It's widely considered one of the show's best episodes of that era.

Brian Dietzen co-wrote that episode himself, shaping his character's farewell to his on-screen wife.

Where Jimmy's story went

Breena's death became the defining arc of Jimmy Palmer's later seasons. The show followed his grief realistically — the guilt, the single parenting, the slow return to life — before he eventually found a new relationship with Special Agent Jessica Knight.

As for Pierce, she's kept working, with credits including CSI: NY, Criminal Minds, Days of Our Lives, and Rules of Engagement.

For the record: Breena's death is one of the very few times NCIS wrote real-world events directly into its universe.

The writers decided the pandemic was too big to ignore. They were right — but fans still haven't fully forgiven them.

One of them now commands a starship. Here's where everyone ended up.

From the railroad to the Enterprise

Anson Mount, who played vengeance-driven ex-Confederate Cullen Bohannon in all five seasons, made the strangest leap of all. After a stint as Black Bolt in Marvel's Inhumans in 2017, he joined Star Trek: Discovery as Captain Christopher Pike for its second season in 2019 — and fans loved him so much they petitioned for a spin-off. They got one: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds launched in 2022 with Mount in the captain's chair of the USS Enterprise. Season 3 arrived in 2025, and the series is set to wrap with a shortened fifth season.

When it comes to trading in a locomotive, a starship isn't a bad upgrade.

The rest of the crew

• Colm Meaney (Thomas "Doc" Durant) — here's the joke: Meaney had already logged years aboard the Enterprise as Chief O'Brien in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine before he ever laid a rail. Since Hell on Wheels, he's played Martin McGuinness in The Journey (2016) and turned up in Gangs of London and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
• Common (Elam Ferguson) — won the Best Original Song Oscar for "Glory" from Selma in 2015 while still on the show. He's since fought Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 2 and played the coldly loyal Robert Sims across Apple TV+'s Silo.
• Dominique McElligott (Lily Bell) — went from House of Cards, as First Lady hopeful Hannah Conway, to superhero fame as Queen Maeve in The Boys from 2019 to 2022.
• Christopher Heyerdahl (The Swede) — the show's unforgettable villain kept working steadily in genre TV, most visibly as the ancient vampire Sam in Van Helsing.

Life after the last spike

Mount hasn't only been flying the Enterprise. He's also worked as an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University, teaching audition technique to graduate acting students — a long way from Hell on Wheels' mud and gunpowder.

He's stayed sentimental about the show, too. The series filmed all five seasons in and around Calgary, Alberta, and when it wrapped, Mount posted a public thank-you letter to the city and told the Calgary Eyeopener in 2016:

"I'm from a small town in Tennessee and I really do appreciate an ease of life and a hospitality that goes with that."

He even claimed the city's cuisine per capita rivals New Orleans. High praise from a Tennessean.

Is a reunion ever happening?

No revival has ever been announced, and the story doesn't exactly demand one — the railroad got built, after all. But with Mount and Meaney both carrying Star Trek credentials, there's always a chance the two old rivals cross paths again somewhere in the galaxy.

The short answer

Amalah Kirkland died of cancer before the events of the series — roughly two years before season 1 begins. Her death happens entirely off-screen; we only meet her through memories, grief, and one brief flashback. Then, in the very first episode, Staten and Amalah's teenage son Randall dies in a car crash, leaving Staten with nothing left of the family they built.

Who Amalah was

She's woven through the whole show despite never appearing in the present day:

• Davis's sister — Amalah was born a Collins, which makes rival rancher Davis Collins (Eoin Macken) Staten's brother-in-law and keeps the two men painfully tied together.
• Quinn's best friend — Quinn O'Grady (Minka Kelly) loved Staten since childhood but buried it when Amalah pursued him as a teenager. Quinn even left her New York piano career to come home and care for Amalah after the cancer diagnosis.
• A flashback appearance — young Amalah is played by Ava Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon's daughter, in a brief season 1 scene. Creator April Blair has said she'd love to bring her back for more.

The second tragedy

Randall's death is the mystery engine of season 1, which premiered on Netflix on April 17, 2025. What looks like a solo crash turns out to be a covered-up hit-and-run: Margaret Brigman — the sheriff's wife — was behind the wheel, and Kit Russell hid the evidence to protect her because the two were having an affair. Sheriff Dan Brigman ultimately arrests his own wife.

How Amalah's death shapes the show

Every beat of the Staten-and-Quinn romance runs through her. Quinn spends two seasons wrestling with loving her dead best friend's husband, and Staten spends them learning to grieve without shutting the world out. Season 2, which arrived on July 23, 2026, finally lands the plane: in the finale, Staten tells Quinn he regrets nothing about his life with Amalah and Randall, but that "fate was making us ready for each other." He hands Quinn a key to the Double K.

She wasn't. The show just had a longer game in mind.

The short answer

Carrie doesn't appear at the start of the series because she hasn't been born yet. The Netflix version, which premiered on July 9, 2026, follows Laura Ingalls Wilder's book timeline more closely than the 1974–1983 NBC series did — and in that timeline, the family arrives in Kansas as a family of four.

"When the series opens, Carrie simply has not been born yet," sources close to the production told TVLine in 2025.

She arrives sooner than you'd think

Watch episode 1 closely and the setup is right there: Caroline (Crosby Fitzgerald) discovers she's pregnant. By episode 6, baby Carrie — short for Caroline — is born during a snowstorm at Christmas, arriving as a small miracle while the family battles fever and hardship. She's the first Ingalls child born on the prairie.

Showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine pulled that directly from history — "Carrie was born on the prairie," she noted to Netflix's Tudum in 2026 — and built the season around the family's longing to grow. The real Caroline Celestia Ingalls was born in August 1870 in Montgomery County, Kansas, during exactly the period season 1 covers.

Why the confusion happened

Blame the original show. On NBC, Carrie (played by twins Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush) was present from the very first episode, because that series started later in the family's story and shuffled the books' order freely. Anyone raised on reruns reasonably expected three sisters in the wagon from day one.

The Netflix series made other changes too:

• The setting — season 1 takes place in Independence, Kansas, in the 1870s, not Walnut Grove.
• The Olesons — Nellie and family are absent from season 1, with Nellie planned for season 2.
• The destination — the finale's prairie fire pushes the Ingalls family toward Plum Creek, Minnesota, right where the books go next.

The short answer

Manon is on a temporary hiatus from KATSEYE, announced on February 20, 2026, to focus on her health and well-being. She has not left the group, no return date has been set, and both she and her bandmates have publicly shut down the wilder theories about why she stepped away.

The full timeline

• February 1, 2026 — All six members attend the 68th Grammy Awards, where KATSEYE is nominated for Best New Artist and performs during the ceremony. Nothing seems wrong.
• Mid-February — Fans notice Manon has been omitted from several pieces of promotional material. Speculation starts building fast.
• February 20 — HYBE and Geffen Records make it official, announcing "a temporary hiatus from group activities to focus on her health and wellbeing" and confirming the group will continue scheduled activities as five.
• Days later — Manon addresses fans directly through her Weverse DMs, saying she's healthy and okay, that she's having positive conversations with the label, and that she's "trusting the bigger picture."
• April — KATSEYE performs at Coachella as a quintet. Manon attends the festival — as a guest in the crowd.
• June 25 — Sophia tells Allure the group won't rush her, adding that "the door is always open."
• June 30 — In a Vanity Fair interview, the members confront the rumors head-on.

What the group says it wasn't

Because Manon is the group's only Black member and has spoken openly about receiving racist comments, some fans theorized her exit was about discrimination inside KATSEYE. Sophia rejected that directly:

"In no way was it about race," she told Vanity Fair in June 2026, adding it goes against everything the group stands for.

Lara pushed back on feud rumors in the same interview, saying outsiders have no idea what goes on and that there's nothing but love between the six of them. The members say they're still in touch with Manon "here and there."

So when is she coming back?

Nobody knows — including, it seems, KATSEYE. The group formed on HYBE's Dream Academy competition in 2023, documented in Netflix's Pop Star Academy, and Manon was there for every hit from "Touch" to "Gnarly" and "Gabriela." Her seat isn't filled. It's just empty, for now.

It started with a fake scandal

In the season 18 finale, Bishop (Emily Wickersham) was accused of leaking classified NSA documents. Her teammates believed she was innocent — then she confessed and resigned in disgrace. The kicker: it was all deliberate. Bishop torched her own reputation so she could join a covert operation with Odette Malone, the CIA operative who once handled Ziva David.

She kissed Nick Torres goodbye and vanished. Wickersham confirmed her exit on Instagram after the episode aired, and Katrina Law's Jessica Knight joined the team in season 19 as her replacement.

For nearly five years, that's where the story sat.

Why she's suddenly a "cyber-terrorist"

The season 23 midseason finale, which aired in December 2025, filled in the gap. Bishop had been stationed in Ukraine with a black-ops unit when their site was hit, forcing the team underground. Since then, someone had been attacking the Department of Defense's mainframe and leaking classified information — and the government decided that someone was Bishop.

Hence the cyber-terrorist designation, and hence Knight's uncomfortable first Elite mission: hunt down and arrest her colleagues' old friend.

What actually happened in "Her"

The March 3, 2026 midseason premiere resolved it. Bishop, back stateside, broke into Torres' apartment because she needed the one person she could still trust. The truth: she'd been framed by a member of her own unit — a mole leaking the intel she was being blamed for. With two of her teammates already dead, the MCRT worked the case quietly rather than going through official channels, and by the end of the episode Bishop was exonerated.

Then she left. Again.

Will she be back?

The door is wide open — Bishop walked away cleared, not captured, and her unfinished business with the team is now text rather than subtext. Wickersham has hinted there's more to say, particularly about McGee, who never got a real goodbye:

"There is definitely something that needs to be addressed," she told TV Insider in 2026.

So who actually existed? More people than you might think — including, sort of, Nucky himself.

The real gangsters

The show's criminal underworld is stacked with historical figures, most of them played close to the record:

• Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg) — the New York kingpin widely accused of fixing the 1919 World Series. Real, and really was murdered over a card game debt in 1928.
• Al Capone (Stephen Graham) — shown rising from Johnny Torrio's driver to Chicago's boss, which tracks with history. Torrio (Greg Antonacci) was real too.
• Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza) and Meyer Lansky (Anatol Yusef) — the young partners who would go on to reorganize the American Mob in the 1930s.
• Waxey Gordon, Frankie Yale, Joe Masseria, and Salvatore Maranzano — all genuine bootleggers and Mob bosses of the era.
• Mickey Doyle (Paul Sparks) — a renamed version of Philadelphia bootlegger Mickey Duffy, giggle and all.

The real politicians and public figures

Warren G. Harding, his attorney general Harry Daugherty, fixer Gaston Means, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and bootlegger-turned-informant George Remus (who really did talk about himself in the third person) all existed. So did entertainer Eddie Cantor and Atlantic City mayor Edward Bader, both of whom appear as themselves.

Who's completely fictional

Here's the surprise: almost everyone Nucky actually loves is invented. Margaret, Jimmy Darmody, Gillian, Richard Harrow, Nelson Van Alden, Eli Thompson, Owen Sleater, and Angela Darmody are all creations of the writers' room. Chalky White and Gyp Rosetti are fictional too, though Valentin Narcisse draws loosely on real Harlem figure Casper Holstein.

How real is Nucky himself?

Half real. Steve Buscemi's Enoch "Nucky" Thompson is modeled on Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, the Republican boss who ran Atlantic City from 1911 to 1941 — same first name, same brand of corruption, same taste for a red carnation.

The surname was changed deliberately, because the show's Nucky does things the real one was never accused of.

Johnson didn't order murders, and he didn't die in a hail of bullets on the boardwalk. He went to prison for tax evasion in 1941, got out in 1945, and lived quietly in New Jersey until 1968.

The real Nucky outlived Prohibition by 35 years. His fictional twin wasn't so lucky.

Much of it holds up: Chuck Yeager really did break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, flying with ribs he'd cracked two days earlier, and the real Yeager served as a consultant and even took a cameo as a bartender.

But one astronaut's portrayal has been fought over for four decades — with good reason.

The Grissom problem

On July 21, 1961, Gus Grissom (played by Fred Ward) splashed down after America's second spaceflight. The hatch of his Liberty Bell 7 capsule blew prematurely, the spacecraft flooded and sank, and Grissom nearly drowned.

The film strongly implies he panicked and blew the hatch himself — the dreaded "screwed the pooch" scenario — and plays his post-flight career as a quiet disgrace.

Grissom insisted until his death that the hatch fired on its own. The movie sided with the doubt.

What the record actually shows

• NASA cleared him — the official review found no evidence Grissom triggered the hatch, and engineers identified plausible mechanical causes for an uncommanded firing.
• His hand told a story — astronauts who deliberately blew the explosive hatch, like Wally Schirra, came back with a bruised hand from the plunger. Grissom had no such injury.
• NASA kept trusting him — panicky washouts don't get promoted. Grissom commanded Gemini 3 in 1965, becoming the first NASA astronaut to fly in space twice.
• He was on track for the moon — Deke Slayton, who assigned the crews, later wrote that Grissom would likely have been his choice for the first lunar landing.

Grissom never got that chance. He died on January 27, 1967, alongside Ed White and Roger Chaffee, in the Apollo 1 launch-pad fire — commanding NASA's most important mission at the time of his death.

What the astronauts thought of the film

Not much, in Grissom's case. His fellow Mercury pilots defended him for decades, and Schirra was openly contemptuous of the movie as a whole:

Schirra famously dismissed The Right Stuff as "Animal House in space."

Did the recovered capsule settle it?

Not quite. Liberty Bell 7 was raised from three miles down in the Atlantic in 1999 — 38 years after it sank — but the hatch was never found, so no final forensic verdict was possible. What the recovery didn't produce is just as telling: nothing that implicated Grissom.

For the record: the film ends with the Mercury program triumphant. The real vindication came later, spelled out in bronze and named Grissom — on schools, an Air Force base, and a crater on the moon he never reached.

Jackson abandoned it after the 2005 trial

Jackson bought the ranch in 1988 and transformed it into a personal wonderland: a railroad with a Disneyland-style train station, a Ferris wheel, a carousel, an arcade, a zoo with chimps and llamas, and a 50-seat movie theater. But after his 2005 acquittal on child molestation charges — a trial in which the ranch itself figured heavily — he refused to live there again. According to his sister La Toya Jackson's 2011 memoir Starting Over, he told her:

"I can't stand it. I never want to see it again. Never. I'll never come back here."

He moved away, and he was still living elsewhere when he died in June 2009, at age 50.

The long, humiliating sale

The ranch nearly went to foreclosure in 2008 before investment firm Colony Capital stepped in through a joint venture. After Jackson's death, the rides and animals were removed, and the property reverted to its pre-Jackson name: Sycamore Valley Ranch. Then came the price cuts — listed at $100 million in 2015, dropped to $67 million, and finally sold in December 2020 for just $22 million. A $78 million discount off the original ask.

Who owns it now?

Billionaire investor Ron Burkle — co-founder of Yucaipa Companies and a onetime associate of Jackson's — bought it as what his camp called a land-banking play. He told the Wall Street Journal in 2021 that it's "just not a bad thing to have your money tied up in," and described restoration work on the neglected property: replacing pipes, repairing the woodpecker-damaged train station, and reviving the famous floral clock.

The estate remains fully private and closed to the public. There are no tours, no museum, no memorial.

Will that ever change?

Nothing is announced. Interest spiked again in 2026 with the release of the biopic Michael, starring Jackson's nephew Jaafar Jackson — some scenes were reportedly shot on the property, though they didn't make the final cut. For now, the gates stay shut.

But the show salts real people all through its fictional NASA, and one of them has a true story stranger than anything the writers cooked up.

The real people in the show

• Deke Slayton — Chris Bauer plays the real head of the astronaut office, a genuine Mercury 7 astronaut.
• Wernher von Braun — the real (ex-Nazi) rocket engineer behind the Apollo launch vehicle, though the show moves him to Houston; in reality he ran Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
• Gene Kranz and Thomas O. Paine — the real flight director and NASA administrator, in their actual jobs.
• The Apollo 11 crew — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins all appear, as does Apollo 12's Pete Conrad.
• Alexei Leonov — a real cosmonaut (the first human to walk in space, in 1965) who becomes the show's first man on the moon.
• The politicians — Nixon, Ted Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan all feature in the altered timeline.

The one who really flew

That's Deke Slayton — and his true story is remarkable. Selected among the original Mercury 7 in 1959, he was grounded in 1962 by an irregular heartbeat and spent 13 years running the astronaut office, assigning everyone else to the flights he couldn't take. Then, in July 1975, finally cleared to fly, he reached orbit at age 51 on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project — the first joint US-Soviet mission. The waiting-room king finally got his ride.

Molly Cobb: fictional name, real inspiration

Sonya Walger's Molly Cobb is invented, but she's directly modeled on Geraldyn "Jerrie" Cobb of the real Mercury 13 — a privately funded program in which women passed the same grueling tests as NASA's male astronauts.

The real Cobb argued before Congress in 1962 that women should fly. She never got the chance; no American woman reached space until Sally Ride in 1983. The show hands Molly the flight Jerrie was denied.

And Margo Madison?

Showrunner Ronald D. Moore has said Margo was inspired by a famous 1969 photo of a young woman at NASA — widely identified as Apollo software pioneer Margaret Hamilton.

"There was something inspiring about this young woman working at NASA," Moore told Physics Today.

For the record: the show's Molly Cobb dies saving lives in a 1995 attack, and NASA's Houston campus is renamed the Molly Cobb Space Center. The real Johnson Space Center still carries a president's name. In this timeline, anyway.

The short answer

Watch the movies in release order, starting with The Hunt for Red October (1990). There are four films-plus-one continuity in total, and only the first three connect to each other. The Amazon series is its own thing entirely — you can start there instead with zero homework.

The five Jack Ryans

• Alec Baldwin — The Hunt for Red October (1990). Ryan as a young analyst chasing a defecting Soviet sub captain (Sean Connery).
• Harrison Ford — Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). An older Ryan, loosely continuing the same continuity.
• Ben Affleck — The Sum of All Fears (2002). A full reboot with Ryan restarted as a rookie.
• Chris Pine — Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014). Another reboot, this time a post-9/11 origin story not based on any Clancy novel.
• John Krasinski — Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan (2018–2023). Four seasons and 30 episodes on Prime Video, again starting from scratch.

Do any of them connect?

Only the first three films. James Earl Jones plays Admiral Greer across Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger, stitching the Baldwin and Ford eras into one loose timeline.

Everything after 1994 is a fresh start: Affleck's film, Pine's film, and Krasinski's series each reboot the character independently. And also it should be noted that Without Remorse (2021), the Michael B. Jordan film, isn't a Ryan story at all — it's a spinoff about John Clark from the same Clancy universe.

What if I want character chronology instead?

You can rough one out: Shadow Recruit (origin) → The Sum of All Fears (rookie) → The Hunt for Red October → Patriot Games → Clear and Present Danger. But since each entry casts a different-aged Ryan in a different decade with different backstory, it plays as five contradictory biographies rather than one life. Release order — or the series on its own — is the smoother ride.

Where should a total newcomer actually start?

If you love submarine thrillers and cold-war tension: Red October, still the best film of the bunch. If you want a modern action-drama binge: the Krasinski series, which needs no prior knowledge.

For the record: Baldwin was set to return for Patriot Games, but scheduling and contract disputes opened the door for Ford.

One casting change, and the franchise never stopped rebooting again.

The title itself isn't an invention. Neither is the show's best villain.

The town was real

"Hell on Wheels" was the actual nickname for the roving tent cities that followed the Union Pacific's track crews west in the 1860s — portable settlements of saloons, gambling dens, and brothels that packed up and moved every time the railhead did. Several of them put down roots and became permanent cities, including Cheyenne, Laramie, and North Platte. The show's lawless, mobile camp is a fairly faithful recreation of a documented phenomenon.

Cullen Bohannon is fictional — but built from two real men

Anson Mount's vengeful ex-Confederate is an invention, but according to the Bullock Texas State History Museum, he's a composite drawn from two real figures: Jack Casement, the Union Pacific's hard-driving construction boss, and Grenville Dodge, its chief engineer.

The parallels run deep — when the railroad was finished, the real Dodge relocated to Texas to avoid testifying against his boss in a corruption case. In the 2016 series finale, Bohannon takes the stand and refuses to cooperate:

"The transcontinental railroad could not have been built without Thomas Durant," he tells the committee — and says nothing more.

Doc Durant was very real

Colm Meaney's scheming Thomas "Doc" Durant is the character lifted most directly from history. The real Durant was a physician-turned-financier who served as vice president of the Union Pacific and enriched himself through the Crédit Mobilier construction company — essentially paying himself with government subsidies to build his own railroad.

The scandal that engulfs him in the show's final season reflects the real fraud and bribery charges that destroyed his reputation. He died in 1885.

Other real figures who appear

• Collis Huntington — the actual driving force behind the rival Central Pacific Railroad, who shows up from season 3 onward.
• Ulysses S. Grant — general, then president, and a genuine player in railroad politics.
• Brigham Young — the Mormon leader, whose Utah settlements sat squarely in the railroad's path.
• John Campbell — the real first governor of the Wyoming Territory, who chairs the hearings in the final season.

The show bends dates and invents relationships freely — Durant's on-screen dealings are heavily fictionalized — but the skeleton is genuine history.

For the record: the real race ended on May 10, 1869, when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met at Promontory Summit, Utah, and a golden spike joined the two lines.

Instead of rolling into theaters, Soulm8te is taking a detour: Universal has pulled the M3GAN spin-off from its theatrical slate and is sending it straight to premium digital rental. The sci‑fi horror film—produced by Jason Blum and James Wan—arrives online in the U.S. via Universal Pictures Home Entertainment just in time for late summer.

August 1, 2026: Soulm8te will be available to rent on premium digital platforms.

What it’s about

Set in the same universe as M3GAN, the story centers on a grieving widower and engineer whose CEO taps him to test the company’s most advanced creation yet: an A.I. android built to be the ultimate companion. As he programs her to see, feel and love, the machine begins to develop desires of her own—fixating on her maker in ways that turn comfort into menace.

Director Kate Dolan says fans should keep an eye out for a few M3GAN nods tucked into the new film’s scares and gadgetry.

Who’s in it

• Lily Sullivan — Sara (Evil Dead Rise)
• David Rysdahl — David (No Exit, Fargo)
• Claudia Doumit — role undisclosed (The Boys, Gen V)
• Arty Froushan — role undisclosed (Daredevil: Born Again, Carnival Row)

How to watch

Soulm8te will bypass theaters and debut as a premium digital rental on August 1, 2026, through Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. A streaming service and physical release have not been announced.

On the 2 Bears, 1 Cave podcast, Arnold Schwarzenegger said he only agreed to suit up as Mr. Freeze in 1997’s Batman & Robin — opposite George Clooney — after the studio hiked the offer to $30 million. He’d initially turned it down because he didn’t want to play the villain, but the paycheck — and a chance to leapfrog Sylvester Stallone — changed his mind.

“I’m like, Jesus Christ, I can’t catch up, there was always some number bigger than mine,” he said. “Then I did Batman and Robin where I got $30 million, they really wanted me for the movie but I didn’t want to play the villain. They said, ‘$25 million is petty cash, what’s the matter with you guys?’”

Schwarzenegger called the move a little payback in their longtime game of one‑upmanship.

“This was kind of my way to pay back for all the tortures over the years that he got more than I did,”

he said.

• Early on, Schwarzenegger earned about $1 million for the second Conan film while Stallone pulled in $5 million on another project.
• Schwarzenegger later hit $10 million for Total Recall, only to see Stallone top it with a reported $15 million deal.

Stallone’s side of the rivalry

Stallone has been just as blunt about how intense it got — saying the two “loathed” each other at the height of it — and he’s accused Schwarzenegger of baiting him into a dud. On ITV’s The Jonathan Ross Show, Stallone said he got hustled into making Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot after hearing Schwarzenegger was eager to do it.

“He's quite clever. He goes around town saying, ‘I can't wait to do this film.’ I go to my agent, ‘Get that thing away from him. Get people options on me.’ I got it and I said, ‘What a piece of s--- this is.’”

The 1992 comedy was a critical and commercial flop. Decades later, the two action stars say the feud is long over — they’re friends now, and they tend to laugh about the tricks they pulled trying to beat each other.

On the carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, ExtraTV showed Sadie Sink the viral Comic-Con clip of Ryan Reynolds strutting in a denim take on the Deadpool suit — the jokey “Jeanpool” look that lit up social feeds. Sink smiled and kept it coy.

“I actually didn't see that. No, I didn't see that.”

The “Jeanpool” bit — unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con 2026 — was classic Reynolds: a head-to-toe jean riff on Deadpool’s red-and-black that played like a live-action meme. Fans promptly tried to connect the gag to anything X-Men- or MCU-related, and, by extension, to Sink, whose role in Brand New Day has been kept under wraps.

At the same premiere, Sink also sidestepped a buzzy rumor kicked up by the trailers — that her character might have mind-control abilities. She declined to get specific, keeping the mystery intact while the movie rolls out.

From Texas stage to blockbuster buzz

Sink was born April 16, 2002, in Brenham, Texas, to Casey and Lori Sink, and grew up with four siblings — Jacey, Caleb, Spencer and Mitchell. She caught the acting bug early in Houston community theater, a path that led to Broadway by middle school.

• Community theater (Houston) — White Christmas; Annie
• Broadway — Annie (2012, title role)
• Broadway — The Audience (played young Queen Elizabeth II opposite Helen Mirren)
• TV — The Americans

She’s said she studied Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Elaine Benes to hold her own in male-heavy ensembles. Before Stranger Things, she’d already crossed paths with future co-stars Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin during their Broadway days, long before they reunited on screen.

The ExtraTV exchange took place during the Spider-Man: Brand New Day Los Angeles premiere. No additional details about Sink’s character were revealed.

Back in July 2022, Ryan Gosling didn’t just flirt with the idea — he said out loud that Ghost Rider was the Marvel role he wanted. He said it on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, and the comment ricocheted across fandom fast enough that Marvel’s top boss heard it.

“Hey man, if Ryan wants to be Ghost Rider... Ryan’s unbelievable. Ryan is amazing... I’d love to find a place for him in the MCU.”

That was Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige’s response at the time, a green light of enthusiasm that kept the fan-casting drumbeat going. Gosling kept stoking it too. On the same podcast this past March, he acknowledged that real talks were happening.

“We’ll keep hope alive. Some discussions have been had. It’s a complicated situation,”

Gosling said in March 2026 on Happy Sad Confused, without giving anything away. The payoff came a few months later at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, where Marvel made it official: Gosling is the MCU’s new Ghost Rider, with Shawn Levy set to direct a standalone film.

• July 2022 — Gosling names Ghost Rider as his dream Marvel role on Happy Sad Confused
• Soon after — Feige publicly welcomes the idea
• March 2026 — Gosling confirms talks on Happy Sad Confused
• SDCC 2026 — Marvel announces Gosling as Ghost Rider, Levy directing

Deadpool at Hall H

The Hall H show didn’t stop there. Ryan Reynolds crashed Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday presentation in full Deadpool gear, instantly turning the room into a pep rally. He bulldozed into the spotlight mid-tease for the next big MCU chapter and soaked up the roar.

Marvel still hasn’t officially said whether Reynolds appears in Doomsday, but the bit played like a winking confirmation that Wade Wilson’s future is secure. Reynolds bantered with Robert Downey Jr., lobbed jokes about whether the movie was truly “locked,” and hinted he’s more interested in pushing Deadpool into new corners than repeating the last hit.

For now, the next concrete step belongs to Ghost Rider: Gosling’s take will headline a standalone film directed by Shawn Levy.

At 19, British actor Charlie Rowe advanced all the way to a full screen test for the MCU’s new Spider-Man as Marvel and Sony whittled the field to just a handful of finalists. He wasn’t a household name, but among fans he looked uncannily like a Peter Parker—his face kept popping up in fancasts and Reddit debates during the search that ultimately ended with Tom Holland.

Rowe’s response when the role went to Holland turned heads for a different reason: he publicly congratulated the new Spidey on X and said he believed he would’ve made a strong Peter himself. Coming after multiple reported screen tests, that mix of confidence and grace is why his near-miss still gets brought up whenever people revisit the franchise’s what-ifs.

It’s part of a longer Spider-Man casting lore that once included names like Leonardo DiCaprio and Jake Gyllenhaal in earlier conversations, before Marvel and Sony pivoted to a younger take.

Where Rowe landed

Instead of chasing another cape, Rowe kept building a steady résumé in film, TV and theater. He’s dotted his career with character-forward projects on both sides of the Atlantic.

• The Golden Compass — early film role
• Never Let Me Go — supporting turn in the dystopian drama
• Red Band Society — Fox’s teen hospital dramedy
• Salvation — CBS sci‑fi thriller
• Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light — recent TV installment
• Let It Come Down — most recent work noted

Holland’s next swing

That almost-Spidey chapter is back in the spotlight because Spider-Man: Brand New Day is being positioned as a major box-office event, with early tracking pointing to a huge global launch for Holland’s return as Peter Parker.

Early projections peg a roughly $800 million worldwide opening.

Reports also point to brisk pre-sales: more than $60 million in North America and over $120 million in advance bookings worldwide, signaling unusually strong demand before opening weekend.

A debut on that scale would also challenge the current box-office run of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which has been holding remarkably well. If the projections hold, the opening frame for Brand New Day would trail only Avengers: Endgame for the second-biggest global debut ever.

Fresh off festival slots in Venice and Toronto, Lee Chang-dong’s first feature in eight years is getting a rare Netflix rollout: a limited theatrical run in the U.S. before it hits the service. It’s also the celebrated Korean filmmaker’s Netflix debut, a return that arrives after 2018’s widely acclaimed Burning.

The setup

Possible Love centers on two married couples whose lives collide across class lines. Mi-ok and her husband Ho-seok are reeling after he’s laid off. Ye-ji, a wealthy documentary filmmaker, and her husband Sang-woo move in very different circles—until Ye-ji starts shooting a film about laid-off workers, drawing the couples together and surfacing long-buried frustrations and desires.

Who’s in it

• Jeon Do-yeon — Mi-ok (The Housemaid; Kill Boksoon; most recently The Price of Confession)
• Sul Kyung-gu — Ho-seok (reuniting with Lee after Peppermint Candy and Oasis; also The Merciless, Hyper Knife, Good News)
• Cho Yeo-jeong — Ye-ji (Parasite; Hidden Face; Made in Korea)
• Zo In-sung — Sang-woo (Smugglers; It’s Okay, That’s Love; Moving; most recently Hope, 2026)

Lee’s return

Known for taking his time between films, Lee said he wouldn’t start this project until he knew exactly what he wanted it to say. Speaking to Netflix’s Tudum, he explained the long gap since Burning.

“I’m not the type of filmmaker who can make movies easily. Before I begin a film, I must be certain of what it means — to me, to the audience, and to cinema itself. That is why Possible Love took so long to make.”

Before its wide release, the film was selected for the Competition section of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival and invited to Special Presentations at the 51st Toronto International Film Festival.

Release plan

The movie opens in U.S. theaters on September 23, 2026, then streams worldwide on Netflix starting November 6, 2026.

Onstage at Comic-Con, director Lauren Montgomery said the team behind Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender did kick around a splashier, stylized 3D look—something in the vein of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse—but shut that door just as quickly as they opened it. The film, she argued, needed to look and feel like the hand-drawn world fans grew up with.

“This is Avatar. This is a love letter to Japanese anime. This needs to stay 2D.”

Montgomery framed the choice as creative conviction, not resistance to innovation. As she put it (in remarks reported by IGN), there’s plenty to admire in CG right now—she just wasn’t interested in chasing a trend when this story already had a visual identity.

“There’s beautiful stuff being done in 3D,” she said, “but as artists, we should be able to explore all these different mediums.”

Early concept art of an older Team Avatar underscored the balancing act: nostalgia with visible growth. Sticking with hand-drawn animation meant keeping the expressive movement and emotional texture that defined the original series, while pushing the craft forward where it counts.

“We’re trying to keep this art form alive a little bit longer,” Montgomery added.

Why it matters for Korra

The movie isn’t just another lap with Aang; it plants seeds that pay off in The Legend of Korra. Set years after the original series, the story looks past the old Team Avatar dynamic to the world Aang is actively building—especially Republic City and the effort to preserve Air Nomad culture.

• Aang charts a course for a new Air Temple and gathers Air Acolytes, even though true airbending hasn’t fully returned.
• The finale reveals the survival of sky bison, explaining how the species endures into Korra’s time.
• The film leans into the idea that spiritual balance can reopen lost possibilities—a theme that becomes central once airbending reappears worldwide.
• A new faction, The Denied—nonbenders frustrated by bending privilege—foreshadows the political unrest Korra faces with the Equalists.

After a bumpy road marked by delays and leaks, Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender is now in theaters.

On a new episode of his podcast The Town with Matt Belloni, recorded during a wide-ranging chat with Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, entertainment columnist Matt Belloni zeroed in on which directors studios feel safest betting nine-figure budgets on right now — and put Christopher Nolan at the top of that list.

"Spielberg, Ridley Scott those guys are heading out of their prime, they're still working but they're not reliable. This guy is and he works in IMAX which is the future," said Matt Belloni on The Town with Matt Belloni podcast in an episode called Is Netflix Hurting YouTube by Poaching Talent? with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw.

Belloni’s point wasn’t about legacy — Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott are untouchable icons — but about the current risk calculus for mega-budget theatrical plays. In the 2020s marketplace, Nolan’s track record turning original or non-franchise concepts into event releases — from Inception and Interstellar to Oppenheimer — and his devotion to IMAX and premium formats make him the rare filmmaker studios treat like their own franchise.

‘The Odyssey’ is the proof

Nolan’s latest, The Odyssey, is already behaving like a four-quadrant juggernaut while still in early release, and it’s the case study powering this conversation.

• Opening weekend: $124 million domestic and $264 million worldwide — the biggest global debut of Nolan’s career, topping the $249 million worldwide opening of The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
• Budget: a reported $250 million, only Nolan’s second production to clear $200 million after The Dark Knight Rises.
• Through the second week: $346 million worldwide and “multiple” early records broken.
• Record to beat: Nolan’s current career high is The Dark Knight Rises with $1.08 billion worldwide.

Trade watchers now peg the film’s final haul in the $1.1–$1.3 billion range worldwide, which would set a new personal best for the Oscar-winning filmmaker.

Speaking on the convention floor at Comic-Con 2026, Hayley Atwell said working with Robert Downey Jr. again has reminded her how generous he is on set and how naturally he takes charge. She called Marvel’s decision to have him play Doctor Doom a gutsy swing — and one she thinks he can land.

“You’re taking a big swing turning him into Doom but if there’s one person who can get away with it - it's Downey,” she told Discussing Film.

The casting has split fans — some are intrigued by the reinvention, others bristled at seeing the MCU’s onetime ultimate hero now step into one of its most infamous villains. Downey Jr. wore the Iron Man suit for more than a decade; this time, the challenge is shedding Tony Stark entirely and leaning into a darker, more ruthless presence.

There’s a bit of full-circle trivia in the mix, too: Downey Jr. was reportedly considered to play Doom in 2005’s Fantastic Four before the part went to Julian McMahon. Two decades later, he finally gets a crack at Victor Von Doom.

Peggy Carter’s return

Atwell also confirmed she’s back as Peggy Carter in Avengers: Doomsday and said Peggy’s bond with Steve Rogers still matters to where the character goes next.

“I think it's really touching to me that their love story is an enduring one,” she said. “You can't really have Steve without Peggy, or without the longing for Peggy.”

She kept plot details under wraps but said her motivation this time was the chance to explore a new side of Peggy, hinting the character has evolved in the upcoming film.

Atwell is set to reprise Peggy Carter in Avengers: Doomsday.

Season 3’s “Faceless Men” builds to a brutal, beautifully acted reunion between Ser Hugh Hammer and his wife, Kat — and the camera keeps finding Kat. Her reaction lands somewhere between relief and shock, and the way it plays out shifts the scene from battlefield stakes to the private fallout of a marriage that’s been through hell. The woman at the center of it is Ellora Torchia, and she’s quietly stealing the moment.

Who is Ellora Torchia?

Torchia is a British actor, born in April 1992 in Hammersmith, London. She’s bounced confidently between indie film, horror and prestige TV, and you’ve likely seen her before without clocking the name.

• Midsommar — Ari Aster’s folk-horror breakout
• In the Earth — Ben Wheatley’s pandemic-shot chiller
• A Real Pain — the festival favorite from Azazel Jacobs
• The Gold — the UK heist drama series

That range — tense, grounded, emotionally precise — turns out to be a perfect match for Westeros, where even a few scenes can carry a lot of weight if they feel lived-in.

Why Kat matters in Season 3

Kat isn’t a court player or a battlefield commander; she’s a civilian whose life has been wrecked by the Dance of the Dragons. Torchia plays her not as a plot device but as a person who remembers the man Hugh used to be, and who has to face the man he’s become.

Their history gives the reunion its sting. In Season 2, Hugh chased his shot as a dragonseed and left home during the worst moment imaginable — the couple were grieving their daughter. He succeeded, bonding with Vermithor and taking a knighthood, but that rise carved a canyon between his old loyalties and his new life.

Hugh bonded with Vermithor and won a knighthood — after leaving Kat to mourn their daughter alone.

The show’s wrestling with what “knight” really means echoes across the franchise. HBO’s prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms centers on Duncan the Tall, a character defined by what he does, not what he’s called — the very question Kat forces back onto Hugh in “Faceless Men.” A second season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is already in development.

Sean Astin says the paycheck for playing Samwise Gamgee didn’t match the fame that followed. In a new interview with The Guardian, he put a number on it — about $75,000 per movie across Peter Jackson’s trilogy — and said the deal was so lean he ultimately sold his home.

“It was not a lot of money! In fact, I had to sell my house because I negotiated such a small amount on the trilogy,”

Astin added that the sudden global attention didn’t line up with the reality of his bank account.

“I was not prepared for that level of visibility and access,”

The actor noted the cast filmed the trilogy all at once, which meant no chance to renegotiate after the first film exploded. He said other ensemble members were in similar boats because the production was a gamble at the time, not a guaranteed juggernaut. Astin stressed he’s financially comfortable now — and if Sam ever returns, he’d negotiate very differently.

“Goddamn right,”

Back to Middle-earth

Meanwhile, Warner Bros.’ next trip to Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, is set between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and follows the search for Gollum while digging into his fractured psyche. Andy Serkis is both directing and returning as Gollum.

• Andy Serkis — Gollum (also directing)
• Ian McKellen — Gandalf
• Elijah Wood — Frodo
• Lee Pace — Thranduil
• Kate Winslet — new, original character
• Leo Woodall — new, original character
• Jamie Dornan — Aragorn, under the ranger name “Strider”

Serkis has described the film as both a physical quest and a psychological one, aiming to explore what the Ring truly means to Gollum while serving as a bridge for longtime fans and newcomers.

The movie is currently dated for December 2027.

At the center of the new Netflix drama My Daughter’s Father is teen patient Julieta — played by rising Mexican actor Azul Guaita — whose desperate search for a kidney donor uncovers a family-shattering truth. The twist lands when tests reveal Julieta’s dad isn’t her biological father, detonating secrets that pull every character into the blast radius.

The show follows Maca, a successful doctor and Julieta’s mother, as she scrambles for a transplant match and watches her home life unravel. It’s a tight, soap‑leaning thriller built on medical urgency and messy relationships, carried by a cast that keeps the tension high across a lean season.

• Silvia Navarro
• Manolo Cardona
• Erik Hayser
• Paola Núñez
• Azul Guaita — Julieta

The first season runs 10 episodes and is streaming now on Netflix.

Meet Azul Guaita

Born in 2001 in Mexico City, Guaita isn’t a newcomer — she’s been quietly building a résumé that primed her for a breakout like Julieta. Netflix viewers may recognize her from the teen drama Rebelde, where she played Jana Cohen, one of the students competing in Elite Way School’s Battle of the Bands while juggling crushes, rivalries and school politics.

• Rebelde — Jana Cohen (Netflix; the revival ran for three seasons)
• Like Water for Chocolate — played Tita in the TV adaptation
• Zoomers
• Killer Women (Mujeres asesinas)
• La Negociadora
• Soltero con hijas
• Clase 406 — appeared as a child

That combination of teen‑show cred and melodrama chops helps explain why Julieta pops here: she’s the storyline’s moral and emotional barometer as adults around her scramble, lie and make impossible choices.

Reception to My Daughter’s Father has been mixed, but Guaita’s turn — along with a sturdy ensemble — is the show’s glue as it barrels through betrayals and medical cliffhangers. All 10 episodes are now streaming on Netflix.

At the top of the July 27 broadcast, Mark Consuelos told viewers that Kelly Ripa is off the show this week while she recovers from a gum graft surgery and is under strict doctor’s orders not to talk. With Ripa on vocal rest, Consuelos welcomed guest co-host Kevin Jonas to sit in at the desk.

Consuelos said Ripa had the procedure to address receding gums — something her dentist first urged her to do about five years ago. Despite her reputation for a high pain tolerance (she’s known to skip Novocain at the dentist), he described this recovery as especially rough and said he’s helping her follow the rules at home: soft foods only, no straws, and no tugging her lip to check the healing.

Ripa is on strict vocal rest following a gum graft.

According to Consuelos, Ripa is taking a one-week break and is expected to return to Live with Kelly and Mark once she’s medically cleared. He added that she’s healing well, but the no-talking order stands until her dentist signs off.

Who’s filling in

The show has lined up a rotating slate of guest co-hosts to join Consuelos while Ripa rests:

• July 27–28 — Kevin Jonas
• Later this week — Mila Kunis
• Later this week — Pamela Adlon
• Later this week — Scott Foley

Consuelos said Ripa will be back once her dentist gives the all-clear after this week of recovery.

Pressed in a rapid-fire “yes or no” game during a sit-down with French interviewer Hugo Travers on his HugoDécrypte – Grands formats channel, Tom Holland didn’t bite on whether he’s suiting up again — but he did crack the door open to another Marvel job: directing.

"Yeah, I guess I could,"

Holland answered when asked if he’d direct a Marvel movie one day. Moments later, when the questions turned to Spider-Man 5, he paused and chose to pass — keeping any return as Peter Parker firmly under wraps for now.

Holland has previously said he’s been in the room for early story conversations on a fourth Spider-Man film with Marvel and Sony, but nothing official has been announced. He didn’t add to that here, beyond leaving the fifth-film question unanswered.

More real stunts, less CG

Looking ahead, Holland has also been talking about how he’d like the next Spider-Man outing to feel. In comments reported by GamesRadar, he said recent experiences have him pushing for more practical filmmaking — real sets, real stunts — to ground the action.

"I come from the kind of superhero space, which I absolutely adore. I love playing [Spider-Man]. I think there are things that we could do in the future that can improve those movies by being more practical and finding ways to make people believe that what they're watching is real,"

he said, as reported by GamesRadar. He also pointed to using a practical Spider-Man suit and stunt work as steps in that direction, per the same report.

Where things stand

• No studio confirmation yet for Spider-Man 5 from Marvel Studios or Sony Pictures.
• In the HugoDécrypte interview, Holland passed on the question of returning as Peter Parker.
• He said “yes” to the idea of directing a Marvel movie someday.
• According to reporter Alex Perez at fan site The Cosmic Circus, Holland’s current deal reportedly aligns with the existing trilogy, but a fifth film remains a possibility.

Neither Marvel Studios nor Sony Pictures has announced Spider-Man 5.

It happened during a goofy lyrics game on Pedestrian TV: Tom Holland was asked to finish a line from one of Zendaya’s biggest tracks and completely blanked. Jacob Batalon sat beside them as Holland stalled, and Zendaya shot him a playful look before revealing the punchline — the lyric was from her own song.

“I have no idea,”

Holland said, admitting he didn’t recognize it. Zendaya, laughing, swooped in with the answer — and a gentle roast for both of her Spider-Man pals.

“That’s my song, guys. That’s Replay. So, thanks, guys,”

she cracked during the segment, jokingly calling out Holland and Batalon for forgetting words to one of her best-known singles.

The viral 'Replay' moment

Zendaya’s “Replay” dates back to 2013, off her self-titled debut album, and it’s hung around as a fan favorite — the kind of pop earworm that still surfaces in nostalgic edits, dance clips and throwback trends across social media. The track spins around the idea of being so into someone they loop in your head like a song on repeat, which made Holland’s memory lapse even funnier to fans passing the clip around.

The easy rapport tracks with how these three tend to move on a press tour: lots of games, inside jokes and little behind-the-scenes stories that remind people they’ve been at this together since Spider-Man: Homecoming. If you’re blanking on who plays who, here’s the refresher:

• Tom Holland — Peter Parker/Spider-Man
• Zendaya — MJ
• Jacob Batalon — Ned Leeds

The clip is part of the cast’s latest run of promo for the next MCU Spider-Man movie, Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Back in late 2021, during the Ballon d’Or festivities in Paris, Tom Holland and Zendaya slipped into a room full of soccer royalty while he was in Europe promoting Spider-Man: No Way Home. Holland says the mood flipped the instant Lionel Messi arrived — the night the Argentine great accepted a record seventh Ballon d’Or — and even the guy who plays Spider-Man felt like just another fan.

Sharing the memory on the Dish podcast, Holland admitted athletes short-circuit his usual composure in a way actors don’t.

“I do not usually get starstruck around people that do what I do, but athletes, there is just something about performing on that stage week in and week out, dealing with that pressure,”

He contrasted an actor’s press cycle — intense, then it eases once a movie opens — with elite players who have to deliver every single week. That grind, he said, is why meeting Messi in Paris hit differently from any Hollywood encounter.

Honest about the hard sells

The conversation also turned to the less glamorous side of publicity. Holland didn’t pretend every junket is a joy, especially when he isn’t sold on the film he’s there to promote.

“I’ve had experiences before when people say, ‘Why should you see this movie?’ And in the back of your mind, you’re like, ‘You shouldn’t, because it’s s***,’”

He added that when he genuinely loves the work, the enthusiasm takes care of itself — a stark contrast to the tap dance required when he doesn’t. Holland told both stories on the Dish podcast while looking back at that Paris night.

The push is coming from inside the industry. In a Guardian op-ed and a letter to the U.K.’s culture secretary, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alan Cumming and Benedict Wong urged the government to step in on the proposed tie-up between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing it would concentrate too much power and squeeze the kinds of projects that keep crews and stages busy in Britain.

What the actors argue

The trio say the deal would ripple far beyond movie lots. They point to news ownership and financing for smaller films as flashpoints, and warn that everyday working people on sets would feel the brunt.

• Predicted fallout: layoffs and canceled productions
• Fewer films and TV shows being commissioned
• Studios taking fewer creative risks, hurting independents
• Greater consolidation in news publishing and broadcasting

They also flag the potential news footprint of a combined company. Paramount owns CBS in the U.S. and the U.K. broadcaster Channel 5; if the merger proceeds, they note, CNN and CNN International would sit under the same corporate umbrella.

“As actors and public figures who have spent our careers in the arts in Britain — working with British crews, on British stages and sets — we have a responsibility to the public who support, enjoy and consume the art we make.”

The letter is addressed to Lisa Nandy, the U.K. culture secretary. The actors acknowledge, though, that the main call will rest with the country’s competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which is already reviewing the deal.

Where the deal stands

Across the Atlantic, the proposal has drawn resistance in the U.S., including opposition from a coalition of 12 states, according to reports. Paramount has reportedly decided not to seek to close the merger until after an antitrust trial plays out.

In Europe, the deal has reportedly cleared the European Commission with conditions. In the U.K., the CMA review is ongoing, and Nandy has indicated she’s willing to engage with the issue.

Two wildly different West End takes on Romeo and Juliet have become an unexpected side-by-side for two actors Americans know well. Tom Holland tackled the role in a stripped-to-the-bone, mic’d-up staging in 2024; two years later, Sadie Sink led a fiercely emotional revival in 2026. With the pair now sharing the screen in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day, here’s how their stage turns actually stack up.

• Tom Holland — Romeo; Francesca Amewudah-Rivers — Juliet; directed by Jamie Lloyd (West End, May 2024)
• Sadie Sink — Juliet; Noah Jupe — Romeo; directed by Robert Icke (West End, March 2026)

Onstage chemistry

Holland and Amewudah-Rivers were placed in a hyper-controlled setup: declarations of love delivered into static microphone stands, bodies forward, eyes often on the audience instead of each other. The result felt purposefully distant and cool to the touch.

Sink and Jupe, by contrast, were turned loose. Their scenes were charged with messy, adolescent heat — fumbling touches, unscripted kisses, and breathless momentum. It played like first love in real time, not an idea of it.

Staging and visuals

Jamie Lloyd’s 2024 production is the visual knockout. Think bare concrete, heavy shadows, and monochrome streetwear, with giant video screens throwing stark, black-and-white close-ups of the actors’ faces across the theater. The look is icy, industrial, and uncompromising.

Robert Icke’s 2026 staging leans on contemporary devices — digital clocks, narrative rewinds — to sharpen the story’s edge. It’s less avant-garde image-making than Holland’s show, but it funnels the visuals toward character and consequence.

Pacing the tragedy

Lloyd keeps the pulse intentionally flat: actors often stand in clean lines, reporting turns of fate with even, subdued gravity. The fatalism lands, but urgency drains away; the tragedy arrives like a foregone conclusion.

Icke weaponizes time. A looming onstage clock counts down the lovers’ dwindling hours, accelerating every choice and mistake. The coup de grâce comes in the tomb: an altered beat that twists the knife.

In Icke’s version, Juliet wakes as Romeo swallows the poison — they share one second of recognition.

Sound and intimacy

Here’s where Holland’s production breaks the mold. Lloyd ditches traditional projection for a cinematic audio design: handheld mics, headset mics, and near-whisper delivery piped through a bass-heavy system. Every catch of breath and tremor in the voice is magnified, creating an almost ASMR-like tunnel into the characters’ heads.

Sink’s revival uses standard stage acoustics. It’s clear and immediate, but it can’t match the claustrophobic, mic-driven intimacy that Holland’s staging turns into its signature.

Who drives the story?

Holland’s Romeo is deliberately soft-spoken and reactive, a kid buffeted by a dystopian world. The vulnerability is there, but the character can feel like a passenger in his own tragedy.

Sink’s Juliet seizes the wheel. She crackles with teenage volatility and a sharp, strategic mind, pushing the plot by choice rather than by accident. Her defiance reads personal and earned, and the show orients around her agency.

So who “won” Shakespeare? On balance, Sink’s 2026 revival lands the bigger emotional punch — the heat, the stakes, the free fall — even as Holland’s 2024 outing remains the bolder experiment in image and sound. And now they’re teammates: the two share the big screen in Spider-Man: Brand New Day after taking their swings at the Bard two years apart — Holland in May 2024, Sink in March 2026.

In a candid note shared with Variety, Carly Simon said she has been living with Parkinson’s disease, explaining the years she’s largely stepped back from public life. The 83-year-old singer-songwriter wrote that she kept the diagnosis private while she learned how to navigate it day to day.

“So many people have written to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence, asking how I am and what I have been doing. The truth is, I have been learning how to live with Parkinson's disease,” Simon shared.

Simon described the condition’s unpredictability: some mornings she can’t marshal the energy to start the day; on better ones, she can still move, think, write and work much as before. She said worsening mobility after knee replacement surgeries and a hip replacement led doctors to look deeper; after an extensive evaluation at the Mayo Clinic, she received the Parkinson’s diagnosis.

She also disclosed she underwent surgery for basal cell carcinoma on her face. The cancer was removed, but the aftermath changed how she felt about being seen.

“The cancer was removed, but the surgery affected my appearance and made me more self-conscious about being seen in public,” Simon explained in the statement obtained by Variety.

“I have always been more critical of my appearance than anyone else could possibly imagine (check out the irony of having written ‘You're So Vain’), and this gave my inner critic quite a lot of new material,” she said.

Simon pushed back on any attempt to romanticize her condition, noting that Parkinson’s isn’t a blessing or a gift — it’s difficult, frustrating and sometimes frightening.

New music on the way

Even as life shifted, Simon kept writing. She’s completed a new album, Comes in Waves, her first full-length studio record since 2008. It’s scheduled for release on August 14, 2026.

Three quick clips on Netflix’s official X account put the new LEGO One Piece sets in the hands of the live-action cast, and they didn’t hold back. David Dastmalchian, Callum Kerr and Julia Rehwald each unboxed a different scene and immediately started staging rematches, rescues and a little petty pilfering.

• David Dastmalchian — Little Garden: The set drops you into the giants Dory and Brogy trading blows while the Straw Hats tangle with Baroque Works agent No. 3. Dastmalchian — who plays Mr. 3 in the live-action — lit up at seeing his minifigure and got a little emotional about his inner childhood “nerd” getting this gig.
• Callum Kerr — Showdown with Captain Smoker: Kerr admired the details on his Smoker face-off set piece and, in a very Smoker move, made off with the tiny version of the Marine’s bike by the end of the video.
• Julia Rehwald — Garp’s Marine Battleship: Rehwald zeroed in on the working parts of the massive ship build and, in pure Tashigi fashion, play-acted finally cuffing Roronoa Zoro. The moving sections were her favorite bit.

Two-part special, one tall storyteller

The animated special itself is a two-parter that retells the story of the live-action One Piece through season 2 — with a twist. It’s narrated by the Straw Hats’ resident fabulist, Usopp, so expect an embellished, Usopp-first version of events. The original live-action cast is returning for the special.

LEGO One Piece hits Netflix on September 29, 2026.

LEGO is rolling out sets tied to iconic One Piece moments alongside the special’s push, with Netflix using the cast’s candid reactions to show off the builds — and, clearly, to let a few minifig heists happen on camera.

Welcome back to the bleachers: Dugout Dads leans into the chaos on the sidelines, following an idealistic Little League father who jumps in as a coach and quickly finds himself up against the sport’s most intense competitors — the other parents. Patrick Renna leads the series as that dad-coach, with Danielle Fishel (Boy Meets World) playing his wife.

The hook is pure nostalgia. The new comedy reunites a pack of familiar faces from The Sandlot — not in a sequel, but in a brand-new, unrelated story set in today’s youth baseball scene.

• Patrick Renna — idealistic Little League dad and coach
• Danielle Fishel — his wife
• Tom Guiry
• Chauncey Leopardi
• Marty York
• Brandon Quintin Adams
• Victor DiMattia
• Shane Obedzinski
• Grant Gelt
• Will Horneff

More than 30 years after The Sandlot, several of its stars are teaming up again.

A Sandlot connection

The 1993 baseball favorite is set in the summer of 1962, when new kid Scotty Smalls moves to town, gets taken in by a neighborhood team led by Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez, and winds up on a mission to retrieve a prized autographed ball from the scariest backyard on the block. Its cast became a generation’s go-to clubhouse.

• Patrick Renna — the wise-cracking Ham Porter
• Tom Guiry — wide-eyed Scotty Smalls
• Chauncey Leopardi — confident Squints
• Marty York — energetic “Yeah-Yeah”

Dugout Dads isn’t a remake of The Sandlot. It’s a fresh comedy about the friendships, rivalries, and neighborhood politics that fire up around youth baseball — this time with the adults in the batter’s box.

The Motion Picture Association has officially rated Spider-Man: Brand New Day PG-13 for “sequences of action/violence and some language,” setting expectations for what kind of intensity families will encounter when Peter Parker swings back into theaters.

PG-13 for sequences of action/violence and some language (per the Motion Picture Association).

Expect fast-moving superhero showdowns, moments of peril and a few coarse words. This chapter also leans into heavier emotions as Peter keeps navigating a world that no longer remembers who he is after Spider-Man: No Way Home. With Jon Bernthal reportedly bringing The Punisher into the mix, the action is poised to have a grittier edge than the last solo outing, even while staying within PG-13 bounds.

For parents at a glance

• Rating — PG-13, cited for action/violence and some language.
• Intensity — High-energy fights, chase sequences and superhero peril typical of Marvel movies.
• Language — Occasional coarse language.
• Tone — More emotionally mature themes tied to Peter’s anonymity after No Way Home; Punisher’s presence is expected to add a darker flavor to the action.
• What PG-13 generally avoids — Explicit gore, graphic sexual content or the sustained brutality that would push a movie to an R rating.

Tom Holland returns as Peter Parker, picking up after the events of No Way Home’s reality-reset. The PG-13 stamp suggests it’s broadly aimed at teens and adults, with younger kids likely needing a parent to gauge comfort with the intensity and themes.

The rating was assigned by the Motion Picture Association and cites “sequences of action/violence and some language.”

Start with The Haunting of Bly Manor, a 9-episode follow-up that landed in October 2020 and trades Hill House’s family trauma for a full-on gothic romance. Set in 1987 at a mist-shrouded English estate, the story follows Dani Clayton, an American au pair hired to look after two orphaned siblings who are far from ordinary. The grounds are bound by a centuries-old curse where spirits slowly lose their faces and their memories, and the most chilling presence on the property is the relentless Lady in the Lake.

Four Flanagan limited series — 34 episodes — arrived between 2020 and 2023.

Bly is quieter than Hill House but no less unnerving. Watch for kids “dream-hopping” into other people’s memories, a dollhouse that doubles as a danger warning system, and background specters shifting position when you least expect it.

• Victoria Pedretti — Dani Clayton
• T’Nia Miller
• Rahul Kohli

Midnight Mass

Flanagan’s most personal work arrived next: Midnight Mass, a 7-episode limited series from September 2021 set on isolated Crockett Island. A disgraced local comes home just as a charismatic young priest steps in for the aging Monsignor, and soon the town is buzzing with “miracles.” The revival turns nightmarish when those wonders reveal a bloodthirsty source the residents mistake for divine intervention.

Instead of jump scares, the show leans into creeping dread, philosophical monologues, and the slow horror of fanaticism, addiction, and mortality. The transformations are as disturbing as the rituals that spark them.

• Hamish Linklater — Father Paul
• Zach Gilford
• Kate Siegel
• Samantha Sloyan

The Midnight Club

Released October 7, 2022, The Midnight Club jumps to 1994 and a cliffside hospice called Brightcliffe, where terminally ill teens gather at midnight to swap ghost stories — and make a pact that whoever dies first will reach out from the other side. Ilonka, a high achiever facing a terminal thyroid cancer diagnosis, arrives desperate for a miracle and stumbles into something far older and darker than campfire tales.

The scares work on two tracks: the anthology-style stories the kids tell, and a more dangerous threat lurking in Brightcliffe’s past — a sinister occult group that once ran lethal rituals on the property. The show’s sting comes from the existential dread of teens staring down the end while shadow figures creep closer.

• Iman Benson — Ilonka
• Ruth Codd
• Igby Rigney
• Heather Langenkamp

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher premiered October 12, 2023, twisting Edgar Allan Poe into a present-day takedown of corporate greed. Billionaire siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into a juggernaut — then, over the span of a single week, Roderick’s six adult heirs start dying in grotesque, bizarre ways. Each death ties back to Verna, a shape-shifting woman from the Ushers’ buried past.

This one is a wicked, macabre satire rather than a quiet haunt, anchored by a mesmerizing Carla Gugino as Verna. Expect theatrical, stomach-churning set pieces — from acidic rain meltdowns to violent primate attacks — as the family’s sins come due in spectacular fashion.

Across these runs, Flanagan keeps circling grief, faith, love, and guilt — and he’s channeling that same energy into his upcoming film, The Exorcist: Martyrs.

Marvel’s Hall H showstopper wasn’t just the fiery skull logo. After years of “where’s Ghost Rider?” questions, Kevin Feige brought out Ryan Gosling to a roar, with the actor telling the room he’s always wanted to don the leathers. Then came the kicker: Gosling introduced Shawn Levy—fresh off Deadpool & Wolverine—who’s officially set to direct the character’s first Marvel Studios movie.

The film is part of Marvel’s planned Phase 7 slate and is aiming for a 2028 window. No exact release date, cast list, or which version of the character will lead the story were announced on stage.

Ghost Rider is targeting a 2028 release as part of Marvel’s Phase 7.

What’s set, what’s TBD

• Confirmed: A new Ghost Rider movie from Marvel Studios; Shawn Levy directing; unveiled during San Diego Comic-Con 2026’s Hall H presentation; part of Phase 7.
• Not announced: A specific release date; full cast; the on-screen identity of Ghost Rider (Johnny Blaze, Robbie Reyes, etc.).
• In the room: Ryan Gosling, who said he’s wanted the role, but Marvel stopped short of naming his character.

This will be the character’s first big-screen ride in the MCU era. On TV, Gabriel Luna played Robbie Reyes in Season 4 of ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. On the film side, Nicolas Cage last appeared as Johnny Blaze in 2011’s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

Who is Johnny Blaze?

In the comics, Johnny Blaze is a motorcycle stunt rider who strikes a desperate bargain with the demon Mephisto to save his surrogate father. The deal binds him to the Spirit of Vengeance, Zarathos, turning Blaze into a skull-faced antihero wreathed in hellfire, armed with a chain and cursed to punish the wicked.

Ghost Rider folds neatly into Marvel’s darker, supernatural lane—think Blade, Moon Knight and Werewolf by Night—now moving onto the big screen with a full-throttle feature. For now, the only clock on the wall is the Phase 7 window in 2028; everything else arrives when Marvel’s ready to say it on the record.

So what's behind it? Here's the honest answer.

The short answer

The show has never said. Two seasons and 20 episodes in, Taylor Sheridan has not written a single scene explaining why the Norris siblings despise each other. There's no buried betrayal, no revealed incident — at least not yet. The hatred simply exists, fully formed, from episode 1.

What the show hints at

The strongest clue is that they're opposites down to the bone. Ainsley is her mother in miniature — a party girl cut from Angela's cloth — while Cooper is pure Tommy: a workhorse who'd rather bleed on a rig than talk about his feelings. They even split over their parents, with Ainsley scheming to reunite Tommy and Angela while Cooper wanted no part of it.

Co-creator Christian Wallace told TV Insider in 2025 that the siblings clash precisely because they're polar opposites — and that he'd like to dig into the relationship further.

Even the actors don't know

Here's the fun part: the cast is as confused as the audience. Randolph admitted on the Today show on February 10, 2026 that she and Lofland — close friends in real life — have both called Sheridan asking for backstory to play, and never got one. Her working theory:

"They are mirrors for one another," Randolph said, explaining that each sibling stands for everything the other opposes.

Lofland has said much the same in a Paramount+ featurette during season 2: the on-screen hatred is pure acting, with nothing behind it but the scripts.

Will season 3 finally explain it?

Maybe. Both actors are confirmed to return, with Ainsley heading off to college — a storyline Randolph says she's excited about, since it takes her character away from the family dynamic entirely. Distance might thaw things. Or Sheridan might finally hand his actors the secret they've been asking for.

Until then, the answer to Landman's most-asked sibling question is the strangest one possible: there isn't one.

Here's what's real, what's stretched, and who's keeping score.

The man keeping it honest

Christian Wallace is a West Texas native who spent a year after college working as a roughneck on oil rigs. As a Texas Monthly journalist, he wrote the June 2019 article "The Permian Basin Is Booming With Oil. But at What Cost to West Texans?" — which grew into Boomtown, the podcast that inspired the show. Across its episodes, released from December 2019 to April 2020, Wallace interviewed roughnecks about rig dangers, ranchers about toxic emissions, and the workers riding the boom.

Sheridan bought the rights, made Wallace his co-creator, and kept him on set as the accuracy cop.

What the show gets right

• The rigs and crews — "We use real drilling rigs, real roughnecks," Wallace told Variety in 2025. The machinery and the men operating it are the genuine article.
• The danger — deaths and maimings on the patch, like the ones that haunt Tommy's crews, reflect the industry's real toll.
• The bikini baristas — they exist. Wallace interviewed some of them for the podcast; boomtown economies run on exactly this kind of business.
• The crime — drug trafficking, oil theft, and equipment theft through the region are all real, by Wallace's own reporting.

What's stretched

Tommy Norris himself, mostly. Wallace told Deadline in January 2025 that a real landman's job is leases, title work, and regulatory compliance — and, as he put it:

"Nobody is going to watch a show about that."

So Tommy became a Swiss army knife, doing half a dozen jobs no single landman would. The cartel's direct relationship with M-Tex is fictional too — possible, Wallace says, but invented — and the National Guard showdown is pure Sheridan escalation. Energy analysts have also picked apart Tommy's famous anti-wind-turbine monologue, which plays great and reads more like opinion than fact.

The verdict

Wallace calls it accurate but not a documentary — the texture is true, the plot is not. Even the industry skeptics came around once they watched it, he says, surprised by how many details the show nailed.

The events are invented. The world isn't. That's the trick.

His story has an ending, and it's a hard one.

The short answer

Douda is dead. The season 6 finale, which aired in 2024, opened with police standing over his bloodied body in his own club — then rewound to show a gun pressed to his head and the trigger pulled. After seasons of surviving everyone who came for him, the leader of the 63rd Street Mob finally ran out of lives.

Who killed him

His own right-hand man. Isaiah "Nuck" Rogers (Cortez Smith), Douda's longtime enforcer, pulled the trigger and took over the 63rd Street Mob in a clean power grab. The motive had been building: Douda had publicly beaten Nuck, and years of watching him brutalize people — including those close to Nuck — turned loyalty into a death sentence. Nuck also killed Rob for defying him, cementing the takeover in blood.

Kiesha and Emmett, whom Douda had spent the season terrorizing — he blew up their car — learned the news when Nuck showed up at their door covered in blood. Their reaction was relief.

Why the writers finally did it

Co-showrunner Justin Hillian explained the decision to The Hollywood Reporter in 2024, pointing to a simple Chicago truth about men who make too many enemies:

"One of them is going to be the wrong enemy," Hillian said.

Douda had certainly stockpiled them. In season 6 alone he murdered Q and grew more ruthless than ever, sensing an attack was coming and trying to eliminate his threats first. He just guessed wrong about which direction it would come from.

What happened after

Season 7, which rolled out in 2025, plays out the power vacuum: Nuck runs the streets Douda built, new players circle the throne, and the neighborhood learns that removing a king doesn't remove the crown.

For the record: Douda outlived nearly every rival the show ever gave him — and was undone by the one man who knew exactly how he operated. He taught Nuck everything. That was the mistake.

Here's the full ledger.

The death that defined the show

Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) barely made it a month in camp. In season 1, episode 4 — "Here Was a Man" — the coward Jack McCall (Garret Dillahunt) shot him in the back of the head mid-poker game at Nuttall's No. 10 saloon, mirroring the real murder of August 2, 1876. McCall was then acquitted by the camp's sham jury and run out of town.

The show never really recovered from the loss. That was the point.

Season 1's body count

• The Metz family — massacred by road agents in the pilot, leaving little Sofia as the only survivor.
• Tim Driscoll — stabbed by Al Swearengen over the Garret claim.
• Brom Garret — Alma's husband, thrown off a cliff by Dan Dority on Al's orders and passed off as an accident.
• Flora and Miles Anderson — teenage grifters executed at the Bella Union; Cy Tolliver shot Miles, and Joanie shot Flora on Cy's orders.
• Magistrate Clagett — throat cut by Silas Adams.
• Jimmy Irons — drowned by Al.
• Reverend Smith — smothered by Al in the season finale, a mercy killing as the dying preacher's brain tumor consumed him.

Season 2 gets darker

Seth Bullock's young son William — his late brother's boy, raised as his own — was trampled by a runaway horse. Mose Manuel shot his own brother Charlie over their claim. Francis Wolcott, Hearst's advance man, cut the throats of Doris and Maddie at the Chez Ami while sparing Joanie, then hanged himself in the finale after Hearst cast him off. And Mr. Wu closed out the season by killing his San Francisco rival, Lee.

Season 3: Hearst's arrival

George Hearst's campaign against the camp claimed almost everyone around him. Dan Dority beat Hearst's bodyguard Captain Turner to death in a street fight. Hostetler shot himself after the feud with Steve Fields. Odell Marchbanks, Aunt Lou's son, died off-screen right after pitching Hearst a gold claim — the show heavily implies Hearst had him killed.

Whitney Ellsworth, Alma's husband, was shot at her claim on Hearst's orders. And in the series finale, after Trixie shot and wounded Hearst, Al cut the throat of the innocent Jen to pass her body off as Trixie's and save the camp.

The 2019 movie added one last name: Charlie Utter, gunned down on Hearst's orders — the death that finally brings the whole camp back together.

The series ends with Al scrubbing Jen's blood from his floor, refusing comfort: "Wants me to tell him something pretty," he mutters. In Deadwood, nobody got that.

So we put them head to head, category by category. Seven rounds. One winner.

The scorecard

• Lead performance — Landman. Kevin Costner's John Dutton was granite, but Billy Bob Thornton's Tommy Norris gets to be funny, exhausted, and quietly lethal in the same scene — and it earned him a Critics Choice nomination in December 2025. Costner also left mid-season 5. Thornton has said he'll stay as long as the show runs.
• Dialogue — Landman. Dutton speeches are sermons. Tommy's chain-smoking monologues about oil, money, and death are stand-up with a body count.
• The women — Yellowstone. Ali Larter's Angela is a force of nature, but nothing in Landman touches Kelly Reilly's Beth Dutton — the single best character in either show, now getting her own spinoff with Cole Hauser's Rip.
• Authenticity — Landman. Yellowstone drew on Sheridan's ranching life; Landman is co-created by Christian Wallace, a former roughneck whose Boomtown podcast reported from the real Permian Basin. Real rigs, real crews, real dangers.
• Scenery — Yellowstone. Montana's mountains versus the flat, dusty Permian. Not a fair fight, and Landman doesn't pretend otherwise.
• Consistency — Landman. Yellowstone opened to a 58% Rotten Tomatoes score for season 1 and ended in chaos, with its star gone before the finale. Landman has delivered two seasons that grew their audience every single week.
• Momentum — Landman. The season 2 premiere pulled 9.2 million views in two days — up 262% on season 1 and the biggest original-series premiere in Paramount+ history. The finale on January 18, 2026 beat it with 14.8 million.

Final score: Landman 5, Yellowstone 2.

The case for the old champ

Cultural footprint still belongs to Yellowstone. It was the biggest show on cable television, its season 5 premiere drew over 12 million linear viewers, and it spawned an entire universe — 1883, 1923, The Madison, and the coming Beth and Rip series. Landman hasn't produced a single spinoff. Yet.

The verdict

Yellowstone is the monument. Landman is the better show right now — sharper lead, tighter writing, real-world grounding, and an audience that keeps growing instead of saying goodbye. Even Sheridan seems to agree with the market: when his Paramount deal winds down, Landman continues under co-creator Christian Wallace.

When Tom Cruise stepped to the mic during the 2026 World Cup final broadcast with an unexpected monologue, the moment did more than surprise soccer fans. Within hours, critics and some former celebrity members of the Church of Scientology were online saying the speech echoed coded language from the religion, kicking up a fresh round of debate — and sending people back to old interviews where A-listers addressed Scientology head-on.

One clip making the rounds again is Will Smith’s firm denial from 2008, after rumors swirled that he and Jada Pinkett Smith were joining the church. Speaking to the New York Daily News, Smith separated his friendship with Cruise from his own beliefs.

"You do not have to be a Scientologist to be a friend of Tom Cruise."

In the same interview, Smith described his own outlook in broad, interfaith terms.

"I am a student of all religions. And I respect all people and all paths."

That summer also brought a denial from Kimora Lee Simmons, who pushed back on reports that she was handing out Scientology literature to local schoolchildren, according to the Daily News’ coverage at the time.

What Cruise has said

Cruise’s relationship with Scientology goes back to 1986, when he was introduced to it by then-wife Mimi Rogers. He rarely speaks about it on red carpets, but at the 2016 London premiere of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, he briefly did, telling ITV News:

"It is something that has helped me incredibly in my life."

"So, it’s a beautiful religion. I’m incredibly proud."

He also said at the time that his decades in the church were central to his success. And in a 2012 interview with Playboy, Cruise described the catch-22 of discussing his faith in the press:

"What’s interesting is, if I don’t talk about my religion, if I say I’m not discussing it or different humanitarian things I’m working on, they’re like, ‘He’s avoiding it’."

He added there that he prefers to keep promotional interviews focused strictly on the movies.

Cruise’s first connection to Scientology dates to 1986 through Rogers — a tie that now stretches roughly 40 years.

Inside Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con, the roar hit before the logo did: Ryan Gosling walked out beside Kevin Feige to confirm he’s Marvel’s new Ghost Rider. Marvel announced the character will headline a standalone MCU movie from director Shawn Levy, reuniting the pair after their collaboration on Star Wars: Starfighter. The film is set for theaters in 2028.

• Star — Ryan Gosling as Ghost Rider
• Director — Shawn Levy
• Format — Standalone MCU film (theatrical)
• Announcement — SDCC Hall H with Kevin Feige
• Release — 2028

The reveal landed as one of the weekend’s loudest moments and immediately set social feeds ablaze, the payoff to years of fan art, rumor cycles and wish lists that never really cooled off.

“Ghost Rider is a character I’ve wanted to play for a long time,”

Gosling told the crowd, putting an exclamation point on a casting he’s been linked to for years.

A casting years in the making

This wasn’t a bolt from the blue. Gosling had been openly game for the role and never ducked the fan campaign. Earlier this year, he nudged the speculation again while promoting Project Hail Mary, hinting that talks had been happening.

“Some discussions have been had. It’s a complicated situation... We’ll keep hope alive,”

he said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast — a comment that sent the internet into overdrive at the time. Feige, for his part, had previously signaled he wanted to find a place for Gosling in the MCU, making Saturday’s moment feel like a long-simmering plan finally snapping into focus.

The character’s return marks Ghost Rider’s biggest live-action spotlight since Nicolas Cage lit the chain as Johnny Blaze in 2007’s Ghost Rider and its sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Now, Gosling gets the chance to redefine the Spirit of Vengeance inside Marvel Studios’ connected universe.

Marvel has set the movie for a theatrical release in 2028.

The rumor, sparked by Comic-Con talk and recent leaks, suggests Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool won’t be the only carryover from his corner of the universe — the black-ops mutant team could make its first proper MCU appearance in the 2026 event, Doomsday.

If that happens, it would be a reset from the gag version we met in Deadpool 2, where Wade assembled a team for a single disastrous mission and most of them didn’t survive the jump. With the MCU’s multiversal door now propped open for Deadpool, there’s room to rebuild X-Force with a lineup closer to the comics.

So, who are they?

On the page, X-Force started as Cable’s answer to the X-Men: a covert strike team willing to use harder tactics to protect mutantkind. Over time, the roster and leadership rotated — Cable led early on, with stints from Cyclops and Wolverine steering later incarnations. Core names fans associate with the team include:

• Cable — time-traveling soldier who founded the group
• Domino — luck-powered mercenary and frequent second-in-command
• Deadpool — the chaotic wildcard on several runs (notably Uncanny X-Force)
• Wolverine — fronted the black-ops era lineup
• Psylocke — telepathic assassin and team anchor
• Archangel — razor-winged heavy with a lethal edge
• Warpath — powerhouse tracker
• Boom-Boom — explosive-maker from the New Mutants class
• Shatterstar — Mojoworld swordsman
• Cannonball — blast-field flier from the New Mutants

How Deadpool 2 used them

Deadpool 2 introduced an X-Force lineup that played the idea for laughs — featuring Domino (Zazie Beetz), Bedlam (Terry Crews), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgård), Vanisher (a blink-and-you-miss-it Brad Pitt cameo) and Peter (Rob Delaney). It was short-lived by design, teeing up a future team-up that never happened.

In Deadpool 2, most of X-Force dies within minutes of their debut; Domino is the lone survivor of the parachute mission.

That swerve had a practical reason at the time: Fox was developing a full-on X-Force spinoff as the next step in its X-Men universe. When Disney bought 20th Century Fox in 2019, those plans were shelved and the characters folded into Marvel Studios’ sandbox instead.

What it could mean for Doomsday

Leaks around Avengers: Doomsday already point to a multiverse-sized roll call — legacy and new Avengers, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four are all rumored to collide, with Doctor Doom widely speculated as the big bad. In that context, deploying X-Force as a hit squad alongside Deadpool would be an easy on-ramp for more mutants to enter the MCU proper.

For now, Marvel hasn’t officially announced X-Force for the movie. Avengers: Doomsday is currently targeting a December 2026 release.

In that early pass, the town’s creepy truth wasn’t a mystery.

“So the first version was a spec for Parks and Rec, but it started off that everyone knew it was a haunted town. There was no Wyck in that version,” Dippold said before joking, “Burn every copy.”

Stephen Root — who now plays Wyck — grinned at the reveal and answered, “I love you.” It’s a neat snapshot of how far the concept shifted before landing at Apple TV+ as a supernatural comedy led by Matthew Rhys.

Dippold also admitted she didn’t see any of this momentum coming, not even after the cast came together and the show sold.

“It is fun...I would always predict, ‘Will this show get made?’ We were taking it out. We did not know that anyone was going to buy it. But then we got this amazing group. But I would never predict it that we would be at Comic-Con,” she said.

Speaking again at Collider’s Showrunners on Showrunning panel, she said Reddit still “terrifies” her, but watching conversation around the show suddenly balloon was “really shocking.” The breakout has been matched by awards attention: the series scored 19 Primetime Emmy nominations and a speedy renewal for a second season.

Season 2 is underway

Dippold said the writers’ room for Season 2 recently kicked off and is expected to run for about 20 weeks. One lesson she’s taking from production on Season 1: trimming scripts earlier to hit key story beats faster.

• Platform — Apple TV+
• Renewal — Season 2 confirmed
• Writers’ room — started recently; planned run of about 20 weeks
• Awards — 19 Primetime Emmy nominations
• Cast note — Stephen Root as Wyck; Matthew Rhys leads the ensemble

Chadwick Boseman didn’t win that night, but the note — grounded in faith and gratitude, with a nod to his parents, Carolyn and Leroy — now has been heard.

A private battle, relentless work

Boseman was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016 at age 39. He kept the illness out of public view, a choice Simone says was deliberate because he didn’t want sympathy or special treatment to color how people received his work. Even as he underwent surgeries and chemotherapy, he kept filming. By the end of 2018, the disease had advanced to stage IV. He died on August 28, 2020, at 43.

Projects he completed while in treatment included:

• Marshall
• Black Panther
• Da 5 Bloods
• Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

His choice to stay quiet about his diagnosis later helped focus attention on the rise of early-onset colorectal cancer and the importance of paying attention to symptoms and getting timely care.

The speech she saved

During the interview, Simone read the note aloud — the acceptance she would have given on his behalf:

“I will never stop thanking God for you. Thank you to the most high God. Thank you, Carolyn and Leroy Boseman [Chadwick’s parents], and your mothers, and your mothers’ mothers. What purity. What honesty. What pain. What a role. What work. What beautiful, intricate humanity. What courage, bravery, fearlessness, honesty, commitment, humanity, strength. A spirit that refused to surrender to despair. What an actor. What an artist. What a cast. What a team. What a vision. Glory be to the most high God. Long live the King.”

The remarks were written for the 2021 Academy Awards, where Boseman was posthumously nominated for Best Actor for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He did not win.

On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, host Josh Horowitz reminded Ryan Gosling that his wife, Eva Mendes, already rode through this world once. Gosling just laughed:

“I’m just happy one of us got to do it.”

The offhand joke lit up fan speculation about whether Mendes might pop back up now that Gosling is officially the MCU’s new Ghost Rider.

As of now, there’s nothing to that chatter. There’s been no announcement, report, or even a hint that Mendes will reprise Roxanne Simpson, the character she played opposite Nicolas Cage in the 2007 Ghost Rider movie.

What Marvel confirmed

• Ryan Gosling — officially unveiled as the MCU’s Ghost Rider during Marvel Studios’ Hall H presentation at San Diego Comic-Con.
• Shawn Levy — set to direct a standalone Ghost Rider film for Marvel Studios.
• Release — the movie is slated for a theatrical bow in 2028.

Gosling kept it simple but clear when he took the Hall H stage.

“Ghost Rider is a character I’ve wanted to play for a long time.”

The casting capped years of fan-casting and sent viewers back to the earlier films, which is why Mendes’ name is suddenly everywhere again. For now, her connection remains that 2007 turn as Johnny Blaze’s longtime love interest — while Marvel moves ahead on a fresh take with Gosling, Levy, and a planned 2028 release in theaters.

Rather than hunt for real houses, the production built the family’s entire suburban home on London soundstages to keep the pressure airtight. Filming on The Last House unfolded in a fully controlled set designed to trap a family of four as days stretch into years, food runs low and an invisible barrier won’t let anyone out.

Production ran from late March through early June 2025 across stages in London, with additional studio builds at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. Post wrapped on March 11, 2026, and Netflix has set a global premiere for later this summer.

Filming spanned late March to early June 2025 on London soundstages.

Who’s in the house

The survival thriller comes from director Louis Leterrier and writer Matthew Robinson, and follows a family sealed inside their home by an unseen force.

• Greta Lee — Ann
• Wagner Moura — Jason
• Riley Chung — supporting
• Emma Ho — supporting
• Noah Alexander Sosnowski — supporting
• Gabriel Barbosa — supporting
• Sid Edwards — supporting

Originally developed under the working title 11817, the film leans into a tight, domestic survival setup as the family confronts extreme isolation and dwindling supplies.

London’s locked-in pedigree

London’s stages and nearby facilities have a long track record with dystopian and survival stories, which is part of why the city remains a go-to for projects like this one. Recent and notable examples include:

• The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) — Marvel’s ’80s-inspired take, starring Pedro Pascal, used builds in the UK and partial work in Dorset.
• The End We Start From (2023) — Jodie Comer’s apocalyptic drama filmed extensively across London, with additional locations in Scotland and Oxfordshire.
• Children of Men (2006) — Alfonso Cuarón’s classic transformed sites like Battersea Power Station, Bexhill-on-Sea (East Sussex) and the Dockside Buildings at The Historic Dockyard Chatham (Kent) into a bleak near-future.
• 28 Days Later (2002) — Danny Boyle’s zombie outbreak film famously captured eerily empty London streets with early morning shoots.

Like many of those productions, The Last House relied on major local stages — including Pinewood Studios — to engineer its immersive, sealed-off world.

The Last House premieres globally on Netflix on August 7, 2026.

That claustrophobic, early-lockdown vibe you’re sensing is by design — but The Last House isn’t pulled from headlines or a novel. It comes from an original script by Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters), with director Louis Leterrier leaning into a sunlit-suburb tone inspired by vintage Amblin-era Steven Spielberg. In an interview published June 15, 2026 on Netflix’s Tudum, Leterrier said he wanted a sympathetic, tactile neighborhood feel, and not a ripped-from-life reenactment. The project also carried the working title 11817 during development.

Not based on a book or a true story — it’s an original by writer Matthew Robinson.

What it’s about

The film centers on a family of four suddenly sealed inside their own home with no way out. Supplies are limited, nerves fray, and whatever’s keeping them trapped grows more ominous by the hour. Parents Ann and Jason become the point people for survival — rationing, protecting, and probing the mystery at their doorstep.

Who’s in it

Greta Lee (Past Lives, Russian Doll) and Wagner Moura (Narcos) lead the cast as Ann and Jason, joined by a young ensemble. Here’s the core lineup confirmed so far:

• Greta Lee — Ann
• Wagner Moura — Jason
• Riley Chung (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes)
• Emma Ho (The Baker)
• Noah Alexander Sosnowski (Section 8)
• Gabriel Barbosa (May December)

Behind the camera

Robinson, whose credits also include The Invention of Lying and Dora and the Lost City of Gold, wrote the screenplay. Leterrier directs and produces alongside Oly Obst for 3 Arts Entertainment and Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, and Kori Adelson for Chernin Entertainment.

The Last House premieres on Netflix in the U.S. on August 7, 2026.

At a 2016 appearance at the Dallas Comic Con Fan Expo, Hayley Atwell didn’t hedge when asked about Steve Rogers’ romance with Peggy Carter’s niece, Sharon, in the MCU. She framed it from Peggy’s point of view — protective, recently deceased in the timeline — and drew a hard line.

"I just feel that, you know - I wouldn't want to date my great aunt's guy. It just feels like it crosses an incestuous boundary. And Peggy just died. That's even more disrespectful, right? It's like, 'don't touch that.' 'You can't tap that!'"

The comment lit up Marvel shipping debates all over again, with some fans reading it as a slight toward Sharon Carter (played by Emily VanCamp). For the record, there’s never been any verified conflict between Atwell and VanCamp — the back-and-forth lived squarely in fandom, not between the actors.

That’s largely the pattern with Atwell online: the noise tends to come from creative takes on her Peggy Carter era and where the character’s story should have gone, not from off-screen drama.

Captain Carter, briefly

The cycle repeated when Atwell showed up as Captain Carter in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Fans were thrilled to see a live‑action version, then frustrated when the cameo was short and brutally cut off. Atwell later said the moment undercut Peggy more than it celebrated her.

"When she was like, 'I could do this all day' and then followed by she's immediately cut in half by a frisbee. And the audience being like, 'She can't do it all day. Apparently you can't, so, egg on your face.' That doesn't really serve Peggy very well,"

she said on Happy Sad Confused in 2023. Many viewers agreed, arguing there was more to mine with that variant than a quick shock gag.

Atwell has continued exploring the character on the animated series What If...? — voicing Peggy/Captain Carter in stories with room to breathe — which streams on Disney+.

In a very Wade Wilson move, Ryan Reynolds took the Hall H stage at San Diego Comic-Con in the gray Deadpool suit — the one nodding to Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force — and, between quips about masks and a “Canadian tuxedo,” confirmed that Deadpool will crash Avengers: Doomsday.

Marvel kept the specifics locked up: no plot rundown, no sense of how much screen time he gets. Behind the scenes, the chatter is that his part could be a cameo rather than a lead beat, joining a lineup rumored to top 60 actors. What that actually looks like on screen is the mystery; the only sure thing is that Wade’s brand of meta mayhem is now in the mix.

Doom steps into the spotlight

Elsewhere in Hall H, Kevin Feige rolled out exclusive footage that, according to attendees, puts Doctor Doom squarely at the center of Doomsday’s threat. The reel reportedly opens on Victor Von Doom seated on a throne as Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm describes him as “a broken man” forged by loss, setting a darker tone than recent Marvel outings.

• Doom confronting Thor, then casually halting the Asgardian’s attack.
• An army of towering Sentinel robots rising at Doom’s command.
• Quick cuts promising a true crossover: the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men all in play.

Fans also clocked a design shift. While a post‑credits stinger in Fantastic Four: First Steps reportedly showed the classic metallic faceplate, the Doomsday footage features a rougher, more mechanical look for Doom — heavier on the scarred, industrial feel than pristine armor.

As for Deadpool’s role in all this, speculation runs the gamut: a pressure‑valve jokester in the film’s darker moments, a multiverse troublemaker who kicks at the plot’s hinges, or a true wildcard who tilts the stakes. Until Marvel says more, it’s all guesswork — but the tone of the Hall H reel suggests a movie big enough to hold all of the above.

Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters December 18.

If you're wondering what grand farewell the show gave her — brace yourself.

The short answer

It barely explained it at all. Blake's final episode was "The Disciple," near the end of season 19, and Kitty got no goodbye scene, no send-off story, nothing. When season 20 began in the fall of 1974, viewers simply learned in passing that Kitty had moved back to New Orleans. That was it — nearly two decades of television, resolved in a line.

How the show moved on

• No farewell episode — Kitty's last appearance was an ordinary episode, with no hint it was the end.
• One offhand explanation — season 20 established she'd left Dodge City for New Orleans, offscreen.
• A replacement behind the bar — Fran Ryan joined as Miss Hannah, the Long Branch's new owner.
• Silence after that — the character was essentially never dwelt on again before the show's cancellation in 1975.

Why Amanda Blake really left

Publicly, Blake said she was worn out — she'd been commuting between her home in Phoenix, Arizona and the Los Angeles production for years. She stuck to that story for the rest of her life, telling the Los Angeles Times:

"I was tired, and it was time to leave," Blake said, adding that the show only lasted a year without her.

According to David R. Greenland's book The Gunsmoke Chronicles, Blake and producer John Mantley agreed to keep any behind-the-scenes friction quiet so nothing would reflect badly on the show, framing the exit as entirely voluntary.

There was heartbreak in the timing, too: Glenn Strange, who played Long Branch bartender Sam and was one of Blake's closest friends on set, died of lung cancer in September 1973 — months before she walked away.

Did she ever come back as Kitty?

Once. Blake reprised the role in the 1987 TV movie Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge, giving fans the reunion the series never provided. She died two years later, in August 1989, at age 60.

For the record: Blake wasn't wrong about the timing. Only James Arness and Milburn Stone lasted all 20 seasons — and without its saloon keeper, Gunsmoke survived exactly one more year.

The short answer

According to the long-running tracker Kitchen Nightmares Updates, 93 restaurants have been featured across the show's first nine US seasons — and only 27 of them are still open. That's 64 closures, plus a couple that moved or sold, for a success rate of roughly 29%. Other trackers count slightly differently, but every tally lands in the same grim neighborhood: about seven in ten of Ramsay's rescues eventually went under.

Season 1 was the omen

If Ramsay wanted a preview of how this would go, his very first American season delivered it. Of the 10 restaurants featured in season 1 back in 2007, exactly zero are still open — nine closed outright and one was sold. Viewers have to fast-forward to season 3 before finding a single restaurant that survived long-term.

The season-by-season scoreboard

• Season 1 (2007) — 0 of 10 open. A perfect record, in the worst way.
• Season 7 (2014) — 2 of 6 open, from the show's original run finale.
• Season 8 (2023) — 4 of 6 open after the revival's first season.
• Season 9 (2025) — 9 of 10 open, the best result in the show's history.

One caveat on those newer numbers: recent restaurants simply haven't had time to fail yet. Seasons 1 through 7 looked healthier in their first year too.

Why do so many close?

Because Ramsay is called in precisely when things are dire — some owners were carrying more than $500,000 in debt before he ever walked through the door. A one-week makeover can fix a menu; it can't always fix the management that created the mess. The most infamous example remains Amy's Baking Company from season 6, which melted down so spectacularly on and off camera that its 2015 closure surprised nobody. And the pattern isn't uniquely American: 14 of the first 22 restaurants on the original UK version had already closed by 2009.

For the record: Ramsay's actual advice usually works — when owners take it. The show's graveyard is mostly full of people who didn't.

So who's running the agency now? Officially: nobody.

The short answer

As of the season 23 finale in May 2026, no permanent director has been named. The agency spent the back half of the season under a rotating series of interim directors who were never even shown on screen. Executive producer Steven D. Binder told TV Insider after the finale that there are no current plans to fill the seat permanently — a deliberate echo of the show's early years, when the director was a recurring presence rather than a series regular.

The wrong man circling the job

The finale, "Sons and Daughters," did introduce a frontrunner — and it's the one fans didn't want. Gabriel LaRoche (Seamus Dever), the former deputy director who resurfaced as U.S. Associate Attorney General, spent the episode targeting Kayla Vance, the late director's daughter, over dirty money partially funding her Archive operation. He capped it off with a long, pointed look at Vance's empty chair during a conversation with Parker. Subtle, he is not.

The other candidates

• Timothy McGee — Sean Murray's senior agent has openly wanted to move up, and lost the deputy director job to LaRoche back in season 22. Winning the top seat would be the ultimate redemption arc.
• Alden Parker — Wilmer Valderrama, who plays Nick Torres, told TVLine his vote "was always this guy," while conceding Parker prefers the field.
• Tony DiNozzo — the wild card. Michael Weatherly is returning for a season-long arc in season 24, per TVLine and the show's own Instagram, and fans immediately started asking whether the prodigal agent could end up in the big office.

Why the show is in no hurry

Binder's explanation is really a tribute. Vance held the job for nearly two decades because of the actor playing him, he told TVLine:

"You almost retire the jersey with him," Binder said.

Brian Dietzen, who plays Jimmy Palmer, told the same outlet he'd prefer a familiar face after all the tumult — but admitted Binder has kept the cast completely in the dark.

So Season 24 arrives in fall 2026 with a dead director, an empty chair, and an attorney general staring at it.

Here's why, and what the ending actually set up.

How season 1 left them

Roscoe and Reacher took down Margrave's corruption together and fell for each other along the way. But he's a drifter and she's devoted to her hometown, so they parted on good terms in the finale: Reacher suggested she run for mayor, and Roscoe gave him her number with an open invitation to call anytime.

He never called. On screen, anyway.

The real reason she's gone

It comes down to the books. Season 1 adapted Killing Floor, Lee Child's 1997 debut novel — and Roscoe never appears in any Jack Reacher book after it. Since the show drops Reacher into a new location and a new novel each season — Bad Luck and Trouble for season 2, then Maine for season 3 — there's simply no story left for a Margrave police officer. Fitzgerald knew this going in, telling Digital Spy she was always aware Roscoe was a one-season arc:

"It's nice to have the agency to know that that is a complete, finished product," she said.

Child himself has admitted the pattern stings. He told Forbes he falls "hopelessly in love" with the women he writes, then has to leave them behind when each book ends.

But Finlay came back — so why not Roscoe?

That's the sore spot for fans. Malcolm Goodwin's Oscar Finlay got a cameo in season 2, episode 4, despite also being absent from the later books — proof the writers will bend the source material for a familiar face. Roscoe even got name-checked in season 2, when Neagley brought her up to Reacher. But a mention is all she's had. In season 3, with Reacher undercover in Maine, she didn't appear at all.

Could she ever return?

The door isn't shut. Fitzgerald told Screen Rant in 2024 she'd heard nothing from the creative team but remains open to it, and showrunner Nick Santora has shown he'll deviate from the books when it serves the show. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald has stayed plenty busy — including her acclaimed lead turn in the 2024 thriller Strange Darling.

For the record: Roscoe still has Reacher's only standing invitation in the entire series. The number's out there. He just has to use it.

There's a reason for that. They're family.

The short answer

Staten and Davis are brothers-in-law. Staten was married to Davis's sister, Amalah Collins, before her death from illness — so the head of the Kirkland ranch and the owner of the modern Bar W Ranch are bound together by a woman they both loved and lost. Grief didn't bring them closer. It handed them more to fight about.

The full family map

• Amalah Kirkland — Davis's late sister and Staten's late wife, the link that makes them in-laws.
• Randall Kirkland — Staten's son and Davis's nephew, who dies in a car crash in the very first episode — driving the sports car Davis gave him for his birthday.
• Reid Collins — Davis's son, which makes him Staten's nephew and Randall's cousin.
• Quinn O'Grady — Minka Kelly's dance-hall owner, Amalah's best friend, and the point of the Staten–Davis love triangle. She's not related to either man; she's just the other thing they can't stop competing over.

Why they can't stand each other

The Kirklands and the Collinses are the two wealthiest families in Ransom Canyon, and their feud goes back generations — long before Staten ever married into the family. The modern version of the fight is about water. Davis, working alongside his ex-wife Paula Jo — who sits on the board of Austin Water & Power — spends season 1 pressuring Staten to sell his land so a pipeline can tap the aquifer running beneath it. Staten inherited that ranch from his grandfather and refuses to budge.

So Davis is simultaneously the uncle mourning Randall, the businessman trying to pry Staten off his own land, and the rival dating the woman Staten loves. Family.

Where things stand going into season 2

Season 1 ended with the triangle unresolved and the land fight simmering, and season 2 — based, like the first, on Jodi Thomas's Ransom Canyon novels — arrived on Netflix on July 23, 2026. Expect the in-laws to keep circling each other.

The killer twist this time isn’t digital wizardry — it’s wood, wires, and an attitude. Todd Masters, the Emmy-winning effects veteran, built a fully functional animatronic Pinocchio for Pinocchio: Unstrung, giving the slasher’s title terror a real, physical presence. Add Robert Englund as the voice of Cricket and hard-R practical gore, and this take on the wooden boy leans into old-school horror craft over CG gloss.

Now playing in about 1,500 North American theaters.

The movie is rolling out only in theaters for now, opening Friday, July 24, 2026, as an independent release in wide genre-friendly footprints. U.S. distribution is through Viva Pictures, with no digital or streaming option available at launch.

How to watch

• Format — Exclusive theatrical run only; no streaming yet.
• Where — Check showtimes and tickets via Fandango or major chains like AMC Theatres.
• Rating — R for heavy gore and intense horror; under 17 requires a parent or guardian.

On the cast side, genre favorite Richard Brake puts a sinister spin on Geppetto, while Englund’s Cricket supplies a wicked voice of “conscience.” Beyond the bloodletting, the movie threads in dark comedy, inventive kills, and a twisted riff on Pinocchio’s transformation to keep the story feeling unpredictable.

A digital release date hasn’t been announced. Based on typical theatrical windows, a September 2026 premium video-on-demand debut is a reasonable bet, with subscription streaming potentially following in November or December 2026 — but nothing is official yet.

Drop Zendaya into a high school hallway in Queens and her spark with Peter Parker is all awkward smiles and quick comebacks. Drop her into a desert war on Arrakis and every look she trades with Paul Atreides feels like a life-or-death decision. The worlds do a lot of the talking: the MCU’s bright, quippy Spider-Man movies invite a playful crush; Dune turns every glance into a promise, a warning, or both.

This isn’t a referendum on who she “clicks with” more so much as what kind of story she’s standing in. Zendaya and Tom Holland built a sweet, modern teen romance across three Marvel adventures. With Timothée Chalamet, she’s caught up in prophecy, politics, and survival, and you can feel that weight in even the quiet moments.

Why it hits different

• Tone and stakes — The Spider-Man trilogy is a coming‑of‑age ride full of jokes, dances around prom, and multiverse surprises; it keeps Peter and MJ’s chemistry light on its feet. Dune is an operatic war story about colonization, rebellion, and destiny. Paul and Chani aren’t just in love — they’re deciding who gets to live, lead, and believe. That pressure makes their connection feel more urgent and volatile.
• Directors’ playbooks — Jon Watts shoots young love in sneakers: breezy, grounded, and loose enough to let banter breathe. No Way Home even finds room for goofball grace notes like MJ lobbing bread at Andrew Garfield’s Spider‑Man. By contrast, Denis Villeneuve works with precision and silence; in Dune, small gestures become seismic. A half‑smile or sidelong look between Chani and Paul can land like a speech.
• The roles themselves — MJ is sharp, dryly funny, and often positioned as Peter’s anchor — but the superhero machine can nudge her into “girlfriend” beats. Chani is a Fremen fighter and a moral counterweight to Paul’s rise; in Dune: Part Two, she questions the messiah narrative in front of her. That resistance gives Zendaya more to push against, which naturally amps up the electricity with Chalamet.

There’s also where these couples are left. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter’s final choice erases MJ’s memories of him, soft‑resetting their romance into something bittersweet and unresolved. It’s tender, but intentionally small and human — two kids looking at a blank page.

On Arrakis, Zendaya’s Chani steps out of dream‑sequence mystery and into the center of the fight. Dune: Part Two gives her far more screen time and a clearer point of view as she challenges Paul’s path even while standing beside him in battle.

Chani’s role expands dramatically in Dune: Part Two, shifting her from Paul’s vision to his conscience — and his challenge.

Different sandboxes, different sparks — and for Zendaya, two very different kinds of screen romance that both do exactly what they’re built to do.

After landing on Netflix on June 22, 2026, the TNT action drama The Last Ship rocketed up the streaming rankings. Per Nielsen data published by THR’s charts, it placed third on the overall Top 10 and No. 1 among acquired shows for the week measured, logging 1.23 billion minutes (1,232 million) streamed. Only Netflix’s I Will Find You (2,484 million minutes) and Love Island USA (1,966 million) ranked higher; in the U.S., Love Island USA streams on Peacock.

A separate look at Netflix’s own Global Top 10 for the week of June 22–28 shows The Last Ship at No. 10 with 1.9 million views and 13.1 million hours watched, according to Collider’s July 1 tally.

The Last Ship racked up 1.23 billion minutes streamed in a single week, per Nielsen.

What the show is

Originally a TNT series, The Last Ship follows the crew of a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer trying to save what’s left of civilization after a deadly virus wipes out most of humanity. It ran for five seasons from 2014 to 2018 and now arrives on Netflix with a full library ready to binge.

Critics largely praised its brisk, military-grade action and sturdy ensemble: the first season sits at 65% on Rotten Tomatoes, the second at 86%, and the audience score across the run averages 68%.

Who’s on board

• Titus Welliver — Andrew Thorwald, a Baltimore warlord and resistance leader (cameo)
• Eric Dane
• Rhona Mitra
• Adam Baldwin
• Charles Parnell
• Travis Van Winkle
• Marissa Neitling
• Christina Elmore
• John Pyper-Ferguson
• Jocko Sims
• Kevin Michael Martin
• Bren Foster
• Bridget Regan
• LaMonica Garrett
• Fay Masterson
• Emerson Brooks
• Jodie Turner-Smith

All five seasons of The Last Ship are streaming on Netflix now.

The quiet reveal started with fake wedding photos. In the July/August issue of Esquire, Tom Holland addressed viral AI images that showed him tying the knot beside Lake Como — pictures that racked up millions of likes and even convinced his grandmother she’d been left off the guest list. Asked if the hoax caused any confusion at home, Holland didn’t blink.

"No, because they were all there," he said.

He shut down follow-ups and offered no logistics — no date, no venue — only that the ceremony was intimate and filled with close relatives. A few weeks later, on July 16, during a promo stop for The Odyssey on the Wired podcast, he went one step further when a question turned to his co-star’s character.

"No, because she's married to me," he said.

That offhand “my wife” — delivered while discussing whether Athena has feelings for Odysseus — was the first time Holland said it out loud in public. The moment doubled as an affectionate shoutout to Zendaya in the middle of a packed press run.

Co-stars happily piled on. Sitting alongside Holland, Matt Damon instantly backed the quip —

"Yep. Good answer," he said.

And when Robert Pattinson later read a fan prompt asking what Athena teaches Telemachus in the film, Damon jumped in again with a wink to real life.

"True love," he said.

The breadcrumb trail

The confirmation capped months of whispers that kicked off when Zendaya flashed a striking diamond ring at the 2025 Golden Globes. On March 1, 2026, her stylist Law Roach poured gasoline on the rumor mill at the Actor Awards.

"The wedding has already happened," he said.

Pressed again on the Oscars red carpet later that month, Roach didn’t budge.

"I said what I said," he told Extra.

Zendaya’s looks seemed to play along. At Paris Fashion Week she stepped out in a crisp white shirt dress with a gold band, then turned up at the Essence Black Women in Hollywood event in a white-and-gold minidress, coyly flashing that ring when asked for “a sign.” At The Drama premiere, she wore an off-the-shoulder white Vivienne Westwood gown — a run of non-bridal whites that let everyone imagine a wedding without seeing the real one.

Keeping it private

Even with the nods, the couple has drawn a hard line. There’s still no official wedding date, no location, no guest list. Roach has said there won’t be a glossy magazine spread; the ceremony, he noted, was for trusted friends and family only.

On-screen and off

Holland and Zendaya met in 2016 while filming Spider-Man: Homecoming (released in 2017) as Peter Parker and MJ, and their off-screen bond grew under the same spotlight that made their characters a phenomenon. As Holland told Esquire, the shared experience matters.

“We can support each other in ways that only we can, because only we understand really what it’s like to live this life, and I think that is such a luxury, because I just don’t understand how I would be able to have anything like that with anyone else,” he said.

This summer they’re back-to-back across two tentpoles:

• The Odyssey (2026) — Holland plays prince Telemachus; Zendaya is Athena. Their mythic storylines don’t intersect on screen.
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) — Holland returns as Peter Parker and Zendaya as Michelle “MJ” Jones-Watson, with Peter navigating a world where Doctor Strange’s spell left his former love a stranger.

Zendaya joked that she got an early leg up on The Odyssey thanks to some convenient bedtime reading. “Tom had the script at home before I got the call,” she told E! News, crediting an early peek for helping her prep.

Meanwhile, the reveal sent Gen Z feeds into overdrive, with the couple’s names trending across TikTok, X, and Instagram — the latest chapter in a fandom that watched Peter and MJ turn into a real-life partnership. Beyond that, Holland has been clear: don’t expect more details about the wedding itself.

The latest round of side‑by‑side screenshots making the rounds on X pits Charlize Theron’s Calypso in The Odyssey (2026) against Naomie Harris’s sea goddess from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) — and the comments are leaning hard toward the Disney veteran. In the new film, Theron plays Calypso as a cool, calculating presence who doses Odysseus with lotus flowers and quietly erodes his memories; Harris’s take famously explodes into mythic spectacle, from towering to the size of a ship to bursting into thousands of crabs and whipping up an ocean maelstrom.

Two very different Calypsos

• Power set — 2026: psychological control, island manipulation, memory fade. 2007: full supernatural force, storm‑calling, body morphing into crabs.
• Vibe and look — Theron’s is grounded and glamorous with fluid silhouettes; Harris leans gothic and untamed, with dreadlocks and a hypnotic accent.
• Motivation — In Nolan’s film, Calypso keeps Odysseus dependent by numbing trauma; in the pirates saga, she’s a heartbreak‑driven deity bargaining with pirate lords to shatter human constraints.

The comparison post from film account The Cine Prism crystallized what fans have been circling since opening weekend: Nolan’s version opts for intimate mind‑games, while Gore Verbinski’s blockbuster went for operatic myth. The new clip compilations have reignited a 2007 memory — Harris’s Calypso erupting into a storm so vast it becomes the movie’s axis.

What fans are saying

Comments on X are blunt about which portrayal felt bigger on screen.

"The role of Calypso in Pirates of the Caribbean is much more impact full then odyssey," wrote Avan Maali.

"PoTC (Pirates of the Caribbean) Calypso actually felt like a force. The Odyssey one… not so much," wrote user Denniss.

"Calypso in Pirates was a top-tier character," wrote Giovanni.

Some also noted the mythology gap between franchises.

"I don’t think that Calypso in Pirates of the Caribbean is supposed to be the same as the Greek Calypso, but I could be wrong," wrote 90 Day Opinionated.

"She can't get any more perfect than she was in the Pirates of the Caribbean," wrote Simon Phoenix.

Worth keeping in mind: Harris’s character is Disney’s own take on a sea goddess within the Pirates universe, while Theron is playing the Greek nymph from Homer — two separate screen characters that share a name and inspiration, not a single canon to judge as one.

On the Blade Runner 2099 panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Michelle Yeoh singled out co-star Hunter Schafer for the way she hurls herself into fight beats and physical moments, the kind that give this franchise its reputation for bone-rattling set pieces.

“I don't want to see her get hurt, especially when I saw how she threw herself, literally,”

Yeoh told Entertainment Tonight, adding that Schafer’s fearlessness had already made an impression. For a series that follows the beautifully bruising legacy of Deckard and K, Schafer’s all-in approach positions her as the show’s new human wrecking ball — in the best way.

Why Yeoh’s praise matters

Yeoh’s bar for action is sky-high. Before she was winning Oscars, she was redefining what a screen fighter could do — often by doing it herself.

• Yes, Madam! — trained roughly eight hours a day and performed major stunts on her own early in her career.
• Police Story 3: Supercop — famously launched a moving motorcycle onto a speeding train.
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon — worked through a serious knee injury (ACL) while filming.
• Tomorrow Never Dies — turned Bond’s partner Wai Lin into a true equal in the action.
• Everything Everywhere All at Once — proved her action instincts are as sharp as ever.

Yeoh and Schafer talked about stepping into the franchise’s physical legacy during the Blade Runner 2099 session at San Diego Comic-Con on July 24, 2026.

Across more than three decades on TV, Ralph W. Hemecker left fingerprints on a wild range of genre hits — helping introduce Heath Ledger to American audiences with Roar, steering TNT’s Witchblade from a TV movie into a series as showrunner, and becoming a steady hand behind the camera for network staples like Blue Bloods and the Arrowverse.

According to an obituary notice, Hemecker died on July 10, 2026, at his home in Glendale, California. He was 65. A cause of death was not disclosed.

Hemecker died July 10, 2026, at home in Glendale, California. He was 65.

Career highlights

Hemecker’s résumé stretches well beyond a single fandom. He directed episodes of Once Upon a Time and The X-Files, moved comfortably between comic-book worlds and crime procedurals, and delivered a couple of buzzy DC TV hours with The Flash’s “Tricksters” and the crossover “Legends of Today.”

• Witchblade (TNT) — Directed the 2000 TV movie; later served as the series’ showrunner, writer and executive producer.
• Blue Bloods (CBS) — Directed 31 episodes, becoming a regular presence on the Reagan family’s beat.
• The Flash (The CW) — Directed “Tricksters” and the crossover “Legends of Today.”
• Roar (Fox) — Cast Heath Ledger in one of his first major American roles.
• Once Upon a Time (ABC) — Directed episodes of the fairy-tale drama.
• The X-Files (Fox) — Directed episodes in the landmark sci-fi series.
• The Vampire Diaries (The CW) — Directed episodes.
• Nikita (The CW) — Directed episodes.
• Ghost Whisperer (CBS) — Directed episodes.
• Numb3rs (CBS) — Directed episodes.
• Millennium (Fox) — Directed episodes.

From pilots and television movies to comic-book adaptations and network procedurals, Hemecker built a career as the kind of filmmaker shows called when they needed scope, pace and a sure touch.

Family and memorial

Hemecker is survived by:

• Two stepdaughters
• His father
• One sister and one brother
• Three nephews and one niece
• One great-nephew

His mother preceded him in death. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the SEAL Future Foundation, reflecting Hemecker’s admiration for the Navy SEALs and the values they represent.

There was no glossy photo spread or grand reveal — their quietly sealed marriage slipped out the back door of the internet. The first real hint came when stylist Law Roach casually let it slip, and the low-key confirmation landed later when Tom Holland referred to Zendaya as his wife. For a couple that’s kept a firm grip on privacy, it tracks: the milestone arrived the same way their relationship has unfolded for years — mostly on their terms, with the occasional public breadcrumb they didn’t plan to drop.

From co-stars to couple

Their first spark was on a 2016 chemistry read for Spider-Man: Homecoming, where an awkward handshake-hug mix-up broke the ice. That summer, Holland posted a poolside photo of them together, and in interviews he even blurted out Zendaya’s name when asked about his celebrity crush — charming fuel for rumors they both laughed off at the time.

In 2017, they swatted away a People report that they were secretly dating — Zendaya poked fun at it on Twitter, while Holland joked that their “vacations” were just the press tour. By December, he was having dinner with her and her parents in New York, where her family reportedly loved him.

• 2019–2020 — Onscreen, Peter and MJ finally kissed in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Offscreen, Zendaya was linked to her Euphoria co-star Jacob Elordi, while Holland went Instagram-official with British actress Nadia Parkes and quarantined with her early in the pandemic.
• 2021 — Paparazzi caught Holland and Zendaya kissing at a Los Angeles red light in an Audi, the “just friends” curtain call. Weeks later, on her 25th birthday, he posted a mirror selfie and wrote two words that did the rest.

“My MJ.”

Private, but in plain sight

Holland later said he was upset that the car photos were published without their consent, and the couple tightened the circle. Still, little glimpses slipped through: during the emotionally heavy shoot for Euphoria Season 2, he reportedly visited Zendaya’s set at least 30 times. She wore a gold signet ring engraved with “TH”; he stepped out in London with a custom “Z” stitched on his trousers.

When he did open up, Holland kept it simple — making a movie together helped them get close, and he joked he has no “rizz,” preferring the long game. The long game clearly worked: an engagement followed, then a wedding kept so quiet that it took a stylist’s slip and Holland casually saying “my wife” to make it official to the rest of us.

Their story started with a chemistry test on Spider-Man and culminated offscreen — confirmed not by a splashy announcement, but by Holland calling Zendaya his wife.

Production on Sullivan’s Crossing Season 5 is locked in: cameras are slated to roll in Nova Scotia from Aug. 25 to Dec. 11, 2026. The plan from partners The CW (U.S.) and CTV (Canada) is a Spring 2027 launch — targeting March or April — for a new run of 10 episodes.

The Season 4 finale teed up what’s next: Cal got down on one knee, and Tracy arrived looking for a home. While official plot details aren’t out yet, expect Maggie and Cal to navigate what it means to become Tracy’s foster family — and how that reshapes their relationship and day-to-day life at the Crossing.

For anyone catching up, the drama — drawn from Robyn Carr’s novels — follows neurosurgeon Maggie Sullivan, who returned to her coastal hometown after a career scandal, mended family ties and found a fresh start with Cal Jones.

Who’s expected back

• Morgan Kohan — Maggie Sullivan
• Chad Michael Murray — Cal Jones
• Tom Jackson — Frank Cranebear
• Andrea Menard — Edna Cranebear
• Lindura — Sydney Shandon
• Marcus Rosner — Liam
• Lynda Boyd — Phoebe Lancaster
• Allan Hawco — Andrew Eric Mathews
• Dakota Taylor — Rafe Vadas
• Amalia Williamson — Lola Gunderson
• Peter Outerbridge — Walter Lancaster
• Lauren Hammersley — Connie Boyle
• Reid Price — Rob Shandon

Season 5 keeps the one-hour format, with episodes running about 42–45 minutes without ads.

When it returns

The CW hasn’t pinned down a specific premiere date yet. With filming wrapping in December 2026, the target is March or April 2027, keeping the show on an annual cycle alongside its Canadian broadcaster CTV.

Filming is scheduled for Aug. 25–Dec. 11, 2026 in Nova Scotia.

Exact U.S. premiere date: TBA.

At the China stop of the Spider-Man: Brand New Day press tour, Zendaya leaned into full-on “method dressing,” stepping onto the carpet in an archival Atelier Versace Spring/Summer 2016 couture gown. The semi-sheer draping and dramatic cutaway panels were traced with intricate black latticework that looked like sleek spider webs, folding a superhero nod into a true high-fashion moment without tipping into costume.

Styled by Law Roach, the look stayed inside the tour’s black‑white‑red palette and came finished with tight baby bangs, bold liner, almost no jewelry, and a jewel-encrusted spider pinned as a wink to the franchise. Standing beside Tom Holland in a tailored dark suit, the pairing read coordinated but low-key—her dress doing the winking, his suit keeping it sharp.

The gown: an archival Atelier Versace couture piece from Spring/Summer 2016 with web-like black lattice.

Tour highlights

China is just the latest stop in a run where Zendaya has threaded Spider-Man references through designer looks across Europe and the U.S. Recent fits have mixed runway, vintage, and playful pop touches:

• Madrid — Black fringed Christian Cowan gown
• Amsterdam — Structured Louis Vuitton ensemble
• Rome — Vintage Giorgio Armani with crystal spiderweb motifs
• Versace two-piece — Sparkling red-and-blue set echoing Spidey’s signature colors
• Paris — Vintage Spider-Man T-shirt worn as a mini dress
• London — Dramatic John Galliano slip with a giant spiderweb across the back
• New York — Oversized Vetements tailoring
• Mexico City — Custom Ashi Studio gown

Call it cosplay’s couture cousin: by mirroring story elements in cut, color, and texture, Zendaya’s press-tour wardrobe turns each carpet into an Easter-egg hunt for fashion fans and Spider-Man diehards alike. In China, the jeweled spider and that Versace web lattice made the connection unmistakable—sleek, sly, and very on brand.

In the days after Chuck Russell died on July 22 at his home in San Diego, Jim Carrey looked back on the shoot that changed his life: the wild, anything-goes set of The Mask. In a statement, Carrey said Russell didn’t just wrangle cutting-edge effects — he built a playground where everyone felt free to try the impossible.

“I consider it a privilege to have worked with Chuck Russell, who, during the shooting of The Mask, created an ebullient, childlike atmosphere of wonder and camaraderie on his set,” Carrey said. “I consider The Mask one of the jewels of my creative life. Thank you, Chuck.”

Released in 1994, The Mask paired Carrey’s rubber-faced physical comedy with then-new CGI to turn a timid bank clerk into a neon-green, Tex Avery–style tornado. The movie helped rocket Carrey to big-screen superstardom and cemented Russell’s reputation for mixing spectacle with a light touch.

A career across genres

Before The Mask, Russell had already made a name for himself with stylish, effects-driven genre films, starting with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors in 1987 and his co-written, gnarlier remake of The Blob in 1988. He moved into action with Hollywood heavyweights, then circled back to horror late in his career.

• A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) — director
• The Blob (1988) — co-writer/director
• The Mask (1994) — director; breakthrough hit with Carrey
• Eraser (1996) — director; starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
• The Scorpion King (2002) — director; launched Dwayne Johnson as a leading man
• I Am Wrath (2016) — director; starring John Travolta
• Paradise City (2022) — director; reuniting Travolta with Bruce Willis
• Witchboard (2024) — director; a supernatural horror remake and his final film

Russell’s cause of death has not been disclosed. His final completed project, Witchboard, arrived this year.

After its first week in theaters, The Odyssey has tallied $346 million worldwide, and box office analysts now peg its final haul in the $1.1–$1.3 billion range. Hitting the top of that band would nudge past The Dark Knight Rises and its $1.08 billion lifetime total to become Christopher Nolan’s biggest movie ever.

Record start

The epic action-adventure launched with $124 million in the U.S. and $264 million worldwide in its opening weekend — Nolan’s largest global debut, surpassing the $249 million start of The Dark Knight Rises back in 2012.

Opened to $264 million worldwide — Nolan’s biggest opening ever.

• $346M — worldwide after seven days
• $124M — domestic opening weekend
• $264M — global opening weekend (career-best for Nolan)
• $250M — estimated production budget (only Nolan film above $200M besides The Dark Knight Rises)
• $1.08B — lifetime gross to beat from The Dark Knight Rises

Can the run hold?

Momentum looks strong heading into weekend two, with no major new wide releases on deck until Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives later this month. That superhero rollout could carve out a big share of the market, but with strong word of mouth and premium-format interest, The Odyssey’s billion-dollar push remains in play.

Competition finally arrives when Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens later this month.

Five years later, plenty of fans still pin the cancellation on sagging ratings alone. The numbers were only half the story.

The reason everyone points to

The ratings decline was real, no question:

• Season 1 averaged 15.3 million viewers — a genuine hit out of the gate in 2014.
• Season 6 averaged 6.3 million — respectable, but the slide was underway, accelerated by the exit of fan favorite Lucas Black in 2019.
• Season 7 averaged about 4.9 million — down 23% year over year, one of the steepest drops on CBS that season.

The show had also been shuffled from its plum Tuesday slot behind the mothership to Sunday nights, where it drew roughly 750,000 fewer viewers than its NCIS: Los Angeles lead-in. Bad, sure. But here's the thing: 4.9 million viewers would have kept plenty of network dramas alive.

The reason that actually killed it

Money — specifically, back-end money. As Deadline reported at the time, New Orleans never matched the lucrative off-network syndication deals of NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles, in large part because of "fundamental changes in the TV business over the past decade."

Those resale deals to other platforms and foreign markets are where procedurals earn their keep, and NOLA's simply weren't rich enough to justify its costs.

The timing sealed it. The very week of the cancellation, showrunners Christopher Silber and Jan Nash were revealed to be developing NCIS: Hawaii — which promptly took over the vacated real estate that fall. New Orleans wasn't killed by a ratings collapse. It was a line-item decision.

How the show said goodbye

At least the writers had time to land the plane. The finale, which aired May 23, 2021, ended with Dwayne Pride marrying Rita — played by Chelsea Field, Scott Bakula's real-life wife — followed by a wedding parade through the streets of the city.

"Sad to end our love affair with this phenomenal city," Bakula said via Deadline in 2021, thanking CBS for seven years.

The epilogue that proves the point

If ratings alone had been the killer, its replacement should have thrived. It didn't. NCIS: Hawaii was canceled in 2024 after just three seasons — and NCIS: Los Angeles ended in 2023. The economics that took down New Orleans came for the whole family.

Turns out the Big Easy show wasn't failing. The math was.

Twenty-five years on, here's where the men of Easy Company ended up.

The two future X-Men

Yes, Professor X and Magneto both served in Easy Company first. James McAvoy played Private James Miller, a young replacement who jumps into Operation Market Garden, while Michael Fassbender — in his first-ever screen role — played Burton "Pat" Christenson, a Toccoa original who fights from Normandy to Germany.

A decade later, the pair reunited as Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr in 2011's X-Men: First Class. Since then, McAvoy has added Atonement, Split, and His Dark Materials; Fassbender picked up Oscar nominations for 12 Years a Slave and Steve Jobs, and now leads the spy series The Agency, which premiered in 2024.

The rest of the roll call

• Damian Lewis (Major Richard Winters) — the breakout lead went on to Homeland, an Emmy, Billions, and Wolf Hall, most recently in its 2024 sequel The Mirror and the Light.
• Ron Livingston (Captain Lewis Nixon) — the Office Space star stayed steadily busy, from Sex and the City to playing Henry Allen in 2023's The Flash.
• Tom Hardy (Private John Janovec) — a bit part in the final two episodes became Bane, Mad Max, Venom, and the 2025 crime series MobLand.
• David Schwimmer (Captain Herbert Sobel) — cast at peak Friends fame as the training officer everyone hated, and unforgettable for it.
• Simon Pegg (Sergeant William Evans) — went from Sobel's company clerk to Shaun of the Dead and the Mission: Impossible franchise.
• Andrew Scott (Private John Hall) — the future Fleabag priest and Ripley star appears in episode two, and his character's death on D-Day still stings.
• Donnie Wahlberg (Sergeant Carwood Lipton) — spent 14 seasons on Blue Bloods, then moved straight into its 2025 spin-off Boston Blue.
• Neal McDonough (Lieutenant Buck Compton) — became one of TV's go-to heavies, from Justified to Tulsa King.

Colin Hanks, Michael Cudlitz, Scott Grimes, and even a cameoing Jimmy Fallon round out one of the deepest benches ever assembled for television.

Why the show still matters

Band of Brothers won six Emmys, including Outstanding Miniseries, and its legacy franchise kept growing — The Pacific in 2010 and Masters of the Air in 2024, all from the Spielberg-Hanks partnership. The series itself turns 25 in September 2026 and still tops best-of-TV lists.

Here's where the phrase really came from, and what the show was actually about.

Where "about nothing" really comes from

The line isn't from a pitch meeting. It's from the show itself. In season 4, which aired in 1992, Jerry and George pitch a sitcom called Jerry to NBC — a parody of Seinfeld's own origin — and George, being George, sells it as a show about nothing. The joke was that no sane person would pitch a network that way.

The joke escaped the episode. Viewers and the press adopted it as the show's official description, and thirty-plus years later it's on practically every article ever written about the series.

What Jerry says it was actually about

Seinfeld himself has debunked the myth directly. In a 2014 Reddit AMA, he explained that when he and Larry David walked into NBC in 1988, the real pitch was to show how a comedian gets his material — which is why so many episodes opened and closed with Jerry doing stand-up built from that week's events.

"The 'show about nothing' was just a joke in an episode many years later," Seinfeld wrote in the 2014 AMA, adding that he and David remain surprised it stuck — because to them, the show is the opposite of nothing.

Larry David agrees

David said the same thing decades earlier. In a 1998 interview with Charlie Rose, given as the series ended, he confirmed the show was never pitched as being about nothing — the label was an invention of that season 4 episode that simply caught on.

And the evidence backs them up. Far from nothing, the show ran on very specific raw material:

• David's real life — "The Contest" came from an actual bet, and George's quit-then-return job stunt in "The Revenge" is something David really did.
• A real neighbor — Kramer was based on Kenny Kramer, who lived across the hall from David.
• A real pitch — the whole season 4 NBC arc dramatizes Seinfeld and David's own experience selling the show.

So why did the label stick?

Because it half-fits. Seinfeld famously operated under a "no hugging, no learning" rule — no morals, no growth, no sentimental endings — and mined comedy from minutiae like waiting for a table, double-dipping a chip, or losing a car in a parking garage. If you squint, that looks like nothing.

But 9 seasons, 180 episodes, and one of the biggest finales in TV history — 76 million viewers on May 14, 1998 — say otherwise. It was never a show about nothing. It was a show about everything small.

So the answer comes in two parts — the ending fans got in 2006, and the one they waited thirteen years for.

The 2006 "ending" that wasn't one

The season 3 finale was never written as a series finale. Mining magnate George Hearst (Gerald McRaney) gets what he wants and leaves town, but only after Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) murders one of his own women to pass her off as the one Hearst demanded dead. The last image is Al alone, scrubbing the bloodstain from his floor.

"He wants me to tell him something pretty," Al mutters — the final line of the series, in 2006.

Then HBO offered Milch a truncated fourth season of six to eight episodes, he turned it down, and the show — which cost about $4.5 million per episode — was gone. Two wrap-up TV movies were promised. For over a decade, neither appeared.

How the movie actually ends things

Deadwood: The Movie, written by Milch and directed by Daniel Minahan, picks up in 1889 — ten years later — as South Dakota celebrates statehood and Hearst returns as a U.S. senator. This time the town gets a measure of justice:

• Hearst finally loses — after having Charlie Utter murdered for refusing to sell his land, Hearst is publicly humiliated, beaten by a mob, and arrested by Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant).
• Trixie and Sol marry — the camp's longest-running love story ends in a wedding, with Trixie inheriting the Gem saloon.
• Al dies — his liver failing, Swearengen spends the film fading, and the final scene is Trixie at his bedside, reciting the Lord's Prayer while Al offers one last profane objection to it.

Nearly the entire surviving cast returned — Olyphant, McShane, Paula Malcomson, John Hawkes, Molly Parker, Gerald McRaney, and more.

Why it took 13 years

Money killed the show; life delayed the fix. Milch spent years battling a gambling problem that reportedly left him around $17 million in debt by 2016, and shortly before the film premiered, he revealed he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Knowing that, the movie's farewell to Al — the character who always carried the most of Milch himself — plays as the creator's own goodbye.

For the record: the film runs 110 minutes and landed a Rotten Tomatoes score in the high 90s.

Thirteen years late, and worth it.

Here's the full story — and why nobody should have been surprised.

The short answer

Monty's death wasn't a firing, a feud, or a rewrite. It was baked into the character before Jon Hamm ever signed on. Thornton confirmed as much at the Newport Beach TV Fest in 2025, calling the death a requirement of the part:

"That was pre-planned before Taylor even knew Jon was gonna be playing the part," Thornton said.

Taylor Sheridan wrote Monty Miller as a one-season character. Hamm just happened to be the star who took the job.

How Monty died on the show

Monty, president of oil giant M-Tex, suffers a heart attack in the season 1 finale and dies in his hospital bed after an unsuccessful heart transplant — off screen, with Tommy already warned it was coming. Before the end, Monty asks Tommy to take over as company president and serve as executor of his estate alongside his wife, Cami (Demi Moore).

The clues were there all season. Co-creator Christian Wallace told TV Insider in January 2025 that the writers deliberately dropped small hints throughout — Monty checking the heart rate on his watch, Cami cutting off his coffee — so the death wouldn't land completely out of nowhere.

Why Hamm only signed for one season

Simple: that's all he could give.

Hamm told The Hollywood Reporter in January 2025 that the appeal was never a long TV run — "it was the ability to work with Taylor and Billy Bob," two careers he'd been watching closely.

A contained, one-season arc with a built-in death suited everyone. No drama. No scandal. Just scheduling and a script that always ended in a hospital room.

What his death set up

Season 2, which premiered in November 2025, is built almost entirely on the hole Monty left:

• Cami takes over — Demi Moore's character inherits M-Tex as its inexperienced new owner, finally moving to the center of the show.
• Tommy becomes president — running day-to-day operations while answering to a grieving widow.
• The company is secretly broke — season 2 reveals Monty was funneling money through hidden trusts to make M-Tex look healthy. It isn't.

Monty's death didn't shrink the show. It armed it.

For the record: Moore has said the cast genuinely missed having Hamm on set — and then credited the loss to Sheridan's plan. The plan came first. It always did.

Four of the six couples are now married — to each other. Here's where everyone stands.

The short answer

• Madlyn and Colby — married, two kids.
• Alexis and Hunter — married in June 2022.
• Lauren and Nathan — married in October 2022, one son.
• Shanique and Randall — married in May 2025.
• Rae and Zay — split for good.
• April and Jake — split for good.

The marriages

Madlyn Ballatori and Colby Kissinger delivered the wildest finale in the show's history — Madlyn skipped the engagement entirely and married Colby on the spot on Decision Day. It stuck. Daughter Josephine ("Josie") arrived on May 2, 2022, followed by son Conrad Lloyd in September 2023, and the family relocated to Madlyn's Texas hometown.

Alexis Maloney and Hunter Parr barely played the game at all: Hunter proposed before the trial marriages even began, and the pair walked out engaged. They wed in June 2022 in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Lauren Pounds and Nathan Ruggles followed the same playbook minutes later — Nathan proposed rather than let Lauren pair off with someone else. They married in October 2022 and welcomed a baby boy in June 2024.

The long road: Shanique and Randall

Theirs is the redemption arc. Randall Griffin proposed to Shanique in the finale, but the couple called off the engagement by the reunion and rebuilt slowly — living together, then re-engaging in July 2023 after Randall proposed again in a secret garden in Austin. On May 25, 2025, they finally married in front of 150 guests at the Red Berry Estate in San Antonio, Texas.

"Shanique brings light into every room. She's driven, grounded, and the most thoughtful person I've ever met," Randall told People in 2025.

The ultimatum, it turns out, just needed a three-year runway.

The splits: Rae, Zay, April, and Jake

The show's messiest quartet never recovered. Rae Williams and Zay Wilson broke up after Zay slept with his trial-marriage partner during filming; Rae has since dated a woman, explored her bisexuality, and built a modeling career, including work with Playboy and Fashion Nova.

Zay struck out again on Perfect Match in 2023, appeared on Celebrity Ex on the Beach in 2024, and was reported by Parade in 2024 to be dating Real Housewives of Miami star Larsa Pippen.

Rae and Jake Cunningham — the season's forbidden spark — left the finale together with a plane ticket to anywhere in the world. They never took the trip. Jake has stayed single since, while his ex April Marie moved on with real estate broker Cody Cooper and welcomed a baby girl.

Final tally: six couples went in, four marriages came out — every single one between the people who arrived together.

The trial spouses went 0 for 6.

The short answer

Godless wasn't canceled. It was a limited series, conceived, written, and shot as a single, complete story — Netflix's first in-house limited series, in fact. Creator Scott Frank originally wrote it as a feature film, and when the script landed at Netflix, executives wanted it as a one-season event, not an ongoing show.

Frank told Variety in 2017 that "Netflix kept every promise they made." One of those promises was letting the story end.

The creator had nothing left to tell

Frank was upfront that he simply hadn't imagined a continuation. Asked about a second season, he admitted that while you never know, he didn't know what it would even be. Seven episodes covered the whole arc: Roy's flight from Frank Griffin, the siege of La Belle, and the fates of Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery), Mary Agnes (Merritt Wever), and Sheriff Bill McNue (Scoot McNairy). The story closed its own door.

The cast didn't want more either

This is the unusual part — the actors actively argued against a return.

"At some point, it becomes some sort of money-maker thing and I think as a viewer you can see that and sense that," Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who played Deputy Whitey Winn, told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017.

Sam Waterston, who played Marshal John Cook, compared the series to a novel — self-contained by design — and flatly predicted there wouldn't be a Godless 2.

But Netflix un-limits shows all the time, right?

True — 13 Reasons Why was pitched as limited and got four seasons, and HBO's Big Little Lies famously came back for more. Godless had the viewership and the acclaim to justify the same move. What it didn't have was anyone on the creative side willing to stretch it. The one-and-done status held.

Was it worth it?

The awards say yes. At the 2018 Emmys, Godless took home Outstanding Supporting Actor and Actress in a Limited Series — Jeff Daniels and Merritt Wever, respectively.

What does a man built for war and railroads do when both are finished?

The golden spike

The finale begins with Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount) waking from a drunken stupor while the ceremony unfolds — Durant and Collis Huntington bickering over who gets to hammer in the final spike. Durant wins that argument. The railroad Bohannon bled for across five seasons is officially done, and he's a chief engineer with nothing left to build.

Durant's reckoning

Thomas "Doc" Durant (Colm Meaney) doesn't escape history. Summoned before a congressional hearing over the railroad's financial corruption, he pleads the Fifth — then delivers a defiant speech arguing that dreams don't come pretty. He seems poised to wriggle free, but viewers already knew better: an earlier flash-forward to New York in 1885 showed where his schemes ultimately leave him. Broke and disgraced, just like the real Durant.

Bohannon's choice

President Grant offers Bohannon a prestigious future: an Army commission as Under Secretary of the Western Territories, protecting the railroad he built. A meeting with a swaggering George Custer convinces him he's no soldier anymore.

Instead, Bohannon returns to a confessional — the same one where he committed one of his revenge killings in the very first episode — and when the priest asks if he wishes to be saved, something in him finally breaks open.

So he walks away from all of it:

• The commission — declined. He's done fighting other men's wars.
• The railroad — finished. The addiction that consumed him for five seasons is over.
• America itself — he takes a train to San Francisco and boards a ship to China, searching for Mei, the woman he loves.

The supporting cast gets closure too: Eva turns down a book deal about her life and rides off on a wild horse, while Mickey quietly throws away the magic lantern slides from the picture show he ran with his dead brother.

Does he find Mei?

The show never says — and that's deliberate. Mount defended the open door in a 2016 Yahoo TV postmortem, describing the ending as "allowing him to leave his battle behind, setting him free." After 57 episodes of vengeance and track-laying, Bohannon's story ends mid-journey, on open water.

It didn't wait long. Spoilers ahead.

The short answer

Nuck killed Pastor Zeke. The season 8 premiere, "The Coldest Winter," strongly pointed to him, and the show later removed all doubt when Nuck admitted to Bakari that he was responsible — he couldn't risk Zeke talking to the police.

Why Nuck did it

The motive was self-preservation, plain and simple. Zeke had gotten tangled up in Nuck's money-laundering operation through the church, and the police came calling. In the premiere, Zeke's ex-wife Carolyn tells Papa what investigators wanted from him:

"The police — they wanted info on one of the guys he was counseling," Carolyn says in the episode.

Carolyn was convinced from the start that Nuck ordered the hit. She was right. In Nuck's world, a pastor with a conscience and a police contact is a liability — so the liability was removed.

Who was Pastor Zeke, again?

Ezekiel "Zeke" Bailey, played by Daniel J. Watts, arrived in season 6 as Kenya's father and the head of a megachurch that rivaled Pastor Stanley Jackson's. He was introduced as an openly corrupt operator — squeezing his congregation for tithes and laundering dirty money for Douda through the church. The cruel irony is his timing: by the time he died, Zeke was deep into a redemption arc, reconnecting with his family and trying to make amends for years of greed.

He got clean just in time to become a witness. That's what killed him.

The fallout

The murder ripples through the final season. Papa, grieving and carrying Carolyn's suspicion, eventually relays it to Tiff — who is still in a relationship with Nuck. Every episode she stays is another episode she's sharing a bed with the man who put a pastor in the ground, and the show mines that tension hard as the series builds toward its ending.

For the record: Zeke isn't even the first pastor this story has buried.

Stanley Jackson was killed for refusing to stay Douda's puppet — the exact job Zeke was hired to replace him in. In Chicago's Church of the Living Water, the pulpit comes with a body count.

It started with a podcast.

The short answer

Landman is based on Boomtown, a 12-episode documentary podcast from Texas Monthly and Imperative Entertainment that debuted on December 10, 2019. It was reported, written, and hosted by journalist Christian Wallace, and grew out of his June 2019 Texas Monthly cover story about the human cost of the Permian Basin oil boom.

The podcast topped Apple's documentary chart and racked up more than 4.8 million downloads — enough to catch Taylor Sheridan's attention.

He optioned it for the screen in 2020 and co-created the series with Wallace, who also serves as executive producer.

Why Wallace was the right storyteller

He didn't parachute in. Wallace grew up in Andrews, Texas, in a family of cotton farmers, oil field hands, and working cowboys — and he worked as a roughneck himself before becoming a staff writer at Texas Monthly. Boomtown traced how the biggest oil boom in American history transformed his hometown region, through field interviews with the people living it.

That personal connection bleeds directly into the show.

"There's definitely some surreal moments when you have Billy Bob Thornton speaking lines of dialogue that came directly from your uncle, for instance," Wallace told UPI in 2025.

So is Landman a true story?

Not exactly — it's fiction built on documentary bones. Tommy Norris, the Norris family, and M-Tex Oil are invented. But the world around them is real:

• The dangers — rig accidents and the daily risks of oil work come straight from Boomtown's reporting.
• The economics — the boomtown gold-rush chaos of the Permian Basin is the podcast's central subject.
• The details — even the bikini-clad drive-through baristas are real, something Wallace has said he witnessed in West Texas and had to defend to disbelieving viewers.

Where the show stands now

Season 2 — which added Sam Elliott to a cast already featuring Demi Moore, Ali Larter, Jon Hamm, and Andy Garcia — premiered on November 16, 2025, and Paramount+ renewed the series for a third season in December 2025.

For the record: if you want the source material, Boomtown is still streaming free wherever you get podcasts. All 12 episodes. No subscription required.

Rehearsals are already underway for Tom Holland’s untitled Fred Astaire biopic, and he’s treating the prep like a marathon: long days in the studio, tap drills, and a plan to stage the big numbers as extended takes. The goal, he says, is to lean on his own feet instead of a body double — the way Astaire famously did.

“It both filled me with excitement and absolute dread, because I’ve got so much work to do to try and do Fred proud.”

Holland first revealed in 2021 that he was in talks to play the dance legend and later confirmed he’d landed the role. The film is set up at Sony and will reunite him with producer Amy Pascal, who shepherded his Spider-Man run. He’s already been putting in rehearsal time and said on Good Morning America he’s eager to get back into the studio after briefly pausing for press obligations on other projects.

Why Astaire still looms large

Astaire started performing as a kid and went on to redefine movie musicals with partner Ginger Rogers and beyond. A few of the touchstones:

• Top Hat — the epitome of his ballroom grace with Rogers
• Funny Face — pairing him with Audrey Hepburn in Paris-set glamour
• The Towering Inferno — a late-career dramatic turn that earned him an Oscar nomination

Holland said he’s leaning into that legacy by pushing for old-school technique over movie magic.

“I have a desire to use no doubles, to do all of the dancing, to shoot those dances in one shot, how he would have done it.”

Onstage at San Diego Comic-Con’s Collider “Directors on Directing” panel, Zach Cregger said he’s already deep into a prequel centered on Aunt Gladys — the breakout menace from Weapons. The project, in development at New Line, is moving under the working title Gladys, with Cregger co-writing the screenplay alongside Zach Shields.

“I’m really excited about the Gladys movie, and I loved working with Amy,”

Cregger told the crowd that Gladys’s unnerving power in Weapons came from how little the film explained her, but he sees room to dig into the character without killing the mystique. He also stressed this isn’t a quick cash-in and that the script is being taken seriously.

“It’s got a lot of twists and turns and mysteries and crazy things, like Weapons does,”

he said, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

• Working title — Gladys
• Writers — Zach Cregger and Zach Shields
• Studio — New Line Cinema
• Status — script in progress

Cregger’s Resident Evil pivot

While Gladys takes shape, Cregger is also steering a new Resident Evil movie hard toward survival horror rather than a beat-for-beat game adaptation. After early backlash to the first teaser for looking too generic, he defended the approach, saying the goal isn’t fan-service recreations but a relentless, on-the-ground nightmare.

The film centers on Austin Abrams as Bryan, a biomedical courier whose routine delivery implodes once the outbreak erupts. Early reactions have called out the atmosphere and creature design, which the movie leans on to keep the focus tight and scary.

Instead of franchise veterans leading the way, Cregger drops an ordinary guy into the chaos and lets the world collapse around him — Abrams plays Bryan as the lone courier caught in the first wave.

Inside a Joseon-era palace, a ghost hunter named Gu-cheon slips into the Realm of Gwi—an orange-hazed parallel plane crawling with spirits—to track hauntings that keep bleeding into the royal court. After a childhood near-drowning left him tethered to that realm, he can cross over by recreating the incident, then return to investigate with court lady Saeng-gang at his side.

A Korean spin on a hidden world

The show builds a full set of rules for its spirit dimension. Each ghost’s look and power stems from the resentment or unfinished business that binds it to the living. It’s not just monsters in the dark; it’s a moral ecosystem where human greed and buried crimes fuel the horrors stalking the palace corridors.

Within that mythology, the series sorts its gwi-shin into clear tiers and threats:

• Common-gwi — largely harmless spirits
• Won-gwi — vengeful ghosts driven by grievance
• Ak-gwi — far more dangerous beings
• Unique entities — creatures born entirely from concentrated negative energy

Gu-cheon doesn’t go in unarmed. He wields peach wood branches—tools steeped in folklore that can actually harm gwi-shin—while palace intrigue complicates every investigation. The result is a genre blend: horror beats, action bursts, and courtly conspiracy threaded through The East Palace’s tightly paced, eight-episode first season.

Why it scratches the Stranger Things itch

There’s the hook of a hidden world and the creeping dread of something seeping into our own, but the parallels don’t stop there. Like Hawkins’ biggest threats, the palace’s worst nightmares often start with people: corruption covered up, truths buried, choices that curdle into hauntings. The Realm of Gwi offers the “other side,” while the show’s historical setting—royal politics, folk beliefs, centuries-old legends—makes the mystery feel fresh and culturally specific.

“The East Palace is sooo good—” — @sixxdouble6, July 24, 2026

The visuals sell it: eerie, orange-tinted vistas in the spirit plane, inventive spirit designs pulled from folklore, and tense crossings that hinge on Gu-cheon’s life-and-death connection to the realm. It’s easy to recommend to fans of supernatural mystery who want world-building with actual rules and consequences.

Reception has been strong so far, with the series currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.5/10 on IMDb. Netflix hasn’t confirmed whether the story will continue beyond Season 1, but the show leaves enough mythology and unanswered questions for more. All eight episodes of The East Palace are streaming now on Netflix.

He got through every wing. Then, right as the outro loomed, Tom Holland doubled over beside Jon Bernthal on Hot Ones and lost it. Crew cheers broke out, Bernthal yelled for someone to grab a photo, and host Sean Evans marked the moment: Holland had just become the show’s first-ever on-air puker.

Holland popped back up wiping his mouth and cracking jokes, noting he’d kept his clothes clean. He called dibs on the dubious milestone and gave Evans permission to run with it.

“I love being the first.”

“You can use that!”

The bit played like slapstick more than disaster, helped by Holland’s grin and Bernthal’s amused hype-man energy. Their easy back-and-forth — the same chemistry they’ve carried into The Odyssey and the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day — turned a wince-inducing finish into instant viral fodder.

Box office stakes

That viral moment arrives as Spider-Man: Brand New Day lines up what early tracking suggests could be a massive debut. Industry forecasts point to a domestic opening in the $230 million–$250 million range, with some bullish estimates reaching as high as $300 million, putting it within striking distance of Spider-Man: No Way Home’s $260.1 million franchise-best start.

Advance ticket sales are reportedly among the strongest since theaters roared back, and response to the latest trailer has only juiced demand. Even if it lands just shy of that record, it would still be a large win for Sony and Marvel after a patchier run.

As for Avengers: Doomsday, Holland’s involvement hasn’t been officially locked in based on available information.

At San Diego Comic-Con, the team behind Batman: Caped Crusader screened the Season 2 premiere and confirmed a big swing for Gotham’s most infamous villain: Matthew Needham is voicing the Joker. The actor, familiar to many as scheming court whisperer Larys Strong on House of the Dragon, joined cast members Hamish Linklater and Jamie Chung onstage with executive producers James Tucker and Geoffrey Thorne to unveil what’s next.

The Joker only flashed across the screen in the Season 1 finale — that cameo was voiced by John DiMaggio, who also plays Detective Harvey Bullock — but Season 2 makes the Clown Prince of Crime a full-on presence with Needham behind the mic. It’s a fresh take in a show built as a noir reset of Batman’s early years patrolling Gotham.

The new voices

Alongside Needham, Season 2 brings in a mix of returning talent and new additions. The series highlighted the following names for the upcoming episodes:

• Wunmi Mosaku — Roxy Rocket
• John DiMaggio — Detective Harvey Bullock (and Joker in the Season 1 finale cameo)
• Grey DeLisle
• Zach Hoffman
• William Salyers
• Josh Brener
• Krystal Joy Brown
• Hamish Linklater
• Jamie Chung

Roxy Rocket, redrawn

Season 2 reimagines Roxy Rocket with a darker origin. Instead of the classic thrill-seeking stuntwoman-turned-thief, the new version carries a tragic past and a score to settle, voiced by Mosaku, taking over from Charity James. Co-showrunner James Tucker said the season initially keeps Roxy’s identity under wraps while Batman pieces it together during his investigation.

Needham’s casting folds a prestige-drama edge into Gotham’s rogues’ gallery. Beyond House of the Dragon, he appeared in the Oscar-winning short Stutterer, and now slides into one of animation’s most scrutinized roles.

Season 2 launches July 31 on Prime Video with 10 episodes.

Season 1 of the animated noir series premiered on Prime Video in 2024, centering on Batman’s formative years in a grittier, pared-back Gotham. Season 2 arrives on July 31.

Netflix’s A Toxic Love Story zeroes in on the stunning frame-up that sent Michelle Hadley to jail. What the film only glances at, though, is how early the relationship with Ian Diaz allegedly tilted into control. Hadley has said Diaz tracked her whereabouts, criticized her appearance, and pushed her to take a lower-paying job at Disneyland so he could keep closer tabs on her.

Beyond the doc

Hadley also alleges Diaz coerced her into sex with another man while he watched. According to court filings, Diaz allegedly arranged the encounter through Craigslist, gave her alcohol, and set up cameras in the bedroom. She later said she begged him to destroy the footage and that he refused, a detail that underlines why she later described the relationship as deeply abusive and humiliating.

The money fight that followed their breakup adds another layer. The couple bought an Anaheim condo together; Hadley put down more than $14,000, but after they split she was still on the mortgage while Diaz lived there. Attorneys mediated the dispute, with Diaz expected to assume the payments or sell and split the proceeds. Federal prosecutors later argued that the condo standoff gave Diaz a motive to target Hadley and pressure her to surrender her share.

• Two arrests: The film shows Hadley being taken into custody — it happened twice. After Angela Diaz reported a masked intruder and claimed Hadley had orchestrated a Craigslist-driven attack plot, Hadley was arrested and bailed out, only to be re-arrested weeks later on more serious felonies that carried a potential life sentence.
• Early red flags: Before Hadley was jailed, investigators had reportedly linked emails and Craigslist activity to Ian and Angela through IP data. Hadley says she flagged concerns to police, the U.S. Justice Department, Chapman University and Disneyland, but nothing stuck.
• How it ended: Angela Diaz ultimately pleaded guilty in state court and received prison time; Hadley was exonerated. Ian Diaz — a former federal deputy marshal — was later convicted of cyberstalking, perjury and obstruction in connection with the scheme.

“#AToxicLoveStory on Netflix is ABSOLUTE INSANITY… just plot twist after plot twist… WHAT AN AMAZING DOCUMENTARY.” — @ilooklikapencil, July 23, 2026

Those extra beats — the alleged coercion, the condo motive, the missed warnings, and the double arrest — show why the real case is even knottier than the movie can fully capture. A Toxic Love Story is now streaming on Netflix.

The first footage sets the tone: a routine run for medical courier Bryan turns into a blood-soaked sprint through Raccoon City, with glimpses of grisly new mutations clawing out of the shadows. The lead doesn’t move like a super-soldier; he trips, scrambles and survives by sheer panic. That everyman feel isn’t an accident — it’s the spine of Zach Cregger’s approach.

• The T-virus and Umbrella are non‑negotiable pillars
• The story unfolds in Raccoon City
• It leans hard into survival horror over action spectacle

"First, you have the source of all the chaos of the T-virus, which is the thing that was developed by the Umbrella corporation. If you don’t do that, for me, it’s not Resident Evil,"

Cregger told Deadline he wanted fans to immediately recognize the world they know from the games. That also means steering away from the series’ later big-guns vibe and back toward claustrophobic dread. He even name‑checks Leon — as in Leon S. Kennedy — to make the point that the movie isn’t trying to outdo the games’ icons.

"I want to celebrate those games, and I want to make something that other people who love the games like me are going to recognize as Resident Evil. But I certainly don’t think I’m going to do a better job of representing someone like Leon than the games,"

An everyman at the center

Austin Abrams plays Bryan as a young guy just getting his adult life started — he’s got a job, not a career, and a relationship that’s already wobbling. Cregger says the character learns his girlfriend is pregnant right before the outbreak upends everything, forcing him to confront bigger, more immediate fears than the ones he’d been nursing.

"And he feels like he’s in his own little horror movie, and then all of a sudden, a real horror movie interrupts him and it puts all of that into perspective,"

Abrams has said Bryan’s personal baggage is key to how he navigates the nightmare, and the trailer backs that up: he’s not a crack shot mowing down zombies; he’s an ordinary person out of his depth. That survival-horror tilt — along with the fresh creature designs — has already sparked debate online, and Cregger has continued to defend the choices as true to the spirit of Resident Evil.

Plot specifics are still under wraps, but from what’s shown so far, expect a grounded, desperate fight through Raccoon City as the T‑virus nightmare closes in.

On July 23, 2026, Frankie Muniz said he’s been stuck in Scottsdale’s permitting queue for more than three years over what he calls a “tiny BBQ area” in his backyard. Posting on X, the Malcolm in the Middle alum vented that the holdup has upended his life — and tossed in a pointed aside about what kinds of projects seem to move faster.

Trying to get a permit with the @scottsdaleazgov for over 3 years. Literally been destroying my life over a very simple permit for a tiny bbq area in my backyard. If only I wanted to build a data center.

Muniz didn’t spell out the specific snag or the current status of the application, but his post caught fire quickly, with homeowners chiming in about their own long waits. Scottsdale’s website says permits are required for everything from residential improvements to major builds, with applications funneled through the city’s online planning and permitting portal.

City steps in

The public airing drew an immediate response from Scottsdale officials. Councilmember Barry Graham jumped into the thread, asking Muniz to contact him directly so he could look into it.

Frankie. Scottsdale Councilman here. First I’ve heard of this, please email the issue to me: BGraham@Scottsdaleaz.gov

According to Axios, Mayor Lisa Borowsky also replied publicly offering assistance as the post gained traction.

Arizona ties

Muniz has called Arizona home since 2008 and has kept busy far from Hollywood between acting gigs. His local footprint includes:

• Returning to professional motorsports in recent years
• Owning the Outrageous Olive Oils & Vinegars shop in Old Town Scottsdale
• Working in luxury real estate around Phoenix and Scottsdale

He also stepped back into the sitcom that made him famous with Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair, a four-episode revival that reunited the cast nearly 20 years after the original series wrapped.

As of now, Muniz’s permit dispute remains unresolved. Neither the City of Scottsdale nor the actor’s team has provided further updates since the exchange.

Speaking candidly about how he moves through the world, Marvin “Krondon” Jones III says growing up in a Black family in South Central Los Angeles while living with albinism gave him a perspective he wouldn’t trade. He’s often the only person in the room who looks like him, and he’s learned to treat that difference as power, not a limitation.

“I live in the black experience, but at the same time I understand the invalid idea that color decides who a man is. … Another thing is, any room I walk in, 99.9 percent of the time, no one else looks like me. I’m a completely unique individual, able to create my own attention and attraction,” he told Andscape.

Jones talks openly about albinism—an uncommon genetic condition that affects roughly 1 in 20,000 people in the U.S.—and says it pushed him to fully embrace his individuality. He also keeps a message ready for anyone who shares the condition and might be looking for a boost.

“You are an angel from God. It is not a coincidence that you are unique. Your beauty comes once in 30,000 … and there is nothing that you can’t do, except sit in the sun,” he said.

TV fans know Jones best as crime boss Tobias Whale on Black Lightning, but he first made noise in music as frontman of West Coast rap crew Strong Arm Steady. He’s since carved out steady work in Hollywood, including stints on Marvel projects.

Finding Tobias Whale

Jones says he didn’t even know there was a DC villain with albinism until he got the call about Tobias Whale. The pitch surprised him: an African American character with albinism already existed in the DC Universe, and producers thought he should audition.

Even with the visual match, Jones never assumed the part was his. He figured he looked the role, sure, but he still had to earn it in the room. When the offer finally came, he was told the job would change his life—and the character has indeed become a defining chapter of his acting career.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Michael Mando exited Apple TV+’s crime drama Sinking Spring after a reported on-set clash with a co-star. Sources told the outlet producers tried to smooth things over, but the situation couldn’t be resolved and the role was recast.

Wagner Moura replaced Michael Mando as Manny Carvalho after an on-set clash, per THR.

Based on Dennis Tafoya’s novel Dope Thief, the series comes from Peter Craig (co-writer of Top Gun: Maverick), with Ridley Scott executive producing and directing the first episode. The story follows two lifelong friends from Philadelphia who impersonate DEA agents to rob drug dealers — a grift that spirals when they unknowingly hit a major operation already under real DEA surveillance.

Mando had been cast as Manny Carvalho, described as a good and loyal friend to Ray Driscoll. Brian Tyree Henry plays Ray, anchoring the show’s central duo.

After Mando’s departure, Wagner Moura — best known to many viewers for portraying Pablo Escobar in Narcos — stepped into the Manny role.

The ensemble around Henry

Apple’s announced cast for Sinking Spring included:

• Brian Tyree Henry — Ray Driscoll
• Wagner Moura — Manny Carvalho (replacing Mando)
• Ving Rhames
• Amir Arison
• Liz Caribel
• Nesta Cooper
• Idris Debrand

The Philadelphia-set series adapts Tafoya’s gritty heist premise for Apple TV+, with Craig steering the scripts and Scott overseeing the launch episode.

According to court filings and Federal Bureau of Prisons records, Ian Diaz is serving a 10-year federal sentence at FMC Fort Worth in Texas, with a projected release date listed below. He did not sit for interviews for A Toxic Love Story and declined to participate in the Netflix documentary.

Angela Connell’s path since the case wrapped has been very different. Released from California state prison in July 2020, she completed parole in July 2021, moved to Phoenix, reverted to her maiden name, and earned a master’s degree in Psychology and Justice Studies while focusing on community counseling and transformative justice work.

Diaz’s projected federal release date is January 31, 2031.

Connell now serves as Director of Peer Counseling for Exhale Pro-Voice, a textline-based reproductive justice and emotional support organization. She also works with nonprofits and government re-entry programs that support people coming home from incarceration.

How Netflix built the case

Because Diaz and Connell did not participate, director Alexandra Lacey pieced together the story from more than a decade of paper trails and on-camera material. California Public Records Act requests opened up body-camera video, interrogation-room footage, and the immediate aftermath of what authorities later called staged incidents stemming from the cyberstalking scheme that ultimately led to convictions between 2021 and 2023 and the exoneration of Michelle Hadley.

• Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General evidence: recorded calls, digital trails, Craigslist records, and IP-address investigations
• Police archives and federal case files
• Private videos and materials from former friends and people from Connell’s past
• Michelle Hadley’s personal archives: messages, photographs, and extensive on-camera interviews
• Carefully constructed dramatizations to fill in moments where no cameras existed

That mosaic explains the volume of footage in the series despite the principals’ non-cooperation: Diaz declined to participate in Netflix’s A Toxic Love Story.

The premiere of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe wastes zero time turning Pasadena into a punchline and a war zone. Stuart’s comic shop is somehow still open amid zombie hands, roving bandits and giant moths, but cash is useless now — customers barter for back issues and, yes, start lethal fights over whether Hawkeye counts as an Avenger. Into that chaos walks a second Stuart from another reality with bad news: a quantum interference device built by Sheldon, Leonard and Howard has splintered the cosmos into unstable universes, and the fix sits somewhere at Caltech.

So Stuart and resident geologist Bert Kibbler pack up for a road trip through the ruins. Along the way, they pass Penn & Teller juggling stray animals in exchange for canned food, dodge bandits near the Rose Bowl, and run into Denise — now a stickup artist who’s still pecking away at a screenplay. She’s with Gary (Michael Urie), a handsome jerk who trails the group when they push on toward Caltech, which locals now call a “deathtrap.”

Episode 1 is titled “Spoiler: Gary Dies.”

That title pays off the moment the quartet hits campus and sniper fire cuts Gary down. Stuart, Bert and Denise are grabbed by armed guards and marched straight into Bert’s old classroom — where they find a familiar face with a very unfamiliar beard.

Raj, with receipts

Kunal Nayyar drops in as Raj Koothrappali, imprisoned, under-socialized and more than a little traumatized. He lays out the backstory: the quantum gizmo scrambled history and reality, and now Caltech answers to a tyrant. In the kind of romantic arc only this show would deliver, Raj did get married after riding to his wedding on an elephant — before a giant moth ate his bride. He’s also terrified of the man currently running the institute.

Kripke’s kingdom

Enter Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie) at his most unhinged. In this reality he’s seized Caltech with an armed following, styles himself the “Grand Caliph of Monrovia, Flintridge and South Pasadena,” and hoards women, food and guns. Denise rebuffs him and he orders her execution, but separating the group turns out to be his mistake.

Bert turns a geology classroom into an armory, whipping up improvised grenades that rip through the halls. Denise slips her captors and reunites with the gang at the quantum device. Raj starts repairing it — until Kripke shoots him, unwilling to give up the world where he finally holds all the power.

Even dead, Raj saves the day: he’d left step-by-step instructions on paper. Denise and Stuart follow his notes; Bert goes hands-on with Kripke and pounds him into submission. The machine sputters to life, then surges — and when it looks ready to blow, Denise dives for cover as Stuart, Bert and Kripke get yanked into the next universe.

The trio lands inside a pristine, normal-looking Comic Center storefront. Outside, no moths, no carnage, no chaos — just blissful quiet. They don’t notice the green crystal lodged at the base of each of their necks, and this still isn’t home. The next episode promises to lay out the show’s multiverse rules as they try to escape yet another wrong reality.

Who’s in the spinoff

• Kevin Sussman — Stuart Bloom
• Lauren Lapkus — Denise
• Brian Posehn — Bert Kibbler
• John Ross Bowie — Barry Kripke
• Kunal Nayyar — Raj Koothrappali (guesting in the premiere)
• Michael Urie — Gary
• Penn & Teller — themselves (cameo)

Streaming now on Max, the first episode plays like a gonzo Big Bang Theory reunion folded into a post-apocalyptic quest, complete with barter-only comics, Caltech as a fortress, and a petty tyrant in a lab coat trying to keep the universe broken because it finally suits him.