Batman/Deadpool Puts a New Twist on Grant Morrison’s Most Metatextual Character

This article contains spoilers for Batman/Deadpool #1.

1990 saw the debut of not one, but two of comics’ most notable fourth-wall breakers. In December’s The New Mutants #98, readers met Wade Wilson a.k.a. Deadpool, the Merc’ With a Mouth–then just a Deathstroke and Terminator rip-off and not the self-aware figure he’d become. A few months earlier, Animal Man #25 introduced the Writer, a kind Scottish person who welcomes Animal Man Buddy Baker into their home and explains that they are the cause of all the heroes’ suffering because they are Grant Morrison, the writer of the comic.

At least, we thought that the Writer is Grant Morrison, especially when the character showed up in last month’s Batman/Deadpool #1, written by Morrison and penciled by Dan Mora. But in the latest edition of their newsletter Xanaduum, Morrison clarifies things by making the character more complicated. “Contrary to speculation, The Writer character here is not me,” writes Morrison. “The Writer on this and subsequent pages is the one who appeared in HBO Max’s Titans, at the end of season 4 episode 9 – Dude, Where’s My Gar! – as written by Geoff Johns.”

Unlikely as it is for any character specifically from the live-action Titans series to show up in the comics, it actually makes sense for Batman/Deadpool and especially for the Writer. Morrison returns to the jet-setting, James Bond-inspired version of Batman he wrote years ago to team a wryly funny version of the Dark Knight with Deadpool as the duo navigate a new world created when a tryst between cosmic entities merges the DC and Marvel Universes. As Batman deflects Deadpool’s motor-mouth observations with dry one-liners, the two encounter all manner of deep cuts from the two comic company’s past, including an appearance by Dark Claw, the Batman/Wolverine mashup from a previous intercompany crossover.

At the end of the story, the heroes find the root of the problem. Onto the page walks the Writer, a bald person in a suit, who explains to Batman and Deadpool that they all serve the word processor in his hands and, more importantly, the expectations of the audience. Even when the story’s ostensible big bad Cassandra Nova, whom Morrison created as part of their X-Men run, tries to control the Writer’s mind, the Writer simply explains that this too was determined by the script.

Such has always been the Writer’s modus operandi. The character first appeared at the end of a particularly nasty storyline in Animal Man, in which the silly D-lister Buddy Baker had his life torn apart when his family was brutally murdered. Buddy gets dark and gritty in his search for revenge, only to meet the Writer at the end of it all. The Writer explains that ’80s comic book fans reject goofy heroes and want something dark, which is why Buddy’s family had to die. But choosing their own creative impulses over the demands of fans, the Writer ultimately decides to restore Buddy’s family and status quo.

In 1990, the Animal Man arc felt revolutionary. Like Alan Moore and Frank Miller, Morrison was interested in deconstructing superhero comics and examining their basic construction. But not only did Morrison avoid the darkness of those two creatives’ work at the time, reducing the death of Buddy’s family to an already obvious and tired trope, but they did so through the perspective of the character. The scene in which Buddy turns around, faces the audience, and shouts, “I can see you!” remains powerful, even after endless homages (including one by Morrison themselves in Batman/Deadpool).

Morrison went on to do more wonderful metatextual work, in the not-crossover Seven Soldiers, the pseudo-gospel All-Star Superman, and the all-encompassing epic The Multiversity. But even they recognized the limitations of the Writer as a character and didn’t gripe when the character died as a member of the Suicide Squad just one year after their debut. Of course, neither did Morrison refrain from stepping from behind the word processor and onto the screen to portray the Writer in live action, in the aforementioned episode of Titans.

But that just makes Morrison’s clarification about the Writer’s identity in Batman/Deadpool all the more interesting. By insisting that they are not the Writer and reminding us that Geoff Johns wrote the script for that Titans episode, Morrison makes the Writer bigger than themselves. No longer is the Writer a stand in for just one Scottish magic practitioner and author of comics. Rather, the Writer is anyone who tells a story, even if that story is about Beast Boy crossing the multiverse in live action or a humorless Deadpool trying to kill the New Mutants.

Batman/Deadpool #1 is now available at your local comic shop.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Trailer Introduces Two Very Different Targaryens

By its very nature, Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is going to be a very different beast than the shows we’ve seen in this universe before. With its lighter tone, more limited scope, shortened runtime, and generally well-meaning central character who is charmingly inept rather than ruthlessly self-centered, it feels like a breath of fresh air in a fictional landscape that could really use one. 

The series’ final trailer fully leans into the fun of highlighting all those differences, once again highlighting the show’s humor, its mercifully brighter color palette, and the delightful if occasionally cloddish goodness that epitomizes Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey). But what sets this clip apart is that it gives us our first look at Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ take on the Targaryens, and it’s quite different than any we’ve seen before. 

Multiple members of the infamous dragon family appear in George R.R. Martin’s “Dunk and Egg” novellas, though, for the most part, they’re less central to the action than you probably expect. The story is set roughly 90 years before the events of Game of Thrones, and the Targaryen family, at this point, is in fairly significant disarray. Thanks to the loss of their dragons, a handful of weak and/or ineffectual rulers, and yet another intra-family civil war that leaves the seven kingdoms in ruins, they’re hardly seen as the near-gods they once were. Don’t believe me? Imagine anyone referring to Daemon or Rhaenyra on House of the Dragon as tyrants and incestuous aliens the way Raymun does in this trailer and not getting immediately beheaded. That is a family in decline.

In the world of Dunk and Egg, the Targaryens largely occupy the fringes of the story, which focuses primarily on the lives of the smallfolk scratching out a living on the edges of their endless wars and family squabbles. But the trailer does introduce the two Targaryens you really need to know in Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Prince Baelor “Breakspear” Targaryen (Bertie Carvel) and his nephew, Aerion “Brightflame” Targaryen (Finn Bennett). If it’s not immediately evident from the clip, these two men are virtually nothing alike, and that’s something that’s absolutely going to come into play multiple times during this story. 

Baelor, for starters, doesn’t look anything like a Targaryen, despite his status as the heir to his father, King Daeron II. The black sheep of the clan, thanks to the darker hair and complexion he inherited from his Dornish mother, Myriah Martell, he’s a remarkably fair and just leader, level-headed, intelligent, and generally great in a way that most assuredly does not run in his family. In the novella, he speaks up for Dunk on more than one occasion, and in the trailer, he seems prepared to at least give him some advice about how to avoid Aerion’s evident wrath. 

Aerion, on the other hand, is… pretty much exactly the kind of character we picture when we think of a Targaryen: Platinum blond, violent, and clearly obsessed with the family legacy. (He will go on to become known as Aerion the Monstrous if you want a sneak peek at how that all turns out.) Sporting an admittedly badass dragon-head helm, Aerion certainly looks the part of a Targaryen warrior in the vein of House of the Dragon’s Daemon (Matt Smith), but when you consider the fact that he’s still dressing up like this decades after the last dragon died to compete in a joust at a market town in the Reach, well… it all just all becomes sort of sad, more than anything else. 

How these two Targaryens and the larger battles for the Iron Throne that their stories represent will intersect with Ser Dunk’s onscreen remains to be seen. But at least we don’t have to wait very long to find out for ourselves.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres Sunday, January 18 at 10 p.m. ET on HBO.

Matthew Macfadyen Will Bring John Le Carré’s Most Famous Spy to Life

Though Amazon’s still struggling to figure out what to do with the James Bond franchise it acquired with seemingly very little forethought, espionage and spy dramas are still having a moment in pop culture. Blame Apple TV’s Slow Horses, whose five-season (and counting!) run has racked up critical acclaim, several significant pieces of awards hardware, and the sort of viewer numbers that more than justify its repeat renewals. (Heck, it’s even got a pseudo spinoff in the Emma Thompson-led Down Cemetery Road, which is based on another of author Mick Herron’s investigative series.) So it’s no surprise that other networks and streamers are rushing to follow suit.

MGM+ has joined forces with the BBC to produce Legacy of Spies, a new eight-part series based on the works of one of the most famous spy storytellers of all time: John le Carré. A former intelligence officer himself, he is considered one of the greatest novelists of the postwar era and is known for his realistic depictions of the world of spycraft. The series will follow the story of George Smiley, arguably Le Carré’s most famous character, who starred in half a dozen of his novels and appeared as a supporting figure in four more.

Despite his ubiquitous presence on the page, the character of Smiley hasn’t been brought to life on screen all that often. Rupert Davies’ take on the character is a minor role in the 1965 film adaptation of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. Star Wars great Alec Guinness played him in a pair of popular BBC series that aired back in the late 1970s and early 80s. And Slow Horses star Gary Oldman nabbed an Oscar nomination for playing the (in)famous agent in the critically acclaimed 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. 

Now Matthew Macfadyen, the actor best known these days for his turn as Tom Wambsgans on HBO’s Succession, but who has played everyone from Fitzwilliam Darcy (the 2005 Pride and Prejudice film) to assassin Charles Guiteau (Netflix’s Death By Lightning), will take on the role. He’s obviously talented, but he also has established spy series cred, having led the first two seasons of the long-running BBC series Spooks (which aired here in America as MI-5).

Legacy of Spies will adapt The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, while drawing in additional material from Le Carré’s 2017 novel A Legacy of Spies. This move makes sense, given that this is probably Le Carré’s best-known work. But Smiley’s also a fairly minor character in it, and the story primarily follows an intelligence officer named Alec Leamas. Since the show’s being touted as an exploration of his long-standing quest to catch the Russian spymaster known as Karla, it’s… well, it’s a somewhat surprising adaptation choice. 

Of course, this could all just be backhand confirmation that Legacy of Spies is a series that’s intended to run for several seasons. After all, neither of these listed titles is part of what is traditionally referred to as Le Carre’s “ Karla trilogy” (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People), and while A Legacy of Spies is technically a sequel to those books (with some additional prequel bits thrown in), it seems unlikely the TV series would skip over all the good stuff just to get to the end so quickly. 

Macfadyen isn’t the only A-lister taking part in the eight-part drama. Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam will take on the role of Leamas, with Daniel Brühl playing East German spy Jens Fielder, and Devrim Lingnau Islamoğlu as Doris Quinz, otherwise known as Agent Tulip. If you’re wondering why there’s no one playing Karla… well, technically, the shadowy figure rarely appears directly in the books. Though it seems highly likely the television series will opt to change that — what’s the point of a high-stakes cat and mouse chase if you only ever see one side of it onscreen? But we’ll have to wait and see on that score. 

Production on the series is slated to begin in 2026.

SXSW 2026 Will Open Witth a Bang Courtesy of Boots Riley

Austin’s SXSW festival turns 40 years old next year. And like most who hit that milestone age, SXSW wants to kick off the decade with a bang. It’s hard to think of a better choice than the movie that opens the 2026 festival, I Love Boosters from provocateur Boots Riley.

To follow his mind-bending debut Sorry to Bother You, and his cult hit miniseries I Am a Virgo, Riley’s gathered an incredible cast for I Love Boosters, including Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, as well as established stars LaKeith Stanfield, Don Cheadle and Demi Moore.

I Love Boosters follows a group of shoplifters who band together as the Velvet Gang to fight against a fashion icon. If that description brings to mind a light-hearted comedy, then you clearly don’t know about Boots Riley. A founding member of the Leftist hip hop group the Coup and the rap-rock duo Street Sweeper Social Club, along with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Riley brought his vibrant anti-capitalist and pro-people message to the screen with Sorry to Bother You in 2018.

That film starred Stanfield as a Black worker at a call center who becomes a sensation thanks to his ability to adopt a “white voice” (provided by David Cross). From there, the movie becomes a surreal comedy and a hilarious screed against corporate America, including Amazon whose proxy in the satire begins developing horse/human hybrids. I Am a Virgo takes that same approach and spreads it out over seven episodes. Part superhero story, part agitprop surrealism, I Am a Virgo stars Jharrel Jerome as a 13-foot-tall boy who becomes a political flashpoint.

Riley’s ability to transcend genre and tones to create something strange and immediate makes his latest project the perfect choice for SXSW. Part concert, part film festival, part interactive media hub, SXSW celebrates all things creative.

“We are beyond thrilled to kick off the festival with the world premiere of Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters,” said Claudette Godfrey, the festival’s VP of Film & TV. “We can’t wait for our audience to be sucked into his singular, subversive world where razor-sharp social commentary meets fearless, surreal storytelling and eye-popping imagery—all powered by a ridiculously stacked cast of some of the most talented actors on the planet.”

I Love Boosters will join a long list of great movies that made their debut at SXSW. Past standouts include Four Letter Words and Medicine for Melancholy, the first feature from indie favorites Sean Baker and Barry Jenkins, hit comedies such as Knocked Up and Bridesmaids, and the indescribable Spring Breakers.

With such an incredible history, SXSW has more than earned the right to rest on its laurels. But clearly the festival has no intention of slowing down and, with the help of Boots Riley, is only going to weirder, wilder, and better as it ages.

SXSW 2026 runs March 12-18 in Austin, Texas.

The Batman 2: Who Is Scarlett Johansson Playing?

Scarlett Johansson has left the MCU and come to the DC Universe! Well, sort of. The former Black Widow will star alongside Robert Pattinson in The Batman Part II, Matt Reeves’ more grounded take on Gotham City. Whenever a major star joins an established comic book franchise, theories about potential characters flood the internet. That’s even more true with The Batman Part II, as Reeves’ unique approach not only brings in deep cuts from the comics, but also leaves plenty of room for unique interpretations on even established characters.

Even with all of those possibilities, here are the six denizens of Gotham City that we could see ScarJo play in The Batman Part II.

Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy

Going all the way back to Cesar Romero and Burgess Meredith playing Joker and Penguin on the ’60s Batman show, stars who come to Gotham play baddies. So when an actress of Johansson’s caliber signs onto The Batman, most expect that she’ll play the most popular villainess who isn’t Catwoman or Harley Quinn: Poison Ivy.

Although the comic book version of Poison Ivy has the ability to control plants, which makes her a strange fit in Reeves’s world without superpowers, one could imagine Johansson playing an eco-terrorist with botanical bombs of some sort. Like Paul Dano‘s the Riddler, this Poison Ivy could be someone with a just cause who goes about it in a way that challenges Batman both physically and thematically.

That said, a few objections must be stated. Reeves has already said that The Batman 2 would feature a baddie (somewhat) new to movies, and Uma Thurman‘s Mae West-inspired take in Batman & Robin is still the best part of that film. Further, Poison Ivy isn’t really a villain anymore. In both the comics and the Harley Quinn animated show, she’s an antihero and Harley’s partner. It might feel like a step back to make her a big bad again.

Silver St. Cloud

When one thinks glamorous blonde in the world of Batman, the mind immediately goes to Silver St. Cloud. Silver St. Cloud debuted during the period in the comics in which Bruce Wayne left his stately manor and lived in a penthouse. A glamorous society woman, Silver St. Cloud drew Bruce toward his civilian identity and away from his duties atop Gotham rooftops, at least until she learned about his double-life.

Those qualities make Silver St. Cloud a natural fit for The Batman Part II, given the way the previous movie ended. Pattinson’s Wayne has little in common with the billionaire playboy persona usually associated with the character. In the same way that he ends the movie realizing that Batman needs to inspire hope, Wayne understands that he needs to honor his parents’ commitment to civic duty. Silver St. Cloud could help him do that.

Even the setting associated with St. Cloud allows room for a Matt Reeves twist. In The Batman, Wayne lives in a Wayne Tower penthouse, which gets destroyed by a letter bomb from the Riddler. The Batman Part II will probably see him doing the opposite of what he did in the comics and moving into Wayne Manor. Bruce will need a guide to help him navigate Gotham society and Silver St. Cloud may be the girl to do it.

Andrea Beaumont/Phantasm

The cool Bat-fans know that Batman: The Animated Series is the best incarnation of the Dark Knight. So important is that series that Reeves recently teamed with TAS co-creator Bruce Timm to make a spiritual sequel, Batman: Caped Crusader. So it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for Reeves to cast Johansson as one of that show’s most important characters: Andrea Beaumont a.k.a. the Phantasm.

As seen in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, a young Bruce Wayne met and fell for Andrea Beaumont shortly after his return to Gotham after his years training to become Batman. So taken by Beaumont is he that he even considers giving up his quest for justice and allowing himself a happy life. That chance at happiness is stolen from him when Andrea’s father takes her away to escape his mob ties, leading Beaumont to eventually become the vengeful Phantasm.

Beaumont would be a great role for Johansson because it would give her a chance to play two types of characters. As Beaumont, she could play a socialite similar to Silver St. Cloud, a woman who offers Bruce a different path. And as Phantasm, she could exercise the action chops she developed in the MCU, getting to have her own cool fight sequences with Batman.

Gilda Dent/Holiday

Okay, this one takes some explaining. For most of her existence, Gilda Gold was just the doomed fiancee of Harvey Dent, the good girl who lost the man of her dreams when he was transformed into Two-Face. Sometimes, when Harvey seems to get treatment and cures himself of the Two-Face identity, Gilda marries him but lives in fear that his other identity will resurface (as it always does).

That’s more or less how Gilda seems throughout most of The Long Halloween, the classic story by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale that influenced The Batman. But as Batman investigates murders of the Falcone crime family by someone dubbed the Holiday Killer, the trail leads to Gilda. Batman discovers Gilda’s past with the Falcone family before she married Harvey, a past that eventually drives her to take revenge as the Holiday Killer.

Not only does The Batman draw inspiration from The Long Halloween, but it also dove into the twisted history of the Falcone family, making Gilda a natural fit. That said, even as Holiday, Gilda is second-fiddle to Two-Face, which makes her unlikely for Johansson. Also, some of Gilda’s themes, if not plot points, were grafted onto Sofia Falcone’s story in The Penguin, carried by an incredible performance by Cristin Milioti. Great as Johansson is, she may not want to follow too closely to that award-winning take.

Dr. Hilda Strange

As The Batman showed, Reeves has no problem playing around with comic lore. He made Selina Kyle into the daughter of Carmine Falcone and made the Penguin Oz Cobb instead of Oswald Cobblepot. And given the lack of great female villains in the Batman stable, we wouldn’t put it past Reeves to gender flip a character to suit Johansson.

If so, a great choice may be Dr. Hugo Strange, the psychologist who gets inside of Bruce Wayne’s head. The character fits the more psychological nature of Reeves’s movies and hasn’t been in previous films, making him ripe for adaptation, even if he has to become Hilda or Hugette for Johansson.

Again, though, two issues stand in the way. Theo Rossi’s creepy psychologist Dr. Rush in The Penguin sure felt a lot like Hugo Strange, so Reeves may have some plans for him there. Second, whenever we think of a blond psychologist who gets inside Batman’s head, only one name comes to mind: Dr. Chase Meridian, Nicole Kidman‘s character from Batman Forever. And not even Johansson could take on a character so complex that her first name describes what she does.

I guess we’ll just need to wait until an official casting announcement gets released.

Russell T. Davies Says He’s Already Figured Out Next Year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special

Though the… let’s just call it, much-discussed Doctor Who spinoff series The War Between the Land and the Sea is finally set to hit our screens this month (at least for fans in the United Kingdom), showrunner Russell T Davies is already looking ahead to the future of the Whoniverse. Namely, the 2026 Christmas special, an installment that will be the franchise’s first since the collapse of its much-vaunted production deal with Disney. 

This is probably a good thing, given that this special is going to have to do a lot of clean-up in the wake of the divisive season 15 finale that saw Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor regenerate into former companion Billie Piper, for some reason. Who is Piper playing? Why didn’t Fifteen just regenerate into the next Doctor (since it clearly isn’t Piper’s character)? Will this special manage to introduce the next Doctor? Who’s even going to be in this special, outside of Piper, who sort of has to be? And how is the show planning to deal with all of this mess in the midst of what is, traditionally, a fairly madcap holiday romp?

There are a lot of unknowns out there, but according to Davies, he’s got it all under control. 

Speaking with the Radio Times, he seemed confident about the direction of the festive installment. “I know exactly what happens in it, don’t worry about that,” he said. 

However, he also went on to confirm that the Christmas special doesn’t exactly exist as such yet. “Not at the moment because I’m busy on [The War Between the Land and the Sea],” he said when asked about whether he was writing the holiday episode. “I’m also shooting a show in Manchester [the LGBTQ drama Tip Toe], so next year my plate clears, and we’ll get to work on that.”

While this certainly seems like a tremendously quick turnaround given that the episode is set to air next December and has (obviously) yet to be filmed, Davies may actually be a little further along in his process than he originally hinted. 

In the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine, the showrunner shares a three-word tease with readers about what they can expect from Doctor Who’s return. “Twelve months-a-waiting! Next December, I’ll be here to trumpet and toot about the 2026 Christmas Special,” he said. “It contains these three words. ‘Bafflers,’ ‘Winternox’ and ‘village’.”

Village seems fairly self-explanatory. My money’s on Winternox being the name of whatever the holiday monster of the week happens to be. And to spare you a Google: “Bafflers” can mean either a particularly difficult puzzle or riddle, or a device that’s used to prevent the spreading of sound or light in a particular direction. Heck, in the world of Doctor Who, it could easily mean both. Weirder things have happened. 

Honestly, this is a lot to say that we have no idea what’s coming next. This is probably normal, given that we’re over a year from the episode’s release. Given the epically messy nature of the BBC and Disney’s breakup — see also the almost purposefully disparate War Between the Land and the Sea release dates —  it’s likely that any plans to get Who back on our screens are in the early stages at best, and there’s so much we just don’t know. Beyond the BBC’s insistence that the show will continue, there’s no word yet on when we can expect another full season, or if Davies will still be in charge of things when that happens. 

Maybe we just take this small bit of news for the Christmas gift it is, and take the rest of it as it comes. (And figure out how we’re all going to watch the spinoff in the meantime.) 

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Review: Gateway Horror That’s Unapologetically for Kids

The Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise is uniquely suited to one of horror’s most consistent tropes. Whether it’s Steve McQueen and Aneta Corsaut warning their townspeople about ravenous slime in The Blob, Heather Langenkamp confronting her mother about Freddy Krueger, or the distracted parents of Derry, Maine, horror fiction is filled with kids who get it and parents who just don’t understand.

Based on an enormously popular video game series with winding and (to the outsider) impenetrable lore, both 2023’s Five Nights at Freddy’s and now its new sequel split moviegoing audiences into two groups. There’s the superfans who understand the world created by indie game designer Scott Cawthon—the folks who can discern the difference between Toy Chica, Nightmare Chica, and regular ol’ Chica—and then there’s everybody else. Those of us who come to the movie hoping for a few decent scares and hoping not to get too confused by the backstory. The former group will certainly get more from this sequel, but the grown-ups won’t be totally lost by Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, precisely because it rewards ignorance, sometimes to its own detriment.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 begins in the aftermath of the first film with the principal characters trying and failing to move on from their deadly encounter with animatronics possessed by murdered children. Of the principals, Mike (Josh Hutcherson) seems to be coping best, devoting his time to renovating his run-down house and caring for his young sister Abby (Piper Rubio). But Abby misses those spectral kids she befriended, especially since her technical wizardry and devotion to ghost stories alienates her from everyone at school, including her science teacher (Wayne Knight). Worse still is Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), a grown woman still haunted by her father, the child murderer and creator of the animatronics at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

As troubled as the Freddy’s experience has left our principals, lurid Freddy Fazbear mania has overtaken the town, attracting true crime enthusiasts to host a convention celebrating the animatronics and its lore. That attention draws a trio of ghost hunters, led by Lisa (Mckenna Grace) and her co-hosts (David Andrew Calvillo and Teo Briones), who are invited to the long-shuttered original location by a mysterious figure called Michael (Freddy Carter). As you might guess the investigation goes… poorly. In fact, it unleashes a whole new monster called the Marionette, and all the deadly animatronic nonsense that comes with it.

If that summary sounds overwhelming to the uninitiated, rest assured that director Emma Tammi and screenwriter Cawthon, this time without the co-writers attached to the first movie, keep everything legible. Characters plainly state their feelings and motivations. They declare plot points and explain relationships to one another. And anything not explicitly explained, such as the cameos by YouTube celebrities, or some random toy or object on which the camera lingers, passes by without disrupting the plot.

While this approach strips the film of any emotional resonance, it leaves plenty of space for scares. And the scares also require no foreknowledge. In fact, they work better for it.

Apropos of an adaptation of a game in which characters jump toward the screen, nearly every scare in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is a jump scare. A little boy turns around to find Freddy standing in front of him. A mom closes the refrigerator door to reveal Bonnie waiting. Foxy’s hand smashes through a car window. How did those characters get into those places to jump out? Where do they stand in relation to Mike, Abby, and Vanessa? The movie doesn’t know and doesn’t care. At no point does Tammi take the time to lay out the spacial geography of her movie, even when Mike stares at a literal map with blinking lights to indicate the animatronics’ positions. The monsters are always already behind you, just waiting for a loud music cue before they attack.

The one exception to this rule is the Marionette. Like the other characters, she has a backstory that involves a murdered child (Audrey Lynn-Marie) and a connection to the pizza parlor’s past (plus a cameo portrayed by Lillard’s Scream co-conspirator, Skeet Ulrich, giving the adults something that the kids don’t get). Although the Marionette has her moments of striking at the audience out of nowhere, Tammi’s camera at least takes some time to admire her genuinely creepy design, yellow glowing eyes peering out of a pale face covered by blond hair, her tear stains blending with her smile.

In fact, all of the main monsters look pretty good whenever the camera stops to admire them. The plot allows for several iterations of the main animatronics, which will thrill fans who want to see their favorite version but also keeps things visually interesting. The addition of Megan Fox as the voice of Toy Chica, the bird figure who seems to befriend Abby, does nothing for those who don’t recognize her name in the credits, but it’s still creepy to hear her chipper cadence coming from a massive puppet.

Does all of this make Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 a good movie? Not quite. Even those who can turn off their brain and enjoy the jump scares will get annoyed that Tammi and Cawthon don’t take full advantage of their own premise. The movie never really gets much mileage out of setting the animatronics loose on the town and seems disinterested with the fact that there’s a convention of superfans happening at the same time.

But of course Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 isn’t really about consistent plotting or creating tension. It’s about giving fans the references they want and giving everyone else enough jump scares to pass the time. It’s a movie for kids just getting into horror, and if they understand something that eludes their parents then, well, the kids have already learned one of the genre’s most important lessons.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 opens in theaters nationwide on Dec. 5, 2025.

Christina Chong Has an Idea for a Strange New Worlds and Doctor Who Crossover

Star Trek and Doctor Who are two of the most iconic franchises in sci-fi television history, so it’s not surprising that fans have been dreaming of a crossover between them for many years. It makes a certain amount of sense: The shows share a similar optimistic, open-hearted worldview that embraces the more aspirational and hopeful elements of the genre. And in recent years, the two franchises have flirted with each other more and more often, from increasingly overt references and Easter eggs onscreen to a comics crossover that saw the Doctor join forces with the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew. 

But Christina Chong has a more direct idea. The actress, who plays Star Trek: Strange New Worlds security officer La’an Noonien Singh, is one of the few stars who have appeared on both franchises, and thinks her characters could help make this long-hoped-for dream a reality. 

For those who don’t remember, Chong played the 51st-century cleric Lorna Bucket in the Eleventh Doctor episode “A Good Man Goes to War.” Her character played a key role in revealing River Song’s identity as Amy Pond’s daughter and had her own timey-wimey relationship with the Doctor. 

According to TrekMovie.com, during an appearance at the recent ST-CHI: Trek To Chicago convention, Chong shared her thoughts on a variety of topics, from the bittersweet final days of Strange New Worlds filming to some of the episode ideas she’s pitched to producers in the past. (Not for nothing, but the Federation Olympics is a seriously great concept.) And when she was asked about her thoughts on the concept of a Trek/Who crossover, she was more than ready with her idea.

“So what I would do is—I played a character called Lorna Bucket in “A Good Man Goes to War,” one of Matt Smith’s episodes—and I would somehow find a way to make La’an and Lorna Bucket the same character,” Chong said. “And [I’d] create a story as to why Lorna Bucket was in the Whoniverse and what brought her to Trekverse. I don’t know what that reason would be right now.”

The fact that Lorna dies tragically in the Doctor’s arms at the end of the episode is maybe a small roadblock to this plan, but Doctor Who is nothing if not incredibly willing to play with the timelines of its characters’ lives. For example, while we know that Lorna met the Doctor more than once over the course of her life, for Eleven, her death was technically their first encounter for him. (It’s literally a plot point that he doesn’t remember who she is, even though he lies about it in the name of comforting her.) 

Who’s to say some later incarnation didn’t take her traveling as a sort of timey-wimey apology? It’s already been confirmed (albeit in a roundabout way) that Strange New Worlds and Doctor Who exist in the same universe; Lorna somehow finding her way to a new life on the Enterprise isn’t even close to the weirdest thing that’s ever happened on either show.

An audience member at Chong’s panel also piped up with the idea that Lorna and La’an could perhaps turn out to be augment twins separated at birth. While less of a direct crossover — it’s unlikely we’d need the Doctor for such a story — it would be an intriguing new way to explore her family history. Most of Strange New Worlds has focused on La’an’s lingering trauma as a survivor of the Gorn attacks rather than her specific experiences as a descendant of Khan. 

Unfortunately, as filming is set to wrap on Strange New Worlds’ final season in the coming weeks — and Doctor Who is currently trapped in its own post-Disney era hiatus — such an idea will most likely have to remain an entertaining what-if. But it’s still fun to dream, isn’t it?

Tig Notaro Might Be Our Next Big Movie Star

Zack Snyder has garnered such a passionate following because few filmmakers are better at turning regular people into gods. In movies such as 300, Man of Steel, and Army of the Dead, Snyder trains his camera at his stars with reverence, making them into icons that loom over we lowly regular folk and inspire awe in audiences. Now he’s ready to do the same with Tig Notaro, a deadpan stand-up comedian and emergency stand-in performer in Snyder’s Army of the Dead.

After realizing that she had gone viral for being a lesbian sex symbol in Army of the Dead, Notaro had a pitch for Snyder, as she told Kara Swisher on the latter’s podcast (via Variety). “What if we just went for it and everyone’s a hot lesbian?” And to his credit, Snyder responded positively. “He was like, ‘Oh my God, yes, let’s make that movie,'” recalled Notaro.

In some ways, Notaro is an unlikely choice for Hollywood stardom. She doesn’t have the muscles or figure that Snyder’s camera usually adores, nor does she have a demeanor suggesting she’s bearing the weight of the world or saving the galaxy. Instead, she excels at making wry observations and cracking the well-timed joke.

And those qualities have served Notaro just fine. The 54-year-old Mississippian entered show business as a comedian, gaining praise for her dry sense of humor and observational absurdity. She rose to prominence with her 2012 concert album Live, which featured material about her cancer diagnosis. Notaro’s humane but offbeat approach to the disease made her a hit, which led to multiple film and television appearances before getting her own show One Mississippi on Prime Video and the documentary Tig on Netflix, both released in 2015.

Notaro made the jump to genre work with the 2014 thriller Catch Hell, where she starred alongside Ryan Phillipe, who wrote and directed the film, and later appeared in Noah Hawley‘s film Lucy in the Sky. But her most significant genre material was in the world of Star Trek, where she played snarky engineer Jett Reno on Discovery, injecting some much-needed low-stakes humor into the show. So great was her performance that she’s reprising her role as Reno for the upcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.

Notaro entered Snyder’s orbit in the most unsual way. Snyder originally shot Army of the Dead with comedian Chris D’Elia. Before the film released to Netflix, sexual assault allegations against D’Elia arose, and Snyder promptly removed him from the film and replaced him with Notaro as Marianne Peters. Having no time to do full cast reshoots of the movie before its release on May 14, 2021, Snyder simply shot scenes of Notaro standing alone and delivering dialogue without her other actors, which the director then spliced together into the finished film.

Unideal as the conditions may have been, they apparently worked, as far as Notaro’s concerned. “It was so unexpected,” said Notaro of her sudden popularity. “My phone’s exploding. I’m not walking around going ‘Oh my God,’ you know, ‘check me out.’ I was so confused. So I called Zack, and I said, ‘I’m hearing it from straight men, gay men, gay women, and straight women that they think I’m hot in this movie.'”

At this point, we don’t know what Notaro and Snyder are cooking up together. Given the latter’s filmography, one would assume an action film, which seems ill-suited for Notaro… until one considers recent movie trends. The Bob Odenkirk picture Nobody, Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer trilogy, and last year’s charming June Squibb vehicle Thelma show that there’s a real market for stories about older-than-average and unexpected action stars.

Whatever the genre will be, Notaro knows how to give the people what they want. “We’re in the process of putting the script together,” she said of the project’s current status, before getting right to the point. “Picture this poster: We have the name of the film, and then it says ‘Hot Lesbian Action.’ That’s how I sold him on the Zoom.”

And with those three words, the world is about to get the greatest Zack Snyder hero of them all.

The Wire’s David Simon Will Apologize For Killing Your Favorite Character

This article contains full spoilers for The Wire, which you really should have watched by now. Seriously, why haven’t you watched The Wire?

Where’s Wallace at? For decades, that question has haunted fans of The Wire. The question arose when Baltimore drug dealer D’Angelo Barksdale (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) realized that the boy Wallace (a young Michael B. Jordan) was missing and likely murdered. A horrified D’Angelo confronts his boss Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), peppering him with the question, asking not just where Wallace is at, but also why a child had to die.

Now, some fans in Tennessee can ask the same question and take it to the top, all the way to The Wire‘s creator David Simon. In a now-deleted post to the social media site Bluesky on December 2, 2025, Simon said, “If you are a voter in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District and a fan of The Wire, I will, on evidence you voted today, pen a personal apology for having killed any character you cared for.”

In other words, Simon has a lot of apologizing to do.

Based on his experiences as an investigative reporter for the Sun, experiences that also spawned the television series Homicide: Life on the Street and The Corner, The Wire explored the rotting of America via an examination of Baltimore. Starting with the drug trade in project housing and tracing its entanglement with law enforcement, city politics, the school system, and the new media, The Wire managed to be at once poetic and real, a tragedy that felt both true to the citizens it followed and indicative of the entire country.

Which meant that a lot of great characters died on The Wire. In addition to innocent Wallace, there was the incredibly charismatic Omar Little (Michael K. Williams), who robbed drug dealers and met an ignoble end in season five. There was Snoop (Felicia Pearson), who has one of the show’s most memorable exchanges right before her execution. There was first season antagonist Stringer Bell, whose death was the culmination of a tragic downfall. And then there was poor Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer), killed off screen at the end of the series’s second (and best!) season.

Of course, The Wire had incredible moments of optimism too. Famously, Simon reversed his original decision to have Detective Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) die of gunshot wounds in season one. Even better, addict Bubbles (Andre Royo) managed to kick the habit that ravaged him for five seasons, resulting in one of television’s all-time great character arcs.

But that’s not what people want to talk to Simon about. They want him to apologize for making them care so much about these characters and then ripping the characters away. And Simon was happy to do it, provided that voted for Democratic Aftyn Behn over Republican Matt Van Epps, whom the writer called “some cheese-eating supplicant for any tinpot dictator.”

Or, rather, Simon would have been happy to do it. But not only has Simon since removed his post (“writer’s cramp,” he explained) but Van Epps defeated Behn by nine percentage points. Which is exactly the type of terrible thing that The Wire set out to chronicle, and what made its deaths feel so real.

All five seasons of The Wire are streaming on HBO Max. So now you don’t have an excuse for not watching it.

Stranger Things Season 5 Viewing Figures Are Huge

The latest season of Netflix’s sci-fi horror hit Stranger Things has shattered its own records and then some. Viewership numbers reportedly show that the first volume of season 5 racked up a staggering 59.6 million views in its first five days after release, making it the biggest debut ever for an English-language Netflix series.

This figure is pretty dramatic compared with season 4’s premiere. When volume 1 of season 4 launched in 2022, Netflix counted around 287 million hours streamed over its opening days. While this doesn’t directly translate to views, those hours are roughly equivalent to 22 million views, meaning that season 5’s figure represents about a 171% increase.

This figure also ranks the show among the streamer’s most-watched debuts, trailing behind only the second and third seasons of Squid Game, but this level of popularity was likely partly fueled by Netflix’s decision to make the final season of the show such a huge event, one that will culminate on New Year’s Eve.

High viewership hasn’t guaranteed unanimous praise for this season, though. One notable review has claimed that Stranger Things may be outgrowing its original appeal, given the extended time between seasons and the young cast having clearly aged so much in the meantime.

In the first four episodes of season 5, we caught up with the Hawkins gang as they tried to track down the villainous Vecna and get rid of him once and for all. The fourth episode concluded with a payoff for poor Will Byers, who has suffered any number of indignities since the show first began in 2016, but has finally unlocked his supernatural powers and link to the hive mind in the Upside Down.

You can bet that the final episodes of Stranger Things will also be one of the most-watched TV events of 2025, given that so many people logged on to watch the first volume last month that the service temporarily crashed.

Ready or Not 2 Trailer Promises a Neo-Scream Queen Team Up

Late in the first Ready or Not film, Samara Weaving delivers a sound that defies all characterization. Backed into a corner by members of the Le Domas family, who try to kill her as soon as she marries a member of the wealthy clan, Weaving’s character Grace grabs a knife and emits what might be a shriek, might be a dolphin call, or might something else altogether. Whatever the sound was, it fully solidified Weaving’s status as a modern Scream Queen.

The first teaser for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come wisely replays that scene and Weaving’s idiosyncratic screech. But it goes even further to introduce Grace’s little sister Faith. Faith is played by Kathryn Newton who, of course, established her own Scream Queen credentials in Abigail, the previous movie made by Ready or Not directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Thus, with Ready or Not 2, we get a true Neo-Scream Queen team up, carrying on the proud tradition of women in horror movies.

Ready or Not 2 seems to pick up directly where the first movie left off. After marrying Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brien) on the estate of his estranged family, Grace learns that his ancestor achieved such fortune in the game-making business by entering into a deal with the Satanic Mr. Le Bail. That deal bestowed untold wealth upon the Le Domases, but required them to play a game every time they welcomed a new member. In Grace’s case, that game was Hide ‘n Seek, with a deadly twist, as the Le Domases, including a reluctant Alex, had to hunt her down.

As we see in the Ready or Not 2 trailer, Grace survived her in-laws’ attack, which resulted in their being exploded like blood balloons by Le Bail, punishment for failing to uphold their part of the deal. The next movie, also written by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, picks up immediately afterwards. A new rich person (Elijah Wood) informs Grace that her survival simply means that the game continues, and now other wealthy families have to hunt her down. To up the stakes, Grace will be joined by Faith as the other quarry.

Film fans will certainly take note of the all-star cast making up the new families, including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Néstor Carbonell (sounding a lot like Batmanuel from The Tick), and horror legend David Cronenberg. They’ll also note that the scene of Grace being attacked in the hospital, recovering from the events of the first film, recalls Laurie Strode’s fate at the start of 1980’s Halloween II.

That’s an apt comparison, given the nature of the Scream Queen. Although the term goes back to Fay Wray in 1933’s King Kong, the greatest Scream Queen is Jamie Lee Curtis, who survived the onslaught of Michael Myers in Halloween and its sequels. Curtis, of course, came by the title honestly, as her mother Janet Leigh unleashed one of cinema’s best screams in 1960’s Psycho.

Although Curtis continues to do great work, even reprising her role as Laurie for the recent Halloween legacy sequels, it’s time for a new generation of actresses to put their own spin on the horror genre. And if Newton can deliver a noise as memorable as her on-screen sister, the future of horror is in good hands.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come releases April 10, 2026.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Cast: Who’s Who in Game of Thrones Prequel

Though the Game of Thrones franchise is now endemic to our culture, the success of the original fantasy epic wasn’t always so assured. One can imagine HBO execs’ mounting concern in the early days of Game of Thrones‘ first season as viewers were tasked with keeping up with the immense lore of George R.R. Martin’s sprawling “A Song of Ice and Fire” canon. Then Tyrion of House Lannister met Bronn of House No-One-In-Particular on the road to The Eyrie and everything changed.

Tyrion and Bronn’s unlikely bromance was the first of many Game of Thrones pairings that would launch dozens of YouTube fan compilations and low-res “Westerbros” gifs. It served as a reminder that, even amid all the political posturing, gratuitous nudity, and child defenestration, the core of this story would always be about interesting characters bumping into one another. Now, nearly 15 years later, second Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to boldly ask “what if we just built the whole thing out of oddball pairings?”

Based on Martin’s series of three prequel novellas called “Tales of Dunk and Egg,” A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows the mismatched duo of dim-witted but good-natured hedge knight Ser Duncan the Tall a.k.a. “Dunk” and his young, bald-headed squire Egg as they traipse across a postwar Seven Kingdoms looking for adventure.

“[This show] allows us to lean into the thing that I think a lot of Game of Thrones fans love, which is the odd couple pairings. That is essentially our show,” showrunner Ira Parker tells Den of Geek. “Everyone loves Brienne and Pod. Everyone loves The Hound and Arya. Game of Thrones was at its best when it could figure out who were the two least likely people to be in a scene together. That is my favorite stuff.”

Initially a writer for fellow Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, Parker was brought aboard the Dunk and Egg adaptation via an early morning text from HBO.

“[They were] like ‘what do you think about Dunk and Egg?'” he says. “The first thing I did is go and read them all. I had read the main series but I had never read Dunk and Egg. I spent about a week immersing myself in that world. I think, by the end of it, I came out knowing just as much if not more than George did about that period in history.”

That period of Westerosi history is a juicy one. Roughly 80 years since the Targaryen civil war known as the “Dance of the Dragons” (as depicted in House of the Dragon) has concluded, the Seven Kingdoms has just wrapped up another civil conflict – the first of many skirmishes in “The Blackfyre Rebellion,” in which a bastard branch of House Targaryen lays claim to the Iron Throne. While the lords indulge in their petty squabbles, life goes on for the smallfolk of Westeros, including one small folk who is not so small at all. Ser Duncan the Tall sets off for a jousting tourney at Ashford Meadow, where he’ll encounter his young charge Egg and get embroiled in a conflict that’s bigger than even him.

Accompanied by exclusive new character photos of Dunk, Egg, several Targaryens, and other major figures, Ira Parker guides Den of Geek through who to know before watching A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

Peter Claffey as Ser Duncan the Tall

Ser Duncan the Tall a.k.a. “Dunk” isn’t just A Knight of the Seven Kingdom‘s central character, he might be an unprecedented figure within the Game of Thrones franchise thus far as he serves as the story’s only point-of-view.

“Having a single POV – that was probably the most challenging part,” Parker says. “Cutting away from one scene of Dunk to another scene of Dunk puts a lot on that character’s very broad shoulders.”

Providing those very broad shoulders is Peter Claffey – an Irish rugby player-turned-actor who previously appeared in similar swords and shields property Vikings: Valhalla and the Cillian Murphy-starring film Small Things Like These.

“Peter was in the mix very early. I would say that the biggest thing I noticed when he came in is that he got exponentially better every single time,” Parker says. “You don’t want someone who is a finished product. You want somebody who is going to grow into this. This is a huge job to take on for any actor of any level. Peter has risen to that challenge and more. I’m just so proud of him.”

Claffey also brings a certain level of humility that’s crucial for the role.

“He’s such a charismatic individual but he’s also just like Dunk. He’s got an inner anxiety about him. When he came into the first meeting he was like ‘my palms are sweating’ and I’m just like ‘this is perfect, this is what we wanted.'”

Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg

Identifying a compelling child actor to play a young character is often one of the most challenging tasks facing any given production. For A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, however, finding the right Egg might have just been its easiest endeavor.

“Dexter Sol Ansell was entry number one that I was sent at the very beginning of this process,” Parker says. “I watched his audition for Egg and I thought ‘that kid just nailed it. What do we do now?’ Our casting director was like ‘hold your horses, Ira, let’s see some other people first.’ But then we came all the way back around to him again. It feels like it was meant to be.”

An actor since the age of four, Ansell has already scored major roles like that of a young Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Now he’s set to grow old(er) with the Game of Thrones franchise as Egg’s role evolves in fascinating ways in the stories to come.

Finn Bennett as Prince Aerion “Brightflame” Targaryen

After eight seasons of Game of Thrones and two of House of the Dragon, the Targaryen family has put together a lot of game tape for would-be dragon performers to analyze and emulate. Still, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms‘ showrunner sounds surprised at how naturally Finn Bennett embodies the privileged Valyrian prince Aerion.

“Finn came in and knocked it out of the fucking park for us. He can do so many different interesting things. Because the show is so religiously through Dunk’s POV, I wanted [Aerion] to feel how Dunk experiences him, which is just this bad shit happens to you sometimes. It drops out of the sky from nowhere. That’s hard for Aerion because there’s less for [Finn] to bite into. A lot had to be done with very little.”

The son of Prince Maekar, who himself is the son (though not heir) of King Daeron II, Aerion is like many other young male Targaryen royals with no reasonable expectation of sitting the Iron Throne. That is to say: he’s kind of a dick. Delving into exactly why he’s kind of a dick was an acting challenge that Bennett, who previously shined in True Detective: Night Country and Alex Garland’s Warfare, rose to meet.

“The biggest challenge with Aerion is that we don’t dig too deep into his psyche as to why he is like this and I think that’s important. There are a lot of villain backstories in general across the film and television spectrum that I’m just getting a little sick of. It’s becoming a little cookie cutter. Aerion is almost unreadable at points. You think he’s having fun with it. Then you think it’s a personality defect or maybe his father. He’s mysterious. It could go so many different ways.”

Bertie Carvel as Prince Baelor “Breakspear” Targaryen

Prince Baelor Breakspear is the black sheep of the Targaryen family in more ways than one. For starters, he doesn’t look much like the other platinum blond dragons, sporting notably darker and shorter hair thanks to his mother’s Dornish heritage. Secondly, he’s also a surprisingly level-headed and chill guy. Much more Maester Aemon than the Mad King Aerys II, the realm has good reason to believe that he will be a fair ruler when he one day takes over for his father King Daeron II.

Per Parker, Baelor’s respectable nature created an interesting casting dilemma, “Baelor was very tricky,” he says. “Because the way he was written on the page you worry that he’s just going to feel bland. That was actually probably our hardest, most complicated search.”

Thankfully, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms found half-Dornish gold with two-time Laurence Olivier Award-winning actor Bertie Carvel, best known for playing Jonathan Strange in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Tony Blair in The Crown.

“Bertie Carvel is one of the greatest working actors today,” Parker says. “He came in and he gave it that little extra edge and bite. You so effortlessly believe he is the one in charge. That is not easily done. But to be reserved and thoughtful and kind and honest in his approach while also being a big dog is hard.”

Tanzyn Crawford as Tanselle

As his sobriquet suggests, Ser Duncan the Tall is… well, tall. Naturally then, he is drawn to the similarly statuesque Tanselle, a humble puppeteer from Dorne. Finding the right performer for Tanselle began with understanding that physicality.

“We certainly knew the pool that we were going to be drawing from, which was modeling. Obviously [Tanselle] is pretty enough to draw Dunk’s attention and she’s tall and willowy. A lot of models fit that bill. The issue is, of course, was finding somebody who’s got almost the Talia Shire-esque vibe behind Tanselle. How to be shy but also not uninteresting. Tanzyn nailed that immediately.”

An Australian actress with only a handful of credits under her belt, Tanzyn Crawford provided precisely what production was looking for.

“The line that she nailed that got her the job was ‘All men are fools and all men are knights.’ When she says it to Dunk, he doesn’t even really know what it means. Is she taking a shot at me? She has a sly bit of dry wit. It made our decision very easy. She’s a wonderful actor.”

Daniel Ings as Ser Lyonel “The Laughing Storm” Baratheon

Part of the fun in prequels is getting to see some of our favorite characters’ forebears. Once viewers witness Ser Lyonel “The Laughing Storm” Baratheon, it will immediately become apparent where Kings Robert and Renly got their joie de vivre from. (The taciturn Stannis, however, remains a mystery). Heir to Storm’s End and just a rollicking good hang, Ser Lyonel cuts a big presence through A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms as does the actor who plays him, Daniel Ings.

“I had begun to think that I had written it poorly because we were getting auditions that just weren’t doing the scenes how they were in my head,” Parker says of Lyonel. “Then Danny Ings came in and it was like I had scored the script for him or something. Note-by-note. He got the ups and downs. Lyonel’s cadence. When he speaks, his words just rip through the air like Al Pacino.”

Best known for his breakout role in Guy Ritchie’s 2024 Netflix action series The Gentlemen, Ings now counts a very influential Thrones figure among his biggest fans.

“George [R.R. Martin] said, when he saw him in the first episode, ‘You gotta be careful. This guy might steal the show,'” Parker says. “I think some big things are happening for him. He’s gonna have a huge career.”

Sam Spruell as Prince Maekar Targaryen

Arriving to Ashford with Baelor and the rest of the Targaryen contingent is Prince Maekar, one of King Daeron II’s “extra” sons and Baelor’s younger brother. A serious and capable man, Maekar must contend with his own household of sons, each of whom he finds disappointing for entirely different reasons.

Embodying Maekar is veteran actor Sam Spruell, who just made waves in the fifth season of Fargo, playing the ageless and mysterious “Ole Munch.” For Parker, however, it was an even older role that made Spruell jump out.

“I knew him as the ex-boyfriend on Catastrophe, which I love,” Parker says. “Then I saw the work he did in Fargo and thought ‘This guy’s a genius. This is what we need.’ He does some really fun stuff. You believe him as Bertie’s brother. They just act how brothers do. He brought so many different layers to this role. His own sense of unique, quirky comedy, which we love here.”

Shaun Thomas as Raymun Fossoway

While Raymun Fossoway may have a useful surname as a member of House Fossoway of Cider Hall in The Reach, in reality he is little more than a squire and stable boy to his much more famous cousin, Ser Steffon. That relatively modest station in life allows him to empathize with a lowly hedge knight like Dunk.

“Raymun is the perfect friend for Dunk to meet when he gets to Ashford,” Parker says. “We should all be so lucky to have a Raymun in our life. He’s a lord but he’s basically an apple farmer. Because we’re not in the big cities or the fancy castles, we can meet a greater cross section of lords in Westeros.”

Playing Raymun is Shaun Thomas, a little-known actor whose real life equestrian experience almost made its way onto the show.

“Shaun is Raymun in a lot of ways. All our guys do horse riding lessons. Shaun actually came up doing horse riding but not in a fancy, posh way. It’s sort of a back country way, as he would probably describe it. It has him leaning back with his legs out. I couldn’t quite convince my horse masters to let us do that.”

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres Sunday, January 18 at 10 p.m. ET on HBO.

Avengers: Doomsday Seems Ready to Fix an Endgame Mistake in the Worst Possible Way

For as much as the final third of Avengers: Endgame was all crowd-pleasing hit after crowd-pleasing hit, one moment earned more of an ugh than awe. That was the point when Spider-Man handed off the Infinity Gauntlet to Captain Marvel. As Carol Danvers prepared to face the oncoming hordes of Thanos, she was joined by all the superheroines of the MCU thus far: Pepper Potts as Rescue, Wasp, Valkyrie, Shuri, Okoye, Wanda Maximoff, Gamora, Nebula, and Mantis. But instead of feeling like a celebration of great Marvel women, the scene both wreaked of corporate box ticking and highlighted how little attention the franchise paid to female characters.

Looks like Marvel won’t be repeating Endgame‘s mistake in Avengers: Doomsday. Video footage from Giornate di Cinema, an Italian expo for theater owners, reveals the teams coming together to fight Doctor Doom. We see great male heroes like Captain America, Mister Fantastic, Shang-Chi, Gambit, and much more. We also see great female heroes including Invisible Woman, Mystique, Black Panther, Ghost, White Widow, and… Well, it’s just them.

Yes, Marvel seems to be avoiding its cringy feminist hero moment by removing the women altogether. That’s not what we wanted, Kevin Feige.

To be certain, the Lady Avengers Assemble scene from Endgame stinks and everyone on the internet agrees. Of course, a small (but obnoxiously loud) group on the internet hates the scene for the dumbest possible reason, arguing that it shows that Marvel cares more about women than men. They contend that the scene inaugurates what they derisively call the “M-She-U.”

In fact, that’s the exact opposite reason that the scene doesn’t work. By bringing together all of its female heroes, Marvel clearly wanted congratulations for its portrayal of superpowered women. But instead, the scene highlighted just how few women they have on their superhero roster. And even then, some of these are stretches; as much as we all love Pepper Potts, she had only been Rescue for maybe five minutes in Iron Man 3.

Since then, Marvel has been much better with its treatment of female characters. Wanda actually got one of the best character arcs in the franchise with WandaVision, which ended with her finally becoming the Scarlet Witch… at least until she becomes a crazy villain lady in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Captain Marvel was joined by Monica Rambeau and Ms. Marvel, and the franchise added She-Hulk, America Chavez, Ironheart, Stature, the Kate Bishop Hawkeye, and more.

None of whom show up in Avengers: Doomsday.

Now, there are a few caveats to keep in mind. First of all, this clearly isn’t the entire cast, as we don’t see every character revealed to be in Doomsday, such as Tenoch Huerta’s Namor, let alone those rumoured to appear, such as Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man or Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. Second, Doomsday isn’t trying to encompass all of the MCU in the same way that Infinity War and Endgame did. Just because they’re not showing up in this movie doesn’t mean that She-Hulk or Captain Marvel don’t exist, any more than it means that Hulk or Doctor Strange are gone for good.

More importantly, quantity doesn’t mean quality. Part of the problem with the Endgame scene is that many of those characters hadn’t been given enough development to earn a spotlight. Heck, Hope van Dyne had to spend an entire movie playing second fiddle to Scott Lang before she got to be the Wasp, and even then she was completely absent from Infinity War and Endgame until she showed up with the other women.

For all of its post-Endgame problems, the MCU has actually been pretty good at using its superheroines. Not only did Shuri get an upgrade to become Black Panther, but these later phases have also introduced the White Widow Yelena Balova and the Invisible Woman Sue Storm. Even better, all three of these women were the leads of their respective films, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

If Doomsday is going to give these characters as much to do as their respective individual films did, then the smaller quantity of other women will be less of a problem. But if Doomsday is the super sausage fest it appears to be, then the Lady Avengers Assemble seem will somehow be even more embarrassing.

Avengers: Doomsday premieres on December 18, 2026.

The Batman Actor Catches Strays Over “Weak Sauce” Performance

Paul Dano, who has come across as a real sweetheart to date, caught some strays this week during a new interview with director Quentin Tarantino.

The Kill Bill director was chatting happily about his top films of the century on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, but after he ranked There Will Be Blood at number five, he didn’t hold back when explaining why the acclaimed Paul Thomas Anderson movie wasn’t higher on his list.

“There Will Be Blood would stand a good chance at being number one or number two if it didn’t have a big, giant flaw in it… and the flaw is Paul Dano,” he said. “Obviously, it’s supposed to be a two-hander [with Daniel Day-Lewis], but it’s also drastically obvious that it’s not a two-hander. [Dano] is weak sauce, man. He is the weak sister. Austin Butler would have been wonderful in that role. He’s just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy. The weakest fucking actor in SAG.”

First of all, this is Jared Leto erasure. Secondly, Tarantino is entitled to his opinion, but his comments seem unnecessarily mean. Later, he even described Dano as “the limpest dick in the world” and added, “I don’t care for him, I don’t care for Owen Wilson, and I don’t care for Matthew Lillard.”

You can imagine these guys scrolling through their phones this week and wondering what they ever did to Tarantino, but they should take heart that many fans and critics came to Dano’s defense after Tarantino’s comments, arguing that his performance in There Will Be Blood is one of the film’s emotional cores and that his subtle, often unsettling portrayal of Eli Sunday is precisely what makes the movie as haunting as it is.

One social‑media user wrote bluntly: “Tarantino’s statement on Paul Dano is wrong on so many levels. He holds himself strong opposite a legend like Day‑Lewis… it’s one of the great performances.”

Dano’s actual body of work also stands strong against Tarantino’s assessment. Over the past two decades, he’s built a reputation for versatility and intensity, whether he’s starring in indies like Little Miss Sunshine and Swiss Army Man or offering wilder turns in more traditional blockbuster fare like his villainous Riddler in The Batman.

Leave Paul Dano alone! Leave him alone.

James Gunn Shuts Down Batman Suit Demands

As DC Studios gets rolling on a new Batman movie that will be entirely separate from Robert Pattinson’s incarnation of the character, DCU architect James Gunn and director Andy Muschietti have some choices to make about how this version of the Dark Knight will manifest onscreen.

Gunn, who is always candid about his decision-making process on social media, recently addressed a fan query about whether white eye lenses are the number one request for the new Batman suit, and whether they could even be animated like Deadpool’s eyes. The Superman director made it clear that, while the white eyes are among the most-requested design elements for Batman’s suit, they’re low on his list of priorities.

According to Gunn, the most requested Batsuit details in order of popularity are the blue and grey color scheme, the yellow around the bat, and finally, the white eyes, but all of those are less important to Gunn than “the character himself, the writing, and the person who plays him.”

Gunn then zeroed in on the conundrum at the heart of giving fans what they want, adding, “Individuals are making clear what they want to see. But even the most requested thing – the blue and grey – is split evenly with people who don’t want that. And the other two most requested things are also things just as many people say they don’t want to see. So you have to do what’s right by the specific film and story.”

Previously, Gunn has described the upcoming Batflick, tentatively titled The Brave and the Bold, as having what he believes is a “really, really good story” for Batman, so it’s clear that he isn’t interested in trotting out just another DC installment that only caters to nostalgia or fan hunger for the character, but making a movie that has something to say. His take is that the appeal of Batman lies in his flexibility as a character.

“There are so many expressions of Batman that are cool, and [having] different ways to access that character is one of the ways in which he’s so iconic,” Gunn mused. “I don’t think it’s a matter of the blue and the grey or the black Batman.”

He’s also noted that he finds there to be “a religious aspect to some of this stuff that’s very uncomfortable,” where Batman’s iconography tends to overshadow the deeper creative story.

As fans debate what Batman “should” look like, Gunn seems happy as long as audiences walk away feeling like they understood Bruce Wayne.

Avatar 3 Early Reactions Call It the Best One Yet

Avatar: Fire and Ash finally screened for the press earlier this week, and if their reactions are anything to go by, director James Cameron can just go ahead and pop a bottle of champagne (probably underwater) because his threequel got a largely warm reception. If Fire and Ash goes on to achieve the same financial success as the last two Avatar movies, he could also maybe pop [counts on fingers]… many more bottles of champagne.

If you’ve forgotten what’s happening in the Avatar franchise, the series follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a former human marine who becomes part of the Na’vi clan on the alien moon Pandora and dedicates his life to defending it from human exploitation. Avatar: The Way of Water continues the story years after the first flick, with Jake and his Na’vi lover Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) raising a family while the humans return in greater numbers, driving them into hiding with a new ocean-dwelling clan. Fire and Ash is set to explore deeper fractures within Pandora by introducing a fire-aligned Na’vi clan that is way more antagonistic, pushing the story towards a more morally complex struggle for the planet’s future.

Cameron is planning to make two more Avatar sequels after this, but Fire and Ash is set to conclude this particular part of the story.

“I don’t think of Fire and Ash as a sequel,” Cameron has explained. “I think it was a culmination of a saga. I like ‘saga’ better than ‘sequel’ because a lot of where we were going with the story was in the original architecture of the story. So if you think of this as the third act, I think that’s healthier. It’s a long game. And I went into it knowing that we’d be playing a long game and betting that the audience would come along with us and care about these people. Because they may be 10 feet tall and blue, but they’re people.”

Critics have described Fire and Ash more positively as a “knockout” that delivers on “an enormous scale.” Complimenting its “awe-inspiring” visuals, a few have declared it the best Avatar movie yet. However, some weren’t as impressed with Cameron’s latest, calling it “overstuffed,” “pointless,” and “mostly a repetitive bore.”

You can see some of these critical reactions below…

Avatar: Fire and Ash will be released on December 19.

This Christmas, Give Yourself the Gift of Seeing a Skarsgård Fight Naked on a Volcano

When you’re buying gifts for everyone else during the holidays, don’t forget to get yourself something special. You deserve a little treat! Our humble suggestion? Nothing says “’tis the season!” quite like Alexander Skarsgård fighting naked on a volcano. Luckily, Netflix has you covered, as Robert Eggers’ Viking film The Northman is streaming from December 3.

We won’t lie to you, the journey up until the moment Skarsgård fights naked on a volcano is a brutal one. The Northman is set in a world that’s ruled by things we don’t really truck with anymore, like blood oaths and such. Not that we’re here to yuck anyone’s yum! Obviously, if you have a blood oath going right now, please just stay safe and proceed with caution.

The movie’s story follows Skarsgård’s Amleth, whose princely life is upended when his dad is murdered, and his mother becomes his aunt (it’s complicated). Naturally, Amleth sets out on a bloody revenge mission to mete out justice for all the ways he and his family were wronged, but any standard revenge tale is slowly muddied here by pesky Norse rituals, incest, and odd supernatural occurrences.

It’s an epic, violent movie with some truly unnerving scenes, so you might find yourself wondering whether you should keep watching. Right around the time Björk shows up, you might find yourself wondering again.

You must. Because even though there’s much to recommend in The Northman, from its beautiful cinematography to its meticulous detail and authenticity, it ends with Skarsgård having a sword fight naked on a volcano. And that’s cinema.

For Skarsgård, this scene was about authenticity. “It was essential to be naked,” he told Indiewire. “There are a lot of stories about the Vikings taking their clothes off before a fight for many different reasons. One being to intimidate the opponent. When you’re completely naked, you’re completely vulnerable. It is a way of showing fearlessness, and also to potentially to shock your opponent.”

That’s why we recommend you also show fearlessness this holiday season by watching The Northman on Netflix in the comfort of your own pajamas: for realism, for cinema, and for the sight of Alexander Skarsgård fighting naked on a volcano – the greatest gift of all.

Fortnite Is a Good Cinema Supplement, Not a Cinema Replacement

“Somehow, Palpatine returned,” Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron famously declared in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. What Damreon didn’t say was how exactly he and the resistance learned that the Emperor had come back. Because all of that happened in 2019’s Star Wars X Fortnite, a four-week series within the massively popular Battle Royale game. Players who completed the event, in which their characters blasted away at one another while collecting Star Wars-style skins and guns, were treated to a recording of Darth Sidious calling for revenge, declaring that the day of the Sith is imminent.

The decision to put such a major plot point in a video game certainly raised eyebrows back in 2019, but it was overshadowed by the many, many, many other problems with The Rise of Skywalker. But more and more studios and even filmmakers are collaborating with Fortnite. Most recently Quentin Tarantino went so far as to make a short film within the game, the Kill Bill spinoff “The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge.” To some movie fans, the idea of a devoted cinephile like Tarantino making a movie in Fortnite spells the end of the theatrical experience. But as long as Fortnite is just another promotional technique, such fears are unfounded.

A History of Exploitation

American cinema has always been entangled in capitalism, going all the way back to Thomas Edison demanding payment for anyone who used the early film camera and projectors that he and W. K. L. Dickson created. Just as much a product as they are an art, movies must be sold to audiences and distributors and, thus, marketing is heavily involved.

For example, actor-turned-director Emory Johnson promoted his 1922 pro-police melodrama In the Name of the Law by inviting local law enforcement to attend for free and handing out plastic badges and whistles to youngsters. Twenty years later, Howard Hughes pushed back against Hays Code enforcer Joseph Breen’s demands to downplay the emphasis on star Jane Russell’s chest in his movie The Outlaw by hiring a skywriter to display the film title in the sky, accompanied by two huge circles. In 1960, theaters filled their lobbies with standees of Alfred Hitchcock informing audiences that they will not be permitted entrance to Psycho after the film had begun, which only increased interest in the early slasher. It’s no wonder that studios used the word “exploitation” instead of “promotion” to describe their marketing techniques.

The wording may have changed since then, but the basic practice has not. In 1999, The Blair Witch Project‘s producers posted missing posters for its supposedly doomed documentarians, Joaquin Phoenix pretended to be stoned during a David Letterman interview for his mockumentary 2009 I’m Still Here, and just this year, Tom Cruise posted videos of himself eating popcorn like a madman to drum up interest in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. One of the more famous recent examples came from Christopher Nolan, who released the first image of Heath Ledger‘s Joker in The Dark Knight via a cross-country scavenger hunt.

Why So Serious?

It’s not hard to draw a straight line from Nolan promoting The Dark Knight through an alternate reality game and the way he released a trailer for his 2020 movie Tenet. The first people who got to see the teaser for that Bond-influenced sci-fi flick were those playing Fortnite, where the trailer played in an online theater.

Nolan’s participation in the Fortnite promotion helps put the current craze into perspective. Few filmmakers are as devoted to the theatrical experience as Nolan. Not only does he remain committed to film over digital and not only has he pioneered the use of IMAX cameras for narrative movies, but he held back Tenet to prevent it from going to streaming before theaters during the pandemic. Clearly, he knows how to use Fortnite to get attention for his movies while still upholding the sanctity of the movie theater.

That said, one can sympathize with moviegoers worried about Fortnite‘s effects on cinema as an art. It’s quite unnerving to see how the game uses skins based on famous characters and figures from all over pop culture, including the movies. Any given game may feature David Corenswet’s Superman shooting Zendaya‘s Chani from Dune in the face while dodging sniper fire from Art the Clown from Terrifer, who happens to be controlled by a six-year-old who has no business watching those movies. Whatever genuine feelings these respective movies invoke seem cheapened when they become stuff kids can buy for a game.

And yet, when Chani shows up in Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune 3 next year, none of us are going to be wondering how she escaped the clutches of Superman and Art. The situations in Fortnite are so ridiculous that they stand apart on their own, completely divorced from the narratives that spawned them.

The Theatrical Standard

No question, it is strange that you can only watch “Yuki’s Revenge” in Fortnite, which is a huge bummer for cinephiles who don’t care about video games. And there is the fact films such as Inception did stream for a while within Fortnite, attempting to undo the division between the actual film and the video game.

As of yet, the movie-watching experience within Fortnite is pretty substandard, which means that even the biggest gamer understands the theater to be superior to whatever Epic Games has constructed. And as long as we keep movies within Fortnite to a minimum, then the promotions and goofy skins can continue without worrying film fans. Fortnite isn’t a threat to cinema; it’s its own weird thing.

But if Palpatine’s return taught us anything, it’s that you can never keep a bad idea down. So we’re sure that, somehow, the idea of movies within Fortnite will return. Until then, we’ll keep watching movies in theaters and using King Kong to shoot Poe Dameron with a laser rifle.

Resident Evil Dives Into Strategic Survival Horror with Resident Evil Survival Unit

This article is presented in partnership with JOYCITY

Survival horror goes mobile with the release of Resident Evil Survival Unit, a new strategy game co-developed by Aniplex Inc. and JOYCITY Corporation for iOS and Android devices. Based on Capcom’s iconic video game franchise, Resident Evil Survival Unit is a love letter to the game series and mythos, bringing in some familiar faces to get in on the intense fun, while telling its own original tale that both longtime and new Resident Evil fans will love.

The game has players wake up in a mysterious hospital as the latest test subject for the sinister Umbrella Corporation. As the player searches for other survivors to ally themselves with against the hordes of undead and other ghastly monsters, they can also improve upon their impromptu defenses while getting to the bottom of what Umbrella has been up to with their gruesome experiments.

Resident Evil has often expanded upon expectations regarding survival horror games, with Resident Evil Survival Unit revolving around base building and tactical battles as core elements of its gameplay. Like other Resident Evil games, exploration, puzzle-solving, and character development and weapon upgrades are important factors in Resident Evil Survival Unit. And as players build and train their team to take on Umbrella’s monstrosities and other enemies, fans will be thrilled to see who they can team up with to become the ultimate zombie-slaying squad.

Resident Evil mainstays Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, and Jill Valentine are among the most famous franchise heroes who can be recruited, trained, and deployed as part of the player’s squad. These characters are joined by more deep-cut figures that are sure to have hardcore Resident Evil fans happily surprised by their inclusion, immediately recognizable from their classic appearances and with their own signature traits to contribute to the team. This mix of characters clearly underscores that Resident Evil Survival Unit is made by Resident Evil fans, for Resident Evil fans.

And then, of course, there is the matter of the gameplay, which provides players with an engrossing new way to experience Resident Evil and more than just a title developed for mobile platforms. With characters each possessing a variety of traits that fall into distinct classes, players must be strategic in how they train and deploy their team into defensive positions to take on waves of enemies to increase their chances of survival. As a base of operations, players convert an abandoned mansion, restoring and repurposing the building while carefully managing resources to both effectively establish a strong defensive base and better equip the team.

While Resident Evil Survival Unit offers an in-depth single-player experience, like so many fan-favorite Resident Evil games, it also provides competitive real-time online multiplayer for those looking to put their team to the ultimate test. There are a variety of tactical battle game modes for players to try out, meticulously plotting hero formation and field deployment as they make alliances and clash in strategy arena settings to see whose survivor squad will emerge triumphant.

Since its announcement in July 2025, Resident Evil Survival Unit has fueled widespread excitement from fans worldwide who have responded in kind. By the time the game’s November 18 launch date was officially announced, over 2 million players had pre-registered for it on the App Store and Google Play in preparation for its release. Positive buzz has only grown since then, with players eager for a completely fresh take on the classic trappings and characters from Resident Evil through a new title optimized for mobile platforms.

In addition to its beloved survival horror source material, Resident Evil Survival Unit boasts the creative contributions of celebrated Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano, known for his work on classic franchises like Final Fantasy and Vampire Hunter D. For Resident Evil Survivor Unit, Amano served as a guest designer, creating the original creature Mortem, who symbolizes the terrors of the unknown in this parallel Resident Evil universe. So much of the fear from Resident Evil is derived from the unknowable and Amano channels those primal sensibilities in creating Survival Unit’s original monster.

With an all-new strategy mobile game experience that celebrates the storied legacy of Resident Evil while delivering gripping tactical battle gameplay, Resident Evil Survival Unit is the most hyped mobile game release of 2025. Capcom, Aniplex Inc., and JOYCITY have come together to bring a varied and immersive mobile title that lets players explore a parallel universe take on Resident Evil, complete with its most beloved characters ready to join the fight for survival against hordes of monsters. Intuitive, accessible, and endlessly rewarding to play, Resident Evil Survival Unit proves that there are plenty of innovative directions and experiences to be had from the biggest franchise in the survival horror genre.

Resident Evil Survival Unit will be released Nov. 18 for iOS and Android devices through the App Store and Google Play.

Fire and Ash Could Be James Cameron’s Final Avatar Film

By this point, no one in Hollywood would bet against James Cameron. For decades, Cameron has raised eyebrows by racking up enormous budgets for weird ideas like “a gigantic sequel to a grimy movie about a killer robot from the future” or “Fern Gully but in 3D.” And each and every time, Cameron is proven right, turning out movies that thrill critics and make tons of money at the box office. But there is one person who is showing doubt in James Cameron: James Cameron himself.

“I have no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money,” Cameron said of Avatar: Fire and Ash in an interview with The Town (via Inverse). “The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?” And if it does not reach that level of profit, Cameron admitted that he’s “absolutely” prepared to walk away from the franchise.

That’s a shocking admission from a guy known for his force of will. It’s not just that Cameron projects garner huge price tags. It’s also that he does things that Hollywood common sense considers crazy. That’s how he made Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Titanic into such spectacles, and it’s why he put an Avatar sequel into theaters 13 years after the first one.

Even now, before Fire and Ash has even hit theaters, Cameron has two more movies in production, one slated to release in 2029 and the other in 2031. Those are big plans for a 71-year-old.

But Cameron is right to say that Hollywood budgets are massive, and Disney—which acquired the Avatar franchise when they bought 20th Century Fox—certainly has expectations that blockbusters turn a profit. As Cameron so colorfully put it on The Town, Fire and Ash cost “one metric fuck ton of money, which means we have to make two metric fuck tons of money to make a profit.”

As admirable and rare as Cameron’s introspection is, one has to wonder if he really needs to worry. After all, both of the previous Avatar films did indeed make several two metric fuck tons of money. The 2009 film is the highest-grossing movie of all time, and The Way of Water is the third highest grossing movie all time, with Avengers: Endgame tucked between. Given the excitement already building around Fire and Ash, it’s hard to believe that the third entry won’t continue the trend.

For his part, Cameron isn’t waiting to find out. If Fire and Ash proves to be the final outing for Jake Sully and his family of Na’vi, fans won’t be left hanging. In addition to assuring viewers that most major plot points will be revolved, Cameron has a plan for dealing with any remaining questions. “There is one open thread,” not resolved in Fire and Ash,” he explained, “and if [the story] ends there theatrically, I’ll write a book.”

And so, in classic James Cameron fashion, even when he doubts himself, James Cameron still has a plan to bet on himself.

Avatar: Fire and Ash releases December 19, 2025.

Noah Hawley’s Canceled Star Trek Movie Actually Understood Star Trek

Noah Hawley might be the weirdest fan in show business. He makes shows about well-established and beloved properties, tackling the X-Men in Legion, the Coen Brothers’ filmography in Fargo, and xenomorphs in Alien: Earth. And while he fills those shows with the sort of attention to detail that usually marks fan-centric works—see the pseudo-Nostromo in Alien: Earth or the flying saucer from The Man Who Wasn’t There in Fargo‘s second season—Hawley also has wild takes on the source material.

So it’s a little surprising to learn that Hawley’s now-canceled Star Trek movie sounds like, well, Star Trek. Speaking with the Smartless podcast (via TrekMovie) hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett, Hawley explained his approach to property. “I thought, everything [in franchises] is war, right? Star Wars is war, and Marvel is war,” he explained. “But Star Trek isn’t war. Star Trek is exploration, right? It’s people solving problems by being smarter than the other guy.”

Those words are music to the ears to Trekkies everywhere. As much as new Star Trek as we’ve had over the past 16 years, “Trekking” hasn’t always been the focus. We’ve had people running up and down hallways in the J.J. Abrams movies, lots of crying it out on Discovery, and so much insight into Spock’s love life on Strange New Worlds, but despite the last example’s title, not a whole lot of seeking new life and new civilizations.

On one hand, the franchise has to grow and evolve as times change, and we don’t necessarily need TOS‘s over-reliance on meeting god-like beings on another planet that looks like Earth or all of TNG‘s beigeness. There’s nothing inherently wrong with season-long arcs, exploring the emotional stakes of characters, or even references to classic series. But as demonstrated by its need to keep doing prequels or simply remix existing alien races, as Star Trek: Academy seems to be doing, the franchise has forgotten how to boldly go.

And if there’s one thing Hawley loves to do, it’s to go boldly. He made the xenomorph just one of several monsters in Alien: Earth (all hail Eyetopus!) and Legion had more surreal dance numbers than it did mutant on mutant battles.

By all accounts, his Star Trek movie would have done the same. His movie was rumored to involve an all-new crew, investigating a virus that wiped out various planets. “It was an original story that was not Chris Pine-related, nor was it Captain Kirk-related,” Hawley recently told Men’s Journal. The only connection to established stories would have involved “an unboxing of Data, the idea of the android. And that was to become an element in the films.”

On Smartless, Hawley said Paramount loved the idea and gave it the greenlight, but then a regime change stalled things. A new head took over Paramount‘s movie division and “the first thing they did was kill the original Star Trek movie,” Hawley explained. And they killed for one reason: it went too far into new territory, straying from the Kelvin movies that fans already knew. “They said, ‘Well, how do we know people are going to like it? Shouldn’t we do a transition movie from Chris Pine, play it safe?’ And so [the movie] kind of went away.”

First, Hawley’s movie was replaced by a fourth Kelvin film, which would have seen Pine’s Captain Kirk reunite with his father, memorably portrayed by Chris Hemsworth in the 2009 movie. But contract negotiations and schedules prevented that from happening, and now Paramount has announced a different film, this time from Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves duo Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.

At this point, we don’t know what Goldstein and Daley plan to do. And with season two of Alien: Earth now in production, we know that Hawley is busy making the world of xenomorphs weird again. But whatever happens, we can’t help but mourn the loss of a Star Trek story that put trekking first, that cared more about smart people using their training and competence to help others than it does explosions or name drops or whatever the heck Section 31 was.

Until then, we can just hope that Goldstein and Daley remember that Star Trek is about astronauts on some kind of star trek, even if they don’t get quite as weird as Hawley surely would have been.

The Most Highly-Anticipated Marvel Movie Stuck in Limbo “Just Unraveled”

It’s been over six years since Marvel announced a rebooted Blade movie, but it still hasn’t gone into production. The project, which initially snagged Mahershala Ali (Moonlight) to star as the fan favorite Daywalker, has repeatedly stalled since 2016 after getting hit with multiple script and director changes.

Right now, we have no idea what stage Marvel is at with developing the highly-anticipated superhero movie, despite some eagerness to promote the character outside of it. Wesley Snipes briefly returned as Blade in Deadpool & Wolverine last year, and a multiversal version of Blade also appeared in this year’s well-received animated series, Marvel Zombies, but in terms of any solo Blade action, there’s no start date on the horizon.

Someone who does have some insight into how the project fell apart is Pearl star Mia Goth, who was attached to the movie as its villain, Lilith. During a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Goth says things seemed to be going well with Blade behind the scenes. At least, for a while.

“The furthest that it got with me is that I auditioned,” she told host Josh Horowitz. “And I flew to Atlanta, and we did a chemistry test between Mahershala and I, and we did a costume fitting, and a wig fitting, and I was very excited in the direction that it was going. It was very cool, and Mahershala had such an interesting take on it. He was great. And then it just unraveled from there, unfortunately.”

Goth also confirmed that she doesn’t know what’s going on with Blade at the moment. She thinks Marvel still wants to make it, but doesn’t seem to have been given an update, rounding up her comments with “We’ll see if it comes back around.”

It would be great if it did. Fans are excited about a new Blade movie and seem happy enough to see a new take on the character, especially from Oscar-winner Ali. It would also be interesting to see how a darker, vampire-focused story would fit into the MCU’s larger superhero world, but it doesn’t look like we’re getting that story anytime soon.

Pluribus Poses a Hive Mind Dilemma The Expanse Never Got to Explore

This article contains spoilers for both Pluribus and The Expanse.

It didn’t take long for Apple TV’s Pluribus to use a nearly complete takeover of humanity to pose a philosophical question. Is the loss of individuality a price worth paying for the end of all the killing, lying, wastefulness, and greed that our species is responsible for? Wouldn’t the planet and all of its inhabitants be better off if the dominant life form stopped getting in its own way and started working for the common good, free will be damned?

Science fiction television has explored the idea of humans being part of a single mind before, whether it be the well-known Borg story arc in Star Trek or the more obscure Glorious Evolution in Arcane, but there’s one popular series that never got the chance to prove that personhood with all its foibles outweighs any utopia that involves human drones. The six seasons of The Expanse got two-thirds of the way through adapting James S.A. Corey’s space epic, but the final novel, which explored a hive-mind solution to the solar system’s woes, sadly never made it to the small screen.

In Leviathan Falls, the ninth and final book in The Expanse series, Winston Duarte went well beyond the ambition of his television counterpart, who had only begun establishing a totalitarian foothold while the Sol system was distracted by the Free Navy that he secretly funded. Using the protomolecule to grant himself near immortality, Duarte’s initial plan was to unite the gate worlds under his Laconian Empire, and hints of this in the series finale temper the celebration of the treaty being signed between Belters and Inners.

But whereas The Expanse television show leaves the rest to the viewer’s imagination, the books explore Duarte’s innovative solution to defeating the silent alien killers lurking inside the gates. His unique use of the protomolecule gives him the ability to merge the thoughts and experiences of every human inside the Ring space, and, as a single mind under Duarte’s control, humanity could succeed where the Ring makers failed in defeating the “dark gods.” That was the plan, anyway.

“I dreamed too small before,” Duarte says in a climactic Leviathan Falls scene in which the god-emperor has nearly achieved the deity status his title suggests. “I see that now. I thought I could save us by organizing, by keeping us together, and I was right about that… but I didn’t understand how to do it.”

The final solution presented in Leviathan Falls won’t be spoiled here, but the big difference in The Expanse is that the transformation was much more gradual than the viral spread in Pluribus. People in the Ring space had the chance to experience the horror of the loss of privacy and their sense of self while maintaining a tenuous hold on their individuality. All that the infected people in Pluribus could do before “awakening” was convulse a bit.

Zosia (Karolina Wydra) makes a big deal out of Carol (Rhea Seehorn) not knowing what it’s like to be “them,” and that she shouldn’t judge before experiencing the joy of a joined mind. For the Belters, Martians, and Earthers of The Expanse, however, that argument falls flat. While a merging might have brought unity to the warring factions of the solar system, the idea was universally rejected by the characters that experienced it, especially as the bond grew stronger.

Carol doesn’t get much cooperation from her fellow immune humans in Pluribus because the hive mind serves them willingly and even gladly plays the role of loved ones, like Lakshmi with her son, so that they can continue in their denial. Carol would find many more like-minded malcontents like herself in the world of The Expanse. It’s a shame we never got to see their rebellion on screen.