During an Entertainment Weekly “Around the Table” chat with his Ebenezer castmates, Johnny Depp got called out for an on‑set gag that’s very much his style: a pocket‑sized fart machine. After a little prompting from the group, Tramell Tillman admitted he fell for it more than once, which set Depp off on a gleeful breakdown of the device.

“The most brilliant invention of all time, which is kind of a little rubber thing you put in your pocket, you squeeze on it, and it makes the perfect, involuntary (noise),” he said.

The pranks didn’t spare the film’s legends either. When Andrea Riseborough asked if he’d dare try it on Sir Ian McKellen—who plays Jacob Marley—Depp didn’t hesitate.

“I did it to Ian; I did it to everyone. Michael Gambon, Marlon Brando, I’ve used it on. No, if I find it funny, it’s fine,” he said.

A twisted take on Dickens

Depp leads this dark fantasy comedy as Ebenezer Scrooge, the original Christmas grouch, in a new spin on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The movie is directed by Ti West, known for bending genre in unexpected ways.

Early reception

There’s plenty of curiosity around the cast and tone, but on the review front the film is starting middling: as of now, Rotten Tomatoes has it at 53 percent—among the lower scores for major A Christmas Carol adaptations, though it edges past Disney’s 2009 version, which sits at 52 percent.

• Director: Ti West
• Release date: November 13, 2026
• Current Rotten Tomatoes score: 53 percent (as of publication)

When Heartland landed on Netflix on November 13, 2026, the Nashville-set thriller arrived with a clear hook: Jessica Chastain as Misty Jones, a onetime country superstar who storms back into town after two decades away when her niece disappears. The twist viewers keep asking about isn’t in the plot, though — it’s whether any of it really happened.

Not a true story

Heartland is not based on a true story.

Netflix bills the movie as an original, fictional mystery thriller, written and directed by Shana Feste. There’s no underlying book, podcast, or real missing-person case. Misty Jones is a made-up character — more of a composite of ’90s country icons than a portrait of any one singer — and every turn of the investigation comes from the script.

Feste built the film on classic noir bones, borrowing the hard-boiled DNA of Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum detectives and handing that role to a flawed woman at the center. It’s familiar territory for her: Feste also steered the 2010 country-music drama Country Strong.

Even with a fictional case, the movie leans on real-world textures: shots at Nashville’s famed Bluebird Cafe, a blend of Atlanta-area sets and Music City locations, and industry dynamics — powerful managers, long memories, and the kind of blackmail that can trail fame.

Who’s in it

• Jessica Chastain — Misty Jones; an Oscar and Golden Globe winner whose roles include Interstellar and The Martian; she also earned an Emmy nomination for playing Tammy Wynette in 2022’s George & Tammy
• John Hawkes — Clark; known for Winter’s Bone and The Sessions, with Oscar and Golden Globe nominations
• Carter Faith — Charlie Heart; a real country singer who released her debut album, Cherry Valley, in 2025
• Garrett Hedlund — Roy Combs, a manager with deep ties in Misty’s past
• Jennifer Nettles — Winnie Jo Lean; the Grammy-winning singer steps into a fellow star’s boots
• Ross Lynch — Jace
• Isabelle Kusman
• Wynn Everett

The setup is pure noir: Misty returns to Nashville’s back rooms and barrooms to find her niece, Charlie, pulling on old relationships and bad memories as the search drags her into the industry’s darker corners.

Heartland is now streaming on Netflix in the U.S., is rated R, and runs about 1 hour and 53 minutes.

After shattering records at the box office, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is getting a full-on awards push. Sony Pictures is mounting a substantial Best Picture campaign for the 99th Academy Awards, and studio chairman Tom Rothman is not shy about his expectations.

“Are you telling me that there are 10 films this year that are better than this film?”

In a conversation with Deadline, Rothman argued that blockbuster status shouldn’t disqualify a movie from Oscar consideration, saying the Academy’s top category is meant to honor achievement in filmmaking whether the hero wears a tux or a mask.

“The Academy is meant to recognize greatness,” he said. “I think it’s greatness.”

The Oscar push

The campaign follows a run most studios only dream about. Starring Tom Holland, Brand New Day has passed $2.5 billion worldwide, is 2026’s box-office champion, and now stands as the highest-grossing film in North American history. Rothman’s stance is that studios shouldn’t assume voters will simply discover a commercial hit’s craft on their own—he plans to make the case directly.

Meanwhile, another Sony win

It isn’t just Spider-Man ringing up big numbers for Sony abroad. The studio is also touting the early global performance of Ramayana: Rise of a Legend, a mythological epic distributed by Sony outside India and led by a trio of major stars:

• Ranbir Kapoor
• Yash
• Sai Pallavi

The film opened to $55.7 million worldwide, good for No. 2 globally on its first weekend behind Godzilla Minus Zero ($63 million), then quickly crossed the $100 million mark with $101.9 million to date. It sold over 11 million tickets during its opening period and set a Diwali opening record for an Indian production.

Territory breakdowns so far include:

• India — $67.1 million
• North America — $17.7 million
• Other Sony-handled overseas markets — $16.9 million

In the U.K. and Ireland, Ramayana also made history as the first Indian film to top the weekend box office, edging out Godzilla Minus Zero locally.

For Sony, the numbers bolster a broader narrative heading into awards season: a year of massive theatrical wins and, if Rothman has his way, a superhero swinging into the Best Picture lineup at the 99th Academy Awards.

On Threads, James Gunn pushed back on the week’s loudest claim: that Skydance had already screened his Superman film Man of Tomorrow and sent it back for changes. He said that hasn’t happened, noting that only Peter Safran and a tiny circle of friends and family have seen the movie so far. Filming wrapped earlier this fall, and the project is now in post.

“There are a lot of untrue rumors going around, but one of them is that Skydance has seen,"

Gunn wrote on Threads, before adding:

“No one from Skydance has even seen the movie.”

His post arrived days after Gunn and Safran announced on November 9 that they’re stepping down as co-CEOs of DC Studios, while remaining involved on the creative side. Online chatter spiked in the handoff-and-takeover swirl, with Gunn signing off his reply with a heart and a merman emoji.

The rumor mill had escalated well beyond a phantom screening, with claims that:

• Skydance executives disliked the current cut
• Additional filming was being weighed, possibly without Gunn involved
• Gunn would lose a say in the final cut
• Cameos from returning DCU players would be removed
• A separate “Skydance cut” existed

Gunn only addressed the screening claim directly, saying no one from Skydance has watched the film.

The “Superman 3” chatter

Another rumor picking up steam says Gunn is already working on a third Superman movie. There’s no confirmation of that. The claim spread after the X account Superman Saga News attributed it to DanielRPK, tying it to a Threads post where Gunn said he was writing his next film—without naming the project.

Variety reported on October 5 that Gunn was writing his next screenplay while waiting for the assembly cut of Man of Tomorrow. Speculation ranges from a “Superman 3” to a Justice League movie, but Gunn hasn’t identified what he’s writing. Jeremy Latcham is set to take over as DC Studios chief on December 1.

On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Anthony Mackie laughed his way through a very on-brand “heist” story: he spotted a set of teak outdoor furniture on a Marvel shoot and decided it had to come home with him. Appearing alongside Jamie Dornan while they promoted their new heist series, 12 12 12, Mackie said he usually leaves sets empty-handed — until that day.

“I drive a F250, dog. I pulled up on a Saturday. I talked to the teamsters. 100 for you. 100 for you. Once we cleared out that scene, s*** Yo, I strapped that,”

The target wasn’t random. Mackie pointed out the appeal of teak — wood prized for outdoor furniture because the trees grow slowly and it can take decades to reach the kind of quality you’d want on a patio set. He added that the purloined pieces are still sitting in his house.

Mackie first joined the MCU as Sam Wilson in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and has returned in multiple Marvel films since. This isn’t his first souvenir, either. In 2024, he posted a photo in a bright red Santa sweater and admitted in the caption he’d snagged it off the set of his holiday comedy The Night Before, which fans immediately recognized.

He’s not the only one

• Daniel Radcliffe — kept Harry Potter’s glasses from both the first and the final films, according to the Daily Mail.
• Rupert Grint — took the Privet Drive house number plate and once tried (unsuccessfully) to nab the golden dragon egg from Goblet of Fire, per the Daily Mail.
• Emma Watson — told Time for Kids she brought home multiple items to remember playing Hermione.

Onstage at New York’s 92nd Street Y for a live taping of Happy Sad Confused, Anthony Mackie didn’t make a polite pitch for more Captain America movies — he broke out the math. With host Josh Horowitz prodding him about what comes after Sam Wilson’s first solo outing, Mackie turned to a very Marvel kind of evidence: Spider-Man headcount. Jamie Dornan, seated beside him after the pair introduced the first episode of their new Apple TV heist series “12 12 12,” let his co-star handle the superhero calculus.

The Spider-Man math

Pressed on how far he wants to take Sam, Mackie argued that every character deserves at least a second film — then escalated to a trilogy case study built on Web-Slinger precedent.

“17 Spider-Mans. All of them had three movies. That’s about 51,”

he said, to big laughs, before bringing it back to Sam’s journey.

“I would enjoy partaking in the idea of two more films just to see that character complete his arc.”

Dornan, for the record, stayed out of the Spider-verse accounting and let Mackie do the lobbying.

Where the Avengers pick up

While he’s game for a full trilogy, Mackie also suggested Sam’s next team-up is coming fast. Speaking to SYFY WIRE over Zoom while promoting Exoplanet — a project produced by The Martian author Andy Weir — he said Avengers: Doomsday picks up just months after Sam officially takes up the shield.

According to Mackie, Sam heads straight into a new expedition and works on getting Earth’s Mightiest Heroes back together. In story time, Captain America: Brave New World wrapped only a few months earlier — meaning the suit is still practically fresh out of the box and there’s not much breathing room between crises.

Here’s what Sam was already dealing with in Brave New World:

• Presidential conspiracies
• An assassination attempt
• An adamantium crisis
• A bruising showdown with Thaddeus Ross in Red Hulk form

That tight timeline also complicates things with Bucky Barnes, who was off running with the Thunderbolts while Sam accepted the shield. There’s no multi-year off-screen reset baked in before they cross paths again.

Trilogy math aside, Mackie’s bottom line for now is timing: Avengers: Doomsday starts only months after the events of Captain America: Brave New World.

Behind closed doors, Robert Pattinson has reportedly screen-tested to be the next James Bond, joining a heated search that’s bounced from one hot name to the next. Puck’s Matthew Belloni says provisional “test deals” floated to actors weren’t all the same — in Pattinson’s case, he reportedly secured terms for three films, while others were asked to commit to four. There’s still no official pick, but if Pattinson is in the mix, the road ahead is more complicated than it looks.

• Callum Turner
• Jack Lowden
• Josh O’Connor
• Nicholas Hoult
• Robert Pattinson (reportedly tested)

Puck reports Pattinson’s test-deal terms cover three Bond films; other contenders were asked for four.

The age and contract math

Pattinson turned 40 in May 2026. That’s not disqualifying — Daniel Craig launched at 38, Roger Moore at 45 — but modern tentpoles sprawl across prep time, long shoots, and marathon press tours. Craig’s run stretched to five films over 15 years. A similar pace could put Pattinson in his late 40s after only two or three Bond outings.

He’s also been frank about how action hits differently now. In a GQ conversation about The Batman Part II, Pattinson acknowledged fight scenes were more physically demanding in his forties. That’s part of the calculus if Bond aims to lock in an actor for a full era, not just a couple of entries.

Gotham vs. MI6

Pattinson already anchors another mega-franchise as Batman. The Batman Part II is currently dated for February 18, 2028. Per reports, production paused in October when director Matt Reeves stepped away to address a family matter, and Steven Soderbergh joined to help complete principal photography with Reeves still involved creatively. A third Batman film hasn’t been officially greenlit, but it’s very much in the conversation.

Two globe-trotting franchises at once is a scheduling nightmare — months of training, shoot days on multiple continents, then global press. There’s also the brand identity piece: Pattinson has worked hard to shed the Twilight label and build a chameleon reputation. Wearing both the cowl and the tux in the same stretch could blur the distinct flavors that make each character pop.

The exclusivity problem

Bond plays best as an event: the theme hits, the barrel rolls, and it feels rare. Pattinson’s current pace is the opposite of rare. In 2026 alone, he headlined multiple projects, and he’s already booked ahead. That heat is great for most careers — but it can dent Bond’s mystique.

• The Drama (2026) — opposite Zendaya
• The Odyssey (2026) — with Christopher Nolan
• Primetime (2026) — as TV personality Chris Hansen
• Dune: Part Three — arriving December 18, with Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya
• The Take (2027, Netflix) — a heist thriller from Fernando Meirelles, co-starring Denzel Washington and Daisy Edgar-Jones
• The Batman Part II — February 18, 2028

On the upside for Bond, reports also point to Denis Villeneuve being attached to direct the franchise’s next chapter for Amazon MGM, and Pattinson already works with him on Dune: Part Three — a creative connection that could be a real asset. But it also underscores the calendar crunch and the question of how “special” a new 007 feels when the same star is fronting multiple massive releases in tight succession.

For now, all of this remains unconfirmed. Pattinson’s test was reportedly part of a broader search, and there’s been no official casting announcement from the Bond team or Amazon MGM.

Onstage at the Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards, sound team member Willie Burton turned a running on-set joke into an awards-night bit about the pecking order behind The Odyssey. With Matt Damon leading Christopher Nolan’s cast as Odysseus, Burton said even the snack table mirrored star power — and he playfully cast himself as the guy handing out the goodies.

“Matt and the major actors got the best snacks,” Burton said. “The crew on the ship, I gave them the worst snacks.”

Burton delivered the line at the ceremony presented by Variety, ribbing a production so sprawling that even its catering became a talking point. The gag landed because Nolan’s seafaring epic is anything but small — and its success means the snack budget jokes practically write themselves.

Big movie, bigger box office

The film’s financial haul makes Burton’s quip even sharper. The Odyssey has racked up records while cruising past billion-dollar benchmarks.

• About $1.8 billion worldwide
• Now the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever
• Christopher Nolan’s biggest box-office hit
• Record-shattering IMAX run, including roughly $555 million in IMAX ticket sales
• Multiple milestones for Universal Pictures

A Homer expert isn’t sold

Emily Wilson, the University of Pennsylvania classics professor behind the widely praised 2017 English translation of Homer’s poem, has doubled down on her critique of Nolan’s take. In an op-ed for The Atlantic, she writes that the movie looks stunning but leaves the poem’s heart behind, with a script that talks up compassion and hospitality while the images lean harder on machinery and spectacle.

Wilson zeroes in on the film’s handling of the Trojan Horse and its repeated nods to Zeus’ law of welcoming strangers, arguing the story never fully engages the human cost of war or the choices driving it. She had previously questioned the screenplay’s emotional and ethical depth in a review for the London Review of Books.

Before heading to set on The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, Jamie Dornan says he sat his kids down for a full rewatch of Peter Jackson’s trilogy — a reminder, he admits, of the shadow he’s stepping into with Aragorn. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he talked about the weight of inheriting a role many fans associate forever with Viggo Mortensen.

“We're offering something new and I am very aware I've never been more proud or privileged or felt the weight of something more,”

Dornan said he knows comparisons to Mortensen’s performance are inevitable, and he’s not trying to top it. In a separate chat with L’Officiel, he emphasized he isn’t out to outdo Mortensen — just to bring his own take to a character he’s loved for years.

The casting hit him hard, too. Dornan told Entertainment Tonight he cried when he learned he’d landed Aragorn, calling the part one of the most meaningful opportunities of his career.

Who’s back in Middle-earth

Dornan said the production has wrapped filming and promised both new and familiar faces in the mix. Among the returning veterans he cited:

• Ian McKellen — Gandalf
• Elijah Wood — Frodo

He added that the cast poured everything into the movie and hopes audiences will make room for a fresh chapter inside Middle-earth.

The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is slated to open in theaters on December 17, 2027.

After the post-merger shake-up at the newly combined Warner Bros.–Paramount–Skydance company, James Gunn and Peter Safran were shown the door — and DC fans are pushing back. A fast-growing Change.org petition urging the companies to reverse course has drawn about 100,000 signatures, with supporters warning that shows like Peacemaker and Lanterns could be left in limbo.

What fans are asking for

The petition argues that Gunn and Safran had only just set the reboot in motion — rolling out a new Superman, reintroducing Supergirl, and laying groundwork for Batman — and should be allowed to finish what they started. It also contends the pair shouldn’t be dismissed over early stumbles, citing the “Supergirl” disappointment, and points to unfinished plans fans still want to see.

• Superman — a new film that launched the reboot in 2025
• “Man of Tomorrow” — a follow-up the petition cites for 2027
• Peacemaker — future of the series now uncertain
• Creature Commandos — part of the first wave of projects
• Lanterns — in development under the Gunn/Safran plan
• Clayface — one of several character projects floated

Supporters say the abrupt change puts the fate of these titles — and the new storylines tied to them — up in the air while the new corporate leadership decides what stays and what gets scrapped.

Cavill on the Superman question

The shake-up also reignited an evergreen fan debate: could Henry Cavill come back as the Man of Steel? Asked about the leadership change in an interview with Inverse, Cavill kept the door cracked.

“Look, there’s lots of fantastic storylines. There’s always a lot of opportunity... I would never say never now.”

Cavill portrayed Superman across five films before the role moved to David Corenswet for the 2025 reboot. The petition, meanwhile, nods to additional Superman-world plans it wants preserved, including a 2027 “Man of Tomorrow.”

The timeline

Gunn and Safran were appointed to run DC Studios in 2022. Nearly four years later, following the Warner Bros.–Paramount–Skydance merger, they were fired — a move that triggered the fan campaign now topping roughly 100,000 signatures on Change.org.

Oscar-winning cinematographer Linus Sandgren says Marvel’s new take on Ghost Rider isn’t just about flaming skulls and stunt bikes. Speaking at the Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards, he described the Ryan Gosling–led film as a more grounded, character-forward ride — and, according to industry chatter, one that’s eyeing real film stock and a start in New York in early 2027.

“That’s a super exciting project. I think [there’s] an intention to do something really special, and grounded, and emotional,” Sandgren said, adding, “It could be very dramatic and fun.”

Sandgren, who won an Oscar for La La Land and shot First Man and No Time to Die, joins director Shawn Levy (Deadpool & Wolverine) on the movie that will introduce Ryan Gosling as Johnny Blaze. Marvel announced the project at San Diego Comic-Con, with a planned release on July 28, 2028.

• Star — Ryan Gosling as Johnny Blaze
• Director — Shawn Levy
• Cinematography — Linus Sandgren (reportedly shooting on film)
• Filming — Expected to begin in New York in early 2027 (per reports)
• Release — July 28, 2028
• Announced — San Diego Comic-Con

Nicolas Cage passes the torch

The last big-screen Ghost Rider has weighed in. At the Nov. 4 premiere of Madden, Nicolas Cage told The Hollywood Reporter he’s all-in on Gosling taking over as the Spirit of Vengeance — and said the two stay in touch.

“Ryan’s going to do his thing with it and I’m looking forward to seeing it,” Cage said.

Cage introduced mainstream audiences to Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider (2007) and returned for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012). There’s also a neat full-circle footnote: Eva Mendes — Gosling’s longtime partner — played Roxanne Simpson opposite Cage in the 2007 film.

Ghost Rider is slated to hit theaters on July 28, 2028, with production expected to kick off in New York early in 2027.

The three-part documentary Get Huge: Looksmaxxing to Death turns its camera on a corner of the online “manosphere” where extreme self-experimentation has become content — and, in some cases, reportedly intersected with a string of suspicious deaths. At the center is Tony Huge, an online personality who positions himself as a guru and shares aggressive “biohacks” he says can fast-track muscle growth and physical transformation.

Across its episodes, the series looks at how performance-driven internet culture collides with real bodies and real consequences. Expect a ground-level view of followers chasing quick results, the tactics they’re urged to try, and the gap between online personas and off-camera realities.

Directed by Stacey Lee and produced by Boardwalk Pictures, the film aims to get past the shiny clips and taglines that dominate social feeds. Lee says the project was built to show the people behind the performance, not just the viral versions of themselves.

“We wanted to capture this world in a way that was more dimensional than what YouTube feeds allow, puncturing the veneer of performance to show who these people are beyond their online personas,” she said. “I want audiences to see a more multifaceted view of this world and decide for themselves how they feel about these characters based on what they’re seeing.”

How to watch in the U.S.

• Platform: Hulu
• Release date: November 10, 2026
• Format: 3-part documentary

Another angle on the same world

If you want a wider survey of the personalities fueling this space, Netflix’s Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere follows the British American documentarian as he interviews influencers and podcasters who push hardline views on masculinity, gender roles, and relationships. Featured voices include Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy, British influencer Harrison Sullivan (HS Tikky Tokky), and Amrou Fudl, co-host of the Fresh & Fit podcast.

Clips from that film sparked debate online — some viewers argued it amplified controversial figures, while others said it usefully exposed how this culture operates. Get Huge: Looksmaxxing to Death arrives in that conversation on November 10, 2026, streaming on Hulu.

When Robert Downey Jr. strode out at Comic-Con in a Doctor Doom mask, the room did exactly what Marvel wanted: it gasped. But the moment the crowd stopped cheering, the frame-by-frame sleuthing started. Fans combed through the new footage and con floor displays from SDCC and D23, convinced that the reveal was more misdirect than mic drop.

There’s no official word from Marvel on anything beyond the splashy onstage stunt. Still, the internet has built a detailed case that the man truly under Doom’s hood is Cillian Murphy—either sharing the role with Downey or popping in from elsewhere in the multiverse. Here’s the evidence fans keep pointing to.

The case for Murphy

• Eye color doesn’t match — In close-ups from the trailer, Doom’s eyes read blue-green. Downey’s are unmistakably brown across a decade of Iron Man and Avengers appearances. Murphy, of course, is known for those icy blue-green eyes that cut through scenes in Peaky Blinders and Oppenheimer. Skeptics chalk the trailer look up to lighting and color grading; believers argue Marvel controls every pixel it releases, so a teal glint isn’t an accident.
• The armor keeps changing — Fans clocked noticeable tweaks to Doom’s suit across trailers and the SDCC/D23 displays. One trailer beat shows Doom hurled out a window, and mid-fall the armor appears to shift designs. That’s become the backbone of a bigger theory: Downey plays the primary, fully armored Doom tied to the Fantastic Four, while Murphy is a second Doom the movie is hiding in plain sight.
• Multiverse logic makes it easy — The film’s setup leans on collapsing timelines, which gives Marvel a clean lane to introduce another Doom—even if it’s just a quick, crowd-pleasing cameo. Two masks, two men, one name fits right into the studio’s recent bag of surprise appearances.
• Years of fan casting — Murphy as Doom has been a staple of wish lists long before this movie. And when Josh Horowitz asked him about comic-book roles on Happy Sad Confused, Murphy didn’t slam the door.
• A face-swapping out — At the end of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Doom appears in a closing scene with Franklin, the baby of Sue Storm. Some viewers read that as more than a villain tease. In their read, Doom—whose power set can reshape matter—walks away with a new face. If that’s the case, a mask reveal in the next film could show Downey one moment and Murphy the next without breaking story logic.

“It all depends on the script.” — Cillian Murphy on Happy Sad Confused, when asked about doing a Marvel role

Part of why this won’t die down: Marvel has a long history of cutting trailers like puzzles and sanding details in marketing to protect a turn in the theater. Costume continuity quirks and blink-and-you-miss-it inserts have teed up some of the studio’s biggest reveals before; fans think they’re seeing that playbook again.

None of this is confirmed. Marvel hasn’t announced Murphy for Avengers: Doomsday, hasn’t addressed the multiple-Dooms chatter, and hasn’t clarified those trailer shots. For now, the studio’s keeping the mask on.

During a fight rehearsal on Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders, Rob Lowe says a staged scuffle with Tom Cruise suddenly turned real. What started as routine choreography went sideways when Lowe accidentally landed a clean shot on his co-star — and Cruise’s competitive switch flipped fast.

Lowe has talked about the moment in recent interviews, saying Cruise’s response was immediate and intense. He even called Cruise a “competitive lunatic” — in a way he clearly meant as both a warning and a compliment — and admitted Cruise was the one castmate he genuinely worried about on that set.

“the United States and China right now.”

That’s how Lowe summed up the escalation, likening the mood to geopolitical brinkmanship once the accidental punch connected. The dust-up happened as the then–up-and-comers were cutting their teeth on Coppola’s 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s novel, a breakout project that would help launch several young actors into the mainstream.

Before cameras rolled

The tension, Lowe says, actually started back in New York City during the movie’s auditions. Studio handlers booked the two actors into the same hotel room — and Cruise wasn’t having it. On Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, Lowe recalled that Cruise “went ballistic” when he discovered he’d be sharing quarters.

Looking back, Lowe frames the flare-ups as part of Cruise’s singular drive. He’s been clear he respects that intensity, even as he jokes about how hard it was to keep up with it at 19: in Lowe’s words, Cruise was a “competitive lunatic — which is what I love about him.”

On Nov. 11, writer-producer Chris Cantwell jumped on X to swat down the growing chatter that HBO’s Lanterns is dead. Cantwell—who’s attached to the show’s potential Season 2 as a writer, producer and showrunner—said he hasn’t been told of any decision to pull the plug.

“Dear Internet, I haven’t heard a f****** thing…Nothing’s cancelled. Calm down.”

His post followed a wave of reports claiming the Green Lantern drama hadn’t secured a second-season renewal. Cantwell’s message is a reality check, not an official save—HBO hasn’t announced a pickup either way—but it pushes back on the idea that a decision has been made.

Cantwell also vented about the rumor mill in general, joking about how future seasons of his earlier series Halt and Catch Fire might have handled social media and AI. The point: a lot of noise, not a lot of facts.

DC’s leadership in flux

The uncertainty around Lanterns is unfolding as DC Studios shifts leadership. James Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping away, with Jeremy Latcham set to take the reins. That handoff has sparked wider questions about which titles survive the transition and how the new boss wants to build out the DC Universe.

According to TheWrap, Latcham’s marching orders after Skydance’s takeover focus on getting DC’s biggest heroes back on the big screen fast—reportedly including a new Justice League movie. That’s a different emphasis from the Gunn/Safran plan, which leaned on stepping-stone teams before assembling DC’s heaviest hitters. The ripple effect matters for Lanterns: Green Lantern is one of the original seven Justice League members, so any fast-track to a team-up could change the calculus for the series.

• Man of Tomorrow — currently scheduled for 2027, and a potential signpost for where Superman fits under the new regime.
• The Batman Part II — continuing outside the main DCU continuity, with its own creative lane.
• Jeremy Latcham — officially takes over DC Studios on Dec. 1, 2026.

Where does that leave the show? For now, despite the noise, there’s no official decision on Lanterns Season 2. Latcham assumes control on Dec. 1, 2026.

Asked point-blank if he’d ever slip back into the cape, Henry Cavill didn’t shut the door. In a new conversation with Inverse about the state of DC on screen, the actor said he’s open to the idea if the stars ever align.

"Look, there's lots of fantastic storylines. There's always a lot of opportunity... I would never say never now."

Cavill played Superman across nearly a decade — from Man of Steel through Justice League — before DC Studios shifted direction under new leadership and recast the role. James Gunn’s rebooted DC Universe now has David Corenswet wearing the “S,” and Cavill isn’t part of that lineup. Still, his “never say never” keeps the question alive for fans who watched his Kal‑El define a generation.

New Netflix team‑up

While the Superman speculation simmers, Cavill’s next move is lighter on spandex and heavier on laughs. He’s set to co‑star with Kevin Hart in a new Netflix spy comedy, with fresh casting continuing to stack the deck.

Per Variety, the ensemble now includes:

• Jason Isaacs
• Justine Lupe
• Aja Naomi King

The movie follows two rival spies who unexpectedly meet at a Lamaze class, where their wives become friends. That awkward overlap drags the agents into each other’s lives until circumstance turns competitors into confidants — all while they try to stay alive through a string of dangerous situations. It’s the first on‑screen pairing for Hart and Cavill.

Netflix hasn’t announced a release date yet.

On Wednesday, Frank Grillo posted a long Instagram video addressing the shake-up at DC, using it to thank James Gunn and Peter Safran directly. Grillo — who plays Rick Flag Sr. across the DC Universe — didn’t wade into the week’s arguments over what comes next. He went personal, calling the pair “the finest” and “most loyal” people he’s worked with and saying whether fans liked their movies was beside the point.

“I just wanted to publicly thank two of the finest men.”

He added that working with them had been an honor, and even joked about future favors: Safran, he said, gets airport pickup any time, while Gunn’s ride he left playfully up in the air.

Grillo’s message landed two days after an industry jolt: on Monday, the pair stepped down as co-chiefs of DC Studios, with Marvel veteran Jeremy Latcham stepping in. Gunn and Safran had been steering the DC Universe reboot since 2022.

Projects he shouted out

In the clip, Grillo called collaborating with Gunn and Safran on these DC titles “a gift”:

• Creature Commandos — Grillo voices Rick Flag Sr.
• Peacemaker
• Superman
• Man of Tomorrow

The running “secrets” joke

The tribute also echoed a lighthearted back-and-forth the three have had this year about spoilers. Earlier, Gunn shared a clip about John Cena and the future of Peacemaker, praising Cena as excellent at keeping secrets — and ribbing Grillo as, well, less so. Grillo shot back with a joke of his own that he could keep a secret if someone actually told him one.

That theme flared again in October when Grillo reshared a fan-made Man of Tomorrow poster that slotted Adria Arjona as Wonder Woman. Some fans took it as confirmation. Gunn countered that Grillo had simply liked seeing himself in the post and didn’t know Arjona’s role, then posted screenshots of their private texts and called the mix-up weirdly helpful to them.

Grillo’s parting note in Wednesday’s video was simple: whatever happens next at DC, his admiration for Gunn and Safran isn’t a secret.

On the press tour for Paper Tiger, Scarlett Johansson said some recent studio pitches didn’t just miss the mark — they made her question why the movie should exist at all. In a Los Angeles Times interview, she described weighing every offer against a simple test: will anyone actually want to watch this?

“I don’t think you should make this. I don’t know who you’re making this for.”

“It seems irresponsible to make this.”

Johansson didn’t name the projects that drew those reactions, but she framed audience connection as the filter she still uses after two decades of navigating blockbusters and indies alike.

Inside the movie

Set in 1986 Queens, Paper Tiger centers on the Pearl family, whose seemingly smart business play spirals into a run‑in with the Russian mob. James Gray writes and directs, trading superheroes for a street‑level crime story where money troubles turn dangerous fast.

• Miles Teller — Irwin, an engineer hustling to secure his family’s future
• Adam Driver — Gary, Irwin’s brother, a former cop with a “can’t-miss” scheme tied to Brooklyn’s polluted Gowanus Canal
• Scarlett Johansson — Hester, Irwin’s wife, shielding their two boys while hiding a frightening medical diagnosis
• Gavin Goudey — one of the Pearls’ sons
• Roman Engel — the other son

The film premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, with Neon handling North American distribution. It’s rated R for language and some violence, and opens in select theaters November 13 before expanding nationwide November 20.

On the carpet at the New York premiere of How to Rob a Bank, a 007 question turned into a quick gag — and then an earnest endorsement — when Pete Davidson fielded it with Nicholas Hoult standing right beside him. Speaking to E! News, Davidson cracked a one-liner and immediately pivoted to boosting his co-star for the tux.

“It’s going to be me. Plot twist, I will be the first American James Bond,” he said to E! News.

“No, if anyone should get it, it’s this guy next to me. We’re all rooting for him. He’s the best guy for the job.”

The joke landed because the rumor mill isn’t hypothetical. Multiple outlets — including Deadline, Variety and CNN — have reported that screen tests for Bond 26 have taken place at Amazon MGM, with Hoult among the names in the mix. A decision has been rumored for late fall, though nothing is confirmed and the studio hasn’t commented.

• Nicholas Hoult — reportedly tested
• Robert Pattinson — reportedly tested
• Callum Turner — reportedly tested
• Jack Lowden — reportedly tested
• Josh O’Connor — reportedly tested

Hoult’s cheer section

Support isn’t just coming from comedians on a red carpet. At the same premiere, director David Leitch told Variety he considers Hoult one of the finest actors of his generation and said he’d make an “amazing” Bond.

Back in May, Frank Grillo weighed in while wrapping Man of Tomorrow, arguing that skipping Hoult would be a major mistake. Fans have been campaigning online for years; one recent Celebrity Post poll put support for Hoult at 48%.

Why he fits

Hoult is British, 36, and around 6'2", with an on-screen gearshift that goes from the razor wit of The Great to the unsettling chill of The Menu and the grease-and-gravel physicality of Mad Max: Fury Road. He’s also got franchise mileage — Beast in X-Men and Lex Luthor in Superman — to match the demands of 007.

As for the movie that brought Davidson and Hoult to the same carpet, How to Rob a Bank opens in theaters November 13, 2026.

It started with a $3 million check in December 2008 — forged, investigators said — that blew open what had been happening behind the scenes of Dane Cook’s career. For years, the comedian’s half-brother Darryl McCauley had handled his money; by the time the paper trail was pieced together, a forensic team had tallied roughly $12 million siphoned through phony signatures and unauthorized transfers, the figure later used for court-ordered restitution.

Cook has been open about the gut punch of realizing family was behind it. On Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s on Me podcast, the host didn’t dance around it.

“Your brother stole a s*** ton of money from you.”

Cook didn’t flinch.

“That's what the police said too, ‘A s*** ton of money.’ All those Boston cops.”

Inside the scheme

McCauley had been in charge of Cook’s finances since the 1990s, a period that saw the comic rocket from Boston clubs to national tours. According to investigators, the money went out through forged signatures and accounts Cook hadn’t authorized. A forensic review set the loss around $12 million; on the podcast, Cook put his own estimate closer to $15 million, noting the full total is still unclear.

That collapse — and the rise that made it possible — is the spine of Funny Money: The Dane Cook Story, a feature documentary directed by Brett Harvey. The film tracks Cook’s working-class Boston roots, early sets, and relentless touring that culminated in selling out Madison Square Garden, then shifts from roar-of-the-crowd footage to spreadsheets, subpoenas, and a family trust gone catastrophically wrong.

Who’s in the doc

Cook narrates the fallout himself, joined by family, friends, and people who helped unravel the case:

• Kelsi — Cook’s wife
• Courtney Cook — sister
• Kelly Amann — sister
• Al Del Bene — childhood friend
• Guy Venuti — former friend of McCauley
• Richard Grundy — prosecutor on the case
• Business managers, attorneys and investigators who reconstructed the fraud

Funny Money: The Dane Cook Story debuted on digital platforms on September 29, 2026, and lands on Netflix on November 6, 2026.

In a new chat with Deadline, Mike Myers didn’t just say he’s happy to be back in the swamp — he’s calling Shrek 5 a personal high point. The actor says the new script floored him and that the team behind it “really outdid themselves.”

“The script is so great. This might be my favorite one of all of them,” Myers told Deadline.

“They’ve really outdone themselves. It’s just been a joy. I can’t wait for people to see it.”

The mainline series hasn’t had a new chapter since 2010’s Shrek Forever After, which was marketed at the time as the “final chapter.” In the years since, the world of Far Far Away stayed alive on the big screen via Puss in Boots spinoffs, and a fresh trailer for the new movie has already kicked up a lot of curiosity about where the story goes next.

What Myers is saying

Myers told Deadline it was “so much fun” slipping back into the ogre’s voice — a voice he famously retooled with a now-classic Scottish accent late in the process on the first film. He praised the filmmakers as brilliant and said the heart of Shrek has always been a character who doesn’t love himself learning to do exactly that, calling it an “eternal” theme. Asked if there’s more story to tell beyond this movie, he said there always is.

How the earlier movies stack up

While Myers is bullish on the new chapter, the franchise’s existing films still set a high bar. Here’s where they land, based on long-running fan sentiment and the series’ own milestones:

• Shrek 2 — Often crowned the standout, thanks in part to the debut of Puss in Boots and turning Far Far Away into a full-on playground.
• Shrek — The original swamp-set fairy-tale send-up that launched it all and won the first-ever Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish — Lauded for a more mature spin on fear and aging; many call it the franchise’s best since Shrek 2.
• Shrek Forever After — Sends Shrek into an alternate reality where he was never born.
• Puss in Boots — An origin story for the feline outlaw that clawed past $550 million worldwide.
• Shrek the Third — A box-office hit that still ranks as the weakest entry for a lot of fans.

With that lineup behind it, Myers says the new film clears the bar — and, as far as he’s concerned, there’s always more story to tell with this ogre.

Director Francis Lawrence says the long-discussed sequel to Constantine 2 has fresh momentum after a leadership change at DC Studios. He told Collider they already have a script and a clear idea for the movie — and that his version can live alongside any other DC take on the hellblazing antihero.

“If they just let us do the sequel to our version, they can coexist,” Lawrence said. “So, I have renewed hope as of yesterday that there might be some possibility for forward movement there.”

Lawrence has been trying to make a follow-up for nearly two decades, and Keanu Reeves has stayed eager to put the coat back on. The director suggested previous DC leadership stood in the way, while making a point that he wasn’t rooting for anyone to lose a job. He added that the core team never wavered.

• Keanu Reeves — still on board to return as John Constantine
• Akiva Goldsman — remains attached
• J.J. Abrams — remains attached

According to Lawrence, the next hurdle is aligning the companies involved — including Paramount, Warner Bros., and the current DC brass — to formally back a sequel to the 2005 movie. In February 2025, Reeves said DC Studios had approved their pitch, with Goldsman reportedly writing the script.

Their Constantine, their rules

Marking the film’s 20th anniversary on the Happy Sad Confused podcast last year, Reeves and Lawrence talked about intentionally steering away from a panel-for-panel comic adaptation. Lawrence said he wanted the character’s spirit without getting hung up on specifics like hair color or accent, and he chased a moody, modern noir vibe.

• Set in Los Angeles instead of the comics’ Liverpool
• No English accent and no insistence on blonde hair
• Brown coat instead of the comic’s black
• Style shaped by The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man, and Jim Thompson novels
• Shot in L.A. rather than using Toronto as a stand-in

The 2005 film became a success on its own terms, which is part of why Lawrence believes a sequel faithful to their version can work — even if DC pursues a separate take. There’s no green light yet; the team has a script and a plan, and the focus now is securing studio sign-off to move forward.

The show’s dance-team setting gives Bella Neuspiel a built‑in showcase: she plays Katie in The Body, and she’s a classically trained dancer in real life. Before stepping onto this Netflix thriller, the Canadian-born, New York–based performer spent years in studios honing ballet, contemporary, and jazz — a skillset that fits right into a story built around choreography, ritual, and group dynamics.

Set at a Catholic school, the Lions dance team throws a wild initiation for their devout new member, Grace. What starts with party drugs and a fake Satanic ceremony spins into something darker when Grace collapses into a coma — and the girls begin seeing disturbing visions that suggest their “prank” may have opened a door they can’t close.

The Body premiered November 11, 2026 on Netflix.

Who is Bella Neuspiel?

Neuspiel trained with the National Ballet of Canada, Steps on Broadway, and PMT House of Dance, and performed with the Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre. Beyond acting and dance, she’s dabbled in sketch comedy, gymnastics, acrobatics, and singing — the kind of cross‑training that tends to pop on screen in youth-driven thrillers.

In 2024, she appeared in Carly May Borgstrom’s feature debut, Spirit in the Blood, a horror thriller about a group of teen girls who believe a malevolent spirit killed their friend and set out for payback. The film also features Summer H. Howell, Sarah‑Maxine Racicot, and Greg Bryk, keeping Neuspiel firmly in the genre space she taps again with The Body.

Created by Quinn Shephard, the series pairs its occult mystery with the pressure-cooker world of a competitive team. Alongside Neuspiel’s Katie, the cast includes:

• Sofia Wylie
• Nnamdi Asomugha
• Louisa Krause
• Shirley Chen
• Kristina Bogic
• Sara Boustany
• Geena Meszaros
• Jackson Kelly

The Body is streaming now on Netflix.

On stage at Variety’s invite-only A Night in the Writers’ Room: Awards Season Edition in Los Angeles, Lisa Kudrow listened to the familiar pitch about AI cutting costs and trimming crews — and pushed back. Fresh off a season of The Comeback that put her character, Valerie Cherish, inside TV’s first AI-written sitcom, she said the cost-saving fantasy doesn’t line up with how shows actually get made.

“They’re going to try every way to make things less expensive and with fewer people,” she said, “but I don’t think they will be able to.”

Kudrow wasn’t speaking as an outsider. She co-created The Comeback with Michael Patrick King and served as a writer and executive producer, and that final season — centered on an AI-driven sitcom — earned her two 2026 Emmy nominations. She shared her view during the event’s Comedy Series panel.

Where studios stand on AI

While Kudrow is skeptical that AI can replace people, seven major companies have already rolled out or tested high-profile AI efforts this past year:

• Walt Disney Studios — Signed an OpenAI deal tied to Sora in late 2025, with a reported $1 billion equity investment and access to 200+ characters; that partnership is reportedly shutting down.
• Amazon MGM Studios — Launched a multimillion-dollar GenAI Creators’ Fund in May 2026.
• Netflix — Used generative AI on an effects sequence in The Eternaut, finishing nearly 10x faster, and then acquired InterPositive, founded by Ben Affleck.
• Fox Entertainment — Took a stake in HOLYWATER in 2025 and pledged 200+ vertical titles over two years.
• Warner Bros. Discovery — Cut caption production time by nearly 80%.
• Lionsgate — Partnered with Runway in September 2024 on a custom model.
• Paramount Advertising — Teamed with Waymark on AI ad tools.

Kudrow’s comments came during the Comedy Series panel at Variety’s A Night in the Writers’ Room: Awards Season Edition, held for Emmy voters in Los Angeles on November 11, 2026.

Clint Eastwood didn’t tap Nicholas Hoult for his legal thriller Juror #2 because of a steely courtroom monologue. According to Hoult and a very amused Pete Davidson, the director zeroed in after seeing a very NSFW moment from Hoult’s Hulu series The Great — a scene with absolutely nothing to do with a jury box.

The story came out when Hoult and his How to Rob a Bank co-star Davidson sat down for Complex’s GOAT Talk. As Hoult picked his character from The Great as his “greatest of all time” role, Davidson jumped in to connect the dots to Eastwood.

"That's also the role that got you the Clint Eastwood movie,"

Davidson said, as the two laughed about the unlikely casting pipeline from royal romp to sober courtroom drama. The contrast is part of the fun: The Great is an off-the-rails historical satire, while Eastwood’s Juror #2 is a contemporary, straight-ahead thriller.

Eastwood’s on-set nickname

Hoult also shared that Eastwood — who was 94 during production — greeted him on set with a running gag that harked back to that infamous Great scene. On Late Night with Seth Meyers, the Nosferatu star said the director had a very specific salute every morning.

"He would salute me in the morning and say Cap'n Lingus"

Both anecdotes — the casting curveball and the not-safe-for-daytime nickname — surfaced in recent appearances on Complex’s GOAT Talk and NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers.

When Michael Williams was too ill to travel for a Vatican honor, Judi Dench turned their home into a chapel. In her new memoir Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, Dench writes that friends and family filled the house as a priest conferred her husband’s papal knighthood at his bedside. Their daughter, Finty, rigged a baby monitor so guests downstairs in the sitting room could hear the service taking place upstairs.

“I wish he’d been able to receive his knighthood in the way that it was meant to happen – at Westminster Cathedral – but he wasn’t well enough to travel.”

Williams had been battling lung cancer. He died on January 11, 2001, at age 65.

Dench and Williams first met in the 1960s while touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company, then married in 1971 at St Mary’s Church in Hampstead. In the book’s Q&A format with Brendan O’Hea, she’s asked whether her career ever overshadowed his; Dench says if Williams felt that way, he never said so, and he stayed focused on his own work and goals.

Robin Williams’ quiet assist

Dench also shares a moment of kindness from Robin Williams during a visit to Billy Connolly’s home in Scotland. After a bonfire in the woods, Williams noticed Michael struggling on the walk back up. He offered to help; when Michael politely declined, Robin found a gentler way to be there anyway.

“And Robin said, ‘Well, I think I’ll ride shotgun anyway’, which was such a lovely thing to say.”

Dench recalled the exchange in an interview with PEOPLE. Robin Williams died in 2014 at age 63.

Asked to name the greatest Saturday Night Live host during Complex’s rapid-fire Goat Talk, Pete Davidson didn’t hesitate—then turned the praise into a bit. Sitting beside Nicholas Hoult while promoting their new movie How to Rob a Bank, the former SNL cast member picked Ryan Gosling and immediately started mock-griping about why.

“He’s like really hot and then super talented, but then he’s like really funny,” Davidson said, adding, “He’s he’s perfect. I hate him so much.”

Davidson kept piling on “offenses,” saying Gosling has razor-sharp comedic timing, a real comedy education that lets him drop deep-cut references you don’t expect from a movie star, and—just to make it worse—he’s genuinely nice. Hoult nodded along and agreed with the choice.

The Goat Talk moment landed as Davidson and Hoult made the press rounds for their heist drama. How to Rob a Bank is set to hit theaters on November 13, 2026.

Bond talk on the carpet

Later at the New York premiere, an E! News interviewer brought up the long-simmering 007 rumors with Hoult. Davidson joked he’d be the first American James Bond, then immediately handed the tux to Hoult, saying everyone’s rooting for him and calling him the best guy for the job. Director David Leitch echoed the sentiment at the event, telling Variety Hoult would make an “amazing Bond.”

Hoult has reportedly screen-tested for the next Bond movie at Amazon MGM, according to multiple outlets. Others said to have tested include:

• Robert Pattinson
• Callum Turner
• Jack Lowden
• Josh O’Connor

Reports suggest a decision could come before Thanksgiving, though nothing has been confirmed.

How to Rob a Bank opens in theaters November 13, 2026.

On the latest episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s On Me, Dane Cook dug up one of the wilder memories from his early club days: taking the stage to a room so hostile, people started pitching their hot dogs at him. He says he literally had to hop around the stage to avoid a barrage of flying franks — and counted them as they sailed by.

“They threw hot dogs at me because they didn’t want me to perform, and I remember all the hot dogs flying. I’m jumping over hot dogs. 15 hot dogs flew over my head,”

Cook admitted he briefly walked off and declared he was done with stand-up. Seconds later, he flipped the script, convinced there was a sign in the chaos.

“Wait, no, I am not gonna quit cause not one hot dog hit me,”

he recalled telling himself — and went back to work.

Modern Family talk

Ferguson also said the Modern Family crew is itching to reunite. The sitcom wrapped in 2020 after 11 seasons and 250 episodes, and six years after the finale, he says the appetite to do more is still there.

“We would love to get back together and do it again,”

Ferguson said on the podcast.

He’s previously mentioned a shelved spinoff centered on Mitchell Pritchett and Eric Stonestreet’s Cameron Tucker, which would have followed the couple’s adventures in Missouri. ABC ultimately passed on the idea.

In the meantime, the cast has kept up their off-camera friendships, reuniting informally over the years:

• Eric Stonestreet — Cameron Tucker
• Ty Burrell — Phil Dunphy
• Julie Bowen — Claire Dunphy
• Sofía Vergara — Gloria Delgado-Pritchett

No official revival or reunion special has been announced.

Asked to name the “greatest” breakup cure during a taping of Complex’s GOAT Talk while promoting their new caper How to Rob a Bank, Pete Davidson clocked the room first. As eyes drifted his way, he jumped in with a straight-faced answer that sounded exactly like something he’d say — and absolutely nothing like real advice.

“Get right back into another one. Do zero healing. Just find another one. Dump on all of them.”

Davidson and co-star Nicholas Hoult cracked up immediately, signaling the bit was a joke, not a self-help plan. Still, the deadpan delivery tracked with Davidson’s habit of talking about his personal life with a shrug and a punchline.

Hoult and the Bond chatter

Hoult, meanwhile, is back in the rumor mill for the next James Bond. According to multiple reports, he’s among a group of actors who have reportedly screen-tested for 007, though nothing has been announced by the Bond team.

• Nicholas Hoult
• Robert Pattinson
• Callum Turner
• Jack Lowden
• Josh O’Connor

Hoult’s franchise résumé already includes Beast in the X-Men films, and he plays Lex Luthor in the upcoming Superman movie. As for Bond, the producers have not confirmed any contenders or a casting decision.

For now, Davidson and Hoult are keeping things light on the promo trail for How to Rob a Bank — and if the GOAT Talk bit is any indication, they’re taking the heartbreak questions with a laugh.

Prime Video kicked things off with a two-episode launch on November 6, 2026, and it’s sticking to an early-bird schedule: new installments of Devils’ Crest roll out Friday mornings at 7 a.m. ET. Both Japanese audio and an English dub are available from day one, with more language options in the settings.

Based on Reki Kawahara’s light novels (titled Demons’ Crest), the series follows a group of sixth graders who dive into a VR experience called “Actual Magic” — and then watch as the game starts bleeding into the real world. It’s not connected to Sword Art Online, but the premise taps Kawahara’s favorite pressure point: what happens when logging off isn’t the escape.

New episodes stream Fridays at 7 a.m. ET on Prime Video.

Release plan

• Where to watch: Prime Video (U.S. and worldwide)
• Premiere: November 6, 2026 — Episodes 1 and 2 are streaming now
• New episodes: Fridays at 7 a.m. ET
• Run: Two consecutive cours through winter 2027
• Languages: Japanese audio and an English dub (additional options available)

Who’s making it

The anime comes from Production I.G — the studio behind Ghost in the Shell — with Kenichiro Komaya directing. The soundtrack brings some star power: Ado performs the opening theme “Shinka,” and Soala closes episodes with the ending song “ReaL.”

The series is planned to continue across two cours into winter 2027.

On the red carpet in New York on November 11, Mike Myers batted away a question about whether today’s politics will seep into a fourth Austin Powers movie — but did tip his hand on the vibe he’s chasing. Speaking to Variety at the Focker-In-Law premiere, he leaned into classic spycraft evasiveness before pivoting to something far softer.

“I can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of such a commentary,”

Pressed on the movie’s tone, Myers turned earnest — and a little Burt Bacharach.

“In the last few weeks, I think fear has had it and love is on the way back. If anything, that’s what the Austin Powers movie is going to be about. What the world needs now is love, sweet love.”

That’s the clearest signal yet that the shagadelic spy’s return could be less about skewering headlines and more about dialing up optimism. It’s been more than two decades since Austin Powers in Goldmember hit theaters in 2002, and Myers is still keeping plot specifics — and any release timeline — under wraps.

Meanwhile: Focker-In-Law

Myers was holding court at the premiere of Focker-In-Law, the fourth chapter in the Meet the Parents saga that reunites Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro with writer-director John Hamburg back at the helm. This one hands the spotlight to Greg Focker’s grown-up son, Henry, played by Skyler Gisondo, who plans to marry his girlfriend, Ariana Grande as Olivia — a former FBI hostage negotiator.

Olivia charms almost everyone, including Jack Byrnes, while Greg grows wary and digs in his heels. Family diplomacy, as ever, is not Greg’s strong suit.

Here’s who’s on board:

• Ben Stiller
• Robert De Niro
• Skyler Gisondo — Henry (Greg’s son)
• Ariana Grande — Olivia
• Owen Wilson
• Teri Polo
• Blythe Danner
• Beanie Feldstein
• Eduardo Franco

Focker-In-Law is set to open in theaters November 25, 2026.

The next team-up is pulling in heroes and villains from all corners of the MCU — and a couple of legendary mutants — with Robert Downey Jr. switching sides to play Victor Von Doom. Alongside him, Chris Evans is back as Steve Rogers, while the current Captain America, Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson, is also in the fight. Announced in 2024, Avengers: Doomsday is shaping up as a full-tilt crossover.

The lineup

Here’s who’s confirmed to appear and who they’re playing:

• Robert Downey Jr. — Victor Von Doom (Doctor Doom)
• Chris Evans — Steve Rogers
• Chris Hemsworth — Thor
• Pedro Pascal — Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic
• Paul Rudd — Scott Lang/Ant-Man
• Anthony Mackie — Captain America/Sam Wilson
• Florence Pugh — Yelena Belova
• Sebastian Stan — Bucky Barnes
• Vanessa Kirby — Sue Storm/Invisible Woman
• Ebon Moss-Bachrach — Ben Grimm/The Thing
• Wyatt Russell — John Walker
• Channing Tatum — Gambit
• Simu Liu — Shang-Chi
• Ian McKellen — Magneto
• Hayley Atwell — Peggy Carter
• Tom Hiddleston — Loki
• James Marsden — Cyclops
• Patrick Stewart — Professor Charles Xavier
• Joseph Quinn — Johnny Storm/Human Torch

The roster blends Avengers mainstays with the new Fantastic Four contingent — Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn — plus legacy X‑Men faces like Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, Ian McKellen’s Magneto and James Marsden’s Cyclops.

Scarlet Witch tease

While Wanda Maximoff isn’t on the confirmed list, the VisionQuest finale points straight at her return — and Doom’s reach. The post‑credits tag mirrors Wanda’s apparent demise from 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, then shows Downey’s Doom clearing the rubble to seize her power.

“Your power will be mine,”

Doom says in the stinger, before Wanda opens her eyes.

Drawing from Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, the next film jumps ahead nearly two decades. Paul Atreides is no longer the upstart messiah — he’s the Emperor, facing the cost of what his rise set in motion. Old allies reappear, fresh enemies circle, and a far-reaching plot takes shape with Chani at the center of its mystery.

Dune: Part Three adapts Dune Messiah and is set almost 20 years after Paul seizes the throne.

Who’s back — and who’s new

• Timothée Chalamet — Paul Atreides, now the Emperor
• Zendaya — Chani, Paul’s Fremen partner and key to the unfolding conspiracy
• Rebecca Ferguson — Lady Jessica, Paul’s Bene Gesserit mother
• Florence Pugh — Princess Irulan, Paul’s political wife
• Javier Bardem — Stilgar, leader among the Fremen
• Josh Brolin — Gurney Halleck; if the film tracks the book, his role this time is smaller
• Jason Momoa — Duncan Idaho, returning despite his death after being brought back as a ghola clone engineered by Scytale
• Anya Taylor-Joy — Alia Atreides, Paul’s sister
• Robert Pattinson — Scytale, the shape-shifting antagonist
• Isaach De Bankolé — Farok, a Fremen commando

Dune: Part Three closes out Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy with a sharp turn from the “chosen one” rise toward the hard aftermath of power — how an empire runs, who gets crushed under it, and the loyalty tests that follow when the desert stops forgiving.

The story sets Paul against a wide conspiracy and forces him to reckon with what his crusade has meant for the Fremen and for Chani in particular — a pivot that reframes the saga’s biggest relationships as the final chapter comes into focus.

The handoff is coming fast. After four years running DC Studios, James Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping away from day-to-day leadership following Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery in October. Former Marvel executive Jeremy Latcham will take over creative control on December 1. The company line is “continuity,” but several in-development titles are now in a holding pattern while the new boss gets his bearings.

Gunn isn’t disappearing from DC entirely. He’s still creatively involved with the sequel to his Superman reboot—Man of Tomorrow—even as he and Safran return to filmmaking. That project, along with the broader “Gods and Monsters” roadmap Gunn unveiled in January 2023 (promising new takes on Superman, Batman, Supergirl, Swamp Thing and more), now passes to Latcham to steer.

Jeremy Latcham takes charge of DC Studios on December 1.

The scorecard

Gunn and Safran’s run showed signs of creative momentum but mixed commercial results—exactly the kind of ledger a new chief has to study on day one. Here’s where the biggest recent titles landed:

• Superman — about $619 million worldwide on a reported $225 million budget; 83% critics and 90% verified audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes.
• Supergirl — roughly $126 million worldwide against a reported $170 million budget.
• Clayface — approximately $110 million worldwide.
• The Batman — around $773 million worldwide (a separate, director-driven lane outside the DCU plan).
• Joker — crossed $1 billion worldwide (another standalone success, even as its sequel carried bigger risks).

The picture that emerges: audiences responded to a hopeful, classic-hero approach in Gunn’s Superman, but launching pricier films around lesser-known characters didn’t translate into the same turnout. At the same time, distinctive one-offs like The Batman and Joker proved there’s still big interest in focused, filmmaker-led stories that don’t exist mainly to set up a future crossover.

Stability vs. resets

DC’s challenge isn’t just which heroes to spotlight—it’s keeping the steering wheel steady. The brand has whiplashed through regimes since the turbulent end of the Zack Snyder-era DCEU, cycling from the Geoff Johns/Jon Berg and Walter Hamada years to the Gunn/Safran rebuild. Every swap asks viewers to buy into a fresh long-term plan before the last one fully plays out.

This is where Latcham comes in. A Marvel veteran who helped launch The Avengers era, he inherits both an in-progress DCU blueprint and moviegoers who have grown more selective about superhero fare. The task now is less about unveiling another elaborate slate and more about delivering consistent, satisfying movies that earn return trips—without promising a destination that keeps moving.

For fans wondering about the near-term, the studio has stressed continuity, but didn’t spell out the fate of every announced title in the “Gods and Monsters” lineup. One thing that is set: Gunn remains creatively attached to Man of Tomorrow, which already has a date.

Man of Tomorrow is currently scheduled to hit theaters in July 2027.

The headline-grabber is the big swing at the center of it: Robert Downey Jr. is back in the MCU, this time slipping into the armor of Doctor Doom. He won’t be the only familiar face. Chris Evans returns as Steve Rogers, and the lineup pulls in heroes and mutants from across Marvel history as the studio sets up its next mega-showdown in Avengers: Doomsday.

• Robert Downey Jr. — Victor Von Doom
• Chris Evans — Steve Rogers
• Chris Hemsworth — Thor
• Pedro Pascal — Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic
• Paul Rudd — Scott Lang/Ant-Man
• Anthony Mackie — Captain America/Sam Wilson
• Florence Pugh — Yelena Belova
• Vanessa Kirby — Sue Storm/Invisible Woman
• Ebon Moss-Bachrach — Ben Grimm/The Thing
• Wyatt Russell — John Walker
• Channing Tatum — Gambit
• Simu Liu — Shang-Chi
• Ian McKellen — Magneto
• Hayley Atwell — Peggy Carter
• Tom Hiddleston — Loki
• James Marsden — Cyclops
• Patrick Stewart — Professor Charles Xavier
• Joseph Quinn — Johnny Storm/Human Torch
• Sebastian Stan — Bucky Barnes

Three worlds collide

Marvel is keeping plot specifics under wraps, but the studio’s synopsis points to a “collision” that unites heroes from three different corners of its universe — the main MCU timeline, the X‑Men world, and the Fantastic Four. That’s how you get Magneto, Professor X, and Cyclops sharing the field with Captain America and Thor, while the Richards–Storm–Grimm crew enters the fray against Doom.

And there are still surprises being held back. Asked directly about a possible Hulk appearance, directors Joe and Anthony Russo wouldn’t bite, but they did confirm there are more names we haven’t heard yet.

“The farthest we can go is to say, there are characters and actors who have not been announced, who are a part of Doomsday,” Anthony Russo said.

Release date

Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, Avengers: Doomsday is slated to open in theaters on December 18, 2026.

If you’re trying to triage your opening‑weekend ticket, the two movies aren’t offering the same thing. Dune: Part Three is the capstone to Denis Villeneuve’s saga, jumping nearly two decades ahead to find Paul Atreides ruling the Imperium and reckoning with the holy war launched in his name. Avengers: Doomsday is Marvel swinging for the fences with a crossover that mashes together the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X‑Men and Wakanda — with Robert Downey Jr. back in the MCU, not as Tony Stark, but as Doctor Doom.

December 18, 2026: both tentpoles open in U.S. theaters the same day.

Dune: Part Three

Villeneuve’s finale adapts Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, picking up years after Paul seized power. Paul (Timothée Chalamet) is now emperor, his jihad has reshaped the universe, and the people closest to him are ensnared in a widening political conspiracy. The official synopsis puts Zendaya’s Chani at the center of the unfolding mystery.

The filmmaker has hinted at a tonal pivot — more of a thriller, more action, and a darker dive into what Paul’s reign actually looks like. With Linus Sandgren shooting and Hans Zimmer returning on the score, it’s engineered for the largest screen you can find.

• Key roles: Timothée Chalamet — Paul Atreides; Zendaya — Chani; Robert Pattinson — Scytale; Nakoa‑Wolf Momoa — Leto II; Ida Brooke — Ghanima
• Also back: Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Anya Taylor‑Joy, Jason Momoa

Avengers: Doomsday

Marvel’s logline promises heroes from three distinct universes facing an unprecedented threat, with Doom at the center. Translation: worlds are colliding, alliances are going to get weird, and the multiverse is very much in play.

The headline twist is Downey’s MCU return — not as Iron Man, but as Victor von Doom. The reunion extends behind the camera, too: Anthony and Joe Russo are back steering the Avengers franchise.

• The Avengers: Chris Hemsworth — Thor; Chris Evans — Steve Rogers; Anthony Mackie — Sam Wilson/Captain America
• Fantastic Four: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss‑Bachrach
• X‑Men vets: Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Alan Cumming, Kelsey Grammer
• From Wakanda and beyond: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Paul Rudd, Tom Hiddleston, Channing Tatum
• Villain: Robert Downey Jr. — Doctor Doom

One is a cerebral sci‑fi epic closing out an operatic trilogy; the other is a mega‑crossover built for cheers and crowd‑pleasing chaos. Either way, premium formats are going to be busy.

Dune: Part Three and Avengers: Doomsday both hit U.S. theaters on December 18, 2026.

In the new documentary You Can See Everything, Amanda Seyfried quietly slipped back into Elizabeth Holmes’ black turtleneck for sequences that mix real-life material with staged moments. The return was kept under wraps until now, and Seyfried says the lure was the project’s unusual blend of documentary and reconstruction rather than a simple encore of a character she already knew.

Speaking at the New York premiere of Netflix’s animated film Steps on November 8, she explained why she signed on for something that felt risky.

“It’s important for me as an actor, an artist, I mean, a mom, of course, but as a person in the world who loves to work, to find things that I haven’t done before and to do things that scare me in a specific way,”

She told PEOPLE that when a scary creative choice pays off with a “mostly positive impact,” it feels especially worth it.

Seyfried’s connection to Holmes dates back to The Dropout on Hulu in 2022, which traced the Theranos founder’s meteoric rise and collapse. Her performance as Holmes earned her both an Emmy and a Golden Globe and cemented the role as one of the defining turns of her career.

Cinderella, remixed at Netflix

While one project takes her back into the Theranos story, the other swings to fairy-tale territory. In Steps, Seyfried voices Cinderella in a reimagining that shifts the spotlight to the stepsisters, traditionally the villains. Taking on such a legacy character, she said, carries its own weight.

“Being able to embody somebody so iconic in some way, in this very specific way, it’s really special. It’s wonderful,”

She added that the responsibility is “a little stressful,” but that pressure is exactly what keeps her engaged as an actor.

Steps is an animated feature for Netflix, and Seyfried discussed both projects while walking the carpet at the film’s New York premiere on November 8.

In a new feature for ELLE’s 2026 Women in Hollywood issue, Florence Pugh looks back on the years she’s spent crossing paths with Timothée Chalamet on film sets big and small, calling him a constant through her breakout and beyond.

“He’s an old friend, I’ve known him since almost the beginning of it all. It’s always wonderful seeing friends that are on this journey with you.”

Pugh added in the profile that she’s fueled by the people around her:

“I always admire my friends that are working hard and have a lot to achieve.”

The pair first clicked playing Amy March and Laurie in Little Women and reunited in Dune: Part Two, with Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Pugh as Princess Irulan. Off camera, they’ve kept up the bit that they’re forever cast as almost-love interests who never quite line up.

On-set mischief

During the Dune: Part Two press tour, director Denis Villeneuve said their chemistry spilled into downtime on set — lots of laughing between takes and even slipping back into old Little Women rhythms. He affectionately called Pugh “mischievous” and a “rambunctious child,” and admitted he occasionally parked them on opposite sides of the set during breaks just to keep everyone on task.

Villeneuve also stressed that when it was time to shoot, both actors locked in. He singled out Pugh’s “immense firepower” and said their goofiness didn’t carry into filming — once the camera rolled, the play stopped and the work took over.

Florence Pugh isn’t shy about the ground rules she brings to work. After years on big movies and prestige TV, she says the vibe of a set rises or falls with basic behavior — especially how people treat the crew. One bad attitude can sour the day for everyone, and she’s done accommodating it.

• No lateness
• No rudeness — especially toward the crew
• No misogyny

As she put it in a recent interview with Elle:

“It’s just about surrounding yourself with professionals who have the same way of working in mind. Show up on time, don’t be rude, don’t be a misogynist.”

Pugh said each project has made her more confident about protecting herself and others on set. And while plenty of stars bury demands in rider clauses, she prefers to say her expectations out loud so there’s no confusion about the culture she wants to build.

Speaking up off set

Her no-nonsense stance extends beyond work. Pugh recently used her platform to call out the so-called Cornell 7 — the online moniker for seven male students accused of attacking a classmate at Cornell University in October 2024, according to reports at the time. In the same Elle interview, she said Instagram initially removed some of her posts, and that attempts to quiet her only made her more determined to speak up.

Why Dune mattered

Pugh also gave credit where she thinks it’s due for getting audiences back into theaters. She told The New York Times that Dune: Part Two felt like a full-on event and described Denis Villeneuve’s saga as her generation’s answer to Star Wars — the kind of big-screen experience people plan a night around.

The numbers back it up: the first Dune took in $411 million worldwide in 2021, while Dune: Part Two crossed $700 million and finished as the No. 7 film of 2024 globally.

Next up, Pugh is set to return to Arrakis in Dune: Part Three and continues a busy slate that includes Netflix’s East of Eden.

Jeremy Latcham starts work at DC Studios on December 1, and his first inbox is already stacked: decide the fate of a John Cena hit, keep a new Superman on track, and sort out a murky Batman map. He’s stepping in as James Gunn and Peter Safran exit after four years, with the pair expected to keep producing select DC titles even as they hand over the keys.

Where this leaves Peacemaker

Peacemaker doesn’t have a Season 3 order — or a cancellation. Max hasn’t greenlit another run, and no creative changes have been announced. Gunn created, wrote and mostly directed the series; after the Season 2 finale in 2025, he said a third season wasn’t planned right away, but he left the door open and suggested the story could continue through other DC projects. Whether the show is one of the titles Gunn and Safran will still produce hasn’t been clarified.

Another wait-and-see: Lanterns. The cosmic detective show is also sitting without a second-season pickup, and it has its own creative team separate from Gunn’s. Both renewals now land on Latcham’s desk.

Latcham takes over DC Studios on December 1.

The big-screen pillars

On the film side, the new boss inherits a slate in very different shapes of readiness:

• Superman — Considered the safest play. Gunn and Safran are finishing the projects they already committed to, which includes Man of Tomorrow with David Corenswet. Corenswet’s first outing as Superman pulled in $618 million worldwide, a number that tends to keep casting steady — though nothing’s official until DC says so.
• Batman — Much hazier. Matt Reeves exited the sequel to The Batman, and Steven Soderbergh stepped in to direct the film scheduled for February 18, 2028. At the same time, Gunn had been developing a separate Dark Knight for The Brave and the Bold, so Robert Pattinson’s place in the broader DC universe remains unresolved.
• Wonder Woman — No confirmed plans. Adria Arjona has been rumored for Man of Tomorrow as either Wonder Woman or the alien queen Maxima, but DC hasn’t announced anything.

For now, Peacemaker sits without a Season 3 order at Max, Lanterns lacks a Season 2 greenlight, and Batman’s next chapter is dated for February 18, 2028.

On opening day of the American Film Market, the first packed panel turned into a rallying cry for a national tax break to shoot movies in the U.S. The pitch had a very specific hook: make it attractive enough that Tom Cruise brings his tentpoles — and all the jobs that come with them — back to American sets.

“When Tom Cruise does a movie in France, all those jobs become French jobs. All the taxes he pays, he pays it to the French government,” said Josh Rogin, the MPA’s senior vice president of federal government affairs, per Variety.

Rogin argued that where studios pay their biggest stars is where the largest crews, vendors and tax revenue follow. Then he put it plainly:

“We need to bring Tom Cruise home to make movies here!”

Who’s at the table

Joining Rogin on the panel were producers who’ve been working the politics behind the scenes to get a federal production incentive off the ground.

• Josh Rogin — Motion Picture Association, SVP of federal government affairs
• Stephen Paul — SP Media Group
• Scott Karol — SP Media Group

Paul and Karol appeared after a meeting earlier this year with President Donald Trump alongside actor Jon Voight. Paul told Trump he was planning a movie about Richard Nixon but would shoot it in England because the U.S. was too expensive, according to Variety’s account of the discussion.

Following that meeting, Trump urged Congress on Truth Social to approve a federal incentive for film production, Variety reported — the kind of national program advocates say could counter the pull of richer overseas rebates that have drawn big shoots out of the country for years.

There’s a deadline attached: producers say the measure needs to pass by year’s end to lock in a January 1, 2027 start date for the proposed program.

Asked what he’d tell himself on day one of his first movie set, Johnny Depp didn’t go soft. Promoting his turn as Scrooge, he told Entertainment Tonight he’d have warned young Johnny to turn around and leave acting behind.

“Get out of here. Save yourself. Get out. Just walk away and do something else. In fact, I did say that to myself, but I didn’t listen.”

Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, Depp said that feeling reaches back to his 1984 debut in A Nightmare on Elm Street, where he played Glen Lantz — the boyfriend famously yanked into a bed by Freddy Krueger. He’d arrived as a musician who didn’t know his marks or key lights, planned to go back to music, and only auditioned after Nicolas Cage pushed him to try; even the minimum pay looked like a windfall. He stuck around because the oddball roles kept him interested, but he’s said he still isn’t sure he considers himself an “actor.”

Advice on set

Depp’s keep-it-light philosophy also filtered to the younger cast of Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol. At the film’s London premiere, real-life siblings Eva and Zac Wishart — who play Cratchit kids Martha and Peter — said he told them there’s no such thing as a “serious actor,” calling the phrase an oxymoron.

The Dickens update leans into the heightened style Depp’s known for, with a stacked supporting cast around his Scrooge:

• Ian McKellen — Jacob Marley
• Rupert Grint — Bob Cratchit
• Eva Wishart — Martha Cratchit
• Zac Wishart — Peter Cratchit
• Johnny Depp — Ebenezer Scrooge

Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol opens in theaters November 13.

When the 2023 actors’ strike shut down sets, Julia Garner flew to France and enrolled in clown school, leaning into failure on purpose. That willingness to fall on her face, she says, started with Ruth Langmore — the scrappy trailer-park hustler she lived with for five seasons on Ozark. A Bronx native who admits she used to be painfully shy, Garner told CBS News the role rewired her.

In that sit-down, she described the show’s five-year run as both a career breakthrough and an education, with castmates Jason Bateman and Laura Linney effectively serving as her professors. The part delivered hardware, too — a Golden Globe and three Emmys.

“It was like my equivalency of college, college years,”

Garner added that the job changed her relationship to fear and attention. Even a 2022 Golden Globe nomination for Inventing Anna didn’t quiet her nerves — she disliked being watched and felt it was getting to her head. France helped. At clown school, she said she failed constantly and called it the best feeling.

Now she’s fronting The Altruists at Netflix — playing Caroline Ellison — a pivot that doubles down on the shape-shifter reputation Ruth helped cement. She’s also got a new thriller on deck at Apple TV+.

• Ozark — Netflix; ran five seasons; earned Garner a Golden Globe and three Emmys
• Inventing Anna — Netflix; earned her a 2022 Golden Globe nomination
• The Altruists — Netflix; Garner plays Caroline Ellison
• Guilty Creatures — Apple TV+ thriller, upcoming
• Madonna biopic — in development; status unresolved

Madonna movie in limbo

As for that long-gestating Madonna biopic — the one she trained and auditioned for under Madonna’s famously punishing process — Garner told CBS the project’s status “changes every hour.” She said she’s as in the dark as everyone else and that the final call isn’t hers to make.

Still, Garner says she came away with a mentor and a friend in Madonna. That bond already put her onstage during the pop icon’s 2023 tour and led to a role in season 2 of The Studio. On the business side, Madonna has described a budget dispute with Universal Pictures and said she was asked to pay to reclaim her own script, complicating a path forward.

For now, the biopic remains stalled after its 2023 postponement.

Season 1 of Lanterns wrapped on October 4 with Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart patrolling Earth — but don’t look for a quick return flight. According to Variety, HBO hasn’t ordered a second season, and no one at the network or DC Studios has labeled the show canceled either. The timing is stark: the report landed a day after James Gunn and Peter Safran exited DC’s top jobs.

Variety also notes the crime‑mystery take on the Green Lantern mythos drew “decent” viewership, but an insider says it isn’t quite catching the broader cultural wave. Co‑showrunner Chris Mundy previously pegged the odds of a renewal at “a coin flip.” It was the first live‑action TV series Gunn and Safran launched while running DC, which makes its status an early stress test of the handoff.

Jeremy Latcham starts December 1 as president and chief creative officer of DC Studios.

New boss, new calls

The shake‑up follows Paramount’s $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery in October and a fast reshuffle of the org chart. Latcham — a former Marvel executive — inherits a slate packed with projects greenlit under the old regime, and renewals are now his call. For Lanterns, that means a wait while the new chief sorts what moves forward.

Peacemaker in limbo

Another Gunn creation, Peacemaker, is in the same holding pattern. There’s no Season 3 pickup and no cancellation, and HBO hasn’t announced any creative changes. Because Gunn created, wrote and largely directed the show, its future is even more entangled with DC’s leadership transition.

After the Season 2 finale in 2025, Gunn said there wasn’t an immediate plan for a third season, hinting the story could spill into other DC Universe projects instead. Gunn and Safran are still on board as producers for select titles — including The People v. Gorilla Grodd and another season of Creature Commandos — but whether Peacemaker makes that short list hasn’t been specified.

On set, Anthony Mackie says the vibe was less end-of-the-world and more reunion weekend — castmates swapping life updates between takes and finally seeing each other after years of shooting separate projects. He described the shoot as a long-overdue catch‑up, from who tied the knot to who’s a new parent.

“It was like summer camp,” Mackie told Entertainment Tonight.

That cheery energy sits in sharp contrast to what’s on the page. Per the film’s synopsis, Avengers: Doomsday pits the heroes against Doctor Doom and pulls in characters from three different worlds just to mount a fight. Grim on screen, easygoing off it — at least for some of the cast.

Secrecy dialed up

Behind the camaraderie, Marvel reportedly ran its tightest spoiler lockdown yet — the kind where even the people making the movie don’t always know who else is in the room with them (or if there is a room at all).

• Scripts were kept scarce, with pages doled out sparingly.
• Real character names were swapped for code names.
• Some actors said they had no idea who else was on the call sheet for their scenes.

That led to odd introductions later. On SiriusXM Hits 1, Alan Cumming said he finally met Florence Pugh at the Emmys — after performing a scene together without ever actually sharing a set.

“I saw Florence Pugh yesterday at the Emmy, and I said, ‘Gosh it’s so funny, I’ve never met you but you lay on top of me.’”

So depending on the day and the call sheet, the same production swung from summer-camp reunion to jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces — complete with code names, limited pages and co-stars you only meet months later on an awards carpet.

At a Nov. 5 screening at The Ross House in Los Angeles, Michelle Pfeiffer talked about why her turn as grieving matriarch Stacy Clyburn in The Madison hit so hard. Speaking about the Paramount+ drama, she said the performance came from a very real place, according to The Hollywood Reporter’s account of the event.

“I’ve lost a few people. And, for some reason, I just tapped into something.”

On the show, Pfeiffer plays Stacy, a Manhattan “city mouse” whose life caves in after her husband Preston — played by Kurt Russell — dies in a plane crash with his brother. The series made noise for reuniting Pfeiffer and Russell, but its staying power came from how unflinching Stacy’s grief is as the family’s center of gravity shifts from New York back to Montana’s Madison River Valley.

Pfeiffer also said Taylor Sheridan first approached her without a script. That leap of faith didn’t slow things down: the series took off on Paramount+, and more episodes are on the way.

Season 2, then what

Season 2 moves past the initial shock of Preston’s death. With the Clyburns back in Montana, the focus turns to rebuilding — and to the family rifts, loyalties and land ties that come with it. For Stacy, the question shifts from “How do I survive this?” to “What does life look like now?”

• Filming on Season 2 has wrapped.
• The season is set for six episodes.
• Paramount+ has already renewed the show for a third season.
• The streamer hasn’t announced a Season 2 premiere date.

Make it past the credits in the VisionQuest finale and the camera lands on a quiet chamber, a flash of red, and a metal mask in shadow. Wanda Maximoff stirs, opens her eyes, and the reveal is unmistakable: Doctor Doom is standing over her.

Doctor Doom wakes Wanda Maximoff in the VisionQuest finale’s post-credits scene, confirming Elizabeth Olsen’s MCU return.

That tag instantly repositions the show from side story to setup. Within seconds, Elizabeth Olsen is back in play as Scarlet Witch, and the path points straight to the next Avengers chapter.

A surprise in the credits

Wanda was believed to be gone after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but the finale’s stinger shows her alive and under the watch of Doctor Doom. There’s no dialogue, just the visual of Doom awakening her — enough to lock in Scarlet Witch for what comes next.

Doom’s recruiting drive

The other shoe drops in new tags added to Avengers: Endgame Encore. In those scenes, Doom tracks Bruce Banner to an underground bunker and “collects” him — a tense pickup that plays very differently depending on whether you read it as a rescue or a snatch.

Banner, who has holed up following the events of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, is clearly on Doom’s radar. The tag puts Bruce Banner back on the board and suggests Doom isn’t just a looming threat — he’s actively assembling pieces.

Notably, Hulk was missing from the Avengers: Doomsday cast announcement. The new Endgame Encore scene flips that absence into a plot point — recruitment or kidnapping — with the exact terms left deliberately unclear.

In the new making-of book The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, the director doesn’t gloss over the messier parts of casting his 2009 WWII thriller. He says two major French names hit the chopping block before filming: Isabelle Huppert over a no-show and contract snags, and Mélanie Laurent after a rocky first table read.

Huppert had been set to play Madame Ada Mimieux, a Paris cinema owner who originally shelters Shosanna. Tarantino says delays negotiating her deal piled up—and then she skipped the cast’s first read-through. His response was blunt.

“She didn’t show up, so f*** it. I fired her. I mean, I love Isabelle Huppert — Heaven’s Gate and all that — but there were issues with her contract. It just kept stalling. And then not coming to the table read. Well, we cast Maggie Cheung instead.”

Laurent’s scare was different. She ultimately became Shosanna Dreyfus, but Tarantino recalls that her initial pass at the table read was a miss—and he acted on it.

“Well, Mélanie was terrible, so I fired her,” the filmmaker said about letting her go.

Laurent’s second shot

Laurent didn’t accept that decision. According to the book, she called Tarantino directly, said she’d been unwell during the read, and offered to fly to Germany on her own dime and wait as long as it took for another chance. Tarantino agreed—on one condition: three days of rehearsals before he made the final call.

The do-over worked. After that rehearsal gauntlet, he gave her the part for good, and Laurent’s performance as Shosanna became one of Inglourious Basterds’ signature turns.

From the Toronto set, Alan Ritchson jumped on Threads with a progress report that was equal parts update and swagger: filming on the next chapter of Reacher has cleared the midpoint and the body count is climbing.

“Over half way done filming… Means a baker’s dozen of dead goons… Winter is upon us… times four, carry the three… I don’t know like… ten years or less,” Ritchson said on Threads.

Season 5 is based on Lee Child’s twentieth Jack Reacher novel, Make Me, which drops the drifter into a tiny, oddly named town called Mother’s Rest. What starts as a stop made out of curiosity pulls him into a dark mystery when he teams with a private investigator looking for a missing colleague.

New faces, new trouble

Alongside Ritchson’s returning bruiser, the season is stacking its ensemble with a mix of allies and threats. Here’s who’s in play so far:

• Amanda Ip — Michelle Chang, a private investigator
• Jay Baruchel — Chief Buck Bauer
• Ciara Bravo — Eunice
• Kevin Durand — Nokes

The latest antagonist to join the party is Ari Stidham, who’s set to play Dean Lassider — a shady businessman running a desert strip club and working in tandem with Nokes, per Deadline. It’s also a mini-reunion: Stidham previously starred on CBS’s Scorpion, created by current Reacher showrunner Nick Santora.

Season 5 is filming in Toronto for Prime Video. Ritchson says the team is past the halfway point as production continues.

At the London premiere, real-life siblings Eva and Zac Wishart—who play Martha and Peter Cratchit—said working with Johnny Depp on Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol came with one piece of guidance they won’t forget.

“He gave us really good advice. He said there’s no such thing as a serious actor because it’s an oxymoron,” the siblings told Deadline.

The Wisharts appear alongside Depp’s Scrooge in Paramount’s darker, more supernatural spin on Dickens’ classic, which leans into eerie Victorian mood while keeping the redemption arc intact.

Who’s playing whom

• Johnny Depp — Ebenezer Scrooge
• Ian McKellen — Jacob Marley
• Rupert Grint — Bob Cratchit
• Andrea Riseborough — Ghost of Christmas Past
• Tramell Tillman — Ghost of Christmas Present
• Arthur Conti — Young Scrooge
• Daisy Ridley — role undisclosed
• Sam Claflin — role undisclosed

In this version, Scrooge’s bitterness is cracked open when Marley returns from the grave, setting off visits from the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future that push him to face what he’s done—and what still might be saved.

The film arrives under Paramount with a gothic streak; West, whose credits include Pearl and MaXXXine, is bringing a horror-tinged sensibility to the holiday staple.

Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol opens in theaters November 13.

In a new chat with Radio Times, Sebastian Stan said stepping back into Bucky Barnes’ boots for Avengers: Doomsday felt less like clocking in for work and more like a reunion with old classmates. After more than a decade of Marvel movies and shows with many of the same faces, he described the vibe on set as downright sentimental.

“I’ve been so lucky to be there for as long as I have, and it’s bizarre to return to something with all of these people that I’ve known and grown up with for the last 10 to 15 years… it’s nostalgic. It’s almost like a college reunion. It’s going to be a very celebratory situation.”

Stan is once again playing Bucky in the new Avengers film, following his most recent turn in Thunderbolts* in 2025. Marvel is keeping Bucky’s exact part in the story under wraps, but Stan made clear he was most excited about suiting up alongside familiar heroes.

Who he’s reuniting with

The new team-up assembles a deep bench of Marvel regulars and legacy stars Stan crossed paths with on set, including:

• Chris Hemsworth
• Anthony Mackie
• Vanessa Kirby
• Paul Rudd
• Florence Pugh
• Ian McKellen
• Rebecca Romijn
• the late Patrick Stewart
• Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom

How Bucky factors into that lineup is still a mystery, but the reunion energy clearly hit Stan hard after spending so many years crisscrossing the MCU with these actors.

Bucky’s unfinished business

On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Stan said he’s satisfied with how Bucky has evolved but thinks there’s more to do with the character.

“I never have any idea about what it is that they want to do, but I still feel that there’s something about this character that hasn’t totally yet been completed, and I think they know it.”

Stan first appeared as Bucky in Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011 and later headlined Disney+’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Most recently, he returned in Thunderbolts* in 2025 before rejoining the fray in Avengers: Doomsday.

Asked by Entertainment Tonight about Patrick Stewart during press for their next Marvel outing, Ian McKellen didn’t go to the X-Men chessboard. He went to Dickens. McKellen lit up remembering Stewart’s solo staging of A Christmas Carol—a feat he says proved just how completely his friend could command a room.

“He was a one-man show. He played all the characters,”

McKellen recalled Stewart bringing the piece to Broadway, London’s West End, and on tour, performing every role from Scrooge to the Cratchits himself. The memory came with a portrait of the person behind it: Stewart, he said, wasn’t just a virtuoso; he was a decent man intent on leaving things better than he found them.

“He achieved that.”

In the days after Stewart’s death at 86, McKellen also posted a longer tribute, calling him someone he could rely on, admire, and love over decades of friendship onstage and off.

A final screen reunion

Marvel has said Avengers: Doomsday will stand as Stewart’s final on-screen appearance, a sendoff that reunites him with McKellen as Professor X and Magneto. The movie is directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, with Robert Downey Jr. returning as Doctor Doom.

The X-Men bench is deep for this one. Alongside McKellen and Stewart, returning alums include:

• James Marsden
• Kelsey Grammer
• Rebecca Romijn
• Alan Cumming
• Channing Tatum — Gambit

The ensemble also pulls in the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and Wakandan heroes. Avengers: Doomsday opens December 18, 2026.

The move was fast: after exiting Love Island U.K. last week, Maya Jama has signed a multi-project deal with Netflix, according to Variety. The streamer isn’t sharing titles or formats yet, but the pact covers several upcoming projects, positioning the British host and presenter for a new run on a global platform.

Jama announced her departure from Love Island U.K. on Nov. 8, wrapping three years and nine seasons as the face of the dating franchise. The new Netflix deal arrives as her next on-screen chapter is already in motion.

Back in The Gentlemen

Jama is set to return as Aisha in The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie’s stylish underworld series at Netflix. Aisha first stepped into the show via Susie Glass’s business dealings, adding another player to the Horniman family’s tangle with high-end crime.

Season 3 is now filming in the United Kingdom and Morocco. The eight-episode run follows Theo James’s Eddie Horniman and Susie on an ambitious casino venture in the Middle East. Production kicked off in Rabat before moving to Britain, where recent set photos captured another grand ensemble gathering; Jama was reportedly among those on set alongside returning cast, including Joely Richardson.

• New this season: Robert Carlyle, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Dexter Fletcher, Bruna Marquezine, Saffron Burrows

Netflix’s U.K. content lead Anne Mensah welcomed the expanded relationship with Jama, and the presenter signaled there’s more to come, keeping specifics under wraps for now.

Jama has signed a multi-project deal with Netflix, with details still under wraps.

For The Gentlemen, cameras are rolling now: production began in Rabat, Morocco, before shifting to the U.K.

Made in the wake of Amy Winehouse’s death, the 2012 film Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery pairs Brand’s own history with heroin with a broader, uncomfortable question: how does society treat addiction — as an illness to be treated or a crime to be punished? Brand wrote the documentary, Ross Wilson directed, and the hour-long film includes archival footage of Winehouse and an appearance by her father, Mitch Winehouse.

Available to rent on Prime Video for $1.99 in the U.S.

The documentary is personal by design. Brand opens up about relapse, recovery, and the systems that catch — or fail — people who need help. It’s less a celebrity tell-all than a push to rethink how we talk about addiction and how people in crisis are seen.

Another tough watch: Cold Turkey

Cold Turkey is a British TV doc from director Leo Regan that follows photojournalist Lanre Fehintola as he attempts to detox from heroin in his Bradford apartment without medication or professional support. Regan keeps the camera close as Fehintola ricochets between volatile stretches and quiet, raw moments, tracing how a journalist studying addiction slowly became part of the story himself. The film is part of Regan’s long-running trilogy that began in 1998.

It isn’t on Netflix or the usual subscription platforms, but the full documentary can be found on YouTube.

Where to watch

• Russell Brand: From Addiction to Recovery — Rent on Prime Video for $1.99 (about 1 hour; 2012; directed by Ross Wilson; written by Brand; includes archival Amy Winehouse footage and Mitch Winehouse).
• Cold Turkey — Watch on YouTube (directed by Leo Regan; follows Lanre Fehintola’s at-home detox; not currently on Netflix or other major U.S. subscription streamers).

At Adobe MAX 2026 in Miami (Nov. 11–12), Disney and Adobe unveiled a multiyear alliance built around “responsibly developed” AI for Disney’s artists and content teams. The plan gives Disney early access to Adobe’s newest AI and media tools and sets up joint development of custom models trained on Disney’s characters, stories and visual styles.

Under the deal, Disney gets first crack at several Adobe offerings, including:

• Adobe Firefly — generative AI for creatives
• Firefly Foundry — proprietary AI model tools
• Adobe Premiere — video editing
• Adobe Photoshop — digital imaging

The companies say the Disney-tuned models are meant to speed up production while keeping human creativity in the driver’s seat, with outputs described as commercially safe and production-ready. The collaboration builds on a long-running relationship between the two companies.

“Disney has always embraced innovation, and this alliance with Adobe builds on a longstanding relationship between two companies that share a deep commitment to creativity,” Becca Vodnoy, SVP of corporate alliances for Disney, said, via Variety.

What it could mean for viewers

On Disney’s 2025 year-end earnings call, executives outlined potential Disney+ features powered by AI: tools that could let subscribers create and share 30‑second clips with characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars, and game-like interactive elements layered onto shows and movies. The company framed the push as giving fans new ways to play with stories while keeping its IP protected.

Adobe will also spotlight its tech across Disney touchpoints through events and showcases, including Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland Resort, Disney Cruise Line, ESPN and Disney’s StudioLAB.

Before filming kicked off on HBO’s new take on Hogwarts, Rupert Grint sat down and wrote a note to the kid picking up Ron Weasley’s wand. He told Entertainment Tonight he reached out to Alastair Stout ahead of production to offer a little encouragement and a handoff from one redhead to another.

“I wrote him a letter, before they started, passing the baton as it were. I had so much fun stepping into this world, and I hope he has the same experience.”

Grint said it’s surreal to watch the casting carousel start again after the days when he, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson first walked into the Great Hall. He even joked there’s a family resemblance between him and Stout. As for popping up himself, Grint hasn’t announced any cameo in the series.

The new HBO series

The first season is an eight-episode adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, following Harry’s first year at Hogwarts. It’s a fresh start with a brand-new cast playing the iconic roles.

Season 1 cast

• McLaughlin — Harry Potter
• Arabella Stanton — Hermione Granger
• Alastair Stout — Ron Weasley
• John Lithgow — Albus Dumbledore
• Janet McTeer — Minerva McGonagall
• Paapa Essiedu — Severus Snape
• Nick Frost — Rubeus Hagrid
• Lox Pratt — Draco Malfoy

Chamber of Secrets already booked

The show has already been renewed for a second season adapting Chamber of Secrets. Newly announced additions include:

• Kit Harington — Gilderoy Lockhart
• Rafe Spall — Arthur Weasley
• Billy Barratt — Tom Riddle
• Lenny Rush — Dobby
• Bonnie Hill — Ginny Weasley

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone premieres December 25, 2026 on HBO and Max.

While promoting her comedy Let’s Have Kids, Karen Gillan was asked point-blank if we’ll see Nebula again in the MCU. After a playful deflection — and a joke about imaginary Marvel “snipers” — she finally cracked a tiny door open.

“I have definitely spoken to them.”

The chat, given to The Direct, stopped there. Gillan wouldn’t say what those talks were about or when they happened, leaning back into Marvel-level secrecy.

“Basically, no spoilers over here.”

So what’s solid? She’s been in contact. What isn’t? Any project, deal, timeline, or storyline. The last time we saw Nebula on screen was in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2023, after a multi-movie arc that took her from Thanos’ tormented daughter to Knowhere’s reluctant protector. Marvel hasn’t announced where she might surface next.

Jumanji: Open World

Gillan does have one confirmed return on the calendar: she’s back as Ruby Roundhouse in Jumanji: Open World. The new movie flips the franchise’s rules, pulling the game’s avatars into the real world in a glitchy “demo mode” — minus their usual teen players. The trailer shows runaway wildlife, confused NPCs, and another round of inconvenient body-swapping.

The ensemble is back in action:

• Dwayne Johnson
• Kevin Hart
• Jack Black
• Alex Wolff
• Madison Iseman
• Morgan Turner
• Ser’Darius Blain
• Nick Jonas
• Danny DeVito
• Awkwafina
• Rhys Darby

Jumanji: Open World opens in theaters December 25, 2026.

The next chapter for Superman is still on the board: the report says David Corenswet will be back as Clark Kent in the already-teased sequel Man of Tomorrow, with Nicholas Hoult continuing as Lex Luthor after the first film’s worldwide haul of $618 million. According to the report, even with a leadership change, James Gunn and Peter Safran are expected to finish the projects they’re already committed to — which includes Man of Tomorrow — while broader plans await new direction under reportedly incoming executive Jeremy Latcham.

On the Bat-side, Robert Pattinson’s The Batman follow-up finally has a date on the calendar after multiple delays, but its creative setup has reportedly shifted. Filmmaker Matt Reeves is said to have stepped away for personal reasons, with Steven Soderbergh joining to complete the sequel. Whether Reeves returns to finish his originally mapped-out trilogy remains unclear, and Gunn’s separate plan to introduce a DCU Batman in The Brave and the Bold is now in flux alongside leadership changes.

The Batman sequel is dated February 18, 2028.

Wonder Woman’s near-term future is less certain. After the 2020 film underperformed, the report notes there are no confirmed DCU plans and that a planned series about Diana’s early years was canceled. One rumor flagged in the piece: Adria Arjona could surface in Man of Tomorrow — possibly as Wonder Woman, or as the Kryptonian royal Maxima. If it’s the former, the door to a new solo outing could open, but that casting remains unconfirmed.

The rest of the slate

• Justice League — The first Superman movie already planted team-up seeds with Mister Terrific and Hawkgirl, and Man of Tomorrow is expected to bring in Supergirl. But with Batman and Wonder Woman still off the board in this continuity, a full Justice League lineup isn’t imminent, per the report.
• Green Lanterns — The report calls the HBO series a major success, led by Aaron Pierre (John Stewart) and Kyle Chandler (Hal Jordan), but says Season 2 has not been ordered yet. With Gunn reportedly out, a renewal is uncertain despite strong ratings.
• Supergirl — Despite high expectations following Superman, the solo film reportedly topped out at $126 million worldwide. The character is expected to appear in Man of Tomorrow, but another standalone is described as unlikely.
• Clayface — A standalone focused on the villain’s backstory, starring Tom Rhys Harries, arrived without Batman in the mix. The report suggests it may remain a one-off focused on the character’s past.
• Harley Quinn — Gunn previously expressed interest in bringing Margot Robbie back to the DCU, according to the piece. Without a Joker figure established in this timeline, mapping her return is described as tricky.
• Blue Beetle — Released during the actors’ strike, the movie underperformed at the box office. The character is expected to pop up in Man of Tomorrow, but another solo outing is not expected for now.
• Peacemaker — The Gunn-created series starring John Cena has Season 2 slated to follow Superman in 2026, per the report, but there’s no decision yet on a Season 3.
• Creature Commandos — Launched in December 2024 as the DCU’s first official project and already renewed for Season 2, which the report says is expected to arrive after Man of Tomorrow in 2027. A possible third season is now in question amid the leadership shake-up.

In the hours after posts claimed a surprise shakeup at DC Studios — with James Gunn allegedly out and producer Jeremy Latcham stepping in — social feeds lit up with déjà vu takes about Henry Cavill. The chatter, which some users tied to Skydance and said also involved Peter Safran, hasn’t been formally confirmed by the companies, but that didn’t stop fans from drawing straight lines back to how Cavill’s Superman tenure ended.

The tone online wasn’t subtle. A wave of posts framed the rumored Gunn move as payback for Cavill’s 2022 exit, when the actor told followers he would “after all” not return as the Man of Steel after a brief Black Adam cameo reignited hope.

“Agreed 100%. Karma always cashes the check eventually. Gunn showed Cavill the door like he was disposable, now he gets to find out how that feels. The Man of Steel deserved better.”

“As someone who likes Gunn, I felt awful for Cavill. He left The Witcher for a second chance at Superman (along with the writers hating the source material) and got screwed AGAIN. Hope his Warhammer series is everything he wants it to be.”

“Four years ago Henry got told in a meeting he was not coming back, and now the same thing happened to the guys who told him, Hollywood really runs in circles.”

Plenty of replies went a step further, pushing for a full-on Snyder-era reunion if leadership really is changing. The wish list popping up across X and Reddit looked familiar:

• Henry Cavill — Superman
• Gal Gadot — Wonder Woman
• Ben Affleck (“Batfleck”) — Batman

One fan even pointed to Cavill’s heartfelt 2022 goodbye post to argue he “WAS the embodiment of Superman,” saying the message “felt like it was actually Superman talking to me.”

Cavill’s bumpy DC timeline

Cavill anchored the Snyder-era films through Justice League, surprised audiences with a mid-credits Black Adam cameo in fall 2022, then announced weeks later he wouldn’t return as Superman after all. Around the same time, Gunn and Safran had just taken the DC Studios reins and said they were rebooting with a younger take on the character. The stop-start whiplash — coupled with Cavill leaving The Witcher before Season 4 — made the exit especially raw for fans.

If a leadership change at DC Studios is ultimately confirmed, the obvious question online is what it would mean for the slate Gunn had been building, starting with a new Superman movie, and whether it reopens the door to past casting. For now, the Cavill talk is coming from fans, not from a studio statement — and neither DC Studios nor the companies named in the posts had issued an official update at the time the conversation went viral.

Speaking with The Times, Andy Serkis said he’s dialed back how hard he tries to explain performance-capture acting to skeptics. The technology is still “very misunderstood,” he noted, but after years of evangelizing, he’s no longer burning energy trying to convert every doubter.

“I used to be evangelical. I’ve talked for hours about how performance capture is acting and watched eyes glaze over, but life’s too short. I calmed down. Now I just think, ‘If you get it? Great,’” he told the paper.

Serkis also drew a line between his Gollum work and classic transformations achieved with prosthetics, pointing to the team that helped John Hurt create The Elephant Man. He questioned why audiences readily credit the human performance under a physical mask but hesitate to extend that same recognition when the “mask” is digital.

Back to Middle-earth

Even if he’s less vocal about it, Serkis is still using the tools. He’ll reprise Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum—and direct the film as well. The project is still in the works, and Serkis said performance capture will be used whenever a scene calls for it.

Casting is taking shape around him, with familiar names circling. According to reports, the conversation has included potential returns and new faces:

• Ian McKellen — reportedly expected to return
• Elijah Wood — reportedly expected to return
• Jamie Dornan — reportedly in the mix

The long mocap campaign

Serkis has been the face of this tech for two decades, from Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy to Kong in King Kong. He’s spent years making the case that performance capture preserves every choice an actor makes—it just gets translated through a digital character.

These days, he says he’s content to let the work speak for itself. As for the new movie, it remains in development, with Serkis set to step in front of and behind the camera as Gollum whenever the story demands it.

After popping up as Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine, Channing Tatum is finally saying out loud what longtime X-Men fans suspected: the solo movie unraveled because it could never stay on track. In a new conversation with ScreenRant, he says the first director left after a clash with the studio and things snowballed from there.

"We had three different directors that were signed up to do it, and the first one, the studio, Fox, they had a fallout, so that one didn't work out."

The project cycled through filmmakers for years, even as Tatum kept the faith — and the trench coat — ready to go. With Tatum now expected to resurface as Gambit in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, the postmortem on his long-stalled standalone is back on the table.

Three directors, no movie

• Rupert Wyatt — first to board; exited after the fallout with Fox, per Tatum.
• Doug Liman — later attached and departed as development dragged.
• Gore Verbinski — the last filmmaker to circle the movie before walking away.

Between the director churn, script work that never quite clicked, and start dates that wouldn’t hold, the film stayed stuck in place. Tatum says each handoff reset momentum that never recovered.

Verbinski’s take

Verbinski, best known for the Pirates of the Caribbean films and the Oscar-winning Rango, echoed the creative gridlock in a separate interview with Collider.

"The script we never got to a place where everybody was in agreement."

He also pointed to timing issues, saying the studio wanted to move quickly while his schedule didn’t line up — another logjam for a movie already wobbling in development.

Tatum first promoted a Gambit solo film onstage at Comic-Con 2014.

At an event at LACMA in Los Angeles, comedian-actor Jordan Firstman floated a very 2026 twist on a long-running Bond tradition: replace the “Bond girl” with a “Bond gay” — and cast him. Speaking to Variety on the carpet, Firstman pitched himself for the part while the franchise figures out its next chapter.

"I want to be a Bond gay. Like, instead of the Bond girls, I think they should make them gay guys."

Swapping out the archetype would be a major shake-up for James Bond, where the women opposite 007 have often become icons in their own right. The franchise’s history is stacked with unforgettable foils and allies, including:

• Ursula Andress — Honey Ryder (Dr. No)
• Eva Green — Vesper Lynd (Casino Royale)
• Léa Seydoux — Madeleine Swann (Spectre; No Time to Die)

Firstman made his pitch as the series sits in transition. With Daniel Craig retired, the next Bond hasn’t been announced, and there’s been no official word on a creative team. Director Denis Villeneuve has been a frequent subject of speculation, and he was also at the LACMA event; whether Firstman lobbed his idea to him directly isn’t clear.

Villeneuve needles the rumor mill

Onstage that night, Villeneuve leaned into the guessing game and got a laugh with a fake-out reveal — one that name-checked a Hollywood power broker in the audience.

"The new James Bond is… and I will stop right now because Amy Pascal is about to have a heart attack. Thank you very much."

As for who might don the tux, the fan-and-oddsmaker chatter has pinned the role on just about every leading man in sight, including:

• Henry Cavill
• Idris Elba
• Nicholas Hoult
• Josh O’Connor
• Robert Pattinson

Whether the next era tinkers with the “Bond girl” formula or not, Firstman’s “Bond gay” is now officially part of the conversation. For now, Eon Productions hasn’t announced a new 007 or a director.

When Michael J. Fox got a call from Larry David about playing himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm, his first instinct was that the joke might be too hot to handle. Speaking in a new interview with Esquire, Fox said David laid out the idea and he immediately worried the bit would spark a backlash.

“Larry called me up and said he had this idea and I said, ‘No, they’ll crucify us. They’re gonna kill us if we do this.’ I said that. And he said, ‘Oh, okay, well,’ I said, ‘No, that’s not a problem. That recommends it to me.’ And it was just a great time.”

Inside the cameo

Fox’s appearance came in 2011 during Season 8, when Curb moved the action to New York and Larry found himself living under Fox’s character. Playing a heightened version of himself, Fox’s Parkinson’s became fodder for Larry’s paranoia — he suspects Fox is using the disease to mess with him, from “heavy boots” stomping overhead to that shaky soda can moment.

Fox said there was plenty of improvisation on set, and despite his initial fears, the audience got the joke. The episode has since become one of the show’s most talked-about celebrity run-ins.

Why he took the risk

Diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991 at age 29 and going public about it years later, Fox said a piece of advice from his dad has guided how he approaches his work — including saying yes to a risky comedy swing.

“Well, if you’re going to be a lumberjack, you might as well go to the goddamn forest,” he said.

That mindset helped turn what could’ve been a third-rail cameo into one of Curb’s sharpest New York detours — and a reminder of Fox’s willingness to meet uncomfortable laughs head-on.

Onstage after a New York screening of Alex Gibney’s new documentary Musk Sunday night, Robert De Niro steered the conversation straight into politics and the billionaire’s public image. He took a sharp swipe at Elon Musk’s recent spending and, according to attendees, even needled the polarizing Cybertruck for good measure.

“And he just spent close to half a billion on Republicans in this past week’s election. How did that turn out for you?”

De Niro’s jabs landed in a room packed with industry figures. Tribeca Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal joined the crowd, and multiple Oscar winners were among those on hand for the screening.

The ribbing capped a bumpy road to release for the film. Gibney’s portrait of Musk has reportedly faced pushback from its subject since early development; Musk dismissed the project as a “hit piece” when it was first announced in 2023.

Inside the film

Gibney—whose docs have tackled Enron, Theranos and Scientology—takes a long, unflinching look at Musk’s rise and the reach of his companies. The movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival and runs a hefty 3 hours and 45 minutes, including a 10-minute intermission.

• Musk did not participate; the film instead stages a simulated interview using a CGI avatar and AI voice syncing built from his real past interviews, a choice Gibney has called intentionally ironic.
• Interviewees include people who moved through Musk’s orbit, among them influencer Ashley St. Clair—who, the film presents, says she had a relationship with Musk and gave birth to his 13th child—and tech journalist Zoë Schiffer.
• The documentary frames Musk as a 21st‑century confidence man and argues he’s gone all‑in on artificial intelligence, with a so‑called plan B that sidelines fears about human extinction.

As for Sunday’s screening, De Niro kept Musk in the conversation even without him onstage—puncturing the room with a political punch line and a Cybertruck crack before handing the mic back to the movie.

The project has been in the works since 2023, when Musk publicly brushed it off as a hit piece.

On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Ariana Grande didn’t just plug a new movie — she pulled out a memory. Fallon surprised the couch with an old backstage selfie of Grande and Robert De Niro, snapped when she met him on the show about 11 years ago, long before they’d end up sharing a call sheet.

Grande laughed seeing the photo again and clocked how young she looked in it.

“Look at how cute and little wierd,”

she said, adding that she’d worked up the nerve to approach De Niro that night.

“I was so excited. I asked him for a selfie. You were so nice to my mom,”

Grande told De Niro on the show.

De Niro, for his part, has been publicly complimentary of Grande. In a recent appearance on Today, he said he still hadn’t gotten to the Wicked movies but planned a father-daughter viewing.

“No, I haven’t. I’m trying to see it with my daughter,”

he said, before offering a quick review of the pop star turned actor:

“Yeah, she’s terrific. She’s great.”

Back to the Fockers

The reunion comes as Grande teams with De Niro and Ben Stiller in the next entry of the comedy franchise, Focker-in-Law. Billed as the fourth film in the Focker lineup and a follow-up to 2010’s Little Fockers, the story centers on Greg and Pam Focker’s son, Henry, who wants to marry Olivia Jones — a match his family isn’t convinced about.

De Niro and Stiller return to their familiar roles from the earlier movies, while this marks the first time Grande and De Niro have worked together on a project.

• Ariana Grande
• Robert De Niro — returning
• Ben Stiller — returning

Focker-in-Law is set to hit theaters on November 25, 2026.

The first trailer for The Slightest Touch is out, and it puts Colin Farrell right beside longtime friend Emma Fogarty as she takes on an audacious goal: tackling the Dublin Marathon as she turns 40. Directed and produced by Rachel Fleit, the documentary follows Fogarty, who lives with epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a rare condition that makes skin so fragile it can blister with even minimal friction — the origin of the film’s title.

Fogarty has spent years pushing past limitations others tried to set for her, and the film frames the marathon not as a stunt, but as the next milestone in a life lived on her own terms. Farrell, who’s supported EB causes for years, joins her for the journey.

Streaming on Max Thursday, Nov. 25.

The documentary will be available to watch in the U.S. on Max (formerly HBO Max) starting Nov. 25 for subscribers. Before its streaming debut, it premiered at the Dublin Film Festival.

Meanwhile, a Farrell throwback is surging

Nearly 14 years after its theatrical release, Farrell’s 2012 sci‑fi remake Total Recall has muscled into the Prime Video Top 10. Directed by Len Wiseman, the movie reimagines the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger hit with a sleeker, more futuristic spin.

• Colin Farrell
• Kate Beckinsale
• Jessica Biel
• Bryan Cranston

Despite the starry lineup, the remake was met with lukewarm reviews on release, earning 30% on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the original’s 81%. Its current streaming run suggests plenty of viewers are giving it another look on Prime Video.

In I Am Helen, Nicola Coughlan plays a woman watching her five-year relationship fray as her partner slips into the online “manosphere.” The one-off drama is part of Channel 4’s female-led anthology from BAFTA winner Dominic Savage, and it pairs Coughlan with Joe Cole as Steve — a boyfriend whose growing diet of misogynistic content starts to warp their day-to-day life.

While discussing the project with Deadline, the Bridgerton star made it clear the story isn’t just on-screen homework. She said the conversation needs to shift from telling young women how to protect themselves to looking squarely at the men whose behavior makes those warnings necessary.

“Toxic masculinity is on the rise among young men. So much responsibility is placed on young women to stay safe and protect themselves from dangerous situations, but we also need to ask who the perpetrators are.”

Coughlan also stressed that the episode avoids easy villains. Cole’s Steve isn’t written as a monster — he’s recognizable, which is the point. The damage creeps in through small changes and everyday interactions, not mustache-twirling.

“Joe Cole’s character, Steve, isn’t a caricature of a bad guy. Helen is an ordinary woman who’s been in this relationship for a long time. I hope that normality speaks to people,” Coughlan told Deadline.

Inside I Am Helen

Created, written and directed by Savage, Channel 4’s I Am anthology hands each film to a lead actress and builds the story around issues they want to explore. In Coughlan’s installment, that means tracking how algorithm-fed content can seep into a couple’s private world and push them apart without a single headline-grabbing incident.

The network is rolling out the film in the U.K. No U.S. release details or streaming plans were mentioned in the Deadline interview.

Onstage at the LACMA Art+Film Gala in Los Angeles over the weekend, Denis Villeneuve capped his remarks with a perfectly timed 007 fake‑out — nodding to Amazon’s MGM ties and name‑checking producer Amy Pascal as his punch line. The ballroom roared; the reveal never came.

"And to express my gratitude, with the blessing of my new friends at Amazon, I will reveal to you tonight... who will be the next James Bond. The actor who will play the next James Bond is - and I will stop right now because (producer) Amy Pascal is about to have a heart attack."

The joke landed because the appetite for the next James Bond is off the charts. With Daniel Craig done after 2021’s No Time to Die and no official successor named, even a hint from a prestige filmmaker like Villeneuve is enough to freeze a room.

Who’s in the mix?

Despite the silence from the Bond brain trust, recent reports have kept the rumor mill spinning — including talk of fresh screen tests and a few returning names. Nothing is confirmed, but the chatter has centered on:

• Robert Pattinson — reported recent screen test
• Nicholas Hoult — reported recent screen test
• Callum Turner — previously rumored contender
• Josh O’Connor — previously rumored contender
• Jack Lowden — previously rumored contender

Pressed on the red carpet, Villeneuve kept things close to the vest, deflecting questions about casting and acknowledging — per Variety’s line of questioning — that a single stray comment could set off a media firestorm.

Officially, the next Bond movie has no announced star or director, and the keepers of the franchise have offered no timeline. Trade reports have previously linked writer Steven Knight to a developing script, but the production remains under wraps.

At a New York City screening of his new film Ebenezer, Johnny Depp fielded the inevitable question about a possible Pirates of the Caribbean return — and answered by poking fun at something far less swashbuckling: facial hair. Instead of hints about plot or contracts, he joked about his and Orlando Bloom’s lifelong battle with beards.

“Well, I think we should have a ... contest of who can grow the fastest non-beard,” he said. “‘Cause neither of us can grow a beard, I don’t think. I can’t for sure, but maybe he can. I don’t know.”

The timing made the line even funnier. For Ti West’s gothic spin on Dickens, Depp is buried under old-age makeup and prosthetics as Scrooge, complete with a grizzled, patchy gray beard and heavy sideburns — a deliberately weathered look that leans on the makeup chair, not Mother Nature.

Bloom’s ready to sail

While Depp kept things light, Bloom has already said he’s game for another voyage. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly at the Toronto International Film Festival, the actor said he still checks in with Depp and would be up for reuniting on screen.

“I connect with [Depp] every now and again, because he’s amazing,”

Bloom added that nostalgia is a real pull for audiences who keep revisiting the pirate adventures, and he’s open to returning if the stars align. There’s no official word on a new film with the pair, but Bloom made his remarks to Entertainment Weekly at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Composer Daniel Pemberton says he’s already watched a rough, work‑in‑progress version of Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse — and it hit him hard. Speaking at Deadline’s Sound & Screen event, he said the early cut, still in animatic form, had him tearing up more than once.

“The last cut I saw made me cry multiple times. And when something can do that when it’s an animatic, and it’s still early, it’s like – I think everyone’s going to be in for a real treat.”

Pemberton’s reaction carries extra weight because he’s been behind the franchise’s sound from the start, scoring both Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. His blend of hip‑hop textures, orchestral muscle, and glitchy multiverse sonics has been a defining part of Miles Morales’ on‑screen world.

Sticking the landing

He’s also been candid about the pressure of wrapping up a trilogy that’s redefined big‑screen animation. In an earlier chat with GamesRadar+, Pemberton said the team is aiming for something timeless and invoked The Godfather as a cautionary tale — shorthand for not stumbling on Part Three.

When online rumors flared in September 2024 claiming major sections had been scrapped, Pemberton pushed back, urging fans not to treat every viral post as gospel. Around the same time, trade outlets were already signaling the finale wouldn’t arrive until at least 2026.

• 2018 — Into the Spider-Verse opens and wins the Oscar for Animated Feature.
• 2023 — Across the Spider-Verse ends on that cliffhanger with Miles confronting a Prowler version of himself.
• Originally slated for 2024 — the Beyond follow-up was delayed.
• At least 2026 — trades indicated the earliest likely debut.
• 2027 window — some reports now point to a later target, though nothing is official.

Story‑wise, Beyond is set to pick up right where Across left off: Miles stranded in an alternate dimension, face to face with his own Prowler variant, while Gwen Stacy and a reformed Spider‑team scramble to find him.

There’s still no confirmed U.S. release date for Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. Sony has not announced a new date.

On the latest episode of The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, Sylvester Stallone said the ice finally cracked with Arnold Schwarzenegger when Arnold left acting to run for governor of California in 2003. Until then, Stallone said, the rivalry was so fierce they wouldn’t even appear on the same stage to present together.

“I said, enough of this. We’re not in competition. He was not doing movies anymore. All right. Thank you very much for waking me up, lighting a fire under me. And he felt the same way.”

Stallone looked back on the ‘80s and ‘90s as a two-decade arms race — bigger box-office, bigger muscles, even bigger on-screen body counts — that hardened into a real rift. Schwarzenegger’s pivot to politics, he said, made the feud feel pointless and opened the door to a truce.

From rivals to co-stars

Once Schwarzenegger’s time in office ended, the détente moved from talk to action. He returned to the big screen with Stallone, and the pair kept teaming up through the mid-2010s.

• The Expendables (2010)
• The Expendables 2 (2012)
• Escape Plan (2013)
• The Expendables 3 (2014)

A viral show of support

The friendship was on full display after Stallone’s unexpected Best Supporting Actor loss at the 2016 Academy Awards, when Schwarzenegger posted a video to lift him up.

“Sly, just remember: No matter what they say, to me, you are the best. You were the winner. I’m proud of you.”

Stallone has been just as vocal in return, often calling Schwarzenegger a strategic “genius” who cracked three industries — bodybuilding, movies and politics — and crediting Arnold’s drive with pushing him to raise his own game.

The new trailer for FOOL NIGHT lays out a bleak sci-fi pitch and a striking pedigree: it’s the first-ever team‑up between two powerhouse Japanese studios, Sunrise and SHAFT, and Netflix is releasing the entire run in one go. The streamer also unveiled a moody key visual on November 5, hinting at a series that leans hard into survival, sacrifice, and body horror.

All episodes arrive November 26, 2026 on Netflix worldwide.

A future starved for air

The story, based on the manga by Yasuda, imagines a world where sunlight has been blotted out for a century. With plants dying and oxygen scarce, humanity turns to “Transfloration,” a procedure that implants seeds into the bodies of people near death, transforming them into oxygen‑producing plants. The moral cost is immense: you save the world, but forfeit your humanity.

At the center is Toshiro Kamiya, a young man scraping by while caring for his ailing mother. Crushed by taxes, medication costs and day‑to‑day expenses, Toshiro gets pulled toward Transfloration as a way out — a desperate choice that spirals into a larger mystery the trailer only teases.

First-time studio team-up

Sunrise, whose legacy includes Mobile Suit Gundam and Cowboy Bebop, joins SHAFT, the studio behind Puella Magi Madoka Magica and the Monogatari series, for the adaptation. Atsushi Yukawa directs, with Jin Tanaka on series composition and Robert Sato handling character designs.

The Japanese voice cast features:

• Koki Uchiyama — Toshiro Kamiya
• Minako Kotobuki — Yomiko Horai
• Junya Enoki — Akira Yatsuka
• Aya Endo — Saeko Kanaeno
• Kiyomitsu Mizuuchi — Jin Hiragishi

Music is locked: the opening theme is “Shake! spit out” by Tempalay, with Nowlu performing the ending song, “iki”. With the trailer and key visual out as of November 5, FOOL NIGHT joins Netflix’s growing slate of prestige anime alongside titles like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Pluto and The Seven Deadly Sins — and it’s built for a binge, with every episode dropping November 26, 2026.

The new season of Stick jumps ahead six months to the Dove Charity Pro/Am Invitational in Georgia, where teenage phenom Santi Wheeler finishes third and proves his breakout wasn’t a fluke. What slows him isn’t his swing — it’s Pryce Cahill waving a full ride to Indiana University and arguing the kid needs school and emotional armor before the grind of tour life. Santi hears opportunity sliding by, and he pointedly reminds Pryce that cashing in his talent used to be the plan.

That hit lands because Pryce’s caution is real: it’s coming from grief over his child’s death and his own career’s crash. When an old friend asks him to sub into a charity foursome — the event raises money for homeless kids — a couple of loudmouths bet he’ll crater. Instead, Pryce threads fearless shots and suddenly looks like the day’s main attraction. The performance doesn’t just light up Santi; it draws in a smooth young agent, Jeremy Pierce, who starts circling Santi and his girlfriend-caddie Zero with promises of the pro world.

Off the course, Amber-Linn fixes Pryce up with her coworker Beth. A few bleak musings about nature nuke the vibe, Clark Ross swoops in, hits it off with Beth, and pitches Pryce on a moonshot: become the oldest US Open champion. Pryce says no — for now — but the idea sticks. As the crew heads west, Jeremy is clearly gearing up to make a move.

L.A. temptations

Los Angeles brings another invitational, another strong finish for Santi, and fresh arguments about college. Jeremy upgrades to full celebrity-agent mode: exclusive parties, doors opened, and an introduction to Michael Jordan that turns Santi’s “someday” into “right now.” Zero is still his partner on and off the bag, while Elena and Mitts keep clicking — with Mitts gently pushing the “move in” conversation.

Jeremy knows exactly where to press. He paints Pryce as yesterday’s model, too old-school to grasp the sponsorship firepower attached to a rising star. Pryce pushes back with hard-earned warnings about building your whole life around one sport and how fast it can all collapse. Meanwhile, Clark keeps buzzing Pryce about that splashy comeback.

Santi says he’s turning pro — and picks Jeremy Pierce as his agent.

The split

It all erupts over a group meal: Santi formally declares he’s going professional. Pryce — clearly gutted — nods his acceptance. Then the real shock: Jeremy will represent him, not Pryce. Pryce and Mitts walk out, leaving Santi, Zero, and Elena at the table.

Instead of spiraling, Pryce heads straight to Clark’s hotel room and says yes to competing again. Two careers now launch on parallel tracks — mentor and protégé pointed at different tees, with a head-to-head clash suddenly on the table.

• Owen Wilson — Pryce Cahill: once-great pro, now eyeing a comeback
• Santi Wheeler: teenage prodigy ready to turn professional
• Zero: Santi’s girlfriend, caddie and social media partner
• Elena and Mitts: happily coupled, trying to build a home base
• Jeremy Pierce: slick young agent promising big-money deals
• Clark Ross: Pryce’s persistent friend with a US Open dream
• Amber-Linn: coworker who sets up Pryce’s ill-fated date
• Beth: the dinner date who bonds with Clark instead

The first footage wastes no time setting the stakes: Leo Patterson (played by Charlie Hunnam) is a meticulous thief trying to shed the life he grew up in, while his old friend Ricky Lawless (Halper) barrels toward danger chasing his father’s outlaw legend. Tensions spike when Ricky’s brother, Tracy (Luke Evans), comes home from military service, pulling old wounds to the surface. Their mess pulls in sharp-witted car thief Greta (Adria Arjona) and Mallory (Emilia Clarke), Ricky’s girlfriend, who’s rattled by how far he’s willing to go.

Prime Video paired the teaser with new first-look photos, giving a clearer sense of the show’s bruised, neon-soaked world and the interlocking stories at its center.

Two-part January rollout

Adapting Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ acclaimed graphic novels, Criminal is structured as an anthology and will launch in two drops on Prime Video in January 2027:

• Criminal Part One: Coward — four episodes, streaming January 13
• Criminal Part Two: Lawless — four episodes, streaming January 27

Both arcs arrive as complete four-episode blocks, for a total of eight episodes.

Stacked cast

The ensemble mixes marquee names with cult favorites. Here’s who’s who in the core story:

• Charlie Hunnam — Leo Patterson
• Halper — Ricky Lawless
• Luke Evans — Tracy (Ricky’s brother)
• Adria Arjona — Greta (car thief)
• Emilia Clarke — Mallory (Ricky’s girlfriend)
• Richard Jenkins
• Kadeem Hardison
• John Hawkes
• Logan Browning

Recurring and guest players span a wide range:

• Michael Mando
• Garrett Hedlund
• Patrick J. Adams
• Pat Healy
• Taylor Selé
• Aliyah Camacho
• Marvin Jones III
• Michael Xavier
• Dominic Burgess
• Chris Diamantopoulos
• Lawrence Kao
• Katie Stevens
• John Pyper-Ferguson
• Robert Lee Hart
• Aina Brei’yon
• Kyle Davis

Fans zero in on the pairings

Early reaction to the teaser has zeroed in on the mix-and-match casting — especially Hunnam with Arjona, and Evans opposite Clarke — and how the anthology split might shape the storytelling.

“hunnam as leo, a thief who won’t carry a gun and always knows the exit. good pick.”

“Hunnam, Arjona, Clarke, Evans — Criminal just stacked the January calendar.”

“charlie hunnam, adria arjona, emilia clarke and luke evans sharing a screen is a very good reason to clear some space on my watchlist. splitting it into two parts has me curious about how this story unfolds.”

Brubaker and Phillips onboard

Creators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are executive producers on the series, joined by a writers-and-directors bench that includes Philipp A. Barnett, Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, Jordan Harper, Sarah Carbiener, Dee Rees, and Halley Gross, with Cortney Norris and Minhal Baig as co-executive producers.

Criminal Part One: Coward premieres January 13, 2027 on Prime Video, with Part Two: Lawless following on January 27.

Filmmakers are turning the Eras Tour’s abruptly canceled Vienna stop into a race-against-time feature: Taylor Swift Wien will retrace how intelligence services moved to shut down an alleged terror plot that scrapped those stadium dates at the last minute.

The documentary is now in production with directors Andreas Pichler and Veronika Kaserer at the helm. German public broadcaster ZDF is backing the project, with Germany’s Beetz Brothers and Austria’s Markand Media co-producing.

Inside the Vienna scare

Built around three interlocking threads, the film blends a security story with a ground-level look at Swifties who lived through it:

• Authorities in multiple countries — including the CIA, Britain’s MI5, and Austrian and German agencies — intercepted the plot in time to prevent an attack tied to the planned shows.
• Three Vienna-based female fans turned the shock of the cancellation into a local support network, even meeting with Austrian government and security officials as they processed what happened.
• The investigation’s main suspect, reportedly a 19-year-old local of North Macedonian descent, is examined through court filings and reporting; per Variety, he allegedly swore allegiance to ISIS after being radicalized via social media platforms such as TikTok.

The Vienna dates were meant to be a celebratory stop on Swift’s globe-spanning Eras Tour before the promoter called them off amid the security scare. The film tracks that whiplash from anticipation to cancellation alongside the behind-the-scenes response.

Another Swift doc out now

While the Vienna project takes shape, The Tennessean has released a separate documentary marking 20 years since Swift’s 2006 debut: Taylor Swift: Finding Her Place in This World — Celebrating 20 Years of Her Debut Album. It revisits her Nashville beginnings — from early songwriting sessions to those formative nights at the Bluebird Cafe — and digs into the making of “Tim McGraw” and “Teardrops on My Guitar,” from the album that went eight-times platinum.

• Rick Barker — Swift’s first manager
• Liz Rose — early songwriting collaborator
• Robert Ellis Orrall — early songwriting collaborator

ZDF is targeting an October 2027 premiere for Taylor Swift Wien, with an international rollout to follow.

DC is quietly building out its creepier side: per Deadline, DC Studios has hired filmmaker Francis Galluppi to write a new John Constantine movie. It’s very early days — no director, star or release plan yet — but the move lands as DC’s horror-leaning Clayface has passed $90 million worldwide, a sign the studio’s supernatural lane is back in play.

DC Studios has tapped Francis Galluppi to write a new John Constantine movie.

Galluppi made waves with the lean, nerve-jangling crime thriller The Last Stop in Yuma County. His next step up the ladder is Evil Dead: Wrath — the seventh entry in the franchise and his first major studio outing — which is slated to hit theaters in April 2028. His knack for grounded menace and slow-burn dread lines up cleanly with Constantine’s street-level occult chaos.

Created by Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben, Constantine first appeared in The Saga of the Swamp Thing #37 in 1985. Better known to comics readers as Hellblazer, he’s a working-class British occult detective who solves problems with magic, manipulation, and a moral compass that doesn’t always point north — where a routine case can turn into a deal with something you don’t want to meet twice.

So where does Keanu fit?

The big variable is Keanu Reeves. He headlined 2005’s Francis Lawrence-directed Constantine, a stylized take that’s since grown a loyal following. Reeves has said for years he wants back in, and a sequel with Lawrence and writer Akiva Goldsman has been batted around. James Gunn said in October 2025 that he’d talked with Reeves about “Constantine 2,” but he hadn’t read a script at the time. Galluppi’s assignment doesn’t clarify whether this is a continuation of that version or a new start, and it’s also unclear if the film would live inside the main DCU or under the studio’s Elseworlds banner.

Where it stands now

• Writer: Francis Galluppi (no director or cast announced)
• Status: very early development at DC Studios
• Universe placement: DCU vs. Elseworlds TBD
• Keanu Reeves: interest long expressed; involvement unconfirmed
• Timing: no date for Constantine; Galluppi’s Evil Dead: Wrath is set for April 2028

The short film that Dylan Brady has been itching to make doesn’t hold your hand. In ANON, a late-night ride between a closeted cabbie and a young male passenger grows increasingly uneasy, and the story refuses the kind of neat, reassuring ending that’s become common in recent queer dramas. The lead is played by Con O’Neill, and Brady leans into ambiguity from the jump — no tidy speeches, no soft landings.

That’s the point. Brady says he’s tired of seeing LGBTQ+ characters sanded down into safe, saintly versions of themselves. He wants the mess — jealousy, fear, obsession — on screen too, and not treated as a step backward for representation.

“I think it’s important that queer characters and characters from different parts of the world are able to be just as complicated and murky and interesting as everyone else.”

He said it in a recent interview with Film Updates, adding that he isn’t arguing against positive stories so much as questioning why upbeat arcs are so often treated as the only acceptable ones.

From actor to director

Brady, 29, has been building a career as both an actor and a writer. He told Attitude that directing wasn’t some childhood goal so much as a realization that he’d have to make the kinds of stories he wanted to see himself. His screen credits include:

• Mary & George
• The Diplomat
• Sebastian
• Netflix’s Everything Now

He wrote and directed ANON after being mentored through the BFI Flare x BAFTA screenwriting program by filmmaker Andrew Haigh.

Getting it financed was tougher. Brady has said he struggled to land backing and ended up putting in his own money. He also crowdfunded a chunk of the budget, celebrating with supporters when the campaign hit its goal on April 9, 2024.

The story, he’s explained, pulls from his own memories of growing up — how the exact same encounter can feel radically different depending on your age, where you live, and how visible or invisible your queer identity feels. He pours those contradictions into a thriller frame, rather than a coming‑of‑age comfort story.

There’s a formal twist, too: ANON was shot entirely on dash cameras in Brady’s hometown of Derby, pinning the drama to the cramped vantage points of a car and the secrets its passengers carry inside it.

On the set of Lawless, the bootlegging drama that paired Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy as Bondurant brothers, an off-camera scuffle turned into one of those enduring behind-the-scenes stories where no two people tell it the same way. One version has Hardy out cold. Another insists he knocked himself out tumbling down stairs during horseplay. The director says there was a fight, but no clean knockout.

Three clashing accounts

• Tom Hardy — 2011 interview: Told Den of Geek he was knocked unconscious by LaBeouf.
• Shia LaBeouf — Hot Ones (2019): Said Hardy likes to tell that story as a joke, claiming Hardy crashed down a flight of stairs during a wrestling bit after barging in while LaBeouf was naked with his girlfriend.
• Director John Hillcoat — Reddit AMA: Denied a LaBeouf KO, but confirmed there was a physical altercation that escalated until others stepped in to restrain them.

“He knocked me out sparko. Out cold. He’s a bad, bad boy. He is. He’s quite intimidating as well. He’s a scary dude.”

Hardy’s “out cold” line came before the movie even hit theaters, in a 2011 chat with Den of Geek. LaBeouf later countered on Hot Ones that the two men often messed with each other on set and that the only reason anyone saw Hardy on the ground was because he’d slipped during their roughhousing.

Adding a referee’s take, John Hillcoat weighed in during a Reddit AMA: there was no clean knockout, but there was a real fight and it got heated enough that others had to separate the stars.

Another on‑set clash

Hardy’s name has popped up in other set-showdown stories, most famously on Mad Max: Fury Road. During the grueling Namibia shoot, he and Charlize Theron clashed over working styles — she prized punctuality and precision; he developed a reputation for turning up late.

The breaking point, per accounts from the production, came when Hardy arrived roughly three hours late to a scene, leaving Theron waiting inside the War Rig in full costume. A screaming match followed, and Theron has said she asked a female producer to accompany her after that because she felt uncomfortable around Hardy. They eventually patched things up, but the blowup remains part of the film’s desert-lore.

New Orleans outfit Swaybox is bringing a hands-on twist to Gotham. The studio’s hybrid process — blending physical puppetry with computer animation — will power the theatrical feature Dynamic Duo, which The Wrap reports will unfold inside Matt Reeves’ gritty Batman universe.

Story-wise, the film zeroes in on the sidekicks: Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. Casting is already in place for the pair, with Mason Thames and Logan Kim set to voice them, while the role of Batman himself remains unannounced.

In theaters September 22, 2028.

Matt Reeves is producing the project, positioning the animated movie alongside the world he launched with 2022’s The Batman starring Robert Pattinson. That continuity sits under DC’s “Elseworlds” banner — separate from James Gunn’s mainline DCU — which leaves room for different tones and formats to coexist without crossing wires.

What we know so far

• Format: A theatrical animated feature centered on Dick Grayson and Jason Todd.
• Cast: Mason Thames — Dick Grayson; Logan Kim — Jason Todd.
• Universe: Set within Matt Reeves’ Gotham continuity from The Batman (2022), per The Wrap.
• Producer: Matt Reeves.
• Animation: Swaybox’s hybrid puppetry/CG approach; The Wrap notes the company has partial Warner Bros. ownership.
• Look: Early footage has drawn comparisons to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, according to reports.
• Release: September 22, 2028, in theaters (per trade reports).

Open questions

No voice casting has been announced for Batman, and neither Warner Bros. nor DC Studios has indicated whether Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne will appear in animated form. Plot specifics and additional cast are also under wraps.

Dynamic Duo is slated to open in theaters on September 22, 2028.

Matt Damon says he was first offered John Bennett in Ted, and he loved the script so much he took it to dinner and read the funniest bits to friends. There were no scheduling hurdles. He simply thought himself out of it, even though the 2012 Seth MacFarlane comedy was set to shoot in Boston—close to home.

“I overthought it and I talked myself out of it. And because it shot in Boston, it would’ve been a chance for me to be home—my father’s passed away now, and I look back and I go, Man, that would’ve been six months back [home],” he told GQ.

Damon said he’s since watched the movie and has zero hard feelings. He praised Mark Wahlberg as “great” in the role and added that the film turned out “fantastic,” telling GQ he doesn’t think he could have done it better and that Wahlberg was the right fit.

Other roles he missed

In the same GQ conversation, Damon ran through two more big parts he nearly took—both lost to the calendar, not cold feet.

• The Dark Knight — Damon says Christopher Nolan offered him Harvey Dent, but he was tied up, either with another Bourne movie or about to start Green Zone with Paul Greengrass.
• Milk — He was set to play Dan White, had talked with Sean Penn, and even started watching documentaries to prep. When Penn’s availability shifted and the film moved three months, the new dates collided with Damon’s work with Greengrass, and he had to step away.

At the New York premiere of The Odyssey, Zendaya arrived in a custom off‑white Matières Fécales “Ange” gown that looked engineered to stop foot traffic: sculptural feathered wings arcing from her shoulders, a plunging corseted bodice, a thigh‑high slit and a sweeping train built for the cameras. The date was July 14, but the vibe was straight Mount Olympus.

Named 2026’s best celebrity look by 50 top Hollywood stylists (per The Hollywood Reporter).

Styled by longtime collaborator Law Roach, the dress was a meticulous one‑off: micro hand‑pleated chiffon and magnificent white rooster‑feather wings that turned the step‑and‑repeat into a tableau. She finished it with more than 30 carats of Chopard diamonds, Christian Louboutin pumps and a loose bohemian fishtail braid — a soft counterpoint to the gown’s architecture.

The fashion crowd took notice. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s poll, stylist Tara Swennen said the look took her breath away, while Ilaria Urbinati compared Zendaya to a painting. And the outfit wasn’t a flash in the pan — it crowned a run that also included a sculptural Schiaparelli in London and an architectural Louis Vuitton shirt‑dress by Nicolas Ghesquière in Paris.

Who she beat

It was a stacked year on the red carpet. Among the contenders THR’s stylists considered:

• Emma Chamberlain — a custom Mugler by Miguel Castro Freitas at the Met Gala (“Fashion Is Art”), with a rainbow, impressionist‑style surface that took over 40 hours to paint.
• Demi Moore — a hot‑pink Matières Fécales ballgown at Cannes, styled by Brad Goreski.
• Zoë Kravitz, Hailey Bieber and Rosé — Saint Laurent muses who turned the CFDA Awards into a liquid‑gold moment.
• Keke Palmer — a vintage Bob Mackie once worn by Raquel Welch.
• Renate Reinsve and Hunter Schafer — standout looks on the Oscars and Euphoria premiere circuits.

One last twist: that winged “Ange” gown had reportedly been waiting in the wings for over two years before its New York debut — landing at exactly the right moment for Zendaya’s Odyssey rollout.

On the night before a movie hits theaters, Christopher Nolan is anything but unflappable, according to Matt Damon. In a new GQ interview, Damon says the director’s steadiest hand gives way to nerves at the very last moment — when the film is about to meet its audience.

“Chris [Nolan], the most nervous he is in the entire process, from the very beginning to the very end, is the eve of the film coming out,” Damon said.

Damon added that Nolan doesn’t hide it, because that’s the one point in the process he can’t control — the public’s reaction.

“He’s genuinely nervous. He talks openly about it, because that is the moment that you put it out into the world and you have to live with the reaction,” Damon added to GQ.

The actor — who’s worked with Nolan before on Interstellar and Oppenheimer — said that with The Odyssey, the team felt relief once the movie opened and strong word-of-mouth started rolling in. For Damon, that early audience response mattered even more given the project’s huge budget and the higher stakes that come with it.

Awards push

As the film rides its theatrical momentum, Universal is mounting a broad Oscars campaign for The Odyssey. Here’s how the studio is positioning its cast:

• Best Actor — Matt Damon
• Best Supporting Actress — Anne Hathaway
• Best Supporting Actress — Samantha Morton
• Best Supporting Actor — Tom Holland
• Best Supporting Actor — Robert Pattinson

The studio’s awards push begins the week of November 9, 2026.

Jeremy Renner is set to lead 12 Bullets, a lean, high-stakes thriller that drops a lone American into the middle of a turf war ripping through London’s criminal underworld. The hook is simple and mean: he’s got one gun, just 12 rounds, and an entire city of gangsters between him and a way out.

One man. One gun. Twelve rounds to survive London’s underworld.

Who’s making it

• Sean Ellis (Anthropoid) — director
• Tim Walker — screenwriter
• Thunder Road (the company behind John Wick) — producer
• Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee — producers for Thunder Road
• Sky — co-developer; film will debut as a Sky Original in the UK and Ireland
• Legendary’s label 193 — launching international sales at the American Film Market in Los Angeles
• CAA Media Finance — representing North American rights

It’s a lane Renner knows well. Between franchise work and darker crime stories, he’s built a résumé that runs from The Hurt Locker and The Town to Wind River and The Bourne Legacy. On TV, he last suited up as Clint Barton in Marvel’s 2021 Disney+ series Hawkeye and currently stars in Paramount+’s Mayor of Kingstown.

Release plan

The movie will roll out as a Sky Original in the UK and Ireland. U.S. distribution is still to be set, with North American rights in play and international sales kicking off at AFM in Los Angeles. No release date has been announced.

After a year that saw him front The Odyssey for Christopher Nolan, Matt Damon says he’s not chasing another lightning-in-a-bottle moment. In a new GQ conversation, he looked back at the two experiences he considers “career-defining” — nearly three decades apart — and made it clear he’s focused on making meaningful movies with the people who’ve been there since the start.

“I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I have such gratitude for the fact that this came along my path at this point. I have no right to expect anything like that to happen again,” he explained.

Sticking with his people

Damon said the goal now is simple: keep doing good work and keep doing it with Ben Affleck. The longtime friends recently teamed back up on the crime thriller The Rip, produced through Artists Equity, the company they co-founded. He even nodded to their childhood dreams — the two have reached a place where they can just enjoy continuing to work together.

• Good Will Hunting — the breakout that launched Damon and Affleck
• The Odyssey — Damon’s latest awards-season juggernaut with Christopher Nolan
• The Rip — a new crime thriller from their Artists Equity banner
• Untitled sci‑fi from the Daniels — now wrapping production

One more, then a breather

Damon admitted he didn’t plan to jump right into another project after this run. That changed when Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — the Daniels, the duo behind Everything Everywhere All at Once — pitched him an unusually fresh sci‑fi idea he couldn’t pass up.

“...So it felt like the right place to put my energy, but we’re almost done shooting it, and yeah, I’m going to take a long time off,” he shared.

According to Damon, filming on the Daniels’ untitled sci‑fi feature is nearly complete, and once the cameras stop rolling, he plans to take a long time off.

On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Bill Skarsgård said his kids sometimes get a surprise visit from his most infamous alter ego. Asked if his children have heard the Pennywise voice, he admitted he’ll occasionally bring it out at home — and he doesn’t stop with just the clown.

"Yeah, if they misbehave…He can slip in there, slip out and then Nosferatu can pop in. There's a whole colorful bunch of schizophrenic daddy," he shared.

Skarsgård’s Pennywise, from Andy Muschietti’s It films, became a modern horror landmark thanks to his unsettling physicality — those contorted facial expressions, odd movements and that chameleonic voice. The approach helped turn the two-film adaptation into a box office juggernaut, with the first movie alone grossing more than $700 million worldwide.

And now the house also has a vampire lurking around bedtime: he recently played Count Orlok in Robert Eggers’ 2024 Nosferatu, making his “dad voices” a little more nightmarish than most.

Another comic-book itch

During the same interview, Skarsgård addressed the summer chatter tying him to Marvel’s next X-Men movie — speculation that heated up in July when reporter Jeff Sneider said Skarsgård and Tom Pelphrey were in the mix. That talk cooled once Marvel cast Christopher Abbott as Charles Xavier in August.

Skarsgård did say there’s a different comics icon he’d love to tackle: John Constantine. He revealed he had imagined reuniting with “It” director Andy Muschietti on a take blending hard-edged horror with a superhero sheen, a combo he finds especially appealing.

The timing lines up with current plans at DC Studios: the company is developing a new Constantine movie, with Francis Galluppi (The Last Stop in Yuma County) set to write the screenplay.

Christian Bale isn’t chasing an impression of Al Pacino as he steps into Vincent Hanna in Heat 2—and he’s already deep in the homework. Speaking with AP Entertainment, Bale said he’s been studying Pacino’s performance but won’t mimic it beat for beat.

“He’s absolutely brilliant in what he did and I’m watching it obsessively, of course, but I’ve got to figure out a way to do it to make it my own thing,”

The Oscar winner added that he plans to honor what Pacino created without copying the cadence or the fireworks that made Hanna a ’90s crime-movie icon.

“I’ve got to make it my own, with all due respect,”

Pacino’s take on the hard-charging LAPD lieutenant helped cement Heat as a modern classic in 1995. Bale will tackle the same character in Michael Mann’s follow-up, which continues the world of cops and thieves the filmmaker built nearly three decades ago.

Who’s reportedly onboard

While the film is still keeping a lid on many details, several big names have been linked to the project. According to reports, the cast expected to join Bale includes:

• Leonardo DiCaprio — Chris Shiherlis
• Stephen Graham — Neil McCauley
• Adam Driver — Otis Wardell
• Odessa Young — Charlene Shiherlis
• Jason Clarke — role TBA

In the 1995 film, those roles were played by Val Kilmer (Chris), Robert De Niro (McCauley) and Ashley Judd (Charlene), with Pacino as Hanna.

Plot specifics and a release date for Heat 2 haven’t been announced yet.

Two book-to-screen projects Harry and Meghan set up at Netflix are still stuck in development, with little visible movement since the spring, according to a Nov. 4 report from Page Six. At the same time, the couple has their next public outing on the calendar — and it’s not in the U.K.

Where the Netflix slate stands

Per the report, neither of the Sussexes’ announced romance adaptations has advanced to production, and there’s no fresh word on their scripted series set in the world of polo. A second industry source told the outlet that long timelines are common for book adaptations, especially when authors are involved in the scripts.

• Meet Me at the Lake — Adapted from Carley Fortune’s bestseller; in development since August 2023. A director is attached, but their name hasn’t been made public.
• The Wedding Date — Based on Jasmine Guillory’s hit novel; listed as in development since 2025.
• Untitled scripted polo drama — No significant update.

The slowdown lands as Archewell Productions trims staff and after longtime nonfiction head Chanel Pysnik exited. Pysnik helped steer the couple’s hit docuseries Harry & Meghan for Netflix; her departure and the cutbacks add to the uncertainty around what gets made next. Separate reports have also floated the idea of Meghan exploring an on-camera return, but there’s nothing official on that front.

Next stop: Brussels

While the Hollywood side simmers, the pair’s first joint overseas appearance since moving back to Britain is set for Brussels. PEOPLE reports the Duke and Duchess will open the Lost Screen Memorial, an installation created with families in Archewell’s Parents’ Network that uses 50 smartphone screens to display photos of children who died following social media–related harms. The memorial debuted in New York in April 2025 before moving to Geneva in May 2026.

The couple will give a keynote on children’s digital safety, and Prince Harry is slated to join a panel titled “Beyond Promises: Building a Digital Future That Works for Children.” Their Brussels stop follows an Oct. 15 joint appearance in Nottingham, their first public outing together since relocating to the U.K. in August.

Brussels — November 10.

Between a cautious Netflix slate and a packed advocacy schedule, the Sussexes are splitting time between entertainment plans and public work — with the next date circled on the calendar in Belgium.

The animated prequel winds the clock back to John’s infamous “Impossible Task” — the one-night gauntlet where he had to eliminate every rival to earn his freedom from the High Table and a chance at life with Helen. Keanu Reeves has now closed a deal to voice Wick for the film, Variety reports, swapping gun-fu in live action for a stylized, blood-and-ink origin he’s never performed on screen before.

Unlike a typical origin story, this chapter follows how Wick tried to get out — and the brutal price he had to pay to leave. Lionsgate first announced the animated prequel in 2025, pitching animation as a way to push the franchise in directions live action can’t.

• Director — Shannon Tindle (Ultraman: Rising, Kubo and the Two Strings)
• Writers — Ryan and Kaz Firpo
• Producers — Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Chad Stahelski, and Keanu Reeves; Point Grey is also on board

The Wick universe keeps expanding: across five movies — including From the World of John Wick: Ballerina — the franchise has topped $1 billion worldwide. A fifth live-action John Wick and a Caine spinoff built around Donnie Yen are in development.

The mission that changed everything: take out all his rivals in one night.

Meanwhile at Netflix

Reeves is also set to lead Maelstrom for Netflix, replacing Alan Ritchson, according to Page Six. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, the thriller follows a Federal Marshal protecting an arms dealer’s fiancée in witness protection as a violent hurricane slams their location and mercenaries close in.

The project’s been a Hollywood boomerang: it started as a spec script bought in 1993 under executive Jeff Robinov, who now returns as a producer after more than three decades in development. Writer Mark Bianculli (How to Rob a Bank) is updating the screenplay begun by the late Gregory Fitzpatrick.

Release details for the animated prequel haven’t been announced. For Maelstrom, casting the female lead is the next milestone before cameras roll.

Under the terms being discussed, Letterboxd would keep its two co-founders — Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow — in charge, with the pair reporting to a New York Times executive, according to The New York Times. The talks are exclusive and the price on the table is about $330 million, but nothing’s signed yet.

If it closes, the movie-logging platform would join the Times’ growing roster of consumer brands — The Athletic, Wirecutter and Wordle among them — and bring along a fiercely active community the company says numbers around 30 million film fans worldwide.

How we got here

• 2011 — Letterboxd launches as a social diary for movies.
• 2023 — Canadian investment firm Tiny buys a 60% stake at a roughly $50–$60 million valuation.
• September 2026 — Variety reports multiple bidders circling, including A24 and the Times; A24 later bows out as the price climbs, per the Times.
• November 2026 — The New York Times reports it has entered exclusive negotiations to buy Letterboxd for around $330 million.

The reported price is more than 20 times Letterboxd’s roughly $15 million in earnings projected for 2026, per the Times — a breathtaking jump from Tiny’s 2023 deal. Music and media analyst Dan Runcie summed up the math in a post on X.

“Letterboxd is in talks to be acquired by The New York Times for $330M. At $15M earnings, that's a 22x multiple. Tiny bought Letterboxd in Sep 2023 for reported $50-60M. That's a 5-6x valuation increase in 3 years.”

The TV question

Even as buyout chatter builds, Letterboxd is wrestling with its next evolution. In early July, the company said on X that television tracking is in development — news that arrived just as rival app TV Time confirmed it would shut down on July 15. The timing set off a wave of speculation that TV Time users could flood in and reshape the vibe.

Some longtime members worry that episode-by-episode logging could drown out Letterboxd’s oddball cinephile culture — the one that fuels lists like “Movies That Feel Like a Fever Dream” and obsesses over deep cuts such as Pink Flamingos, Gummo, The Iron Rose and 964 Pinocchio. For now, the TV features are still being built, and the Times deal remains in negotiation.

Dinner in a Scottish hotel turned into a running joke for Matt Damon when, midway through filming The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan walked past his table and did a double take. Damon says he was eating with his family as Nolan and members of the crew arrived at the hotel after a long day on set. When Damon said hello, the director paused, looked at him and kept moving — then circled back.

“And he turned and he goes, ‘Oh, hey, Matt. I didn’t recognize you with the beard.’ Chris doesn’t say stupid things—it was definitely the stupidest thing he’s ever said, because we’d been next to each other for six months,” he recalled.

Speaking to GQ, Damon laughed that Christopher Nolan had literally just come from watching the day’s dailies — which featured Damon with the exact same beard. He chalked it up to the grind: the cast and crew were wiped, buried in the work, and living on set hours as the production pushed forward.

A billion-dollar odyssey

The fatigue paid off. The film became a full-on phenomenon and sailed past $1 billion at the global box office, grabbing headlines far beyond its opening frame. Damon called the experience one of the high-water marks of his career.

“I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I have such gratitude for the fact that this came along my path at this point. I have no right to expect anything like that to happen again,” he said.

Damon puts it alongside Good Will Hunting as a defining moment, and says he’s now zeroed in on making movies that matter to him with people he trusts. He even stepped away from a planned reunion with Ben Affleck to make room for Nolan’s epic.

According to Damon, he had dropped out of Ben Affleck’s Animals to join The Odyssey, and he’s keeping his dance card open for the collaborations that feel right next.

During a long stretch of Los Angeles auditions a decade ago, Bill Skarsgård says he was sprawled in a friend’s garden, waiting for word on a role that could go either way. Then a single red balloon drifted overhead — exactly the calling card of the clown he was chasing — and he took it as a nudge from the universe. He told the story on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast.

“There's this like one red balloon just crosses the sky,”

“we’re like it’s a sign.”

Eight auditions later

Skarsgård says the process to land It was anything but quick. Director Andy Muschietti wanted him early, but the studio needed convincing, and the tryouts stretched to eight auditions. At the time, Muschietti had only made Mama, so his sway with executives was limited.

Skarsgård even flew to Toronto for a camera test before he had the job, showing up in a cheap clown face and meeting costume designers as if it were already his. When the offer finally came through, he remembers feeling mostly relief, not shock.

Pennywise at home

Recorded the day before Halloween, the conversation also veered into parenting. Skarsgård said he keeps the Pennywise voice in his back pocket for when his kids act up, and joked that Nosferatu might make the occasional cameo too — a “rotating cast” sharing one dad.

Halloween is a family affair: his oldest daughter planned four different vampire looks this year and suggested he go as Nosferatu, but he noted that makeup takes eight hours. Horowitz also flashed a photo of his dog in a Pennywise costume; Skarsgård laughed it off as lazy without the face paint.

After Quentin Tarantino devoted a Sight and Sound essay to Matt Damon’s performance in The Rip—and raved about Damon’s on‑screen chemistry with Ben Affleck—Damon used a fresh GQ interview to shoot his shot. With the tone light but the message unmistakable, he floated a very public invitation for Tarantino to cook something up for the childhood friends turned producing partners.

“Well, he should write us a movie,” Damon told GQ. “We would be very happy if he did that.”

In his Sight and Sound piece, Tarantino argued that audiences may take Damon’s skills for granted and said he loves seeing Damon and Affleck together—going so far as to suggest they’re better as a duo. Damon called the praise “amazing” coming from Tarantino and said he’d already heard about the tribute before the interview ran.

He also pointed to Artists Equity, the company he and Affleck co-founded, as the place they park the projects they truly want to make. At this stage, Damon said, their shared “why not” attitude is rooted in the same boyhood dream that first put them on a set together.

No “third-peak” chase

Asked by GQ whether he’s eyeing a hat trick after Good Will Hunting and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Damon pushed back on the idea. He said he has “no right to expect” another career-defining moment and instead feels enormous gratitude that The Odyssey arrived when it did.

Damon added that no movie is a sure thing—even though, as he noted, The Odyssey earned roughly three times what The Martian did. At those budget levels, he said, simply breaking even requires numbers far beyond his usual films.

He also revealed that Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert pulled him into a nearly finished science‑fiction film, and after that, he’s planning a long break. For now, the Tarantino invite is out there—and Damon and Affleck sound ready to pick it up at Artists Equity if the filmmaker bites.

On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Bill Skarsgård opened up about watching his father, Stellan Skarsgård, power through a major health scare and deliver a standout turn in the film Sentimental Value. He called the project a personal high point for his dad after a difficult stretch and said the response to the movie made the comeback feel especially sweet.

“It was just great to see my dad after, he suffered a stroke, to have that kind of victory lap and a mountain that he climbed back from and reaching that level of success is great,” he said.

Stellan has said he suffered a stroke in 2022, between his work on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and the Star Wars drama Andor, a period that changed how he worked on set. In Sentimental Value, he plays Gustav Borg — a performance that drew wide praise and, for Bill, symbolized how far his dad had come.

Working through recovery

At the Los Angeles premiere of Sentimental Value, Stellan told PEOPLE that while he’s doing well, memorizing dialogue has been difficult since the stroke, so he now relies on an earpiece feeding him lines as he performs.

“So he has to say his lines very fast and very neutral and on top of my coworker’s lines,” Skarsgård said. “So it’s a little special work, but it works.”

He added that there wasn’t much time to ease into the new setup because of the shooting schedule. Even so, he not only starred in Sentimental Value — he also served as an executive producer — and the film’s reception suggested the adjustment paid off on screen.

On the latest episode of the Countdown to Avengers: Doomsday Official Podcast, Iman Vellani didn’t mince words about how X-Men: The Last Stand handled the Phoenix Saga. A lifelong X-Men diehard, the Ms. Marvel star argued the Dark Phoenix arc was crammed into a single film and sidelined the character it’s supposed to be about — pointing to Jean Grey literally standing behind Magneto during the final battle.

“If they wanted to do the Phoenix Saga properly it should’ve been three or four movies, really milk it,”

Vellani went further, saying the 2006 movie undercut its own centerpiece the moment it split focus away from Jean.

“[The movie] failed the minute that they made Jean’s story also secondary.”

She also confessed there’s one chapter of Fox’s run she still won’t touch: Dark Phoenix (2019), the studio’s second attempt at the same storyline. Vellani said she refuses to watch it.

The commentary came as host Frank Alvarez steers the podcast from MCU rewatches into Fox’s original X-Men trilogy. The series launched in August 2026 as a countdown through the Infinity Saga and is now revisiting the mutants with an eye on how they feed into Avengers: Doomsday arriving December 18, 2026.

• Her fix for Phoenix: stretch it across three or four films.
• Her core critique: making Jean’s arc “secondary” broke the movie.
• Her stance now: still skipping Dark Phoenix.

Loki’s moment

Vellani also predicted Loki will loom large in Avengers: Doomsday, calling him the “God of Stories” after the end of Loki Season 2, where he took a seat at the end of time as guardian of the multiverse. She joked he’s been killed and redeemed more times than she can count and said she’ll back the character as long as Tom Hiddleston plays him — while admitting she has no idea what Marvel’s actual plan is.

That read lines up with what we’ve seen so far: the first Avengers: Doomsday trailer features Loki, and Robert Downey Jr. appears as Doctor Doom. Insider Daniel Richtman has claimed the Void could factor into the movie, though Marvel Studios hasn’t confirmed that.

Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters December 18, 2026.

It hit him during a meet-up with teen director Kane Parsons: Mike Flanagan suddenly felt like the veteran in the room. The filmmaker behind Netflix staples like The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass said the new wave of horror creators — many of them coming in from YouTube and other corners of the internet — has him feeling his age in the best possible way.

“I feel very old. When I met Kane, I was like, I am ancient,” Flanagan said. “I'm a total kid, but I find them to be completely inspiring. I think it's such a wonderful thing for the genre.”

Speaking with ScreenRant, Flanagan added that he saw The Backrooms three times, including one screening with his son. The movie scared and thrilled his kid in equal measure, which turned into a dad-and-son horror bonding night. It also sparked the younger Flanagan’s curiosity about Chiwetel Ejiofor — and yes, Mike says he’s got a photo with the star. For Flanagan, that kind of original, non-formula approach is good news for audiences and the genre.

Where to start with Flanagan

If his shout-out to the newcomers has you itching to revisit his own work, there’s a deep bench to choose from across Netflix and Prime Video. A few easy entry points:

• The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix) — A modern haunted-house classic with an emotional core that sneaks up on you.
• Midnight Mass (Netflix) — Centered on faith and fanaticism, with Hamish Linklater’s quietly unnerving turn as Father Paul and a finale that lingers.
• The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix) — A sharper, meaner ride, led by Bruce Greenwood, that twists Edgar Allan Poe through a glossy, nasty family saga.
• The Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix) — Less about jump scares, more about longing and loss; a gothic romance draped in fog.
• Carrie (Prime Video, 2026) — Flanagan’s series take stars Summer H. Howell as Carrie, with Samantha Sloyan as Margaret and Matthew Lillard as the school principal, tackling bullying and religious extremism head-on.
• The Midnight Club (Netflix) — Teen storytellers in hospice trade scary tales, with the character drama baked right into the chills.

Flanagan may be cheering from the sidelines for the new guard, but his own filmography isn’t going anywhere — it just gives fans more ways to get spooked between trips to The Backrooms.

In a fresh spin on Washington Irving’s tale, Nicholas Galitzine is in final negotiations to play Ichabod Crane opposite Sydney Sweeney in Sony’s reimagining, Hollow, according to Deadline. No deal has been announced publicly, and Sony Pictures declined to comment.

This version centers Sweeney as Katrina Van Tassel, who drives the mystery herself amid a supernatural love triangle and psychological twists. Belmont Cameli also stars, with additional roles under wraps.

The film is written and directed by Lindsey Anderson Beer as an adaptation of her own debut novel. Beer is producing through Lab Brew alongside LuckyChap and Sweeney’s Honey Trap banner. A theatrical date hasn’t been set.

Beer’s novel is set for fall 2027 via Putnam; the movie’s release date is still TBA.

Galitzine broke out with Red, White & Royal Blue and The Idea of You, and has been suiting up for action with Masters of the Universe.

Gundam update

While Hollow takes shape, Sweeney is also leading Netflix’s live‑action Gundam opposite Noah Centineo. Directed by Jim Mickle (Sweet Tooth), the film follows rival mech pilots on opposite sides of a decades-long war between Earth and its former space colonies, forced into uneasy cooperation when a larger threat emerges.

Production kicked off in Queensland, Australia, in April 2026 and wrapped in July, putting the project in post‑production. Legendary Pictures is producing with Bandai Namco Filmworks, with Sweeney and Centineo also on board as producers. Netflix has not announced a release date.

Starting December 11, 2026, Universal is putting The Odyssey back on roughly 1,000 theaters across the U.S. and Canada for a limited run, including premium shows in IMAX and select IMAX 70mm auditoriums. It’s a holiday-season return built around the exact way Christopher Nolan wants you to see it: on the biggest possible screen, on film where available.

Why the return

Nolan’s epic was already one of the year’s juggernauts, with $1.8 billion worldwide and a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score. A winter re-release gives it one more lap while Academy voters are filling out ballots — and could nudge it into the record books.

• Awards heat: Timed to keep the movie front-of-mind as a Best Picture and Best Director contender, with craft categories in play.
• Box office milestone: Another wave of ticket sales could push the global haul closer to the $2 billion mark and help Universal notch a new studio record.
• IMAX dominance: The film has reportedly earned a record $550 million through IMAX alone; bringing back IMAX and IMAX 70mm screenings gives it a shot to extend that lead.

For fans who missed the 70mm runs the first time — or just want another go at that wall-of-sound sea battle and cavernous island vistas — the format is the event. Universal’s booking includes traditional IMAX and the large-format 70mm film prints at the handful of theaters that can run them.

Not without debate

Even with its blockbuster status, the adaptation has drawn pushback from one of the most prominent voices on Homer. Emily Wilson, a classics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and translator of the 2017 English edition of The Odyssey, criticized the movie’s emotional center in an op-ed for The Atlantic and a review for the London Review of Books.

“These lessons are legible in Homer and Virgil, but are elided by Nolan’s visually stunning, emotionally empty film.”

Wilson argues the film leans into battles over compassion and hospitality, and says it lacks the emotional and ethical depth she finds in the poem. Nolan’s take does shift the emphasis — foregrounding Odysseus’ guilt, pain, loss, and trauma and introducing new characters — choices that stirred plenty of discussion on release and will likely resurface as audiences revisit it in theaters.

The Odyssey returns to theaters December 11, 2026 for a limited engagement across the U.S. and Canada, with IMAX and IMAX 70mm shows included where available.

On stage at the Tokyo International Film Festival on October 30, the conversation was supposed to be about displaced filmmakers. Then Cate Blanchett turned to surprise guest Kōji Yakusho and lobbed a different kind of question — a casting invite in plain sight.

“When are we gonna work together?” Blanchett asked, before adding with a laugh: “That’s my question, it has nothing to do with the Displacement Film Fund.”

Yakusho had just finished reflecting on a slate of five shorts supported by the Displacement Film Fund. He singled out Mohammad Rasoulof’s Sense of Water for its quiet look at loneliness and hardship, and said Shahrbanoo Sadat’s Super Afghan Gym left him smiling.

The moment also connected two strands of Blanchett’s recent work. She co-founded the fund to back filmmakers forced from their homes and storytellers exploring exile; apparel brand Uniqlo is a founding partner, and Yakusho has collaborated with its Peace for All charity initiative. And if she does link up with him, it would follow a run of global acclaim for Yakusho, who won Best Actor at Cannes 2023 for Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days.

Blanchett’s alien detour

While that dream pairing percolates, Blanchett’s current calendar already features an extraterrestrial left turn in the Zellner brothers’ sci‑fi comedy Alpha Gang. A first-look image released in September shows her nearly unrecognizable — dark hair, eyepatch, leather — as one of several aliens posing as a 1950s motorcycle gang in Eastern Europe, only to find their invasion short-circuited by inconvenient human feelings.

• Directors — David and Nathan Zellner (Sasquatch Sunset)
• Cast — Cate Blanchett, Chris Pine, Léa Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Lily-Rose Depp, Riley Keough, Doona Bae, Kelvin Harrison Jr.
• Producers — Blanchett’s Dirty Films among the producers

Alpha Gang screened at Telluride and Toronto in September before its Japanese premiere in Tokyo on October 30, where Blanchett appeared with the Zellner brothers. A wider theatrical release date has not been announced.

At the Nov. 4 premiere, Nicolas Cage said he packed on weight for Madden the easy way: by ditching his usual two protein shakes and a Caesar salad for nightly bowls of carbs. Asked how he did it, he told People,

“I just enjoyed my pasta and my sourdough bread.”

The goal was to inhabit legendary coach and broadcaster John Madden’s larger-than-life frame without going to dangerous extremes.

Pasta, then prosthetics

Cage said he considered a full 60-pound gain but decided that was unsafe at 62. Instead, he put on about 25 pounds himself and turned to makeup artist Adrien Morot — who helped craft Brendan Fraser’s transformation in The Whale — to add roughly 30 more through prosthetics. The combo gave him Madden’s silhouette without a total body overhaul.

Shedding it proved tougher. Cage said the weight didn’t fall off and that he’s still logging a couple of hours a day on an elliptical to get back to his baseline. The indulgent dinners are over; the cardio grind is not.

Next up: Parish

While the football biopic heads downfield, Cage has already wrapped another transformation with Parish, a post-apocalyptic thriller from writer-director Adam Sigal. Set three decades after a nuclear catastrophe, Cage plays a loner who seals himself behind fortified walls with highly trained attack dogs — until a woman arrives with an infant and begs for help. Letting them in draws hungry attention from monstrous predators and cannibals. The film’s warning sums it up: “Some doors should never be opened.”

Production shot near Stillwater, Minnesota, and wrapped in late October, employing local crews along the way. The cast includes:

• Dane DeHaan
• Alexandra Shipp
• Don Worley (announced his involvement)

Sigal has floated a theatrical window in the summer or fall of 2027, though no date is confirmed.

At the Los Angeles premiere of Heartland, Ross Lynch quietly made a big personal reveal: he’s married. The former Austin & Ally and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina star confirmed the news to People on the carpet, where he was wearing a gold band on his ring finger. He kept his wife’s identity private and offered no details about their relationship.

“I’m not trying to shy away from that by any means, but I am trying to, you know, my wife’s not very fond of celebrity. So I am trying to be sensitive towards that and respectful to her. But everything’s going well,”

Lynch had hinted that life changes were underway when he popped back onto Instagram on June 28, 2026 with a carousel captioned, “Been a minute, what did I miss?” When a follower pressed him on what fans had overlooked, he replied, “Hahaha A LOT.”

Back to acting

The red-carpet moment also marked Lynch’s return to acting after focusing on music with his brother Rocky in their band The Driver Era. His first screen project back pairs him with Jessica Chastain in the Netflix thriller Heartland, and he says she helped smooth the transition.

“Working with Jessica was funny because, you know, it’s been a while for me being acting,” he told People. “After a while, when I started getting warmed up, she would give me this nod of approval, which was kind of fun and reassuring.”

About Heartland

Lynch plays Jace Jacobs in the film. Chastain stars as Misty Jones, a former country music star who sets out to find her missing niece. The project brings Lynch back to a dramatic role after his teen-comedy Disney days and his turn as Harvey Kinkle on Netflix.

Heartland premieres on Netflix on November 13, 2026.

With a sprawling ensemble led by Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi and Yash, the first chapter of Ramayana: Part 1 arrives as a live‑action take on India’s foundational epic, focusing on the prince of Ayodhya’s early years and his exile. It’s the opening move in filmmaker Nitesh Tiwari’s two‑part vision, and it comes with a classic storyteller’s flourish: legend Amitabh Bachchan lends his voice as the narrator.

Tiwari, known to U.S. viewers for Dangal, set out to keep close to the source text, and built the film as a two‑parter to avoid compressing key chapters of the saga.

The cast

• Ranbir Kapoor — Rama (and also Parshurama); credits include Rockstar and Barfi.
• Yash — Ravana; also a producer on the film, previously seen in Ramachari and Masterpiece.
• Sai Pallavi — Sita; known for Kali, Middle Class Abbayi, Maari 2, Athiran, Love Story and Shyam Singha Roy.
• Ravi Dubey — Lakshmana; appeared on reality series Nach Baliye 5 and Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi 8.
• Lara Dutta — Kaikeyi; former Miss Intercontinental 1997 and Miss Universe 2000, with film roles in Masti, No Entry and Bhagam Bhag.
• Arun Govil — Dasharatha; played Ram in Ramanand Sagar’s 1987 TV adaptation, now portraying Ram’s father.
• Rakul Preet Singh — Shurpanakha.
• Indira Krishnan — Kaushalya.
• Sonal Jha — Sumitra.
• Rajiv Kumar — Janaka.
• Adinath Kothare — Bharata.
• Nitish Sharma — Shatrughna.
• Kajal Aggarwal — Mandodari.

Legacy touches and what’s next

Sunny Deol appears as Hanuman in a cameo this time and is set to take on a much larger role in the second installment. Bachchan, who American audiences will remember as Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby, serves as the film’s narrator. Behind the camera, Tiwari is joined by producers Namit Malhotra and Yash.

Why two parts

Tiwari says the decision to split the story was about honoring the breadth of the epic rather than racing through it.

We would have had to rush through too many things, and they had far too many valuable stuff, which is there for us to just crunch it in one and leave aside a lot of stuff.

Ramayana: Part 1 was released November 5, 2026 and is now in theaters.

Season 2 wastes no time tossing Helen Webb into deeper water. Her marriage to Wallace is shaky enough that the premiere opens with the pair in counseling, still rattled by the fallout from last season’s affair and near-exposure. And yet the stakes at home have never been higher: Wallace is now the U.K.’s Prime Minister, the family has relocated to 10 Downing Street, and Helen’s cover as a dutiful spouse is suddenly the most valuable—and dangerous—asset she has.

That delicate balance shatters fast. Helen’s handler, Mrs. Reed, disappears, while her closest ally, Sam, is being blackmailed. Creator Joe Barton doesn’t just scale up the spycraft; he turns the screws on the personal front too, putting love, friendship, and loyalty on the line as the show threads a present-day conspiracy through flashbacks to a long-buried incident with deadly ripples.

Black Doves Season 2 runs six episodes and is now streaming on Netflix.

Knightley and Whishaw dig in

Keira Knightley leans into Helen’s split life—protective of the power base she’s built with Wallace and ferociously focused on her kids—while trying not to blow her cover under constant scrutiny. Opposite her, Ben Whishaw plays Sam as a man still grieving Michael and making increasingly messy choices to shield Helen. One standout: a breathless gunfight where the two argue mid-firefight, on the same side and barely keeping it together.

The friend group around them gets more to do. Barton makes good on teaming up familiar faces—Eleanor and Williams step in often—though Kai-Ming is notably absent this time. The “found family” is forced to air decades-old secrets or risk collateral damage as the clock ticks and bodies fall.

New faces in the fight

Season 2 adds a fresh slate of players who complicate every move, from political fixers to dangerous imports. Among the key additions:

• Sam Riley — Patrick
• Babou Ceesay — Mr. Conteh
• Sylvia Hoeks — Katia Chernov
• Goran Kostic — Alexi Chernov
• Ambika Mod — Laila Joshi

Mod’s Laila Joshi is the most striking new recruit to the spy circle, and her presence pays off as the mystery tightens around Downing Street.

Action with a wink

For all the blood and bruises, the show keeps its playful streak. Christmas slips into the story with a few warm beats, and the soundtrack supplies sly counterpoints—there’s an escape sequence scored to Olly Murs’ “Dance with Me Tonight” that plays like a dare to smile while the bullets fly.

Between the accelerating plot, the flashback puzzle, and a political spotlight that turns every misstep into a headline, Black Doves doubles down on tension without losing its bite. Season 2 is streaming now on Netflix.

The first chapter of director Nitesh Tiwari’s two-part adaptation zeroes in on Prince Rama’s early years in Ayodhya — his bond with his brothers, his courtship of Sita, and the promise that sends him into exile. Ramayana: Part 1 builds to the turning point of the epic: Sita’s abduction by the demon king Ravana, with the next installment set to take up what follows.

Backed by producer Namit Malhotra alongside actor-producer Yash, the film is adapted from Valmiki’s Ramayana and co-written by Tiwari and Shridhar Raghavan. Tiwari, whose credits include Dangal, is aiming for a large-scale, live-action take designed for the big screen.

Who’s playing whom

• Ranbir Kapoor — Rama
• Yash — Ravana
• Sai Pallavi — Sita
• Ravi Dubey — Lakshmana
• Lara Dutta — Kaikeyi
• Rakul Preet Singh — Shurpanakha
• Arun Govil — Dasharatha
• Indira Krishnan — Kaushalya
• Sonal Jha — Sumitra
• Rajiv Kumar — Janaka
• Adinath Kothare — Bharata
• Nitish Sharma — Shatrughna
• Kajal Aggarwal — Mandodari
• Sunny Deol — Hanuman

Announced back in 2017, the project was initially conceived as a trilogy and has since been streamlined into two films. Part 1 charts Rama’s path to marrying Sita and the exile that follows; Part 2 will carry the next chapter of his journey.

Ramayana: Part 1 is slated for a worldwide theatrical release on November 5, 2026.

Robert Pattinson has a message for anyone nitpicking the next trip to Arrakis. Joining Dune: Part Three as Scytale — a shapeshifting conspirator who stirs up the finale’s palace intrigue — he told the New York Times he’s firmly in director Denis Villeneuve’s corner on changes made from Frank Herbert’s book.

“You got to be kind of crazy if you’re going to be picking fault with this one [over the changes to the books].”

Pattinson said Villeneuve’s screenplay initially left him puzzling over its moving parts, but the finished cut landed with an unexpected emotional jolt. He described the story as a sweeping political and moral fable, with themes of parenting threaded through its power games — a different entry point into Herbert’s 1969 novel Dune Messiah, which the film adapts.

Zendaya, back as Chani, has acknowledged the movie takes detours from the page while staying true to big pieces of the source. Timothée Chalamet has also backed the ending, suggesting Villeneuve set a new bar for the trilogy’s close.

• Robert Pattinson — Scytale
• Zendaya — Chani
• Timothée Chalamet — Paul Atreides
• Denis Villeneuve — director and co-writer
• Hans Zimmer — composer

A different sound

Composer Hans Zimmer says the finale won’t simply reprise themes you’ve heard before. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter Australia, he said most of Part Three’s score is brand-new, with familiar motifs only surfacing near the end to tie all three films together. Villeneuve urged him to treat the closer as an “autonomous film,” freeing the music to chase its own mood.

Zimmer framed each installment’s sound world around Paul’s arc: the first film’s discovery of Arrakis, the second’s war footing, and now a tense aftermath shaped by Paul’s rule and its consequences. The result, he suggested, demanded a fresh musical vocabulary rather than a greatest-hits approach.

Fans already got a small taste last fall. In October, Zimmer previewed “Desert Chant,” a collaboration that begins with Chalamet humming before it swells into a Fremen war cry.

Asked on the spot about the new voice of Aslan, Liam Neeson cracked up. In a Screen Rant interview, the actor — who hadn’t heard that Meryl Streep is taking over the lion in Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew for Netflix — offered a playful blessing for the move.

“Meryl is playing Jesus Christ? Well, if you’re gonna make Christ a lady, nobody better than Meryl.”

Neeson knows the mantle he’s passing. He voiced Aslan across the 2000s and early 2010s in Disney and Fox’s big-screen adaptations:

• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
• Prince Caspian (2008)
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

His quip nods to how C.S. Lewis framed Aslan from the start: in a letter to a young reader, Lewis described the lion as an alternate incarnation of Jesus in Narnia — a godlike figure who sacrifices himself and returns from death.

Why Streep for Aslan

Gerwig told Empire she had a very specific brief for the role and immediately thought of Streep, with whom she worked on Little Women.

“I wanted someone who was older than 70, so there was a wisdom of experience, but who also had the capacity of fresh wonder, like a child,” she said. “And also to be one of the greatest actors to ever do it. That list is not a long one.”

At a recent Netflix IMAX sneak-peek event at AMC Lincoln Square in New York City, Gerwig also said many of the film’s adult actors signed on out of a love for the books — and to support the younger cast bringing Narnia to a new generation.

In a new three-part video series released by Google on Nov. 4, Henry Cavill sits down with an HP Googlebook 14 and builds a retro 16‑bit game called Mustache Protocol—a send-up in which players battle rogue CGI artists hellbent on erasing every mustache on Earth. It’s tongue‑in‑cheek and unmistakably personal: the mission is to save the ’stache.

The videos track Cavill as he sketches a hero, experiments with meme-y superpowers, and even helps with the soundtrack. In the first installment, he tests out different mustache styles and briefly toys with an absurdly over-armed medieval warrior before pivoting to something more strategic—because defending facial hair, apparently, calls for tactics.

From CGI lip to 16-bit

This whole bit springs from the infamous Justice League reshoots in 2017, when Cavill couldn’t shave his Mission: Impossible – Fallout mustache and the studio digitally erased it. The uncanny upper lip became a running joke online and a piece of Hollywood lore; Mustache Protocol reads like his playful answer nearly a decade later.

Google’s rollout frames the game as a quick-build project using its in-house tools: Cavill demos Antigravity to turn written prompts into playable mechanics, taps Rambler to refine ideas, and uses Magic Pointer to shape his pixel hero. A “Continue On” feature lets him swap between an Android phone and the laptop mid-build.

Google unveiled Mustache Protocol on Nov. 4 in a three-part video series.

Next up: Highlander

On the film side, Cavill is leading Highlander, director Chad Stahelski’s reboot of the 1986 fantasy classic. He plays Connor MacLeod, a Scottish swordsman born in 1518 who can’t be killed by ordinary means and spends centuries dueling other immortals for a mysterious prize.

• Dave Bautista — Kurgan
• Russell Crowe — Ramírez
• Karen Gillan — Heather
• Djimon Hounsou — (role undisclosed)
• Marisa Abela — (role undisclosed)
• Jeremy Irons — (role undisclosed)
• Drew McIntyre — (role undisclosed)

After a preproduction injury reportedly pushed the schedule, filming moved ahead across Scotland, London, Poland, and Hong Kong. At CinemaCon, attendees were shown first-look footage packed with neon-lit fights, motorcycles, and swordplay with the slick precision you’d expect from the director of John Wick.

Yelena Belova’s dry humor almost didn’t exist. During early Black Widow rehearsals, Florence Pugh tried reading Yelena with her own English accent — and the character felt, in her words, kind of miserable. At home one night, while cooking dinner, she tested a Russian accent instead. Suddenly Yelena was sharper, funnier, more sardonic. Pugh shot a few phone videos, pitched the switch to director Cate Shortland, and sent the clips up the chain. Kevin Feige signed off fast, and Yelena’s voice snapped into place.

Pugh says the accent was only part of the freedom she got inside the MCU. Feige and the team gave her latitude to tweak lines and build little character beats — the stuff that turned Yelena’s brutal backstory into something unexpectedly warm and witty.

“I had more freedom in creating lines, moments,” Pugh said.

“And it’s just so fascinating when you’re building a character and you’re given the space to,”

That trust has carried through each of Yelena’s appearances so far:

• Black Widow (2021) — Pugh’s debut as Yelena
• Hawkeye — a scene-stealing holiday run-in with Clint and Kate
• Thunderbolts — Yelena steps into antihero territory

Keep it calm

Pugh also opened up about how she works best on set. She told Vanity Fair she can’t stand chaotic shoots and wants everyone to show up appreciating “the luxury” of the job; when someone disrupts that, the mood nosedives and people feel uncared for. That calm, she says, is what lets her lock into characters — whether it’s Yelena’s deadpan bite or the thorny, magnetic Cathy Ames in East of Eden.

East of Eden, a seven-episode limited series developed by Zoe Kazan and starring Pugh as Cathy, is now streaming on Netflix after premiering October 1.

What’s next for Yelena

Looking ahead, Feige hinted to Vanity Fair that Yelena is poised to anchor the ensemble in Avengers: Doomsday, which is slated to arrive in December.

Francis Galluppi — the filmmaker steering the next Evil Dead Wrath — has been tapped to write DC Studios’ new John Constantine movie, according to people familiar with the project. It’s in very early development, with no director or cast attached yet, and DC Studios declined to comment.

Galluppi comes in hot from horror. Per Deadline, he developed the original story for Evil Dead Wrath himself before pitching it to Sam Raimi in 2024, and he’s now writing and directing what will be the franchise’s seventh film. His debut, The Last Stop in Yuma County, premiered at Fantastic Fest to strong buzz, with Raimi publicly praising Galluppi’s slow-burn tension that explodes into chaos — a skill set tailor-made for DC’s chain‑smoking occult detective.

Warner Bros. has set Evil Dead Wrath for April 7, 2028.

The move also lands as DC’s horror-leaning Clayface continues its theatrical run, crossing $90 million worldwide and signaling an appetite for the studio’s darker corners.

Looking back at 2005

The last time Constantine headlined on the big screen, Keanu Reeves and director Francis Lawrence bent the comics to their own noir. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast marking the film’s 20th anniversary, Lawrence explained he cared more about the character’s spirit than copying the look panel-for-panel — and he reshaped the world around him accordingly.

• Reeves’ Constantine skipped the character’s blonde hair.
• The English accent was dropped.
• His signature coat shifted from black to brown.
• The setting moved from Liverpool to Los Angeles, with Lawrence drawing on classic noirs like The Maltese Falcon and The Third Man, and the hardboiled vibe of Jim Thompson novels.
• They shot on location in L.A. rather than relying on Toronto stand-ins, a choice Lawrence praised Reeves for embracing.

What Galluppi’s version keeps from the comics — and what it breaks — is the next big question. For now, DC has a writer, no star or director, and a blank page waiting for its demon hunter to return to theaters.

Judges pointed to “clear and numerous similarities” between The Pitt and ER in allowing a lawsuit from Michael Crichton’s widow to move forward, according to a ruling cited by Variety. The appeals court said the shows’ overlap goes beyond a hospital backdrop, flagging the emergency-room setting, rapid pacing, heavy medical jargon, graphic injuries, and exhausted staff — plus a storyline anchored by a young doctor fresh out of med school — as enough to warrant a trial.

The case stems from a reported 1994 agreement between Crichton and Warner Bros. that required mutual approval for any ER spin-offs, remakes, or other derivative works. Sherri Crichton, who filed suit in 2024, alleges The Pitt grew out of an abandoned ER reboot idea without her sign-off. Warner Bros. Television is the central target of the suit; the court dismissed claims against Noah Wyle, John Wells, and R. Scott Gemmill, finding no evidence they knew they could be violating Crichton’s contractual rights, per Variety.

“We find the details here suffice for a prima facie case,” the court said.

The ruling keeps the legal fight alive against the studio and sets the dispute on a path toward trial unless the parties settle.

Season 3 still on deck

Legal drama aside, HBO has already renewed The Pitt for a third season, slated to return in January 2027. Production began in June 2026, with the show sticking to its real-time format that unfolds over a single hospital shift. Season 3 is expected to take place in early November, several months after the events of Season 2.

• Noah Wyle — Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch
• Ayesha Harris — Dr. Parker Ellis
• Patrick Ball
• Katherine LaNasa
• Taylor Dearden
• Isa Briones
• Gerran Howell
• Shabana Azeez
• Sepideh Moafi

HBO says the upcoming run brings a new round of medical emergencies and fresh personal fallout to Pittsburgh’s emergency department. Season 3 of The Pitt is scheduled to premiere in January 2027.

Playing a real tech kingpin has Andrew Garfield thinking about the fallout. In a new GQ profile published November 4, the actor says stepping into Sam Altman’s shoes for Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial made him acutely aware of the power dynamics he’s dramatizing — and the people who might not love seeing it onscreen.

“It’s the artist’s responsibility to reflect the times we’re in, and I think it’s getting harder and harder to do that without fear of consequences from those in power,” Garfield said.

Garfield joked that giants like Altman may be “too big to fail” and could simply brush off his portrayal, but the stakes still rattled him. He recalled waking up to see Vanity Fair call Altman the most powerful man in the world right as audiences were about to watch Garfield’s version. The actor credited Guadagnino’s fearlessness as a steadying force and admitted he’s pushing through his own apprehension.

“I am afraid, but I’m still willing to kind of put it on the line. But we’ll see.”

Inside the film

Written by Simon Rich, Artificial traces roughly two decades of AI breakthroughs before landing in OpenAI’s 2023 leadership crisis, when Altman was ousted as CEO and then reinstated five days later after a tense boardroom showdown.

• Andrew Garfield — Sam Altman
• Yura Borisov — Ilya Sutskever
• Monica Barbaro — Mira Murati
• Cooper Hoffman — Greg Brockman
• Ike Barinholtz — Elon Musk
• Mark Rylance — Geoffrey Hinton
• Jason Schwartzman — role TBA
• Chris O’Dowd — role TBA

The production’s release saga has its own corporate twist: Amazon MGM walked away from the nearly finished movie after Amazon announced an investment in OpenAI. Neon stepped in to acquire the film, which premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 5 and screened in London days later. It opens in U.S. theaters on December 25.

Inside the new Yeezy flagship on Beverly Boulevard, models in stark, monochrome looks circled a bright white mound while unreleased tracks from Ye (formerly Kanye West) rattled the speakers. But midway through the Yeezy Season 01 presentation in Los Angeles on Wednesday night, the room’s hum shifted: Kid Cudi was spotted chatting with Ye after spending time with fellow guests Big Sean and 2 Chainz.

Clips of the two standing together spread within minutes, boosted by fan accounts like @yzyupdates. The sighting landed like a confirmation that their detente isn’t a one-off; it’s ongoing, and it just played out in front of a very loud fashion crowd.

Ye’s first full runway show since Season 9 in Paris in 2022.

The Chicago reset

The face-to-face in L.A. comes two months after a bigger reunion: on September 4, 2026, Cudi joined Ye onstage at Soldier Field during the second of two sold-out homecoming shows in Chicago. They ran through three songs — including “Ghost Town” and Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” — their first shared stage since Coachella 2019.

Not long after, Cudi spoke about that Chicago moment on his podcast Big Bro With Kid Cudi, saying the experience hit him hard emotionally and left him feeling overwhelming gratitude.

Back in Beverly Hills, the Season 01 runway doubled as a reset for the brand too: minimal silhouettes, a circular walking pattern around a sculpted hill instead of a straight runway, and a soundtrack that sounded packed with Ye snippets fans hadn’t heard before. The show also streamed live on Kick.

On a recent appearance on GOAT Talk, Michael Che said he once pitched Dwayne Johnson on a Saturday Night Live sketch tied to Johnson’s DC antihero — and Johnson passed. The bit leaned into a biblical gag about Black Adam that Che knew would be edgy.

“He asked God to remove his rib,” Che said about his Adam script for Dwayne Johnson.

Che didn’t share when the pitch happened, only that it came during Johnson’s Black Adam moment and that Johnson declined to take part. Even so, Che called Johnson his GOAT SNL guest on the same show, a nod to how often the wrestler-turned-movie star has thrown himself into sketches over the years.

Why this stood out

SNL has a long tradition of inviting celebrities to roast their own image or latest project. Kim Kardashian leaned into jokes about her public persona when she hosted, and Ariana Grande gamely spoofed her own franchise ties. Johnson is typically as game as anyone to be the punchline.

That’s part of why Che’s story lands with a thud-and-a-smirk. Johnson has built a career on swerving between action hero and self-parody — squeezing into a tutu for Tooth Fairy, belting as Maui in Moana, and clowning through the Jumanji reboots — and he’s rarely shy about getting silly on live TV.

His SNL résumé backs that up: Johnson is in the show’s Five-Timers Club and has anchored multiple crowd-pleasing monologues and sketches. Che’s takeaway, even after the rib-bit rejection, was pure admiration — he still puts Johnson at the top of his SNL guest list.

At the Madden premiere on November 4, Nicolas Cage said he’s already spoken with Ryan Gosling about taking over as Marvel’s hellfire biker — and he’s all for it.

“Ryan’s going to do his thing with it and I’m looking forward to seeing it,”

Cage told The Hollywood Reporter that he and Gosling have been in touch, he respects him as an actor and he’s happy with the choice. There’s a personal thread here too: Gosling’s partner, Eva Mendes, played Roxanne Simpson opposite Cage’s Johnny Blaze in 2007’s Ghost Rider.

Cage first rode as Blaze in Ghost Rider (2007) and returned for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012). Nearly two decades later, the skull’s still flaming — just on a new head.

Ghost Rider revival

Marvel announced its new Ghost Rider movie at San Diego Comic-Con with Shawn Levy (Deadpool & Wolverine) directing and Jonathan Tropper writing. Gosling has called the character a longtime goal, and the film is set for July 28, 2028.

Connor Storrie (Heated Rivalry) is in talks to play the villain, according to the project’s current lineup.

Before the bike: Star Wars

Gosling and Levy reunite first on Star Wars: Starfighter, a standalone set about five years after The Rise of Skywalker. Gosling stars as Kade Auberon, a cynical rogue forced to confront a buried past, paired with a young companion played by Flynn Gray.

Footage shown at D23 opens with the duo beside a decommissioned craft rumored to be blisteringly fast; once Kade coaxes it back to life, the preview careens through alien vistas, flying droids and fresh interstellar trouble.

The cast also includes:

• Amy Adams
• Matt Smith
• Mia Goth
• Aaron Pierre
• Daniel Ings
• Jamael Westman

Tropper wrote the screenplay here as well, marking another Levy–Gosling team-up before their Marvel handoff. Lucasfilm has dated Starfighter for May 28, 2027, timed to the 50th anniversary of the original Star Wars.

Ghost Rider follows on July 28, 2028.

On December 15, WWE is turning its Worlds Collide card into a full-blown Marvel mash-up, staging an Avengers: Doomsday–themed show at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex near Orlando. The timing isn’t subtle: it lands three days before Marvel’s next Avengers movie hits U.S. theaters, and the ring will feature performers from WWE’s main roster, NXT, and Mexico’s AAA.

The crossover is the centerpiece of a two-day slate in Orlando that folds live matches, a Netflix broadcast, and a sprawling fan fest into one weekend. It follows WWE’s recent pop-culture detours, including a Stranger Things–flavored Raw special back in January.

Orlando weekend lineup

• Dec. 14 — The John Cena Classic: Stars from Raw and SmackDown face up-and-coming NXT talent. Club WWE members vote on the night’s standout performer. The show streams live on Netflix as a Raw episode.
• Dec. 15 — Worlds Collide: Avengers: Doomsday at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, featuring WWE, NXT, and AAA talent.
• All weekend — WWE World: A fan event from WWE and Fanatics with superstar meet-and-greets and merch. Expect Avengers: Doomsday–branded championship belts and other co-branded gear on-site, at WWEShop.com, and in select Disney stores.

Box-office heat

Avengers: Doomsday has reportedly generated about $125 million in worldwide advance ticket sales.

That early haul puts Marvel within striking distance of DC’s Supergirl, which wrapped its entire theatrical run at $126.47 million worldwide, according to The Numbers. The $125 million figure is from reporting rather than a new Disney disclosure, and the tally may have climbed since; either way, it reflects presales revenue, not tickets scanned during the run.

Disney previously announced $50 million in presales in September for the movie’s U.S. debut. Directed by the Russo brothers, the film pits Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom against heroes from across multiple Marvel universes.

Avengers: Doomsday opens in U.S. theaters December 18.

Asked who he’s eyeing to inherit the tux, Pierce Brosnan didn’t hesitate to single out Callum Turner. In a new Vanity Fair conversation, the former 007 said he’s been impressed by several of the names in circulation but gave Turner a special nod — the two appeared together in The Only Living Boy in New York in 2017.

“Callum Turner is someone I’ve worked with, and he’s so strong. They all have a voice and a physique, and a presence on film. They all have longevity as actors, all of these young men,” he said.

Turner’s name has been swirling alongside a handful of younger breakout stars as producers continue the search for the first Bond of the post–Daniel Craig era. No casting has been announced.

• Callum Turner
• Jacob Elordi
• Josh O’Connor
• Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Who’s behind the next Bond

Brosnan also talked directors and lit up at the mention of Denis Villeneuve, praising the Dune filmmaker’s style and saying he’d be thrilled to see his take on 007.

“(Villeneuve) is such an iconoclastic director. His work is visionary, and his stealth and imagination of camera work and storytelling is so visceral and sensuous,” he said.

On the writing side, Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) is attached to script the next Bond movie. In a recent chat with Zoe Ball on the U.K.’s Greatest Hits Radio, Knight said he’s already turned in the screenplay. Casting — including who will play James Bond — has not been revealed and no production start has been announced.

On the set of the horror movie Whistle, a long day of shooting a high school detention scene turned into a personal mission for Dafne Keen. As director Corin Hardy kept changing angles and trying new ideas, Keen started tallying every setup right on the desk in front of her. By the time she hit 73 in a single day, co-star Nick Frost was fighting a cold and looking beat — so Keen leaned over with a deadpan whisper that finally broke him.

“I wonder if the next shot will be a colonoscopy,”

Keen shared the story on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, saying she’d gone into the movie with one very specific goal.

“I must make Nick Frost laugh like this is my mission because he is my childhood icon.”

That crack landed because Frost isn’t an easy laugh on set, Keen noted — and because she grew up watching him. His comedy bona fides run deep: Simon Pegg has called Frost the funniest person he knows, and their run together across TV and films is a big reason why.

• Spaced — Channel 4 cult sitcom with Pegg
• Shaun of the Dead — Edgar Wright’s zombie comedy
• Hot Fuzz — action send-up set in a sleepy village
• The World’s End — pub-crawl sci-fi comedy

About Whistle

Whistle is directed by Corin Hardy (The Nun, The Hallow). Keen plays Chrys, a brooding high school outcast; the cast also includes Sophie Nélisse and Nick Frost. The detention-day sequence Keen described was filmed across dozens of different setups in one day under Hardy’s experimentation.

Back at Overbrook High School in West Philly, Colman Domingo says he shared gym and science classes with a classmate who was already campus-famous: Will Smith. Smith was a year ahead and, even then, a local rapper performing with DJ Jazzy Jeff. Domingo told the story on the Nov. 3 episode of the Friends Keep Secrets podcast hosted by Benny Blanco, Lil Dicky and Kristin Batalucco.

“I wasn’t a cool kid,” … “We were never friends,”

Domingo remembered Smith as “the cool kid” while he saw himself as “the nerd,” and says he skipped the after-school gigs where classmates packed in to watch Smith perform.

Their paths didn’t cross again until years later, when Domingo was waiting tables at El Torito in Philadelphia and Smith had already broken big in music and acting. Smith didn’t recognize him at first; after a quick memory jog, Domingo says they hugged and went their separate ways.

Michael sequel talk

More recently, Domingo portrayed Joe Jackson in Michael, the Lionsgate biopic that stars Jaafar Jackson as his uncle, Michael Jackson. The film wraps around the Bad era, leaving the singer’s later decades untouched, and Lionsgate said in May that a sequel is in development.

Whether Domingo returns is up in the air. Speaking with Vanity Fair in September, he said no offer had come his way and questioned what chapters a follow-up would take on, noting the first movie ends before the first sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson — material any continuation would have to confront.

• Adam Fogelson has indicated filming could start in late 2026 or early 2027.
• California has awarded the project $30.8 million in tax incentives.
• Possible release window: late 2027 to mid-2028.

A new tab with a red gem icon has started popping up on supported TV apps for a small group of U.S. Netflix members: AI Discover. Instead of tossing you into endless rows, it asks what you’re in the mood for, then builds a lane of picks to match. The feature quietly went live on November 3 and is rolling out to more testers over the coming weeks.

It works off plain-English themes, each introduced with a short video. Pick a vibe, get a stack of movies and shows that fit, then drill down into narrower themes or bail out with a “Something Different” button if the lane isn’t clicking.

• “Scare Me”
• “Something Light”
• “Family Movie Night”
• “Quick Watches”

Every title card includes a “Tune Your Recommendations” control next to Play and My List. You can lock in a good match or tell Netflix to stop surfacing a miss. The AI remembers that feedback inside Discover so you’re not haunted by the same bad fit tomorrow.

Under the hood, Netflix says its in-house intelligence layer adapts to your choices in real time. The company is treating the tab as a “test kitchen,” where features that work could graduate into the main app. For now, the experiment serves English-language viewers in the U.S., with access expanding over the next few weeks.

$587 million in cash — that’s what Netflix ultimately paid for Ben Affleck’s AI company, per a later regulatory filing reported by TechCrunch.

Behind the camera

Netflix’s AI push isn’t just about the home screen. In March, the streamer acquired InterPositive, the artificial-intelligence filmmaking outfit Ben Affleck founded in 2022. The company builds postproduction tools aimed at fixing missing shots, smoothing out inconsistent lighting, and replacing backgrounds — the stuff productions usually burn time and money chasing by hand.

Affleck set up InterPositive on the idea that creative judgment belongs to people. Its systems were trained to understand the visual logic of real film sets, and the toolkit is designed with guardrails to preserve a director’s choices. Netflix brought the InterPositive team in-house and named Affleck a senior adviser following the deal.

Back on the couch, AI Discover remains an experiment. If it sticks the landing, Netflix says elements could be folded into the core app as the test grows beyond that initial U.S. group in the coming weeks.

On the red carpet at the New York City premiere of All’s Fair Season 2, Kim Kardashian said her bar plans are very much alive — and she even put a loose timeline on it. After sitting out several exam windows, she’s now aiming to take the California Bar in 2027, she told People at the event.

“I am always thinking about the bar,”

Pressed on timing, she made clear she isn’t cramming in between shoots and business calls.

“But I'm going to take my time and wait until the moment is right when I have some free time.”

Kardashian previously failed the California Bar Exam in July 2025 after a four-year legal apprenticeship, then skipped subsequent sittings — moves that fueled talk she’d shelved the effort. Her latest comments shut that down.

Her legal grind even sneaks into the new season of the Ryan Murphy drama. In the Season 2 trailer, Kardashian’s character, Allura Grant, cracks, “I didn’t pass on my first try,” a cheeky nod to the very real detour in her own journey.

Juggling it all

If the study calendar looks complicated, it’s because her day job(s) are. Kardashian is balancing:

• Starring as attorney Allura Grant in Season 2 of All’s Fair
• Running SKIMS and its expanding business ventures
• Filming The Kardashians
• Pursuing film and TV projects
• Raising her four kids

She’s also been out front defending All’s Fair amid rough reviews — and now, carving out space to return to the bar track. The target: 2027.

On a new episode of his podcast Dinner’s On Me, Jesse Tyler Ferguson said the Modern Family cast has been talking about getting the band back together. The Emmy-winning ABC comedy signed off in 2020 after 11 seasons and 250 episodes, and while everyone scattered to new jobs at the time, Ferguson said the mood has shifted.

He described how rare it was to live with one character for more than a decade and to work with the same crew for so long — and how that familiarity is hard to replace once a show ends.

“That being said, it has now been six years, and we are all like, ‘We would love to get back together and do it again,’” Ferguson said.

The actor also joked about some of Mitchell Pritchett’s most off-brand escapades that the writers embraced over the years — like the episode where Mitchell accidentally got stoned, and the one where he and Eric Stonestreet’s Cameron popped sleeping pills before a long flight — as proof there’s still room to play with these characters. There’s no official reunion on the books, but Ferguson made clear the interest is real on the cast’s side.

New project at Fox

While reunion talk percolates, two of the show’s top creatives are busy elsewhere. Christopher Lloyd and Danny Zuker are developing a new comedy, Mammoth, at Fox for the 2027–28 TV season. Adapted from Welsh comedian Mike Bubbins’ BBC series, it follows Tony Mammoth, a swaggering high school gym teacher who was buried in a ski avalanche in 1983 and thaws out four decades later.

He reenters the world with a Burt Reynolds–worthy mustache, a prized Trans Am and a worldview stuck in the Reagan era. Fox describes him as confident and “hopelessly outdated,” and the fish-out-of-ice premise drops him right back into teaching, where the rules have evolved without him.

Lloyd and Zuker will write, executive produce and serve as showrunners, with Bubbins also executive producing. Fox hasn’t announced casting or a specific premiere date.

At a routine hair appointment, Rhea Seehorn mentioned she was ready to start dating again — and walked straight into the most awkward setup imaginable. Her hairdresser introduced her to stylist Mary Alice Haney at the salon, they hit it off, and Haney offered to fix her up. What Haney didn’t say: the guy she had in mind was her ex-husband, Graham Larson.

After an email introduction, Seehorn did what everyone does — she Googled. Up popped Haney and Larson’s wedding photos, and then an email from Larson inviting her to dinner. Confused, Seehorn kept Haney looped on the chain and tried to steer this very strange courtship into a daylight group hang.

“Is he a cheater? Are they swingers? Like, what is happening?”

That’s how Seehorn remembered it on Dinner’s On Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson. She joked she agreed to a morning coffee “just to get a good story,” but friends confirmed before the meetup that Haney and Larson were, in fact, divorced. Over coffee, she also learned he had two kids with Haney — and the weirdest blind date origin story settled into something real.

Fast-forward: the couple got engaged in 2015 and have kept most of their relationship low-key. Seehorn, known to many as Kim Wexler on Better Call Saul (plus recent work on Cooper’s Bar and Pluribus), has said she’s close with Larson’s boys and considers herself a mother figure.

Who is Graham Larson?

• Early career in film: worked as a production assistant on I Am Sam and Traffic, and as a producer on The Last Samurai.
• Now works in real estate with Sotheby’s International Realty.
• Dad to two sons with Haney: Graham Franklin Larson and Henry McLain Larson.
• He and Seehorn announced their engagement in 2015; she’s spoken about bonding with his kids on the Really Famous with Kara Mayer Robinson podcast.

On a recent appearance on Taboo’s Comics and Kicks, Lea Thompson pushed back on the idea that Howard the Duck was a legendary bomb, pointing straight at the box office to make her case.

"It made a lot of money. It made its money,” Thompson said.

The 1986 live-action Marvel adaptation — with George Lucas as executive producer and Tim Robbins among the cast — earned $37,962,774 worldwide against an estimated $37 million budget. The movie’s reputation as a high-profile Hollywood faceplant has stuck for decades, but Thompson argued it wasn’t the financial disaster it’s been made out to be.

Not the only Marvel misfire

Marvel is synonymous with blockbuster success, but even the studio behind the Avengers has had a few stumbles. Recent and past examples include:

• The Marvels — Opened to $47 million in the U.S., the lowest opening weekend in MCU history.
• Eternals — Grossed $402.1 million worldwide on a reported $236.2 million budget.
• Fantastic Four (2015) — Took in about $167 million worldwide on a roughly $120 million budget, with a $25.6 million U.S. opening.

The 1977 occupation of a federal building in San Francisco is the beating heart of Being Heumann, with CODA filmmaker Siân Heder zeroing in on the day-to-day reality of a sit‑in that stretched for weeks. The film follows organizers who refuse to budge until Washington signs off, and builds from the inside out — from food and community to news cameras and the pressure of time — as Judy Heumann rallies a coalition that won’t accept another delay.

Apple Original Films backs the drama, anchored by Ruth Madeley as Heumann, and a cast that threads the protest’s many moving parts — including Mark Ruffalo as the Cabinet official whose pen the movement needs. The story tracks how public pressure, TV coverage and unlikely alliances turned a single building into the center of a national fight.

Who plays whom

• Ruth Madeley — Judy Heumann, the organizer pushing the coalition past one more bureaucratic stall.
• Mark Ruffalo — Joseph Califano, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare whose signature carries outsized stakes.
• Dylan O’Brien — Evan White, a television journalist whose reporting beams the occupation beyond the federal building’s walls.
• Madeline Delp — Kitty Cone, a key organizer focused on morale as the sit‑in grinds through increasingly tough weeks.
• Antwan Tolliver — Brad Lomax, a disability activist and Black Panther whose ties help keep the protest supplied and connected.
• Ray Fisher — Chuck Jackson, a participant swept up in a solidarity‑driven, everyday act of courage.
• Rob Delaney — Congressman George Miller, a political ally backing the protesters during the standoff.
• Roberta Colindrez — Joni Breves, another member of the on‑the‑ground coalition.

Ruffalo’s read on the fight

Ruffalo recently highlighted a Forbes feature that praised Heder’s choice not to sand down the protest’s edges. The movie leans into the messiness of a real occupation — the defiance, the community taking shape inside the building, and the visible support from the Black Panthers — rather than turning the sit‑in into a tidy montage.

He’s also said the screenplay feels refreshing, surprising and spontaneous, with humor woven through its heavier moments. And while he plays Califano, he pushed back on making the official a cartoon villain, arguing the film is more interested in the system that keeps throwing up barriers than in pinning everything on one person.

Heder’s aim extends to representation: she wanted disabled characters portrayed as full, complicated people — angry, funny, loving, and sometimes in conflict — not polished symbols built for applause. Ruffalo’s praise extends to Madeley, whose take on Heumann threads toughness, wit and vulnerability.

Being Heumann debuts November 13 on Apple TV.

A former country star forced back home, a missing niece, and the shadows of Nashville’s music scene set the tone for Heartland, a new Netflix thriller that drops its lead right into a small-town search where old secrets don’t stay buried. Jessica Chastain plays Misty Jones, whose return to her roots turns into a tense hunt that spins past family drama into something far darker.

The film leans into the world of country music on and off screen, with real recording artists in key roles and a cast stacked with seasoned character actors. It’s directed by Shana Feste, whose work often mixes intimate character studies with high-stakes emotion.

Cast and roles

• Jessica Chastain — Misty Jones (Academy Award and Golden Globe winner; Interstellar, The Martian)
• John Hawkes — Clark (Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee; Winter’s Bone, The Sessions)
• Carter Faith — Charlie Heart (country singer-songwriter; debut album Cherry Valley in 2025)
• Garrett Hedlund — Roy Combs (Friday Night Lights, Four Brothers; Triple Frontier, The Marsh King’s Daughter)
• Jennifer Nettles — Winnie Jo Lean (Grammy winner; four Country Music Association Awards; one American Music Award)
• Ross Lynch — Jace (My Friend Dahmer; Teen Beach Movie and Teen Beach 2)
• Isabelle Kusman — role TBA (seen in Netflix’s His & Hers)
• Wynn Everett — role TBA (Marvel’s Agent Carter; recurring on Sweet Magnolias and This Is Us)

The music bona fides are front and center: Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles brings her stage presence to Winnie Jo Lean, while rising country artist Carter Faith plays a fellow up-and-comer on screen — and released her real-life debut album in 2025.

Chastain on channeling country stardom

Chastain’s already logged serious time in this world, having played Tammy Wynette in the 2022 limited series George & Tammy, which earned her an Emmy nomination. She told People that experience helped her find Misty Jones’s center.

“I could draw from that understanding of what superstardom does to a person, but also the innocence that can somehow survive alongside it,” she told People. “Thankfully, Tammy had already sent me to country-music graduate school.”

Heartland premieres on Netflix on November 13, 2026.

Siân Heder drops viewers straight into San Francisco, 1977, where a 26‑day occupation of a federal building forces the government to finally enforce Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Instead of courtroom speeches, the drama plays out in hallways and offices: organizers coordinating meals and medical care, strategizing around accessibility needs, and using the press to turn a local standoff into a national alarm.

Based on disability rights legend Judy Heumann’s memoir, Being Heumann is an Apple Original Film directed by Heder and co-written with Rebekah Taussig. It’s a feature, running 127 minutes, and it channels the human-scaled clarity that helped Heder’s CODA win Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay into a very different kind of uprising.

What the film covers

The story centers on the government’s long delay in issuing the regulations that would give Section 504 its teeth — a stall that leaves people with disabilities shut out of schools, jobs, and public life. Heumann and a cross-disability coalition answer with a sit‑in at the regional office of Health, Education, and Welfare, building a community inside the building while turning up the heat on HEW Secretary Joseph Califano to sign.

The Black Panther Party lends support to keep the occupation going, while a television crew carries the protesters’ message far beyond the Bay. Heder’s focus sits with the individuals making hard choices in the moment — the disagreements, the fatigue, and the resolve — that push a policy fight over the finish line.

Cast and characters

• Ruth Madeley — Judy Heumann: The driving force of the occupation and its chief strategist.
• Mark Ruffalo — Joseph Califano: The HEW Secretary facing mounting pressure to sign the long-delayed 504 regulations.
• Dylan O’Brien — Evan White: A TV journalist documenting the sit‑in and broadcasting it to the country.
• Madeline Delp — Kitty Cone: A key organizer helping turn solidarity into on-the-ground strategy.
• Rob Delaney — Congressman George Miller: A Capitol Hill ally who brings a Washington perspective into the fight.

Release

Being Heumann opens in select theaters on November 6, 2026, and debuts globally on Apple TV on November 13.

The film first bowed at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2026, setting the stage for its November rollout in theaters followed by its global streaming launch.

The crowning came as Netflix was gutting and rebuilding its org chart: layoffs of roughly 1,000 employees and a content shake-up that pushed out top film executives while elevating a new creative boss. On the company’s Q3 2026 earnings call, Ted Sarandos defended the overhaul and conceded the streamer “could do better,” even as he was being anointed Hollywood’s most powerful executive elsewhere.

The 2026 power list from The Town with Matt Belloni — assembled by Belloni and Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw — ranked clout in practical terms: who can greenlight projects, spend the money, and set talent paydays. While they debated the middle of the pack, they agreed on No. 1.

• No. 1 — Ted Sarandos (Netflix)
• No. 2 — Josh D’Amaro (Disney)
• No. 3 — David Ellison (Skydance)

“In terms of calls getting returned, he is kind of the mayor of Hollywood,” said Belloni.

“Iger used to be the clear number one.”

Belloni and Shaw’s case for Sarandos was less sexy than it was overwhelming: about 325 million Netflix subscribers worldwide and a market cap near $255 billion — still ahead of Disney, even after what they noted was nearly a 50% stock slide over the past year. They also pointed to his singular veto power over Netflix theatrical runs; if Sarandos opts to push out 10 to 15 big-budget movies to theaters, that alone could jolt the film business. And unlike some tech chiefs, he actually shows up — at premieres and even the Golden Globes.

One bit of color from the list-making: when creative heavyweights like Christopher Nolan and Taylor Sheridan weighed in, they were told this one was for executives only. Belloni and Shaw shuffled the rest of the deck, but Sarandos never budged from the top slot.

Inside Netflix’s shake-up

Back at the office, the cuts began October 14, landing mostly on product, technology, legal and HR teams. The same week, Netflix remade its content suite: chief content officer Bela Bajaria was replaced by Peter Rice, and film head Dan Lin, his deputy Doug Belgrad, and executive Carolina Garcia exited.

Sarandos praised Bajaria’s international team on the call and framed Rice — whom he’s known for 15 years — as a rare leader who’s done time across broadcast networks, studios, streaming and live sports. Rice, a former Walt Disney Television chair, officially started October 26 with talent relations cited as a key asset.

The backdrop: Netflix engagement grew just 2% in the first half of 2026, according to the company, while in July YouTube commanded 14.2% of connected-TV viewing versus 7.8% for Netflix.

At the Season 2 premiere of All’s Fair in New York, held at Highline Studios, Kim Kardashian leaned right into the show’s bumpy road from early drubbings to Hulu hit. On the carpet, she was asked by Variety what the roller-coaster reception says about the series’ success.

“I think history is proven that c********** create success, but I think it just shows that you could make something just for the watchers and for the fans to enjoy themselves, and it doesn't have to be critically acclaimed,”

The legal drama’s critics score started rough — it debuted at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, later ticking up to 5% — even as audiences warmed to it. On Hulu, it opened at No. 1 on the platform’s Top 15 and held that spot for its first three days.

Standing beside Kardashian, Sarah Paulson backed the point, saying some shows can simply exist for viewers to enjoy rather than chase awards attention.

The show and the cast

From creator Ryan Murphy, All’s Fair is a glossy legal drama for Hulu, with Kardashian serving as executive producer and appearing on-screen alongside a stacked ensemble. The cast turned out for the New York event, including returning heavy hitters and a notable new face this season.

• Sarah Paulson — returning
• Glenn Close — returning
• Kim Kardashian — returning
• Naomi Watts — returning
• Niecy Nash-Betts — returning
• Cauã Reymond — joins in Season 2

Season 2 rollout

Season 2 launches on November 4, 2026 on Hulu with eight episodes total. The first three episodes premiere together, with the remaining installments arriving weekly.

There’s also a scheduling shift: after a Tuesday pattern in Season 1, new episodes will land on Wednesdays this time around.

The One Ring isn’t just a plot point this year — it’s a workout. Charlie Vickers says filming Sauron’s big forging sequence meant standing in punishing heat with wind machines roaring, swinging a hammer again and again until he blew through about five hammers and even clipped his own hand inside those metal gauntlets.

“It was very intense,” Vickers told ScreenRant, calling the finished experience rewarding.

Inside Mount Doom

Vickers told Empire the set piece took roughly two weeks to shoot and is almost entirely physical, with pages of script that barely include any dialogue. Co-showrunner Patrick McKay has called the forging the show’s most technically demanding undertaking to date, anchored by a massive, lava-lit Mount Doom build that turned Sauron’s workshop into a full-on inferno.

All that sweat is in service of a season built around the moment Tolkien fans have waited for: the birth of the One Ring, crafted to dominate every other Ring of Power and lock in Sauron’s rise.

A darker Middle-earth

Season 3 jumps ahead five years after the fall of Eregion, deep into the War of the Elves and Sauron. His forces are spreading across the map while Galadriel and Elrond scramble to hold a line that keeps moving the wrong way.

Who’s back (and new)

• Morfydd Clark — Galadriel
• Robert Aramayo — Elrond
• Charlie Vickers — Sauron
• Jamie Campbell Bower — Celeborn (Galadriel’s long-absent husband)
• Simon Pegg — voice of the Balrog

Release plan

The Rings of Power returns on Prime Video with a staggered rollout across three weeks:

• November 11, 2026 — first four episodes
• November 18, 2026 — two more episodes
• November 25, 2026 — final two episodes

On November 3, the official White House account on X posted a One Piece-style graphic that puts President Trump in the pirate-captain’s seat, blending presidential branding with the anime’s unmistakable swashbuckling vibe. It’s the latest in a string of pop-culture riffs from the administration’s social feeds, which have previously nodded to Pokémon, Naruto and even Mario.

The choice isn’t just flashy artwork — it carries a wry wink for anyone who knows Eiichiro Oda’s saga. In One Piece, freewheeling pirates routinely clash with a monolithic World Government, a theme that makes a White House embrace of Straw Hat imagery feel intentionally tongue-in-cheek.

Next stop: Alabasta

Meanwhile, Netflix’s live-action One Piece has finished its next leg. Cameras rolled in Cape Town, South Africa, and the new run will pick up the beloved Alabasta arc under the official title One Piece: The Battle of Alabasta.

Filming ran from November 2025 to June 2026 in Cape Town, South Africa.

Story-wise, the Straw Hats cross into a desert kingdom on the brink of civil war as Princess Vivi seeks help outing the true puppeteer: Sir Crocodile and his crime syndicate Baroque Works.

The returning and new cast for Season 3 includes:

• Iñaki Godoy — Monkey D. Luffy
• Mackenyu — Roronoa Zoro
• Emily Rudd — Nami
• Jacob Romero — Usopp
• Taz Skylar — Sanji
• Charithra Chandran — Princess Vivi
• Joe Manganiello — Sir Crocodile
• Mikaela Hoover — Tony Tony Chopper
• Lera Abova — Miss All Sunday
• Sendhil Ramamurthy — King Cobra
• Xolo Maridueña — Ace
• Cole Escola — Bon Clay
• Emilio Sakraya — Koza

Netflix plans to release The Battle of Alabasta in 2027.

On a new episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Olivia Colman didn’t just reiterate her long-stated wish to play M in the James Bond movies — she picked up unexpected cheerleaders. Conan O’Brien said he and co-host Matt Gourley had recently met David Heyman — the producer behind the Paddington films and, per their chat, involved with the next Bond installment — and Colman immediately chimed in that she already knows him.

Gourley reminded Colman he’s been campaigning for her as Bond’s boss for ages, and O’Brien happily egged it on. What started as a friendly tease turned into a mini casting push, with the hosts all but volunteering to make introductions.

“Okay, let’s make this happen,” Gourley said. “It has to be you.”

Colman has been open for years about wanting the MI6 desk job once held on screen by Judi Dench and Ralph Fiennes. With the next 007 still a question mark, a high-profile podcast rallying behind her keeps her name in the Bond conversation — especially if that Heyman connection actually turns into a call.

Meanwhile, her new movie

While she’s pitching herself for M, Colman is drawing strong notices for her offbeat romantic comedy Wicker. The fantasy-tinged tale follows a lonely fisherwoman who commissions a husband made of wicker.

• Olivia Colman — the fisherwoman
• Alexander Skarsgård — the wicker husband
• Peter Dinklage — the basketmaker who builds him

The film’s reviews have been glowing, with Rotten Tomatoes showing a 95% critics’ score and 92% audience score at the time of writing. Critics have singled out Colman’s performance, Skarsgård’s unexpectedly tender turn, and the movie’s strange, funny blend of romance, sensuality, and dark humor. Not everyone is sold: a few reviews cite pacing issues and a script that can’t entirely sustain its wild premise.

There’s no official word yet on who will play M — or the next James Bond.

On Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, John Goodman said his new co-star didn’t just remember their first meeting — he remembered the whole room. Goodman recalled bumping into Tom Cruise again and hearing him tick through who’d been at a Malibu gathering more than three decades ago, a party thrown by Bruce Willis where Goodman says he felt like a guest of a guest and never expected to stick in anyone’s mind.

"He remembers saying hi to me 30-something years ago," Goodman marveled.

Goodman also confirmed he’s now part of Cruise’s holiday-cake circle — the annual white chocolate coconut Bundt from California’s Doan's Bakery that Cruise famously ships to friends every Christmas. Horowitz noted Cruise’s almost presidential knack for clocking everyone in a room; Goodman’s story fit the reputation.

About Digger

That off-screen charm met a rough on-screen season. In Digger, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Cruise plays an oil tycoon scrambling to contain an environmental catastrophe, while Goodman steps in as the American president amid the chaos-soaked satire.

• October 2 release
• Domestic opening around $8 million
• Worldwide gross roughly $49 million, per The Numbers
• Estimated production spend of $160–$180 million, plus about $100 million in marketing, per Variety
• Industry projections have the losses in the hundreds of millions

On the podcast, Goodman argued early negative reviews blunted audience interest and “pre-dinged” the movie before it hit theaters. He said he’s still proud of the work — and that he enjoyed the six-month shoot.

In a new filing in Los Angeles probate court, Paris Jackson is asking a judge to order a partial distribution of $600 million to the Michael Jackson Family Trust, arguing the trust that’s supposed to benefit Michael Jackson’s children still hasn’t been funded even though the estate has earned billions since his death, according to documents cited by Page Six.

The filing says Michael Jackson’s will provides that his children receive income from their portions of the trust once they turn 21; Paris claims she and her brothers have not received that income. The documents also point to longtime estate co-executor John Branca as controlling how much money flows into the trust, noting he left The Michael Jackson Company in 2006 and returned in 2009, nine days before Jackson died.

A spokesperson for the Michael Jackson Estate told Page Six the estate cannot fully fund the trust until outstanding legal issues are resolved, including an ongoing IRS dispute that sought $700 million in taxes and penalties. The spokesperson also dismissed the suggestion that payments to beneficiaries have been reduced.

A hearing on the matter is set for December in Los Angeles.

The court fight lands the same year the family has been back in the spotlight on the big screen. Michael, the biopic starring Jaafar Jackson as his uncle, opened in April and was a box-office hit.

Sequel moves forward

California’s latest film-incentive round awarded the planned sequel, Michael 2, a $30.8 million tax credit — the second-largest allocation in a batch covering 35 projects, behind only a Pixar animated feature at $40.1 million.

Production on the sequel is slated to begin in late 2026 or early 2027, and studio executive Adam Fogelson said around 25% to 30% of the movie has already been filmed. The release is currently eyed for late 2027 or the first half of 2028.

Welcome back to Pikeville, Georgia — whether Sam and Charlie Quinn like it or not. The sisters at the heart of The Good Daughter are both lawyers now, pulled in opposite directions by a past they’ve tried to outrun since a brutal home invasion destroyed their family. When a deadly school shooting rocks their hometown, it drags every buried secret into the open and forces them to work the same case from painfully different angles.

The six-part adaptation comes straight from the source: novelist Karin Slaughter serves as showrunner and wrote all six episodes. Director Steph Green (Watchmen, The L Word: Generation Q) helmed the entire run, giving the series a single, sustained point of view as it toggles between the sisters’ present-day investigation and the night that changed everything.

Slaughter addressed the show’s most delicate question — how to depict violence without turning trauma into spectacle — at an October 29 screening in New York. She told People she was “very mindful” about what to show and said those conversations happened before cameras rolled, with the priority on protecting cast and crew while keeping the story honest.

Cast and characters

• Rose Byrne — Samantha “Sam” Quinn: A New York patent attorney who fled Pikeville after surviving the attack that killed her mother. Coming home means taking on the case she least wants.
• Meghann Fahy — Charlotte “Charlie” Quinn: Sam’s younger sister, a defense lawyer who still works alongside their father. She becomes a crucial witness to the school shooting.
• Brendan Gleeson — Rusty Quinn: The town’s polarizing defense attorney and Quinn family patriarch, famous locally for representing clients who make juries bristle.
• Olivia Williams — Harriet “Gamma” Quinn: The sisters’ brilliant physicist mother, whose curious, exacting worldview reverberates long after she’s gone.
• Michael Dorman — Ben Bernard: Charlie’s estranged husband, a steady presence with deep ties to the Quinns.
• Harper Steele — Lenore: Rusty’s longtime office manager, a second parent of sorts who knows where the family bodies — metaphorical and otherwise — are buried.
• Jake McDorman — Mason “Huck” Huckabee: A local schoolteacher carrying a long-standing grievance against Rusty’s line of work.

From page to screen

The series adapts Slaughter’s 2017 bestseller and follows her previous page-to-screen run: Netflix’s 2022 Pieces of Her, starring Toni Collette and Bella Heathcote, also centered on a daughter forced to reexamine family history after violence shatters the present. Here, Slaughter’s direct involvement — paired with Green directing every episode — suggests a faithful transfer of the novel’s shifting timelines and raw sibling dynamic.

Peacock will release the full season at once, so the mystery is built to binge. All episodes premiere November 12, 2026.

Karin Slaughter isn’t just handing over her bestseller — she’s running the show. For Peacock’s limited series The Good Daughter, the author wrote every episode of the six-part run and serves as showrunner, while director Steph Green (Watchmen) helms all six hours. Each installment runs about an hour, and Peacock is dropping them all at once for a full-on binge.

All six episodes arrive November 12, 2026 on Peacock.

The story

Set in Pikeville, Georgia, the drama tracks estranged sisters Samantha and Charlotte Quinn, who survived a brutal home invasion two decades ago that killed their mother, the brilliant physicist Harriet “Gamma” Quinn. In the years since, Sam fled to New York and built a career as a patent lawyer, while Charlie stayed in Pikeville, defending clients alongside their father, Rusty, a defense attorney known for taking on polarizing cases.

When Charlie witnesses a deadly attack at her former high school — a principal and a student are killed — the shock pulls Sam back home at Rusty’s request. Old wounds, clashing memories, and family loyalties complicate the investigation as the Quinns are forced to relive the night that splintered them.

Cast and creators

Slaughter’s 2017 novel gets its first screen adaptation here, following the author’s earlier TV splash with Netflix’s Pieces of Her. The new series lines up a sharp ensemble:

• Rose Byrne — Samantha “Sam” Quinn, a successful New York patent attorney reluctantly returning to Pikeville.
• Meghann Fahy — Charlotte “Charlie” Quinn, a determined local defense lawyer whose firsthand view of the school attack drags up family truths.
• Brendan Gleeson — Rusty Quinn, the sisters’ outspoken father, a defense attorney whose controversial clients make him a flashpoint in town.
• Olivia Williams — Harriet “Gamma” Quinn, the inquisitive, brilliant mother whose death still defines the family.
• Michael Dorman — Ben Bernard, Charlie’s estranged husband.
• Harper Steele — Lenore, Rusty’s longtime office manager and a surrogate maternal presence for both daughters.

The Good Daughter is a six-episode limited series; Peacock releases the full season on November 12, 2026.

It doesn’t stop when the vault opens. The Apple TV+ heist thriller 12 12 12 slices the story three ways — 12 months of planning, 12 hours of the job, and 12 days after — following a single high-stakes robbery that points to a bank vault in Zurich.

At the center is Jack Strickland, a disgraced FBI agent played by Anthony Mackie, chasing American criminal Paul Galvin, played by Jamie Dornan. Their cat-and-mouse hunt leads into the meticulous prep, the tense overnight execution, and the fallout that refuses to stay buried.

Cast and roles

• Anthony Mackie — Jack Strickland
• Jamie Dornan — Paul Galvin
• Jack Kesy — Bobby Galvin
• Agathe Rousselle — Severine
• Sallie Harmsen — Lena
• Patrick Fabian — Kevin McNeil
• Kali Reis
• Ólafur Darri Ólafsson

The series leans into the mechanics of the crime — how the crew maps every detail leading up to the night itself — then shifts to the pressure cooker of the heist and the dangerous ripples that follow. Zurich’s vault isn’t the finish line; it’s the pivot point.

12 12 12 premieres November 13, 2026 on Apple TV+ with a two-episode launch.

The season runs eight episodes. After the premiere, new episodes arrive weekly on Fridays.

By the time the dust settled on Arrakis, Paul had seized the Golden Lion Throne by demanding Princess Irulan’s hand, shattered the old order, and unleashed a holy war in his name. The next chapter dives straight into the fallout — and it’s bringing in new wild cards alongside some very complicated returns.

Denis Villeneuve is adapting Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah for the third film.

The flashiest new arrival is Robert Pattinson as Scytale, a Face Dancer from the shadowy Bene Tleilax. In the book, Scytale doesn’t just shapeshift; he threads himself into a plot to topple the Emperor, making him the kind of villain who smiles while he moves the knife.

Then there’s the resurrection that isn’t quite a resurrection. Jason Momoa returns as Duncan Idaho — but as Hayt, a ghola engineered from Duncan’s remains. Hayt’s presence turns grief into a test of memory and identity, forcing everyone around Paul to question what “coming back” really means.

Who’s in the fight

• Robert Pattinson — Scytale, a Bene Tleilax Face Dancer tied to a conspiracy against Paul.
• Jason Momoa — Duncan Idaho/Hayt, a ghola whose very existence pokes at the limits of the soul.
• Anya Taylor-Joy — Alia Atreides, born with ancestral memories and far from an ordinary child.
• Timothée Chalamet — Paul Atreides, no longer the reluctant heir but the Emperor trying to hold a burning empire together.
• Florence Pugh — Princess Irulan, Paul’s political bride with Bene Gesserit training and ambitions of her own.
• Zendaya — Chani, the Fremen warrior who walked away rather than watch her people be consumed by a prophecy.

Irulan’s marriage to Paul sealed his claim to the throne but left zero room for romance. As a daughter of the former Emperor and a Bene Gesserit adept, Florence Pugh’s cool, calculating Irulan stands at a crossroads between loyalty, self-preservation, and a regime she helped legitimize.

Briefly glimpsed in Part Two, Anya Taylor-Joy’s Alia now steps into the light. A “pre-born” with the voices and memories of her ancestors, Alia is powerful enough to make the Bene Gesserit uneasy — and complicated enough to test her brother’s rule from the inside.

The man at the center of it all has changed. Timothée Chalamet’s Paul embraced the mantle of Emperor and set off a galaxy-spanning jihad; now he’s trying to steer a future he can see but can’t control, surrounded by plots that cut close to home.

Refusing to be swept along, Zendaya’s Chani chose her people over prophecy and left. The official synopsis places her at the heart of the mystery around Paul’s reign, turning their fractured relationship into the saga’s most volatile front.

And in the shadows, Scytale waits: in Dune Messiah, he becomes a central figure in a conspiracy to overthrow Paul.

The job centers on a bank vault, but the show isn’t just about the moment the door swings open. 12 12 12 plays with time, tracking the meticulous run-up to the heist and the messy fallout after. Threaded through it all: Anthony Mackie’s disgraced FBI agent Jack Strickland locked in a cross‑Europe pursuit of Jamie Dornan’s criminal Paul Galvin while the robbery unfolds in parallel.

There’s reunion energy baked in. Mackie and Dornan previously teamed in the sci‑fi thriller Synchronic, and Mackie is also back with director Kari Skogland, who steered episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Now they’re pointing all that chemistry at a high-stakes caper for Apple TV+.

Who’s in the crew

• Anthony Mackie — Jack Strickland
• Jamie Dornan — Paul Galvin
• Jack Kesy — Bobby Galvin
• Agathe Rousselle — Severine
• Sallie Harmsen — Lena
• Patrick Fabian — Kevin McNeil
• Kali Reis
• Ólafur Darri Ólafsson

The premise promises a cat‑and‑mouse thriller set against European backdrops, with the show toggling between prep, execution, and the aftermath as the chase and the caper collide. It’s a heist series that cares as much about the consequences as the score.

Premieres November 1 on Apple TV+.

Eight shows a week meant stepping into the ring—literally. Playing Joe Bonaparte in the Almeida Theatre’s revival of Golden Boy, Josh O’Connor spent his nights bouncing between a violinist’s poise and a boxer’s punishment. As National Theatre Live readies its filmed capture for theaters, the Emmy winner said the role left a mark, in all the good ways.

“I feel exhausted, but invigorated … I’m just sad that it’s over, but excited that people in places like where I grew up get to see it,”

O’Connor said in a clip shared by Variety, reflecting on the show’s run and the chance for cinema audiences to see it.

From stage hit to cinemas

After a completely sold-out engagement at London’s Almeida, National Theatre Live will roll out the production in theaters worldwide beginning November 5. Directed by Sam Yates, the staging brings Clifford Odets’ 1937 drama into sharp focus, with O’Connor as a gifted classical violinist lured by the money and danger of the boxing world.

• U.S. release: National Theatre Live screenings begin November 5 in select theaters
• Director: Sam Yates
• Playwright: Clifford Odets
• Role: O’Connor plays Joe Bonaparte, a violinist turned prizefighter
• Origin: Filmed at the Almeida Theatre’s sold-out run in London

Back on stage

The run marked O’Connor’s return to theater after a five-year stretch that put him on the global movie map—he won an Emmy for The Crown and headlined films like Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers and Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera. He called the experience on Golden Boy both punishing and energizing, and said he was grateful for the company he got to share the stage with.

National Theatre Live’s Golden Boy starts playing in U.S. cinemas November 5.

When James McAvoy started telling people he wanted to direct, the scripts that came in suddenly had a theme. As he put it in a new interview, the offers were overwhelmingly—and oddly—Scottish, despite the Glasgow native rarely being asked to play Scottish on screen.

“Then when I said I wanted to direct, everything I got was just Scottish movies, Scottish movies, Scottish movies,”

Talking to Sharp Magazine, McAvoy said that disconnect didn’t square with his résumé: over a 32-year acting career, he’s only played Scottish characters “roughly half a dozen” times and worked on just a handful of Scottish-set productions. He called it a telling double standard, especially considering how seldom big backers actually finance local stories.

Moving behind the camera

McAvoy’s first turn in the director’s chair is California Schemin’, a project he discussed while reflecting on what it takes to sustain a life in the arts. The actor said the climb isn’t just long hours and missed dinners—it can chip away at who you are if you’re not careful.

“Anybody trying to make it in the business, you have to sacrifice,”

He described the grind Sharp Magazine-style: early call times, days that bleed into nights, relationships strained by the schedule. The deeper cost, he added, is when the job starts to tax your peace of mind and core values—burnout and heartbreak follow when the emotional bill comes due.

The work that built him

Before stepping behind the camera, McAvoy moved easily between indies and blockbusters. A quick snapshot of the range he’s talking about:

• Filth — Irvine Welsh’s bracing character study
• The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby — a two-perspective drama opposite Jessica Chastain
• X-Men films — a younger Charles Xavier across multiple entries
• Split — M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller and its follow-up, Glass

Even with that track record, he said, the industry’s quick to slap on a label—something he ran into the minute he angled to direct. And as for what’s next in front of the camera, the Sharp profile noted McAvoy has signed on to Armando Iannucci’s new thriller.

Netflix has ordered Dogfight, a London-set revenge thriller that puts Guy Ritchie back in the writer-director-producer chair with Jason Statham leading on screen. The film is set to shoot across the U.K., with backing from Black Bear Pictures alongside Ritchie’s Toff Guy Films and Statham’s Punch Palace Productions. Producing are Ritchie, Statham, Toff Guy partner Ivan Atkinson and Black Bear’s John Friedberg.

Filming on Dogfight is slated to begin in the U.K. in early 2027.

It’s their seventh feature together, a run that started when Ritchie plucked an unknown Statham for 1998’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The new movie is described as a stylish revenge story rooted in the gritty London underworld—very much the terrain that made their names—even as plot specifics are under wraps.

Another job already in the can

Before Dogfight, the duo already teamed up on Viva La Madness, a crime thriller based on J.J. Connolly’s follow-up to Layer Cake. The film wrapped production earlier this year, with Black Bear on the domestic side and Amazon MGM Studios handling international distribution.

Statham is joined in the Viva La Madness ensemble by:

• Vinnie Jones
• Jason Isaacs
• Babs Olusanmokun
• Camila Mendes
• Ben Foster
• Jonny Lee Miller
• Rauw Alejandro — making his feature film acting debut

A partnership built on mayhem

Ritchie and Statham’s track record together mixes cult favorites and recent globe-trotting capers. Their past collaborations include:

• Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
• Snatch (2000)
• Revolver (2005)
• Wrath of Man (2021)
• Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)

Next up: cameras on Dogfight are expected to roll in the U.K. in early 2027 for Netflix.

On a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Alden Ehrenreich said he’s never been on TikTok, keeps just one photo on his Instagram, and even sets his phone wallpaper to a blank screen — a deliberate choice to keep the noise out.

He didn’t just shrug off social media; he went after it. Citing the documentary The Social Dilemma, Ehrenreich argued that endless feeds aren’t just a distraction — they’re warping how people live and how artists make things.

“It’s the climate disaster of culture basically,” he told the Happy Sad Confused podcast.

He described scrolling as a daily reminder of what you’re not doing or not invited to, and said younger artists are increasingly creating with the question “will this sell?” hanging over the work. He added a sliver of optimism, noting a shift he senses among teens and twenty-somethings.

“I do think hopefully young people are starting to like be less enchanted with the culture around it.”

Ehrenreich said his near-empty Instagram leaves him feeling he has to either commit to posting or get off entirely. To show how much the ground has shifted, he recalled a friend’s joke about even Bob Dylan needing to announce a new song on Instagram now, as if social media is the only way to reach anyone. He hopes tighter rules — including age restrictions — could help.

As a reminder to himself, he keeps the phone’s home screen stark: no photo, just black.

Into the woods

That old-school streak goes back years. The day before his 25th birthday, Ehrenreich disappeared into the woods to prepare for his big scene opposite Ralph Fiennes in the Coen brothers’ comedy Hail, Caesar! He said it was the funniest writing he’d ever read — which was exactly the problem. He wanted the moment to land so sincerely that there was no room left for him to crack up.

A Friday rehearsal didn’t go well — he couldn’t get through it without laughing. Director Joel Coen told him to relax because editing could fix it, but Ehrenreich dug in and kept working the scene.

Shoot days stretched to a day and a half. Ehrenreich managed to hold a straight face all the way through his final close-up — until Fiennes broke first.

Curious where to watch the political doc that keeps resurfacing online? In the U.S., Active Measures isn’t sitting on a big subscription service right now — it’s a straightforward digital rental.

Rent it on Prime Video for $2.99 or Apple TV for $3.99.

What the film covers

Released in 2018, the documentary digs into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, tracing political ties and tactics while also spending time on the rise and rule of Vladimir Putin. The film lays out its case through a mix of timelines, on-camera interviews, and archival material.

Notable interviewees include:

• John McCain
• Hillary Clinton
• Michael McFaul (former U.S. Ambassador to Russia)

Release and credits

The movie first screened at Toronto’s Hot Docs festival in April 2018 and opened in the U.S. on August 31, 2018 via distributor Super LTD. It’s directed by Jack Bryan, who later made the 2019 documentary Life After Dark: The Story of Siberia Bar. Producers on Active Measures are Bryan, Marley Clements, and Laura DuBois.

As of 2026, U.S. viewers can rent Active Measures for $2.99–$3.99 on major digital platforms.

Breaking a bit of 007 history back into the chat, Trina Parks — the franchise’s first Black Bond woman, who played the acrobatic assassin Thumper in Diamonds Are Forever in 1971 — just threw her support behind Sydney Sweeney for the next Bond leading lady. In a new interview with The Telegraph, Parks praised Sweeney’s range and old‑school Hollywood poise that she thinks fits right into the Bond world.

“Sydney would do a wonderful job,”

Parks went further than looks and aura. She argued the modern films need women with real agency and control over their sexuality — partners who can hold their ground opposite 007 — and said the franchise’s more outdated romantic formula belongs in the past. Coming from a trailblazer who traded blows with Sean Connery’s Bond, that endorsement lands with extra weight.

The 007 rumor mill

As speculation swirls, Amazon MGM continues to shepherd the next Bond era. The Telegraph reports Denis Villeneuve is in the mix to direct and that casting director Nina Gold is weighing options for the female lead. A rumored shortlist alongside Sweeney includes:

• Zendaya
• Margaret Qualley
• Michelle Randolph
• Nathalie Emmanuel

None of this is confirmed: Amazon MGM hasn’t announced a female lead, and the franchise still hasn’t named its post–Daniel Craig 007.

Sweeney’s next move

While the Bond guessing game continues, Sweeney is already leading The Custom of the Country, adapted from Edith Wharton’s 1913 novel. She plays Undine Spragg, a fiercely ambitious Midwesterner who claws her way into New York high society, leaving romantic and social wreckage in her wake. Josie Rourke (Mary Queen of Scots) wrote and directs, and Sweeney is also a producer.

The ensemble features:

• Leo Woodall
• Dominic West
• Matthew Goode
• Rose Leslie
• Martha Plimpton
• Miranda Richardson
• Hugh Dancy
• Louis Garrel
• Ian Hart

Backed by Studiocanal and Charles Finch’s Rabbit’s Foot Films, the production began filming in Portugal in March 2026 and has moved into post. A 2027 release is expected, but no official date has been announced.

The conversation started lightly — dog breeds, handwritten to-do lists — before Aimee Garcia shifted into the story that’s shaped her whole life. On the podcast Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, the Lucifer alum said she flatlined as a child during a bout of pneumonia and has treated every day since as extra time.

“I might have mentioned this on the podcast before, but I died when I was four years old,” Garcia said. “It’s really informed who I am and how I look at life because to me, I’m on borrow time.”

Garcia said fluid in her lungs sent her to the hospital, where she recovered — but the room next door didn’t. She recalled that the little girl in the neighboring bed died and had no visitors, so Garcia’s father would pick the child up and sing to her. Garcia keeps a humpback whale photo on her wall to remind herself she’s a tiny dot in a very big world, and she tries not to sweat the small stuff.

Known to many as Ella Lopez, the upbeat forensic scientist on Lucifer, Garcia has also gone toe-to-toe with undead mayhem in the Dead Rising movies — but even those plotlines don’t top her real-life pivot point.

Why Dolly’s loss rattled her

When Dolly Parton died on August 25 at age 80, Garcia said the news kept her awake, thinking about mortality and the people she loves. She admitted she usually sleeps about 10 hours a night, but not that night.

Garcia carries a pocket-sized book of Parton quotes, owns a Dolly candle and called her dad as soon as she heard — only to learn he’d shed a few tears, too. She described Parton as a kind of north star she never met and praised the singer’s Imagination Library, which mails free books to young kids and was inspired by Parton’s father, who couldn’t read.

The actress said the loss made her wonder who she’d be without her parents — whom she calls her right and left arm — a reminder that her “borrowed time” outlook isn’t theoretical, it’s daily life.

On a recent episode of Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Aimee Garcia opened up about a run of sleepless nights spent spiraling about loss — not just family, but the cultural icons she grew up with. The conversation kept circling back to Dolly Parton, whose voice and words, Garcia said, have been a steadying force since she was a kid.

Garcia explained that her childhood home had Dolly candles on the shelves, and that she carried around a pocket-sized book of Parton’s sayings the way some people carry a prayer card. Decades later, she still reaches for those pages when she needs grounding.

“It’s like her little book of good quotes. It was like my little Bible that I would just carry around,” Garcia said.

She also recalled phoning her dad to share how much the moment had shaken her, and hearing how hard it hit him, too. As Garcia put it, he admitted he “cried a little bit.”

Why Dolly’s words stuck

Parton’s pull for Garcia tracks: beyond hits like “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” she’s spent more than six decades as a singer, songwriter, actor and philanthropist. Her Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has mailed millions of free books to kids, a signature project that matches her public persona — practical help with a side of heart and humor.

• Growing up, Garcia kept Dolly candles at home.
• She treated Parton’s quote collection like a personal “Bible.”
• Talking it through with her dad left them both emotional.

That blend of wit, warmth and plainspoken advice is why Garcia says Parton’s words still feel like a hand on the shoulder — a reminder she’s carried from childhood to now. The conversation unfolded on Rosenbaum’s podcast, where Garcia didn’t hide how deeply those pages still matter to her.

In the flurry of behind-the-scenes photos from Heidi Klum’s Halloween prosthetics team, fans zeroed in on a few very specific labels and molds sitting on a worktable — details they now think point straight at The Batman: Part II. The shots, taken as Klum’s team built her gnarly party look, ignited a full-on Gotham guessing game overnight.

Klum’s own costume — a bloody “severed” hand she balanced upright and made “walk” on two fingers — was the spectacle. But it’s the background ephemera in those workshop pics that sent internet sleuths digging for sequel clues.

The clues fans spotted

• A scarred facial cast that resembles Brian Tyree Henry, fueling theories he could be Harvey Dent/Two-Face.
• A container labeled “Zsasz”, which dovetails with chatter that Sebastian Stan may be playing serial killer Victor Zsasz rather than Dent.
• A tag reading “Owl 3”, interpreted by fans as a nod to the Court of Owls.
• Mention of an older male casting, sparking speculation about Sebastian Koch’s role.

None of those items have been acknowledged by the studio, and the photos weren’t presented as any kind of reveal — they were simply part of Klum’s annual Halloween production diary. Still, the breadcrumbs lined up neatly enough to kick the rumor mill into overdrive.

None of the rumored details have been confirmed by Warner Bros. or Matt Reeves.

Where the sequel stands

Story details for The Batman: Part II remain locked down. Robert Pattinson is set to return as Bruce Wayne, with Matt Reeves directing and co-writing alongside Mattson Tomlin. Beyond that, reporting around the cast has varied — some names have been floated repeatedly, but official announcements have been scarce.

Here’s who has been reported or rumored so far, alongside returning faces from the first film:

• Robert Pattinson — returning as Bruce Wayne/Batman
• Colin Farrell — expected to return as Oswald Cobblepot (after Max’s The Penguin)
• Jeffrey Wright — expected to return as Jim Gordon
• Andy Serkis — expected to return as Alfred Pennyworth
• Scarlett Johansson — reported to be in the ensemble (role under wraps)
• Sebastian Stan — rumored, with fan theories pointing to Victor Zsasz
• Charles Dance — reported to be part of the sequel
• Brian Tyree Henry — rumored, with fan speculation tying him to Harvey Dent
• Sebastian Koch — reported to be in the cast (role unknown)

The sequel is expected to pick up after events in The Penguin on Max, continuing Reeves’ grounded Gotham crime saga. Production reportedly kicked off in London in June 2026, then paused in October when Reeves stepped away for a family matter; filmmaker Steven Soderbergh has been cited in reports as assisting to keep the shoot on track.

As of now, the film is slated to open in theaters on February 18, 2028.

On the Inside of You podcast with Michael Rosenbaum, Aimee Garcia shared the story of meeting Sandra Bullock early in her career — and getting a compliment she still carries around. Garcia said the encounter happened years ago on the set of the ABC sitcom George Lopez, where Bullock was an executive producer and a key champion of the show.

According to Garcia, Bullock told her she was a younger version of herself — a moment that left Garcia completely floored.

“I could die,”

Garcia said with a laugh as she recounted the exchange. For viewers who’ve followed her since, the reaction is easy to picture: Garcia’s been a steady presence across fan favorites like Lucifer, Dexter, and The Walking Dead: Dead City.

Passing the crown

In a separate recent appearance on Kylie Kelce’s podcast Not Gonna Lie, Bullock talked about the “America’s Sweetheart” label and named a few people she thinks could wear it next. Her short list included:

• Emma Stone
• Lily Collins
• Her Practical Magic 2 co-stars

Hilary Duff says the grind behind Lizzie McGuire left her wiped out by the time cameras rolled on the franchise’s big-screen trip to Italy. Looking back in a new conversation with Paper magazine, she recalled how being addressed as her character nonstop made it hard to feel like herself.

“I was pretty done with Lizzie at that time. Everyone called me Lizzie. And then I went to Italy to film that movie, and I think I was just like, ‘I’m f****** done with you.’ I want people to see me. This isn’t fun anymore.”

The Disney Channel hit launched in 2001 and wrapped in 2004, but Duff noted just how intense those years were: she cranked out 30 episodes in one year and 35 the next—65 episodes total—on top of making The Lizzie McGuire Movie in between. The workload and the constant “Lizzie” labeling, she said, fueled the burnout.

Back to the song

After releasing her 2015 album Breathe In. Breathe Out., Duff stepped away from music for roughly a 10-year stretch. This year, she returned with a re-recording of the fan-favorite “What Dreams Are Made Of,” embracing the anthem she once felt didn’t reflect who she was offscreen. The new version appears on her (Mine) EP, a set collecting fresh takes on several of her biggest songs.

Duff said she’s now comfortable performing the track and celebrating it with fans—something that wasn’t possible when she was trying to separate Hilary from Lizzie.

Where to watch

• Lizzie McGuire (series) — Streaming on Disney+ (Seasons 1–2); also available to purchase on Apple TV.
• The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003) — Streaming on Hulu; available to rent on Prime Video.

On Sunday night’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver couldn’t resist a detour into You Can See Everything, the new Nathan Fielder–Lance Oppenheim documentary that puts Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans on camera for nearly three hours. He framed it as the gold standard for brazen evasiveness, using the film as a punchline — and a measuring stick — for shameless question-dodging.

“I haven't seen someone dodge a question that shamelessly since I spent three hours gasping aloud at two complete lunatics who've never blinked once in their lives,”

Oliver added that his staff has gotten so wrapped up in the movie that it’s been distracting the writers’ room, joking that if anyone wants to talk about it, they should call literally anyone who works on the show.

Inside the documentary

Fielder began filming 34 days before Holmes reported to federal prison in May 2023. Convicted in the Theranos fraud case and sentenced to more than 11 years, Holmes lets the cameras into domestic spaces and long, awkward conversations that double as attempts to prove authenticity. Evans, at one point, acknowledges posting from Holmes’ verified X account on her behalf.

• Directors: Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim
• Subjects: Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans
• Distributor: A24
• US theatrical release: October 16
• Runtime: nearly three hours

Midway through, the film jumps ahead two years. With Holmes incarcerated and absent from the frame, Fielder pivots into more experimental territory — playing with point of view and authorship to ask who controls the story when the central figure can’t be on camera.

The film made a surprise debut at Telluride in September before A24 rolled it out in theaters on October 16.

Asked point-blank in a new Allure interview if she’d ever slip back into Mystique’s blue skin, Jennifer Lawrence didn’t hedge. She answered with the kind of bluntness that made her a late-night talk show favorite.

“Never say never, but absolutely fucking not.”

Lawrence then spelled out why that door is closed: the hours of full-body paint and the frigid airbrushing that came with it. She joked that the process was “like seven airbrushes” going at once — a special kind of torture for someone who’s ticklish — and said enduring it taught her a whole lot of patience.

“Because you know how airbrushing is very cold? So it was like seven airbrushes all... I mean, and I’m ticklish, too.”

Katniss, however, is back

While Mystique is a no, Lawrence has confirmed she’s returning as Katniss Everdeen. On the Call Her Daddy podcast, she said she’ll be back in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, which is slated to hit theaters on November 20. She also talked about how emotional it was to reconnect with her Hunger Games family after years apart.

Two key alums are joining her for the reunion:

• Josh Hutcherson — Peeta Mellark
• Woody Harrelson — Haymitch Abernathy

Lawrence first played Mystique across four X-Men films, but it was Katniss — the girl with the bow and the braid — that turned her into a global phenomenon. Now she’s picking up that story again, with Sunrise on the Reaping set to arrive in theaters on November 20.