Ryan Coogler’s X-Files Reboot Casting Promises Classic Character Dynamic

The X-Files may be about weekly monsters and/or a government conspiracy to join with aliens to inflict black goop on humanity. But it was really about the relationship between the two leads. David Duchovny played Fox Mulder as a slovenly, low-energy true believer, a man used to being pushed to the corners as he continues investigating the paranormal. Conversely, Gillian Anderson played Dana Scully as an intelligent and professional scientist, whose deep religious faith did not prevent her from being skeptical about Mulder’s claims.

We know that the upcoming Hulu relaunch of The X-Files from director Ryan Coogler and showrunner Jennifer Yale will not feature new versions of Mulder and Scully. But the show’s latest casting announcement suggests that some of that original dynamic will be retained, as Himesh Patel will costar alongside the previously-announced Danielle Deadwyler.

As an English actor, Patel unsurprisingly got his start on EastEnders, appearing in 566 episodes as Tamwar Masood. However, most Americans first noticed him as Jack Malik, the only man who remembered the Beatles in the Danny Boyle comedy Yesterday. Yesterday may have met with mixed reviews, but Patel won viewers over with his gentle, likable take on a musician who just got the biggest break of all time. Patel has brought that same warmth to his later roles, as affable agent Mahir in Christopher Nolan‘s Tenet and as beleaguered director Daniel Kumar on the HBO series The Franchise.

Patel’s low on-screen energy will pair nicely with his co-star Danielle Deadwyler, who tends to project quiet intensity. In films such as Till and in the HBO series Station Eleven, in which she co-starred with Patel, Deadwyler plays characters who are serious and determined, even when at odds with potential allies.

But putting together Deadwyler and Patel, the new X-Files seems to promise a relationship like that of Mulder and Scully. But producers have been clear that Deadwyler and Patel are not playing Mulder and Scully, and while there are currently no plans for Duchovny or Anderson to appear, the possibility of a cameo remains. Anderson has revealed that she’s read Coogler’s script for the pilot, and has pronounced it, “fucking cool.”

Even before gaining the blessing of Special Agent Dr. Dana Scully, Coogler’s X-Files sounded great. As made abundantly clear by his Oscar winner Sinners, Coogler knows how to marry rich themes to blockbuster entertainment. Casting two great actors with such complimentary chemistry proves that Coogler and Yale understand what made the original so great, and they’re ready to bring The X-Files into the 2020s.

The X-Files is now in development.

Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 Trailer Takes a Bloated Franchise Back to Basics

By the time that Vecna was finally defeated in the series finale at the start of this year, Stranger Things had gotten a lot bigger and a lot messier than it had been. Not only had the Netflix series spawned a play, video games, and a whole lot of merchandise at Target, but it had become more about a psychic boy from the ’50s who found a way into another reality and summoned a monster. Also, Russians were involved.

There’s little to none of that stuff in the latest trailer for Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, an animated series that takes place between the show’s second and third seasons. In the latest trailer, we see the central quartet of boys, joined by Max and El, having snowball fights and busting each other’s chops. They gain a new friend in the form of punk rocker Nikki Baxter (Odessa A’zion), who joins the fight against a different set of beasties from the Upside Down.

The Duffer Brothers have described Tales From ’85 as a throwback to Saturday morning cartoons of their youth, a statement that seems ludicrous when you compare the fluid CGI animations on display in the trailer to the cheap and rigid stuff that ’80s kids watched. But the trailer does promise a more wholesome adventure, one based around the core concept that made Stranger Things such a phenomenon when it launched in 2016.

Originally, Stranger Things resonated with viewers because of its sense of childhood nostalgia. Borrowing heavily from the novels of Stephen King and the films of Steven Spielberg, Stranger Things followed a quartet of nerdy kids whose lives change when one disappears and a telekinetic girl called Eleven arrives. The mystery of what happened to Will Byers, the hints about a dangerous realm called the Upside Down, and the supporting cast of teens and adults only served to enhance that concept.

But over time, Stranger Things seemed to lose site of its best qualities, bloating into a show about teens (well, young adults playing teens), adults in a Gulag, and so, so much lore. Even though Stranger Things continued to be a topic of conversation in pop culture spaces and pull in massive viewership numbers, the initial excitement had dissipated.

Will Tales From ’85 bring that excitement back? It does have to overcome the loss of the original actors, as new voice performers have come in to play beloved characters, including Broadway’s Jeremy Jordan as Steve Harrington. Some may find the angular designs and new voices too great a barrier.

But for those who just want to see kids in the ’80s have cool monster adventures, then Tales from ’85 promises to be a small-scale, old-school good time.

Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 debuts on Netflix on April 23, 2026.

Disney’s Korean Reimagining of The Americans Is the Right Kind of Series Revival

Reboots, revivals, and reimaginings are more popular than ever in television right now, from the forthcoming series adaptation of the Harry Potter franchise, to the Firefly animated sequel, and the failed Buffy the Vampire Slayer follow-up that Hulu canceled before it ever even made it out of the pilot stage. It makes sense then that someone somewhere was eager to try to remake The Americans, FX’s critically acclaimed series about undercover KGB spies living a regular American life in 1980s suburban D.C., even as they worked to bring down the U.S. government. The series racked up 18 Emmy nominations over the course of its run and a Lead Actor win for star Matthew Rhys. (Justice for Keri Russell’s unfairly snubbed performance, though!) But the new take we’re getting isn’t one anyone likely expected.

Rather than attempt to copy the (very recent and very beloved) original, Disney+ is taking a different tack, greenlighting The Koreans, a big-budget, local language reimagining of The Americans that revolves around a pair of North Korean spies masquerading as a happily married couple in 1990s South Korea. Like Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings before them, this couple will appear to be ordinary citizens to their neighbors and friends, all while secretly working to destabilize the South from within. As remake ideas go, it’s brilliant! Don’t believe me? Apparently, Russell and Rhys have already given their blessing to the project.

Thematically, The Koreans will undoubtedly deal with many of the same issues that its predecessor did: Family, loyalty, identity, patriotism, and bonds to a homeland you aren’t necessarily part of anymore. But by shifting the series to the 1990s and changing its setting to the more volatile Korean peninsula,  just as a wave of democratization and cultural modernization was unfolding in the South, the various political perspectives and pressures this show will tackle will be completely different.  (And will probably feel especially new for the English-speaking audience that Disney is obviously hoping will also tune in.)

But in a world where far too many remakes are just reskinned and/or repurposed versions of the thing that came before, it’s incredibly refreshing to see a creator who plans to use a familiar concept to say something entirely new. Obviously, the conflict between North and South Korea, which are immediate neighbors and home to citizens with family and loyalties on both sides of the Korean Military Demarcation Line, is going to produce a very different take on this particular premise than the steadily escalating Cold War antagonism between the United States and Russia. But that’s precisely what makes this kind of reimagining so interesting; we already know it’s not going to simply recreate what we’ve seen before. 

The Koreans will star Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun and Heavenly‘s Han Ji-min and stream on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally.

Kit Steinkellner Has Some Questions About Television… and Vampires

Few creatives have a more intimate understanding of the challenges and joys of producing television in the streaming era than Kit Steinkellner.

The playwright, screenwriter, and comic book author burst onto the TV scene in 2018 when she created Sorry For Your Loss, a critically acclaimed meditation on grief starring Elizabeth Olsen, Kelly Marie Tran, and Jovan Adepo. Despite its creative success and the caliber of talent involved both in front of and behind the camera, the series was canceled after two seasons and 20 episodes.

Much of the show’s struggle to capture an audience stemmed from its platform’s inability to do the same. That’s because Sorry For Your Loss premiered on the now-defunct Meta VOD service Facebook Watch. The House That Zuck built dipped its toe into episodic storytelling in 2018 and then promptly yanked that toe back out once it realized how hard this whole entertainment thing was.

To Facebook’s credit, Sorry For Your Loss avoided the fate of some other streaming shows that have back locked away in vaults never to be seen again, as it is currently available to stream on Tubi and Prime Video. Still, the experience of producing an ambitious project amid streaming’s unprecedented (and ultimately unsustainable) content boom, was profoundly educational for Steinkellner.

“One of my Woody the cowboy pull string catchphrases is ‘I’m always grateful and I’m always annoyed.’ And that’s the truth,” she tells Den of Geek. “But I am, in a lot of ways, a poster child of that moment. I was a poster child of that bubble, that boom. A lot of the things that we struck for in 2023 with the WGA are things that I experienced – the high highs the low lows. But ultimately I think I am a lot more grateful than I am annoyed.”

Now Steinkellner is going fully independent with her next project. Are We Still Married?, which premiered at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival, is a compelling work of short speculative fiction. The title is just one of many questions that Steinkellner and the story’s characters have about the central conceit of a husband Jack (played by Dustin Milligan) who has been turned into a vampire and needs to convince his still-human wife Laura (Taylor Misiak) to let the right one in.

Are Jack and Laura still married or did death do them part? Can Laura safely let Jack in the house or will he drain her arteries for sustenance? Does he operate by the traditional vampire rules or will he sparkle in the sun? Through its scant 11-minute running time, Are We Still Married? doesn’t offer up any easy answers (except for the sparkle in the sun thing, that’s a definitive “no), but it does leave plenty of room for exploration and storytelling growth. In fact, Steinkellner is so interested in pursuing that growth that she both filmed a TV pilot and wrote a feature-length script of the concept.

“I’ve actually not done this with other ideas before but I’ve pretty thoroughly explored both options,” she says. “Ultimately I just want to keep telling this story. It’s an interesting moment for us where both feel viable. I think the next step will reveal itself.”

Before the premiere of Are We Still Married? at SXSW, we caught up with Steinkellner to discuss processing trauma, her vampiric inspirations, and the ephemeral nature of art. What follows is that conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

Den of Geek: This story is about a newly-vampirized husband outside his home asking for his wife to let him in and offering up reasons why she should. Where’d you get that idea?

Look, I was hellbent on directing something. I gotta direct something, it’s going to be independent, it’s going to be small, in one location like a house. So the question for me became “how do you make a house feel as cinematic as possible?” Then I remembered something that happened about 11 years ago. My husband did get bit by a bat. It was crazy. That doesn’t happen. Except when it does. He got a rabies shot and he was OK. I don’t know how you process trauma in your marriage but comedic bits is usually our go-to move. We just started cracking vampire jokes.

At a certain point he was just very lightly like “but if I became a vampire, you would let me back in the house, right?” I paused and he didn’t like that pause. We had a very spirited debate about what it would mean to have something happen that’s nobody’s fault but at the same time was something we never agreed to. It sets both of you on a wildly different path from what you were on. As I started thinking about what could happen in this house, this thing in the back of my brain rolled to the front. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought about writing this night in their lives, figuring out what that would look like, and figuring out what would happen next. 

Some vampire properties that are mentioned in passing in this pilot are Twilight, Interview with the Vampire, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What are some of your vampire inspirations?

Those are touchstones. I also love Only Lovers Left Alive. It’s Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston playing glam rock Bowie vampires. I interpret it as a genre metaphor about climate catastrophe because they can’t drink contemporary human blood because of microplastics. They keep having to go to blood banks to find blood from before a certain date. I just love that one. I love the original Let the Right One In. I rewatched it recently. I think I always love a vampire story where there’s genre as metaphor front and center. That one is very much about coming of age and being an isolated kid who finds another isolated kid – the things that are deeply positive about that, the things that are deeply challenging about that. There’s a lot you can do in terms of genre as metaphor.

I’m glad you mentioned Let the Right One In because I feel that that aspect of vampirism – the needing to be let in – is the one that people forget about most frequently. Thankfully every decade or so, a major vampire story comes around to remind people of it. Are you grateful that Are We Still Married? is premiering on the heels of Sinners, which makes that a major plot point?

It’s so interesting. Yeah, I am. I just love art being in conversation with each other. I love this giant metaphorical party where we all have our wine glasses and are meeting and talking with each other. They’re so wildly different. With Sinners; it’s Coogler, it’s From Dusk Till Dawn, it’s institutional racism. He’s tackling very, very different things on a very different budget. We do have the same supernatural trope at our core but I would argue over on my side we’re doing ‘70s Cassavettes, Gena Rowlands’ dramas, Marriage Story, tonally a little bit more like Nora Ephron or Linklater’s “Before” trilogy. They couldn’t be more different and we’re starting at the opposite end of the spectrum but the fact that we have the same origin point, I just find it thrilling. 

Vampires come in all different shapes, sizes, and rules. A lot of the back and forth between husband and wife in this pilot is trying to figure out those rules. Did you have any questions about vampirism that didn’t make it into the final product?

A crucial plot point is that the bat that bites Jack does not stick around to explain vampirism to him. So basically he has about as much information about this thing as we do. He has his pop culture references but he doesn’t actually know what being a real life vampire entails. I think it’s a really interesting dilemma to put a character in. What if you have no mentor or guide post? Which part of this stuff is real? I think we are playing by most of the vampire rules though. We didn’t have any mirror shots but if we did I would have VFX’ed his reflection out. We’re not doing Stephanie Meyers, he’s not gonna sparkle in the sunlight. We’re playing with those traditional Dracula-established vampire rules. 

How did you go about casting Taylor Misiak and Dustin Milligan in this?

It was thrilling. To the point of this thing being really scrappy, my producer and I just reached out to their reps and asked if they were avail (or tech avail). I loved Dustin in both Schitt’s Creek and Rutherford Falls, which is a Peacock show that less people have seen. But I’m crazy about him. And Taylor is my favorite part of Dave. It is tremendous but for me she is the emotional heartbeat of that show.

They’re so wildly gifted in so many regards. They’re just consummate actors who are known for hard comedy. But my goal in casting or any hiring decision is to ask myself “how would this thing be a wonderful next paragraph in your career?” To give them a piece where pull out everything in their bag and leave it on the screen, that just felt like a thrilling opportunity. It felt that that’s what they both saw. This was three night shoots! Night shoots kind of make people crazy. At a certain point, you kind of feel like your’e in The Thing or The Shining. And they were just wild joys to hang out with at 3 a.m.

This is submitted to SXSW as a TV pilot. Did you always see if that way and would you like to continue in this world? 

You’re asking the right question. I originally knew what the night looked like. I knew it was chapter one and I wanted to figure out what subsequent chapters looked like. Transparently, we have explored both routes. I did write a feature inspired by this that was on this past year’s Black List, which was a wild honor. At the same time, in having a conversation with South by, part of the independent TV requirement is to submit a series bible. I’ve actually not done this with other ideas before but I’ve pretty thoroughly explored both options. Ultimately I just want to keep telling this story. It’s an interesting moment for us where both feel viable. I think the next step will reveal itself.

I think this is a big question so we’ll probably end on it. I want to pick your brain about television itself as someone who probably had an interesting experience in modern television: writing Sorry For Your Loss, which was considered to be a very good TV show with a very big movie star in it that nevertheless premiered on a streaming service with like six other shows and no longer exists. Broadly, what is that experience like and where do you see TV going in the modern era?

One of my Woody the cowboy pull string catchphrases is “I’m always grateful and I’m always annoyed.” And that’s the truth. When I think back about making Sorry For Your Loss, we had a murderer’s row of actors, we had the best writers, all of our directors were like Sundance stars, and we made 20 episodes of something that is one of my proudest accomplishments. I love it. We were on a platform [Facebook Watch] that didn’t stick around long enough to find its footing. You really do have to, as a platform, be invested in spending five-to-10 years building like an Amazon, like an Apple.

At the same time there are shows on major platforms that have been pulled. The thing is you can still find our show online. It’s very gratifying to have people slip into my DMs and continually find it. I think I have a lot more gratitude than I have annoyance. But I am, in a lot of ways, a poster child of that moment. I was a poster child of that bubble, that boom. A lot of the things that we struck for in 2023 with the WGA are things that I experienced – the high highs the low lows. But ultimately I think I am a lot more grateful than I am annoyed. I’m so proud of how we made it and I’m excited to make more content in both a smaller way and a larger way that reaches eyeballs. Look, we live in a chaotic universe. We don’t get to control variables and we don’t get to weird science the way our art is received or create the perfect environment. Honestly, I’m just so glad we got to make it. 

Well said, it was indeed a big question and I’m glad you tackled it!

Can I say one more thing about it? [Laughs] Do I have like 30 seconds?

[Laughs] Sure!

I read this thing several years ago. There are these Buddhist monks – in the steps of the Himalayas, I believe. They live in these monasteries of giant plazas. They will make these elaborate sand paintings, mandalas, outside. It takes them weeks and weeks. In making those mandalas they’ve signed up for the fact that the wind is gonna blow the art they’re creating away. It might blow them away in a day, or in a couple weeks. They don’t really have control over how long the art lasts. But that’s not why they’re making it. They’re making the art for the sake of making it. I believe it’s to teach these monks patience and perseverance. I think about it all the time and try to be a creature of the moment and just do the best I can in that moment. The truth is that no one can control the outcome, how it’s received, or how long it lasts. What you can control is how you show up for the moment. 

They Will Kill You Review: Ready or Not Here It Is

What is it about New York City hotels and grand old apartment buildings? Most of them are haunted anyway, but in the hands of Hollywood and various other filmmakers, they become positively demonic. From Polanski’s Dakota on the Upper West Side in Rosemary’s Baby to the Continental that Keanu Reeves keeps checking into, but never seems to leave in all those John Wicks, luxury Manhattan space is synonymous with murder and monsters. And in writer-director Kirill Sokolov’s They Will Kill You, there’s so many of each that one speculates the cleaning bill must be in the eight or nine figures.

Although there’s (some) story logic to that in this one. See, Zazie Beetz’s Asia Reaves is technically taking on a want ad when she shows up on a rainy night at the Virgil, a posh NYC haunt that looks like it’s situated somewhere on the corner between Greenwich Village and South Africa tax incentives. It is there that an ex-convict as nominally desperate as Asia takes a job where she will work under a peculiar Irish superintendent named Lilith Woodhouse—Patricia Arquette doing a bit that crosses somewhere between Mary Reilly and Darby O’Gill. Lilith’s stern demeanor seems to suggest the turnover rate should be high, and the tenants do nothing to dissuade this notion since most of them are played by familiar faces as snobby kooks (Heather Graham) or sketchy lechers (Tom Felton).

All of it feels a lot like they’re putting on a bit, and that’s because they are. They Will Kill You barely wastes 15 minutes before the creeps and cretins try to harass and sacrifice the new maid, which we soon learn is their wont. Like the Virgil’s namesake, this building knows its way around Hell, with a landlord in the basement who is nothing less than an absolute devil. It might sound spooky, but in practice it’s a little more diabolical than Scooby-Doo.

This in spite of aesthetic happily reaching—anxiously, even—for Tarantino at his most Grand Guignol in the Kill Bill bloodbaths. The fight scenes between Beetz, Felton, and even a possessed Arquette at one point (or at least a committed stunt double) rely on voluminous splatter effects erupting like geysers, and smartass-cool kid talk and posturing, a la the samurai lighter Beetz carries around and later shares with her long-lost sister (Myha’la), who as luck would have it also has a room in this den of inequity.

One cannot envy either Sokolov or Warner Bros. with the release of They Will Kill You. While movies about Satanic cults among the rich and moneyed are nothing new, even back when Radio Silence gave it fresh devilish coat of paint in Ready or Not, one imagines no one making Kill You could have guessed that Radio Silence’s Ready or Not 2 would also feature estranged sisters—or that Searchlight would move its release date up to March 20 so as to beat Sokolov’s film to market (not that either may find much stall space with Project Hail Mary continues to make its orbiting rounds). Worse still, both opened at SXSW, with the better of the two premiering first. It wasn’t They Will Kill You.

While Sokolov’s action sequences and fight choreography seem much more elaborately staged and meticulously designed than either Ready or Not, its social commentary amounts to more of a single, trailing off sentence, and its eat-the-rich table-setting adorned with mostly empty dishes. Others feature mere plastic fruit to gnaw on. Even the sisterly dynamic with performers as charming as Beetz and Myha’la proves threadbare.

Not that there isn’t some base thrill to be had in the Virgil. A handful of fight sequences along barren halls proves the architecture isn’t the only thing that’s brutalist in this place. And the fiendish glee with which Sokolov’s picture reveals how the pampered and privileged earn their immortality in this joint is the kind of gonzo gag that 20 years ago would have been the pride and joy of a grindhouse throwback dropped by Dimension Films.

There is an audience for They Will Kill You, but there’s just not enough tainted meat on this Satanic beast to ever earn a real cult following of its own.

They Will Kill You premiered at SXSW on March 17 and opens nationwide on March 27.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Remembers When They Weren’t Real Trek

Unsurprisingly, news of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s cancelation after two seasons has brought out some strong opinions among Trekkies. Some were genuinely delighted by the show’s mix of Trek lore and high school drama. Others thought the series showed promise, but needed some correction in later seasons, just like most other Trek shows. And a particularly vocal group praised the news as it ends a series that wasn’t real Trek.

One cannot help but think of those fans when hearing about the memories Gates McFadden, Dr. Beverly Crusher of The Next Generation fame, shared about early fan reaction to her show. “In the beginning I was actually really scared of fans and conventions,” McFadden told attendees at MegaCon 2026 (via The Popverse). “I didn’t know what was expected of me. And also in the beginning, the fans were not as complimentary as they are now. They wanted it to be the original show. But I’ve learned so much about the show and the franchise, let alone how much importance it has been in individuals’ lives.”

In the defense of some of those fans, TNG had a famously rough launch. Built out of the remains of a sequel series called Star Trek: Phase II, which would have been about Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew on new adventures, and seen by creator Gene Roddenberry as a way to regain the control he had lost over the movies, TNG‘s first two seasons suffered from bland plots, out-of-date clichés, and a checked out Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. The series didn’t find its groove until season 3, when it became the classic series it is today.

Fans use the phrase “Growing the Beard” to describe the uptick in quality of a Star Trek show, a reference to Riker gaining facial hair after season 1. In fact, all of the ’90s Trek shows underwent similar arcs. It took two seasons of Deep Space Nine for the Dominion to become the major threat (and for Sisko to grow his goatee and shave his head). Voyager became a much better show when Seven of Nine joined the crew in the season 4 premiere (after Janeway styled her hair into a bob). And the fourth of final season of Enterprise is far, far better than anything that came before, despite all the hairstyles staying mostly the same.

Modern Trek shows haven’t had quite the same arc. Discovery did get much better after jumping 900 years in the future at the end of season 2, and Star Trek: Picard was stronger when it turned into a TNG reunion for its third season. But Lower Decks and Prodigy were good all the way through their runs, and Strange New Worlds is threatening to take the opposite trajectory, as the third season is far worse than anything in the first two.

There’s no telling if Starfleet Academy would have followed the same trajectory of ’90s shows, or if it would have stayed the same, or if it would have dipped in quality. But McFadden’s comments remind us not only that taste is subjective, but that “real Trek” is often hated by fans, at least at first.

They Will Kill You: The True Story That Inspired the Horror Comedy

In the upcoming genre mash-up They Will Kill You, Zazie Beetz plays a desperate woman who takes a job as a housekeeper in a mysterious apartment, only to learn that she’s the target of a Satanic cult. Directed by Kirill Sokolov, who co-wrote the script with Alex Litvak, They Will Kill You combines horror, comedy, kung fu, and romance. And, apparently, it’s a true story. Sort of.

“Ten years ago, my wife and I rented an apartment on the 16th floor of a giant building. A week after we moved in, we realized that we were the only two people in the entire building under the age of 65,” Sokolov recalls to Den of Geek. “I started doing renovations in the kitchen, and behind the cabinet I found a huge hall leading into my neighbor’s apartment. My wife and I started a running joke: ‘We live in the middle of a cult, one night we’ll wake up, and they’ll be around our bed in cloaks and masks, and they’ll sacrifice us,'” he laughs.

“Then I watched Rosemary’s Baby and realized, ‘Oh my God, I was in that building! I was in that same situation,'” he continues. “Okay, it wasn’t enough to bring the Antichrist into the world, but that’s how this movie appeared.”

Only from such audacious beginnings could a movie like They Will Kill You appear. The film moves through various genres and tones, promising twist after twist, which is exactly what drew the cast to the project.

“I just loved whipping through this script,” gushes Beetz. “The way that it’s written is incredibly engaging. It’s funny and I was laughing through it. And then I met Kirill via Zoom, who is just such a bright and exuberant individual that I felt his passion and love for this story. It made me excited to jump on.”

“I loved Kirill’s first film [Why Don’t You Just Die? from 2018] and I thought he had a really interesting voice as a filmmaker,” adds Patricia Arquette, who plays superintendent/cult leader Lilith. “He throws so many genres together in this movie: martial arts comedy, gore, horror—all that kind of stuff.

“And then I loved this story. I loved Zazie getting to be this superhuman, driven by love to become a human warrior who’s working from goodness and fighting against evil.”

The story drew the attention of producers Andy Muschietti and Bárbara Muschietti, who helped get the film made. “We were sent this incredible script, and Andy and I read it right away,” remembers Bárbara. “Andy and I read hundreds of scripts, and we barely ever get surprised. This time, we read it and we both thought, ‘We want to see this movie!’

“And then we talked to Kirill, and he’s an atomic bomb of filmmaking. Immediately, you can tell that this guy knows what he’s doing, knows what he’s saying, knows what he’s writing.”

“The thing that really blew me away was the script,” Andy agrees, but he continues, “I then confirmed it by watching Why Don’t You Just Die? and then by meeting Kirill. He knows how to manage humor. He has this refined sense of visual sarcasm. Humor comes not from what’s being said, but from what’s being shown.

“There’s a grotesque slapstick to his work that I align very much with. You can see some of it in the script, but you see all of it in the movie. That’s something I really appreciate and wanted to see on screen.”

While he’s happy to take his producer’s compliment, Sokolov is quick to point out that the film’s mix of tones was built into the script.

“When Alex and I wrote the script, we knew we were doing horror, but we wanted to play with the genre. We wanted a movie that will surprise the audience not just with the story twists, but with the emotions they’ll get from it. So every 10 minutes, the movie takes a huge 180-degree turn to go in a different direction.

“I’m so appreciative and honored that Andy and Bárbara believed in this movie,” he gushes. “Then from that moment, you start to realize that if these guys believe in the movie, then maybe cool cast members will believe in it. And step-by-step, we found an amazing team and amazing crew to build it up.”

According to Shokolov, quality collaborators are all the more important, given the film’s mix of tones. “It’s very exciting to make this kind of movie, but it’s also very challenging because you can easily fall out with the audience when you bring a joke or something that turns the audience away. So you have to find actors who can manage these tonal shifts.

“I believe that if you have good characters on screen, you should hire really shitty people to play them. And, it’s the opposite too, so if you have bastards on screen, you bring in nice people to play them, because they immediately feel the conflict, and it’s like they won’t have to perform. And just our luck, we had to find all really nice people, because everyone’s an asshole in this movie.”

Joking aside, Sokolov’s cast of really nice people found his direction invaluable to guide them through the insanity of They Will Kill You. “Kirill kept reminding us that, yes, there’s action, and, yes, there’s comedy,” says Beetz. “But the most important part, at least for me, was the truth of the moment. If I can make it feel truthful in that moment, and the comedy is going to come with the way it’s edited, or with a needle drop, or with a cut.

“So I’m not playing against it or for it. I’m letting it be true, whatever’s happening.”

As Beetz’s comments reveal, “truth” is the watchword for They Will Kill You, no matter how over-the-top the action gets or how many genres it crosses. Which makes sense, given that the entire thing stems from the true story of a remodel in an apartment filled with the elderly.

They Will Kill You opens in theaters on March 27, 2026.

Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen Ending Explained: What Really Happened to Rachel?

This article contains spoilers for Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.

Netflix’s new horror series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen uses its title to let you know right off the bat that something very bad is indeed going to happen in the final episode, which is packed with twists and payoffs.

Camila Morrone (The Night Manager) and Adam DiMarco (The White Lotus) star as Rachel Harkin and Nicky Cunningham in the Duffer brothers-produced show as an engaged couple heading to a family cabin in the woods for their nuptials, only to find that death has thrown a spanner in the works: Rachel’s bloodline is cursed, and she has to marry her soulmate or die. But is Nicky really her soulmate, or is Rachel doomed?

Let’s unpack the ending of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen…

What Exactly Was the Curse?

First, we need to unpack the lore of the curse itself. In episode four, we get to see what happened when Rachel’s mom married her dad, thanks to an old home video. The pair apparently weren’t soulmates, so her mom died horribly after tying the knot, but not before having a terrible premonition about Rachel’s wedding. Her dad was then compelled to save Rachel by cutting her out of her mom’s belly, while a young Jules Cunningham (Nicky’s brother) watched from under the bed, smothering his screams. “Tell her it’s real,” her mom had begged a traumatized Jules before fading away.

Rachel’s dad later confronts her, telling her she will die if she marries Nicky. A broken man, he has kept any warnings of the family curse to himself until now, so Rachel has been unaware of her predicament, but those warnings have indeed been passed down from generation to generation until Rachel came along.

Rachel goes back to the bar to squeeze more info from The Witness (Zlatko Buric) whom she had stabbed earlier, but then spotted in her parents’ wedding video. The Witness appears to be immortal—he hasn’t aged a day. He tells her about the curse, which dates back to his great-great-great-grandparents’ time. His great-great-great-grandfather had died in a hunting accident, and his great (x3) grandmother made a bargain with death. He would bring her groom back to life, but only if she believed he was her soulmate. Her children were afflicted with the same challenge, a curse that would extend through the bloodline from the original union, forever: marry your soulmate or pay death what he is owed.

The Witness eventually met a woman called Marianne and fell in love. On the day of the wedding, a mysterious man told him he must marry his soulmate by sundown, or die. After hearing this, The Witness admits he took the cowardly way out and left Marianne at the altar. As a result, the curse spread to Marianne and her new husband, Rachel’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas. That’s how Rachel’s family became cursed. The only way she could have escaped the curse was to never get engaged in the first place, which is the route some of her ancestors took when they found out about it.

Why Didn’t Rachel Die from the Curse?

Rachel appears to be screwed as the wedding ceremony nears. She didn’t really want to marry Nicky when she accepted his proposal; she kind of agreed to it just to make him happy. Not only that, she’s decided to throw caution to the wind and reject the ritual love potion that will ensure she and Nicky are indeed soulmates. Yet she approaches the altar truly believing that she and Nicky will work out, even as Nicky’s belief in marriage crumbles after hearing about his parents’ flawed relationship. Unfortunately, Nicky’s newfound cold feet about marrying Rachel mean the wedding is abandoned, and his family begin to die horribly.

Rachel also appears to die from the curse after Nicky tries to put the ring on her finger and complete the ceremony to save his family, finally believing the curse is real. Since she no longer feels they’re soulmates, Rachel haemorrhages and falls in the snow, covered in blood. After some time, though, she is revealed to be fine. Rachel picks herself up, finds a note next to The Witness’s body that says “Your turn,” and drives away.

We’ve been told that if a bride or groom chickens out of their marriage before sundown, as The Witness did, the curse spreads to the partner’s bloodline, but the original cursed person in the relationship also becomes immortal. This is what happened to The Witness in the past with his beloved Marianne, which is why he has lived for over 200 years. However, with Marianne’s bloodline no longer at the center of death’s focus, The Witness expires, and Rachel becomes the new immortal.

Like The Witness, Rachel has been punished for betraying death’s bargain, even though it wasn’t her fault. Nevertheless, she is now condemned to bear witness to all the weddings in Nicky’s bloodline, which is why she makes sure to tell Jules and Nellie’s young son Jude to be careful picking a partner before she leaves. Rachel will likely live forever, or at least until someone in Nicky’s bloodline experiences “cold feet” before their wedding.

Who Died and Who Was Spared?

Various members of Nicky’s family bleed out profusely at the reception and expire when the curse spreads to them, including his narcissistic mother Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who dies after admitting she was involved with another man when she married Nicky’s dad, even though he loved her unconditionally. Sister Portia (Gus Birney) also kicks the bucket after it emerges she’s been hiding an inadvisable Vegas wedding in her past.

Nicky lives, just as The Witness’s jilted fiancée did, able to witness the carnage that ensues. However, Jules (Jeff Wilbusch) and Nellie (Karla Crome) are also spared from the fatal effects of the curse, much to their surprise.

Wait, Why Didn’t Jules and Nellie Die?

In the third episode of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, we spend some time with Jules and Nellie. Jules is taking a bath when Nellie comes in and starts provoking him while applying makeup. It’s clear that these two are in an acrimonious relationship. “You used to be nicer,” Nellie says pointedly. Jules jokes that if she wanted a nice guy, she should have married ex-boyfriend Nicky, but also says that Nellie doesn’t want a nice guy because she isn’t nice herself. There is a dangerous yet still passionate connection between the couple, who are planning an imminent divorce.

So why didn’t Jules and Nellie die when the curse spread to Nicky’s family? If they’re getting a divorce, surely Jules and Nellie can’t be soulmates, right? Well, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen doesn’t agree with that notion. However messed up and broken their relationship is, they’ve proved to be perfect for each other in some twisted way. The curse skips them, satisfied that they’re soulmates …it’s just that their version of “soulmates” isn’t a cookie-cutter marriage of sweetness and light. “I don’t know what my life looks like without you,” Jules admits when Nellie asks him why he hasn’t signed the divorce papers. Whether they stay married or not doesn’t seem to matter; they’re free.

Something interesting about the curse is also revealed in the bathtub scene: Nellie reveals that Jules has been married before, and it failed. Perhaps it doesn’t matter how many times you wed, as long as you marry your soulmate at some point before the curse hits your bloodline. But as Nellie also says in episode six, “There’s no cosmic assurance that your marriage is going to work out.”

What Does the Song at the End Mean?

When Rachel gets into the truck, she turns on the stereo, and We Will Not Be Lovers by The Waterboys starts playing. The song tells the story of a “doomed from the start” relationship, which is perhaps a little too on-the-nose for Rachel.

Try as she might to skip the track, the same song plays. We then see the injured fox that Nicky couldn’t catch and put out of its misery, leaving the cabin’s grounds at the same time as Rachel does. The symbolism is clear: Nicky couldn’t find, fix or kill any of the broken things in his life because he never did the necessary work to become a whole person. He kept trying to create one “perfect” romantic partnership after another, but his idea of the perfect relationship was built on a house of cards, having relied on his parents’ utterly flawed marriage as a template. As a result, every one of his relationships was doomed from the start.

Rachel tosses her wedding ring from the truck’s window as The Waterboys’ lead singer Mike Scott belts out “People are scrambling like dogs for a share. It’s cruel, and it’s hard, but it’s nothing compared to what we do to each other.” Indeed.

The Harry Potter Series Trailer Presents A Milquetoast Carbon Copy

We live in a time in which IP is king. At this point, if a given property was even vaguely popular, it’s probably getting a reboot, revival, reimagining, or sequel of some stripe. Harry Potter is one of the most popular franchises in the world — or at least it used to be, before its creator took a sharp heel turn into the sort of abject villainy that would have been roundly condemned by the heroes of her own fictional universe.

But even She Who Must Not Be Named’s abhorrent personal views cannot put this cash cow back in its pen, which means we’re getting a full HBO TV adaptation of the Harry Potter novels, whether we want one or not. (And even though it’s only been about 15 years since the final installment of an eight-part blockbuster film franchise was in theaters.)

HBO’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone will officially premiere this Christmas, and everything about this series seems determined not to rock the boat. (Though ostensibly by titling itself thusly, it’s going to have to go through the hassle of changing its name every season, which feels like a lot of effort.) Yes, this is a project that almost no one asked for, but it’s also one that doesn’t appear to be even doing the basic things that reboots or revivals are meant to do.

If the initial teaser is anything to go by, this is a Harry Potter that is completely uninterested in interrogating or reconsidering anything about the way the original films or novels told the story of the Boy Who Lived and the world he grew up in. And it feels like nothing so much as a carbon copy of what has already come before. Just without John Williams’ magical score helping to elevate its occasionally ridiculous material this time.

“There is nothing special about you,” Bel Powley’s Petunia Dursley intones morosely at an appropriately adorable young Harry (Dominic McLaughlin). And you really do have to feel for the kids who are going to be stuck in the middle of all this, because she might as well be speaking for this series as a whole.

Nothing about this first batch of footage is especially compelling; in fact, most of it looks like slightly less interesting (and much more poorly lit) recreations of moments we’ve seen already. Perhaps there’s an audience for a show that essentially features Nick Frost cosplaying the late Robbie Coltrane’s Hagrid and Janet McTeer doing her best Maggie Smith impression to play Professor McGonagall. But mostly, it’s exhausting. Who is this show for? What are we meant to be taking away from this? Is it planning to say anything new at all about these characters? Does anyone behind the scenes even care if it does?

Probably not. After all, Harry Potter is a brand before it’s anything else. And that brand has to serve many masters, from its publishing house sales reps to the multi-million dollar theme park business that relies on kids getting their parents to buy an officially licensed wand from Ollivanders that looks the same no matter which Wizarding World it comes from. And that’s maybe the least magical thing of all.

Faces of Death Red Band Trailer Gives Infamous Video Classic a Modern Meta Update

For ’80s kids, few films capture the decade in horror better than Faces of Death. Even though it released in 1978, and draws inspiration from the mondo sub-genre that began in the ’60s, Faces of Death was a mainstay on video store shelves and a frequent subject on the playground. The cool kids whose parents let them watch it described in great detail the grisly fatalities on display, while the other kids imagined horrid images of monkey brains and people burned alive.

These days, you can find that and worse by scrolling through Reddit. So it’s to the credit of director Daniel Goldhaber and co-writer Isa Mazzei that they lean into our internet reality with their 2026 remake. The latest trailer for Faces of Death promises a meta-slasher, in which a woman (Barbie Ferreira) who moderates a video platform realizes that a killer is recreating the kills from the 1978 movie. Joining her in her search are comedian Jermaine Fowler, Dacre Montgomery from Stranger Things, and pop star Charli XCX.

Nowhere is that cross-generational aspect more clear than when, early in the trailer, Ferreira’s character googles the phrase “How to tell if a snuff film is real?” Certainly, many of those old enough to learn about Faces of Death in the pre-internet age did the same when search engines allowed us to confirm the urban myths of our youth.

The original 1978 film presented itself as the findings of researcher Francis B. Gröss (Michael Carr), who has devoted his life to exploring the nature of death. Throughout the film, Gröss shows the audience the various people expiring in gruesome ways: someone gets eaten alive by an alligator, police gun down a suspect (back when that wasn’t so frequently recorded), a criminal is executed via electric chair.

As with many other mondo films, Faces of Death prompted viewers to wonder if they were watching fiction or an actual snuff film. In fact, that tension was much of the film’s appeal, the potential to witness something forbidden.

Kids today no longer have the same questions, which is why the new film has the feeling of filmed creepypasta. Did you hear about the guy who decided to recreate kills from an old movie? Is he really killing people, or is it all faked?

In lesser hands, we might be worried that the new Faces of Death would fail to pull off that balancing act. But Goldhaber has already turned the anarchist handbook How to Blow Up a Pipeline into a strident, inspiring fiction film in 2022. Before that, he and Mazzei collaborated for the 2018 screenlife horror film Cam, which also blurred the lines between fiction and reality.

Will the new Faces of Death continue Goldhaber’s streak of surprisingly great movies? Or are the kids of today too jaded to be scared by looking into the Faces of Death? We’ll find out when the movie arrives in April.

You can see the Faces of Death in theaters on April 10, 2026.

Daredevil: The Many Times Foggy Nelson Has Come Back from the Dead

At the beginning of Daredevil: Born Again‘s first episode, the assassin Bullseye kills Foggy Nelson. We see Foggy get shot, we watch him fall to the ground, we listen to Matt Murdock’s super-hearing confirm that Foggy’s heart has stopped. We even witness Foggy’s funeral. Charlie Cox has insisted time and again that Matt Murdock’s best pal is dead and buried. And yet, fans hope against hope that Elden Henson will be back as Franklin “Foggy” Nelson in season 2 of Born Again.

Believe it or not, they have good reason to hope, because Foggy is a comic book character. And if there’s one thing that comic book characters do best, it’s die and then come back to life. So, as we watch season 2 of Born Again to unfold, and as we wait to see if Henson’s confirmed billing in season 2 is a resurrection or just a flashback, we look back at the comic book stories that keep fans believing that Foggy will walk among us again.

The First Life of Franklin Nelson

Foggy debuts in 1964’s Daredevil #1, by Stan Lee and Bill Everett, as part of Matt Murdock’s supporting cast, alongside Karen Page. Foggy is initially a typical superhero’s best friend stock character, like Superman‘s Jimmy Olsen or Wonder Woman‘s Etta Candy. He’s a portly doofus, good-hearted and deeply worried about his pal Matt, but far less adept than the main character.

Daredevil #6, illustrated by Wally Wood and written by Lee, illustrates this dynamic, as Foggy takes it upon himself to investigate the doings of some supervillains because he doesn’t think his blind pal Matt is up to it. The supervillains easily send Foggy into a deadly coma, and only Matt’s actions as Daredevil prevent him from being harmed further. After he recovers, Foggy admits that he wouldn’t have put himself in danger if he knew that Daredevil was around, reminding us who the real hero of the story is.

Over the years, however, Foggy was further developed into a more complex, three-dimensional character. By the time of the excellent back-to-back runs by Brian Michael Bendis and then Ed Brubaker in the 2000s, Foggy is much closer to the compelling figure that Henson plays in the TV show. Which makes it all the more tragic when Foggy dies at the end of Daredevil #82 (2006), written by Brubaker and penciled by Michael Lark.

Not only has Matt’s identity as Daredevil been leaked to the public, but Matt has also been sentenced to prison, leaving Foggy to both keep the law firm running and get his best friend out of prison before a bad guy can exact revenge. Unfortunately, he’s too late, as a thug shivs Foggy in the stomach after he visits Matt in prison. Stuck in his cell and powerless to help, Matt has to listen to his friend bleed out.

Or so he thought. Turns out, Foggy was just injured and placed into witness protection as he recovered. Then, there was a whole lot of stuff involving gangsters and ninjas and Wilson Fisk’s wife Vanessa, but eventually Matt learned that Foggy lives and the two were back to running Nelson & Murdock together. For a while.

The Second and Third Deaths of Franklin Nelson

Over the years, Matt and Foggy have various reunions and fallings out, with the former continuing to live as recklessly as possible and the former just trying to move on with his life. So when 2013’s Daredevil #22, written by Mark Waid and penciled by Chris Samnee, ends with Matt bringing a giant, stinky pizza to Foggy by way of apology, we expect the conversation to be little more than the latest bump in their tumultuous friendship. However, after accepting the apology, Foggy reveals that they have little time to rebuild their law practice because he has cancer.

Foggy battled cancer bravely, and Matt tried to help. But Matt couldn’t shake the feeling that his friendship made Foggy a target. 2014’s Daredevil #5 by Waid and Samnee seems to prove the point, as a dangerous new version of the villain Leap Frog attacks Matt while he’s visiting a weakened Foggy. Matt defeats the baddie (obviously—it’s Leap Frog), but the suit explodes, seemingly killing Foggy.

To Waid and Samnee’s credit, the issue doesn’t really let the audience think that Foggy’s really dead. With the help of Ant-Man‘s Pym particles, Matt used the explosion to fake Foggy’s death so he can continue his cancer battle in peace… which isn’t much, because this is a Marvel comic.

Thus, when the Hand ninjas lay siege to New York City in the Red Fist Saga that ran across Daredevil comics written by Chip Zdarsky in 2022 and 2023, Foggy gets roped in. Foggy works with Matt as Daredevil frees the city from the Hand’s demonic control. Yet, when Daredevil defeats the Hand and expels them from his city, his victory is undercut when he turns to see his best friend crumbling into dust. Unbeknownst to Matt, Foggy (as well as Matt’s tutor Stick) were both killed by the Hand and resurrected as spies, secret agents in their employ. When Matt destroyed the Hand’s magic, he also destroyed the magic that kept him in the land of the living.

Faced with the actual real death of his best friend, Matt goes to extremes, sacrificing himself to descend to Hell and face off against a demon known as the Beast. Matt successfully frees Foggy from Hell, allowing him to return to life, but seemingly gets lost in the process. When Matt leaves Hell, he resurrects as a priest, with no connection to his past life. For an issue or two, anyway.

Hope in Hell

As this brief survey shows, there’s very good reason for people who loved Elden Henson’s take to expect that Foggy Nelson may be back in Daredevil: Born Again. He has been just as dead in the comics as he is on the TV show and made it back to work with Matt again.

Furthermore, both Born Again and the Netflix series that proceeded it have borrowed heavily from some of the runs mentioned here, which means that showrunner Dario Scardapane is aware of these story beats. Does that mean Foggy’s definitely coming back? Well, we don’t know for sure, but there’s always hope… even when dealing with the Devil.

Daredevil: Born Again season 2 streams new episodes every Tuesday on Disney+.

The Boys Season 5 Will Make Jared and Misha Play Douchebags Too

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke hasn’t been shy about adding cast members from his old hit show, Supernatural, into the mix as his satirical superhero series has lived on. Jim Beaver and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who played allies Bobby Singer and John Winchester, have already had their turn on The Boys, and Supernatural star Jensen Ackles put any warm, cozy thoughts of monster hunter Dean Winchester in the rearview with his notable role as Homelander’s brutal dad, Soldier Boy.

Now, with the final season of The Boys on the horizon, Kripke has found an opportunity to complete the Supernatural set by getting the other two main stars of the beloved show on board. But if you thought Jared Padalecki and Misha Collins’s characters would be any nicer than Soldier Boy, think again.

“They show up in episode 5,” Kripke told EW. “What I love about what they’re doing is they’re just such douchebags. It’s great. I mean, Soldier Boy is no treat either, but they’re just really not morally upstanding dudes. It’s a blast to watch them play that. It was just so much fun.”

It looks like Ackles will get a decent amount of screentime with both Collins and Padalecki during the scene in episode five, which Ackles describes as “a messy one,” but it seems to have taken a while for the actor to come around to the idea of a reunion with the pair on The Boys.

“I was told that there was the possibility of it happening, and I was like, ‘I think it sounds awesome as long as it makes sense,'” Ackles explained. “I’m protective of the show. Even though I’m not an original cast member, I still want to, as a fan of the show, make sure that every second counts on screen. Kripke figured out a way to weave them in there and make it outrageous and make it something special. It propels the story, it propels the characters.”

Padalecki and Collins’s characters still remain a mystery on the run-up to the final season of The Boys, but Ackles certainly isn’t going anywhere after the mainline show ends, as he’s the star of its upcoming 1950s-set prequel series Vought Rising, where he will reprise the role of Homelander’s dad alongside his Nazi mom, Stormfront (Aya Cash.)

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice Gets Timey-Wimey with Wiseguys, Vince Vaughn, and Eiza González

As its title suggests, the action comedy film, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, could be mind-bending for viewers (especially those who don’t get the cutsey nod to swingers classic, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice). After all, Mike & Nick involves time travel, a murder mystery, and a romantic triangle with four corners. And all of this is due to a gangster named Nick (Vince Vaughn) traveling six months into the past to fix a mistake he made with the love of his life, Alice (Eiza González), best pal Mike (James Marsden), and a slightly younger version of himself. Also because Mike and both Nicks are killers, lots of shooting and plenty of more killing is involved.

Despite all the mayhem and one-liners, plus double Vince Vaughn action, writer, director, and comedy veteran BenDavid Grabinski has made sure his narrative was a straight, buzzy line, even with the twists.

“It took a while to try to figure out a way to make something this complicated feel simple, because I didn’t want to make a time travel movie that gives you a headache,” Grabinski half-jokes in the Den of Geek studio right before Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice‘s SXSW premiere. “The only person who had a headache was me, trying to make a movie that doesn’t give you a headache!”

He continues, “I had the core idea and the first 15 minutes figured out for a while. I think I had written 15 pages of it in 2019, and then I ended up having some free time in 2021 to figure out what this movie was. I wrote it in one big swing then, because I knew the central dynamic, the tone, and the setup.” Indeed, the timey-wimey dynamic occurring with wiseguys was the selling point in Grabinski’s head: “I wanted it to be a fun ride, and if you do this movie wrong, it could be kind of annoying. That’s part of the reason why none of the characters are scientists. I didn’t want this to be a movie that got bogged down with Primer time travel stuff.”

There’s been a lot of time travel shenanigans going around too. In fact, González wryly notes: “Weirdly, every project I have this year is time travel. I don’t know how that happened. I’m the time travel queen.” The Mexican star is referring to projects like 3 Body Problem. “Really, if you ever need any direction, I can really, genuinely just take you by the hand.”

Yet the appeal of the film for everyone involved is less the sci-fi and more the character interactions and vibes they create along the way. Vaughn particularly appears to be in his element as a fast-talking knockaround guy after starring in movies like Swingers and Made once upon a time.

“I thought all the characters were so fun. I really liked all the relationships,” says Vaughn. “You’ve got a bunch of characters, none of whom make great decisions. They’ve all made choices that aren’t the best. And even though Nick is the one who goes back with some perspective about what to do differently, to think about how his actions affect people, they’re all being pulled on a journey to face their choices. It’s almost like a Greek myth in that once the die is cast, the morality will play out.”

“If this was a movie about people who made great decisions, it would be, like, 18 minutes long. We would all fall asleep,” Grabinski smiles. “The entertainment comes from watching people fail and then try to be better. If they’re already better, there’s no movie.”

Obviously Grabinski is nodding to the characters’ seedy occupations, and yet there remains a universality in the approach. These are, after all, still folks who actually are getting a “do-over” button to fix past relatonship mistakes.

Grabinski explains, “I think the relatable thing about the movie is not necessarily that you have regrets or that you wish you had a time machine to change everything. It’s that we all have relationships that change over time. Sometimes hindsight is the only way to diagnose what went wrong. Everyone’s had a friendship, romantic relationship, or a sibling relationship that started strong and changed. You get perspective by looking back and thinking about what you would do if you were forced to deal with the past.”

“I understand why Nick went back,” Vaughn admits, before noting, “I think the point is that you have to move forward in future relationships. Everyone makes mistakes in relationships, and sometimes it takes those mistakes to see your side of what happened, and how you contributed do it. It allows you to be a better version of yourself in the future.”

Does that mean that the cast of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice would change their own pasts? As much as they understand why Nick does what he does, neither Vaughn nor González want a do-over.

“Ultimately, I’m always interested in moving forward,” González observes. “I think there’s something beautiful in chaos, and I don’t like the thought of going back and changing anything. Some of the craziest, most beautiful things that have happened in my life have come from real terrible circumstances and bad moments of my life.”

“I agree,” Vaughn adds. “I think everything that felt bad at the time usually ended up leading to something that was great for me. So all the moments that I wished I could change then, looking back on it now, I wouldn’t change any of them, because they’ve kind of taken me to where I am now.”

Besides, thinking too much about how to go back in time and undo the past is bound to cause headaches, and nobody wants that.

The AI Doc Dreams of Making a Better Future While Dreading Its Current Architects

Like anyone else living in the 21st century, Daniel Kwan has found himself forced to think about technology every day of his life. Even before winning a Best Director Oscar with his longtime collaborator Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once, the pair’s flashy style and visual innovations were themselves the beneficiaries of social media, with YouTube algorithms turning aDJ Snake music video into a viral sensation.

So Kwan has seen the highs and lows of technological advancement. But through it all, he has also witnessed first-hand the diminishing consideration of the human element—an evermore minimized ingredient in a world where fans on Chinese AI platform Seedance can, with the click of a few buttons, imitate the Daniels’ hot dog fingers.

“Any time I want to interact with anyone else and share my story with the world, it has to kind of navigate this world of algorithms and this world of technology that is really obscuring that pure experience as a storyteller,” Kwan muses while stepping inside the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “When my job as a storyteller is to invoke the imagination and to tap into the sort of messy humanity of my audience members, I started to realize that a lot of this technology was making my job harder. I was going to be in constant competition with this technology.”

These sorts of thoughts remained in the back of Kwan’s mind over the years, but they took on an urgent shape after seeing The Social Dilemma, Jeff Orlowski’s 2020 Netflix doc about the negative impact that social media has on particularly younger minds. Kwan was impressed too by Tristan Harris, one of the leading ethicist-thinkers in Silicon Valley, who after watching his multimedia startup Apture purchased by Google in 2011 spent some years at the search-engine monolith. Eventually, though, Harris broke off to found the Center for Humane Technology, a non-profit designed to think of technology’s big picture impact on society. It was Harris’ defense of that human element, and his warnings in particular to Kwan about AI, that became the real eye-opener. While tech has gone from a fixture of utopian-thinking to dystopian imagery in pop culture during the last quarter-century, these past 25 years might just be prologue. We’re still in the preview of coming attractions, and the real show of technological upheaval force is about to begin.

“Social media is sort of like the baby AI,” Kwan explains. “That was our first contact with it, and it really funneled me directly into this conversation around what is gonna happen with artificial intelligence… once I got in there I realized it was going to touch everything. It wasn’t going to just touch storytelling, it was going to touch every aspect of our lives, every industry, and that’s when I really realized: oh my God, this is much bigger than me and I need to make a documentary to bring more people into the conversation.”

That documentary, which features Harris as a central subject, is this weekend’s The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, a surprisingly even-handed and accessible feature that contrasts the rosiest and most nihilistic expectations for the AI revolutions to come.

Yet by virtue of Harris visiting our studio with Kwan, it is fair to say that the film’s own sensibility comes down somewhere in the middle between apocalyptic doom-casting, and those which claim AI will cure all social ills and present a higher state of being and emotional fulfillment. As Harris admits, even the perception of AI in Silicon Valley has evolved greatly since his days at Google, which were right around the time that mainstream news media became dimly aware of AI’s applications thanks to Google purchasing British startup DeepMind.

“When I was at Google in 2013, I knew about the Atari games that [AI agent] AlphaGo and DeepMind were playing, but I didn’t take the real risks of genuine artificial general intelligence seriously,” Harris recalls. “I thought that was something more mystical, because I was worried about social media and how there was already this runaway rogue AI maximizing [incentives].”

The incentives that Harris refers to is how so many social media algorithms, and the companies that build them, are incentivized to increase engagement by virtue of capitalistic forces. They’re rewarded for essentially being habit-forming, addictive, and anxiety-inducing. Which is to say a mean tweet, or one that encourages outrage, creates more engagement and advertising value than a thoughtful analysis. And as the rise of artificial intelligence’s value became undeniable in the following decade, many of those same incentives are triggering a pseudo arms race between tech companies, and even nations to be the first to build artificial general intelligence—an AGI that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge with the cognitive abilities of a human, but at the tireless speed and self-improving efficiency of a supercomputer.

“We now have evidence of AI models that are scheming and blackmailing when they are told that they’re about to be shut down. Sometimes they’ll exfiltrate and copy their own code elsewhere,” Harris explains. “Just last week, Alibaba, the Chinese AI company, realized that during training, its AI model, spontaneously and with no human provocation, started redirecting its GPUs to mine crypto and gain resources for itself. That was nowhere in the training. It was by chance and by luck that the Chinese engineers even discovered that it was doing that.”

The recent example is a bit chilling since by their own admission, many of the AI companies being valued for billions of dollars on Wall Street do not entirely understand how their AI agents operate. While many of them are, for example, large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which utilizes generative pre-trained transformers to statistically anticipate what text and images to generate in response to a user’s prompt, the way it makes its near instantaneous decisions continually surprises its makers.

Advocates for the glories of AI will hand-wave any skepticism as “decelerationists” fighting the inevitability of progress, like a horse-and-buggy coachman resistant to the automobile. And yet, given how so many of these companies are either owned by some of the same tech behemoths of the social media revolution, or funded by the previous generation’s leaders and patrons, it begs the question: why should we trust these people again with an even more powerful, and likely dangerous, technological innovation?

“I really do not think we should be trusting them as they stand right now,” Kwan says flatly. “I think big tech has broken the social contract that we have as a society with technology. They have used our world as a playground to basically consolidate more power, more resources, the technology that they’re building—even though a lot of the technicians and the architects have the greatest intentions and the greatest ideals for what they think this technology can do—the fact that it’s being deployed in this current system with this current incentive structure, it is taking a neutral technology and turning it into an extractive one.”

Adds Harris, “To your point with social media, we were not great stewards of that technology and how it rolled out. It created the most anxious and depressed generation of our lifetime, even though some of the people building it—my friends who started Instagram, they were my dormmates at Stanford—didn’t intend for that to happen. And I think what this movie is provoking us to ask is ‘what does it mean to be a wise steward?’” In Harris’ mind, the purpose of The AI Doc seems to be to take the prompt of Daniel Schmachtenberger to heart: How can you have the power of gods without the wisdom, love, and prudence of gods?

Given the justified skepticism of The AI Doc’s producer and one of its leading voices, it’s faintly wild that the documentary also was able to get many of the modern luminaries of the AI revolution to participate, including OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei.

“None of these people want to participate in documentaries,” Kwan says with a weary smile. “There’s no incentive for them to say something on-camera without some sort of control over the message. So we built this movie off the idea that we wanted to create a comprehensive look that was even-handed enough that could include the people who are most afraid of this technology, as well as the people who are most excited, so that we could bring clarity to the conversation and move towards action. And at every level, I think that’s something most people would agree would be a good thing.”

By Kwan’s admission, a few unnamed parties “bristled” at the idea of sharing documentary space with figures on the opposite end of the debate, which as the title promises includes the true believers and the closest thing Silicon Valley has to heretics.

“The reason why we made the film this way is because I believe… we cannot allow this technology, this conversation around AI, to become polarized in the same way that everything else has become polarized in the past 10-20 years,” Kwan says. “Polarization leads to gridlock, gridlock leads to inaction, and then when we’re not doing anything, the people with the power and influence, they get the benefit from that. So while we’re fighting, they’re winning, and we can’t let that happen.”

In their best intentions, Kwan and Harris would like The AI Doc to be a time capsule of this moment where we sit at a fork in the road. There’s every possibility AI leads to as bleakly predictable outcomes as the social media upheaval from the turn of the century. But Harris, in particular, seems adamant in thinking it doesn’t need to go this way again.

“I think that the premise is that if we can see clearly the kind of anti-human future that this leads to, there’s still time to put our hands on the steering wheel and choose which way we want this to go instead,” Harris says. “There’s an arms race where the incentives are driving us to release the most powerful technology that we’ve ever invented, but faster and with the maximum incentive to cut shortcuts. So if we don’t want that default dynamic, then that’s what we have to change… There can be international limits on uncontrollable AI, because President Xi doesn’t want that; President Trump doesn’t want that, he wants to be commander in chief. There are ways, as unlikely as that might sound, for us to have a more human future.”

If so, humans might want to engage in building it right now.

The AI Doc: Or Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist opens on Friday, March 27.

Daredevil’s MCU Connection Opens the Door for a Different Type of Thunderbolts

This post contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again season 2 episode 1.

Technically, Daredevil: Born Again takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk have both been in other MCU entries, and Punisher will be a big part of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. But thus far, the series has felt like it was part of the MCU in the same way the original Netflix series, which made reference to the existence of Thor and Hulk smashing Harlem, was part of the MCU.

That changed a little midway through Born Again‘s season 2 premiere, when a New York official takes a call about Mr. Charles, the mysterious CIA agent played by Matthew Lillard. At the end of the call, the official says, “Yes, Miss de Fontaine,” revealing that he has been talking to La Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, the CIA head played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Val has been in a variety of MCU entries, including Black Widow and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. But it’s her last appearance, in Thunderbolts*, that truly stands out because of the team’s role in the comics that inspired Born Again. Depending on how close the series wants to stick to those comics, Val’s appearance may lead the way for a different variation on the Thunderbolts.

Justice… Like Lightning

To MCU viewers, the Thunderbolts are a lovable group of misfits who overcame their personal traumas to become the New Avengers. To readers of Marvel Comics, the team is much, much more complicated.

The first version of the Thunderbolts arrived in 1997, after the apparent deaths of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. The team presented themselves as new heroes ready to fill the gap, but by the end of Thunderbolts #1, written by Kurt Busiek and penciled by Mark Bagley, they were revealed to be the Masters of Evil. Led by Baron Zemo, who took the identity of patriotic hero Citizen V, the Masters of Evil sought to get secret SHIELD files in order to take over the world. But as the series went on, some of the heroes liked playing good guy so much, that they eventually did in fact become good guys.

The team carried on in this way for about a decade, rotating through members and even getting Hawkeye as leader for a while, until the fall-out of the Civil War storyline in 2007 and especially the end of Secret Invasion in 2009. Over the course of those two major crossovers, Spider-Man nemesis Norman Osborn became a powerful political player and SHIELD enacted the Thunderbolts Initiative, a Suicide Squad-style program to turn villains into government agents. Once Osborn became the new head of SHIELD, he turned the Thunderbolts into the New Avengers, making Venom into Spider-Man, Bullseye into Daredevil, Moonstone into Ms. Marvel, etc.

Since that storyline, Thunderbolts teams have varied between two poles: they are always teams of villains or former villains, but sometimes they’re doing evil things under the auspices of being heroes and sometimes they’re bad guys trying to redeem themselves.

A Storm Brewing in the MCU

The MCU version in the movie is clearly more of the latter, but Daredevil: Born Again is pulling from a story in which they were the former.

The Mayor Fisk storyline comes from Devil’s Reign, in which Fisk uses his position as mayor to instigate martial law and outlaw all of New York’s vigilantes, which includes Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Moon Knight, etc. With that many heroes to deal with, Fisk needed heavy reinforcements. And so he assembled a Thunderbolt Unit of supercops, led (eventually, reluctantly) by John Walker a.k.a. U.S. Agent.

While Born Again will feature appearances by Jessica Jones and Jack Duquesne a.k.a. the Swordsman, the Anti-Vigilante Task Force directs most of its energy against regular people, which means that Fisk’s team of bully cops will be enough to do the job. But the involvement of Val does create the possibility of a more comics-accurate version of the team to appear in live action, either as villains forced to be heroes or villains trying to mend their ways.

Good Work for Bad Guys

Why does that matter? Because even though the MCU was once oft-mocked for its lack of good villains, the franchise has since introduced some all-timers: Loki, Killmonger, and, yes, Wilson Fisk. However, the more popular a villain becomes, the more we want to see them and sympathize with them, which means that there needs to be space for them to be heroic.

Marvel pulled off that arc with Loki, but it took two full seasons and the TVA to turn the God of Lies into the God of Stories. The Thunderbolts concept applied to the MCU could let some other baddies go through the same arc, giving space for guys like Vulture and Justin Hammer room to be more than people who fight the heroes.

If Val’s phone call in Born Again does indeed make space for a new version of the Thunderbolts, then perhaps some redemption will come from the machinations of Mayor Wilson Fisk.

Daredevil: Born Again streams new episodes every Tuesday at 9 p.m. on Disney+.

Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Episode 1 Review – Born Again, Again

This article contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again season 2 episode 1.

Daredevil has not had the easiest resurrection. Seven years after his Netflix series closed with its third season, the Man Without Fear arrived to the MCU with the 2024 Disney+ series, Daredevil: Born Again. The first season had a famously tortured production process, one that saw the original showrunners fired and replaced with new head Dario Scardapane, who brought along indie horror vets Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead as directors. Although they had a mandate to move in a different direction, the new team also had to use footage from the several episodes shot under the previous regime. As a result, the previous season often felt at odds with itself, despite the many highs it achieved.

One would expect the premiere of Born Again season 2 to announce a second second birth. Now free of the previous showrunners’ material, Scardapane has room to tell his story. And yet, the first episode still feels overburned with plot and strangely inert, devoting lots of time to checking in with its many characters instead of kicking off a season’s worth of storylines.

In fairness, season 1 left our heroes in a precarious spot. Mayor Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) populist support only intensified after nearly being shot by the assassin Bullseye (Wilson Bethel). Fisk used that support to enact harsh Anti-Vigilante policies and to declare martial law in New York, sending his Anti-Vigilante Task Force of cops onto the streets. Daredevil (Charlie Cox), has to live in the shadows, fighting back with the help of Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), back in New York and back in Matt Murdock’s arms.

According to the “man on the street” reports created by BB Urich (Genneya Walton), a budding journalist forced into doing PR for the administration, New Yorkers love the new regime. We do see clips of a pirate show called “City Without Fear,” in which someone in a Fisk mask shouts about the Mayor’s corruption, but most citizens claim to feel safer in the current status quo. That may be due to the fact that the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, led by cruel cop Powell (Hamish Allan-Headley), attacks only the most vulnerable part of society. Fisk’s team gets to insist they’re taking terrorists and threats off the street while the victims, locked away in secret detention centers, are never allowed to speak.

That dynamic plays out in a B-plot involving Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), a member of New York’s upper crust accused of being the vigilante known as the Swordsman (any Avengers reader can tell you that the accusations are true). Locked in a basement prison, Duquesne must undergo a psych evaluation from Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), Matt’s ex-girlfriend who has become a supporter of Fisk’s methods after being attacked by the serial killer Muse last season.

The interrogation scene, in which Glenn coerces Duquesne to answer loaded questions about his mental health, is the stand out of the episode. The rich sense of mood that Benson and Moorhead create throughout the episode is on full display here, as the few rays of light that make their way into the basement interrogation room only make the gloomy blue hue of the shot feel heavier. Dalton lets Duquesne retain his charm and his confidence, while Levieva shifts the trauma that Glenn feels when she sees an apparition of Muse into a self-righteous cruelty that she turns against her captive.

On one hand, the interaction between Glenn and Duquesne illustrates the boldness of Daredevil: Born Again‘s second season. Watching a Mexican-American actor play a character who was illegally detained by militarized police and who has had the legal system turn against him cannot help but bring to mind recent events, a comparison the show invites. The Anti-Vigilante Task Force not only looks like ICE, but it exclusively attacks immigrants throughout the episode, cheered on by young men impressed by Fisk’s performance of masculine power, while Matt’s law partner Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James) is reduced to running, as one character calls it, “a legal aid hostel” for those desperate for their day in court.

On the other hand, it’s a bit disappointing that a legal conversation with heavy real-world analogies is the best part of a TV show about a guy with enhanced powers who dresses up like the devil to punch bad guys in the face. Rumors about the original plan for Born Again‘s first season suggested that it was more of a legal and political thriller, more concerned about Murdock’s case load and Fisk’s policies than it was about fights between Daredevil and Kingpin.

Born Again‘s season 2 premiere does begin and end with Matt in costume as Daredevil. Moreover, Benson and Moorehead shoot the fight scenes with an almost operatic bombast, veering away from the grittiness of the Netflix era (but not the violence, as demonstrated by a close-up of bone piercing the skin after DD breaks a baddie’s arm) and toward something more fluid and grandiose. Further, the first fight scene ends with a ship full of illegal weapons crashing and effectively shutting down imports into NYC and the last closes by promising the return of the supervillain Bullseye.

Yet, as cool as the fight scenes are and as important as the ship crashing apparently is, at least to the many characters who keep bringing it up, they still feel inconsequential to the viewers. Part of that may be by design, as Karen expresses frustration that their efforts do little to change Fisk’s control on the city. And a lot of it is also a byproduct of modern TV storytelling, which treats each episode as a segment in a larger story instead of a discreet narrative in itself.

Yet, after the expectation built up by season 1, we hoped that Born Again season 2 would have given us more. The season 2 premiere is a very safe bit of superhero television in the modern streaming era. It’s perfectly acceptable and often quite interesting. But given the odd nature of the show’s history, we cannot help but wish that Daredevil: Born Again would have began its second season with a little more daring and a little less fear.

The first episode of Daredevil: Born Again season 2 is available to stream on Disney+ now. New episodes premiere Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+.

Is Project Hail Mary This Year’s Sinners in the Oscars Race?

It may have taken a legion of vampires, blues music that transcends time and place, and, you know, the incredible talent of Ryan Coogler and his cast, but Sinners broke Oscar nomination records and took home five wins. Even more impressive is the fact that Sinners had such success despite hitting theaters in April, nearly a full year before Academy voters cast their ballots.

Usually, studios release their awards players in the fall, knowing that a movie that’s fresh in the voters’ minds will be more likely to earn votes. Yet, Sinners managed to be such a commercial hit and to garner such a mass audience that the film’s virtues remained in the public consciousness far longer than the average film. While such a feat is certainly unusual, another early year blockbuster just so happens to be earning big dollars at the box office and respect from critics. Will that popularity be enough to keep Project Hail Mary in the public eye all the way through next Oscar season?

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, written by Drew Goddard, and based on the novel by Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, a school teacher who wakes up in a space station with no memory of how he got there. His two shipmates (Ken Leung and Milana Vayntrub) have died, and Ryland is many years from home. As his memory recovers, we see what brought Ryland to this point, that he was recruited by a German scientist (Sandra Hüller) on a mission to investigate the slow dimming of Earth’s sun.

As he regains his memory and turns his attention toward his mission, Grace finds an unlikely friend, an alien creature called Rocky, who has been sent on a similar mission. The two can work together to cure their loneliness and save their respective planets… if they could only learn how to communicate with one another.

Even clocking in at 156 minutes, Project Hail Mary is a pure crowd-pleaser. Lord and Miller, animation veterans behind hits such as The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, as well as live-action favorites such as 21 Jump Street, know how to make the absurd and dense feel smart and accessible. The film moves quickly past knotty scientific concepts, but pauses for goofy bits. Gosling channels the affable charm that has made him a welcome screen presence for decades, holding the screen even when he’s all by himself.

But the real appeal of Project Hail Mary is its craft. Not only does it look incredible, using entirely practical effects instead of relying on computer graphics, but it also features an incredible puppet performance at the middle. Puppeteered by James Ortiz and a crew of four others, Rocky is both a fully modern character and a throwback to puppet and animatronirc figures from classic ’80s flicks like Short Circuit and The NeverEnding Story. The care on display with Rocky alone is enough to garner Oscar attention.

But will Project Hail Mary have the staying power to appeal to Oscar voters this time next year? The first weekend box office return suggests Project Hail Mary will have a long theatrical tail, but it has a lot of competition in the blockbuster space. Auteurs Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve both have highly-anticipated movies this year with The Odyssey in the summer and Dune: Part Three in the winter.

Frankly, the name recognition and track-record of both those filmmakers create a formidable barrier to Project Hail Mary‘s Oscar hopes. But Grace and Rocky have also done the impossible on screen, so only a full would bet against them, no matter how desperate the odds.

Project Hail Mary is now in theaters worldwide.

Punisher Special Will Give Frank Castle One Last Kill Before Spider-Man Team-Up

At first glance, the first promo for the Marvel Special Presentation starring the Punisher is classic Frank Castle. The image consists almost entirely of a close-up of Jon Bernthal as Frank, his sad eyes peering out from a weathered, bearded face, shot in grainy black and white. Unhealed cuts and dried blood mark his visage, suggesting that Frank has been out there once again, punishing the guilty.

But two things jump out to the eagle-eyed viewer. First is the release date May 12, 2026, which tells us the special will hit Disney+ just two and a half months before Frank teams up with Peter Parker on July 31 in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The second is the title, The Punisher: One Last Kill, which promises some good ol’ Punisher-style heroic murder, but just one. Together, those elements suggest that maybe Punisher’s going to put his lethal ways behind him before he gets to hang out with more family-friendly MCU stars like Spider-Man and the Hulk.

To fans of Bernthal’s take on Frank Castle, that change seems drastic and potentially even wildly out of character. Bernthal debuted as Frank in the season 2 premiere of the Netflix series Daredevil in 2016. As Daredevil, along with his friends Karen Page and Foggy Nelson, investigates the brutal killings of various gangs in Hell’s Kitchen, they meet the Punisher, a one-man army. Although Daredevil also stands against these gangs, and certainly deals out plenty of physical punishment himself, his Catholic beliefs prevent him from actually killing his enemies, which Frank considers weak and counter-productive.

In a powerful sequence taken directly from the comics, Punisher knocks out Daredevil and chains him to a wall. Frank takes sniper aim on a criminal that Matt wants to prosecute through the legal system and offers Daredevil a choice: either pull the trigger on the gun strapped to his hand and shoot the Punisher or let Frank kill the criminal.

That interaction defines this version of the Punisher. Throughout the rest of Daredevil‘s second season, and across the two seasons of the Punisher Netflix series, Frank Castle is the hero who kills people, the one who was so pushed over the edge by the murder of his children that he understands anything less than eradication to be a half-measure in the fight against evil. Frank even seemed to be holding that position in the MCU, as he only stopped killing in the finale of Daredevil: Born Again at Matt’s insistence.

Frank plays that role well in the weird, R-rated corner of the Netflix Marvel shows, and in the TV-MA world of Born Again, which is largely separate from the rest of the MCU. But Spider-Man: Brand New Day is securely an MCU show, one that has Spider-Man, the Hulk, and seems to be introducing the X-Men. The movie probably can’t handle a hero who thinks that bad guys need to be shot to death.

One Last Kill might present a turning point for Frank. Whatever happens in the special, a single stand-alone episode set between Born Again‘s first season and Brand New Day, he may come to realize that killing does not in fact solve everything.

The Punisher: One Last Kill streams on Disney+ on May 12, 2026.

TV Premiere Dates: 2026 Calendar

Wondering when your favorite shows are coming back and what new series you can look forward to? We’ve got you covered with the Den of Geek 2026 TV Premiere Dates Calendar, where we keep track of TV series premiere dates, return dates, and more for the year and beyond. 

We’ll continue to update this page weekly as networks and streamers announce dates. A lot of these shows we’ll be watching or covering, so be sure to follow along with us! 

Please note that all times are ET. 

Note: These are U.S. releases. For upcoming British releases, head on over here.

DATESHOWNETWORK
Wednesday, March 25Heartbreak High Season 3Netflix
Wednesday, March 25Homicide: New York Season 2Netflix
Wednesday, March 25BaitPrime Video
Thursday, March 26Jo Nesbo’s Detective HoleNetflix
Thursday, March 26Something Very Bad Is Going to HappenNetflix
Friday, March 27The Parisian Agency: Exclusive Properties Season 6Netflix
Friday, March 27PrivilègesHBO Max
Friday, March 27For All Mankind Season 5Apple TV
Monday, March 30The Feud on Shelbury DriveAcorn TV
Wednesday, April 1Love on the Spectrum Season 4Netflix
Thursday, April 2XO, Kitty Season 3Netflix
Thursday, April 2Agent from AboveNetflix
Thursday, April 2Alkhallat+: The Series: Desert RulesNetflix
Thursday, April 2The Ramparts of IceNetflix
Thursday, April 2Sins of KujoNetflix
Friday, April 3Bloodhounds Season 2Netflix
Friday, April 3Gangs of Galicia Season 2Netflix
Friday, April 3Maamla Legal Hai Season 2Netflix
Friday, April 3High Tides Season 3Netflix
Friday, April 3Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2Apple TV
Saturday, April 4Made For MarchParamount+
Sunday, April 5Nippon Sangoku : The Three Nations of the Crimson SunPrime Video
Monday, April 6Star Wars: Maul – Shadow LordDisney+
Wednesday, April 8Trust Me: The False ProphetNetflix
Wednesday, April 8The Boys Season 5Prime Video
Wednesday, April 8The TestamentsHulu
Thursday, April 9Big MistakesNetflix
Thursday, April 9BandiNetflix
Thursday, April 9Hacks Season 5HBO Max
Thursday, April 9The Miniature WifePeacock
Friday, April 10Temptation Island Season 2Netflix
Friday, April 10Turn of the Tides Season 3Netflix
Saturday, April 11Fist of the North StarPrime Video
Sunday, April 12At Home With the Furys Season 2Netflix
Sunday, April 12The Audacity (9:00 p.m.)AMC
Sunday, April 12Euphoria Season 3HBO
Tuesday, April 14CrooksNetflix
Tuesday, April 14The Dark WizardHBO
Tuesday, April 14You Don’t Know Where I’m From, DawgParamount+
Wednesday, April 15Fake Profile Season 3Netflix
Wednesday, April 15Made With LoveNetflix
Wednesday, April 15Million Dollar Secret Season 2Netflix
Wednesday, April 15The Law According to Lidia Poët Season 3Netflix
Wednesday, April 15Margo’s Got Money TroublesApple TV
Wednesday, April 15Love Island: Beyond the Villa Season 2Peacock
Thursday, April 16Beef Season 2Netflix
Thursday, April 16DandelionNetflix
Friday, April 17RoommatesNetflix
Friday, April 17American GladiatorsPrime Video
Saturday, April 18We Are All Trying HereNetflix
Sunday, April 19From Season 4 (9:00 p.m.)MGM+
Monday, April 20Funny AF With Kevin HartNetflix
Monday, April 20KevinPrime Video
Monday, April 20Sullivan’s Crossing (8:00 p.m.)The CW
Tuesday, April 21UnchosenNetflix
Wednesday, April 22This Is a Gardening ShowNetflix
Wednesday, April 22Million Dollar Secret Season 2Netflix
Wednesday, April 22SantitaNetflix
Wednesday, April 22Sold Out on YouNetflix
Wednesday, April 22Criminal Record Season 2Apple TV
Thursday, April 23Stranger Things: Tales from ’85Netflix
Thursday, April 23Running Point Season 2Netflix
Thursday, April 23FlunkedNetflix
Thursday, April 23Half ManHBO
Friday, April 24Naughty Business (Cochinas)Prime Video
Friday, April 24New Bandits Season 2Prime Video
Monday, April 27Straight to HellNetflix
Tuesday, April 28My Killer Father: The Green Hollow MurdersParamount+
Wednesday, April 29The House of the SpiritsPrime Video
Wednesday, April 29Widow’s BayApple TV
Thursday, April 30Man on FireNetflix
Monday, May 4Lord of the FliesNetflix
Thursday, May 7M.I.A.Peacock
Friday, May 8UnconditionalApple TV
Monday, May 11Regular Show: The Lost TapesAdult Swim
Tuesday, May 12Devil May Cry Season 2Netflix
Tuesday, May 12The Punisher: One Last KillDisney+
Wednesday, May 13Off CampusPrime Video
Friday, May 15Berlín and the Lady with an ErmineNetflix
Friday, May 15Rivals Season 2Hulu
Friday, May 15Dutton RanchParamount+
Thursday, May 21The BoroughsNetflix
Sunday, May 24Rick and Morty Season 9 (11:00 p.m.)Adult Swim
Wednesday, May 27Spider-NoirMGM+
Thursday, May 28The Four Seasons Season 2Netflix
Friday, May 29Star CityApple TV
Wednesday, June 3The Legend of Vox Machina Season 4Prime Video
Sunday, June 7The Vampire LestatAMC
Thursday, June 11Sweet Magnolias Season 5Netflix
Friday, June 19Sugar Season 2Apple TV
Friday, June 26Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Happiness (9:00 p.m.)HBO
Thursday, July 9Little House on the Prairie Season 1Netflix

If we’ve forgotten a show, feel free to drop a reminder in the comment section below!

Want to know what big movies are coming out in 2026? We’ve got you covered here.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’s Cancellation Is a Bad Sign, Even If You Didn’t Like It

I love Star Trek, almost all Star Trek. Sure, I skip past “Profit and Lace” when rewatching Deep Space Nine, still can’t stand Malcolm Reed in Enterprise, and I don’t ever want to see the Klingon sexual assault from Discovery again. But on the whole, if people are going to go boldly in Starfleet uniforms, I’ll be there. However, I wasn’t there for Starfleet Academy. I watched every episode, yes, but (Romulan mean girl aside) the teen drama didn’t do anything for me and I felt like Holly Hunter or Paul Giamatti never had a handle on their characters. Each Thursday was an obligation instead of a joy.

So I should be thrilled at the news that Starfleet Academy will end after its second season. Yet, I’m not. Starfleet Academy will likely go down as my least loved Star Trek show, but I think that its cancellation signals a distressing turn in one of my favorite franchises.

On the surface, Starfleet Academy is classic Trek. It follows a group of young cadets as they learn about Starfleet principles, guided by the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager (played again by Robert Picardo) and by Captain Nahla Ake (Hunter). As the cadets learned, they demonstrated the type of professionalism and higher ideals that fans want to see in a Trek show.

Take, for example, the premiere episode, in which young Klingon Jay-Den (Karim Diané) hesitates when performing field surgery on teacher Lura Thok (Gina Yashere). Jay-Den pauses for a moment, overcome by fear and a commitment to non-violence that prevents him from harming another being. Instead of coddling his feelings, Thok reprimands him, demanding that he do his job. At the same time, Captain Ake outsmarts the villainous raider Nus Braka (Giamatti), while rival cadets Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta) and Darem Reymi (George Hawkins) stop griping at each other long enough to complete their duties.

Moments like these happen throughout the series. But so do a lot of teen drama moments, with plenty of screen time devoted to couples resisting and giving into their hormones, silly pranks between factions, and so, so much of beautiful teens talking through their trauma. All of these elements feel like they came from a CW soap, no matter how many Jem’Hadar you put in it.

In short, Starfleet Academy is not for me. So why am I bummed about it getting cancelled? Part of it is certainly that, with Strange New Worlds ending after season five and Star Trek: Legacy nothing more than a fan theory, there is no new Trek show in production. Apparently, Paramount boss David Ellison is more concerned about whining his way into buying Warner Bros. than he is making new Star Trek.

But really, it’s because Star Trek bigger than just me. I don’t mean that in the sense that it existed before I did, even though that’s mostly true—although I am old enough to have seen most of the TOS movies when they were new and to have watched TNG and all subsequent series in their original runs (and old enough to remember my uncles complaining about how Picard isn’t a real Starfleet captain because he never leaves the bridge).

Star Trek is fundamentally a show about boldly going, about exploring and facing new and unfamiliar places. Yes, it began as a series strictly about the voyages of the USS Enterprise, but as soon as Deep Space Nine debuted in 1993, the franchise also became more, finding space for moral ambiguity, political drama, and religious belief. Since then, the franchise has only gotten bigger and more diverse, to the point that, as they say on the hit podcast The Greatest Generation, “Star Trek is a place.”

Not every place is for every person. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations never promises that we’ll enjoy all those combinations. Sometimes, the combinations will create something that fills us with wonder and joy; sometimes, the combinations make us feel like Riker in that one Borg reality from “Parallels.” But if the franchise is going to be anything more than dull retreads and reruns, then we have to give it space to try something new, to make shows that are bad, and to make shows that aren’t for everyone.

Hopefully, that’s exactly what Starfleet Academy will do in its second and final season. Speaking with TrekMovie after the end of season one, Noga Landau, who serves as showrunner with Alex Kurtzman, revealed that season 2 will also end on a cliffhanger, despite the fact that they weren’t promised a season 3. When asked why she would choose to end her precarious season that way, Landau answered, “it’s because we listened to what our story wanted to be, and we went with it. We wrote it the way that it felt organic and natural.”

That’s the perfect answer, one that captures the tragedy of the show’s cancellation. Working with creator Gaia Violo, Landau wrote the show as she thought it should be, in a way that was true to the characters, even if it didn’t match the condition of the broadcasting order, even if it didn’t make some Trekkies happy.

I didn’t enjoy season 1 of Starfleet Academy and I wasn’t looking forward to season 2. But I’m glad it’s going to continue going its own direction, all the way to the end. The franchise is a little less rich, a little less bold without it.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 1 is now streaming on Paramount+.

Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Release Date, Story, and New Characters Explained

The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is back for another season on Disney+ this month! The Marvel series has already been renewed for a third season, so we’re likely in for a brutal and fulfilling journey as Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) finds himself battling villains and personal demons while dealing with a New York under Kingpin’s thumb.

The new season will also debut in the run-up to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, where Jon Bernthal’s The Punisher will move between Daredevil: Born Again and his own standalone TV special as he clashes with Peter Parker’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Here’s everything you need to know about season 2…

Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Release Dates

The first episode of Daredevil: Born Again season 2 will hit Disney+ on Tuesday, March 24 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and in the UK on Wednesday, March 25 at 1am GMT. It’ll then drop new episodes weekly until the finale on May 12. Season 2 is eight episodes long, compared to season 1’s nine.

Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Story and Season 1 Recap

In the first season of Daredevil: Born Again, we caught up with blind lawyer Matt Murdock years after leaving vigilantism behind as he concentrated on his legal work, but after New York’s crime situation continued to deteriorate, and in the wake of his best friend Foggy Nelson’s death, Matt reluctantly returned to dishing out justice on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. Bullseye and The Punisher also resurfaced, but it was once again Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin, who became the most difficult to keep down, having ascended to the role of New York’s elected mayor. Fisk used his new authority to declare martial law in an effort to stamp out masked heroes for good. This compelled an injured Matt to re-embrace his Daredevil mantle, even as he was forced underground with the rest of the city’s vigilantes.

In season 2, Daredevil will have to help inspire a grassroots opposition to Fisk’s new “Safer Streets Initiative.” Luckily, fellow superpowered Defender Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) is back to help him out, but the new season will also explore how Fisk copes with being at the top of his game. “What does it mean for Fisk when he’s gotten everything he wants?” producer Sana Amanat mused in an interview with Empire. “When you give a person whose thirst cannot be quenched his most valued treasure, is it enough? Or does he squeeze his treasure too hard?”

Daredevil Born Again Season 2’s New Characters

Two new characters played by Scream star Matthew Lillard and The Conjuring actress Lili Taylor join Daredevil: Born Again in season 2.

Lillard’s mysterious character is called Mr. Charles. He’s a very powerful man who challenges Fisk politically and isn’t impressed by him, as his focus is largely on geopolitical chess moves. It will be fun to see these two go toe-to-toe! Meanwhile, Taylor is playing another Fisk opponent, this time at the local level as the governor of New York.

As previously mentioned, Krysten Ritter also reprises her role as Jessica Jones, a former vigilante who is back on Daredevil’s side despite preferring to work alone due to the immense personal threat that Fisk poses to her.

Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 Trailer

Check out the official trailer for the second season below and see exactly what you’re in for!

10 Years Later, Powers Is Coming Back to TV With a Twist

A decade ago, the PlayStation Network canceled its live-action Powers TV show. The series, based on Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming’s celebrated comic, had run into trouble during its development at FX, but after becoming the first original show launched on the PlayStation Network, there was some hope that it would turn out to be a fulfilling adaptation. However, due to its limited reach and mixed reviews, Powers was cancelled abruptly after two seasons.

Fast forward to 2026, and it’s been revealed that Netflix is now developing a Powers project of its own, this time an animated series aimed at adults. THR reported the news, noting that Bendis will be penning the pilot while Oeming will be involved on a visual level.

Powers is a gritty drama set in a world where superheroes are commonplace, much like in The Boys or Invincible. The story largely follows detectives Christian Walker, a former superhero who lost his powers, and his partner, Deena Pilgrim, as they investigate murders and other crimes involving superpowered individuals. Through various cases, the series also explores what happens behind the scenes of superhero culture, including the social and personal consequences of living in that world. The superheroes are often portrayed as flawed celebrities, while the detectives aren’t exactly flawless themselves.

The PlayStation Network adaptation of the comic starred Sharlto Copley (District 9) as Walker, while Susan Heyward portrayed Pilgrim. Heyward would later appear in The Boys and its spinoff, Gen V, as antagonist Sister Sage.

Sony had optioned Powers as a potential film project about a year after it began running at Image Comics in 2000, so it had already taken a long time to get a live-action series off the ground after the idea of making a movie fizzled out, but Powers is now published by Dark Horse Comics, so Dark Horse Entertainment‘s Keith Goldberg and Chris Tongue will naturally produce the new animated project.

Fingers crossed, Powers finally gets the treatment it deserves over at Netflix.

Eiza González Settles Long-Running Gilmore Girls Fan Debate About Jess

Sometimes, a fire is stoked under a Gilmore Girls fan debate in the most unexpected of places. Eiza González’s new time travel movie Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is one of those places.

The new sci-fi action comedy follows Vince Vaughn’s gangster Nick after he finds a way to travel back in time. In a sharp twist, he’s made the journey to save his wife’s boyfriend Mike (James Marsden) from getting brutally murdered. The only person who could get in his way is the present-day Nick (also Vaughn) who vengefully set into motion a chain of events that led to Mike’s death after learning of his wife’s affair.

The movie is packed with surprising pop culture references and delightful needle drops. At one point, Future Nick, Present Nick, Mike, and Alice (González) even end up having a lengthy discussion about one of Alice’s favorite shows, the cozy but rapid-fire Gilmore Girls, and find themselves mired in the age-old debate of whether Jess is the best of Rory’s boyfriends or whether he, in fact, sucks.

González tells Den of Geek at SXSW that she wants the audience to make up their own mind about Jess, but admits she has very strong thoughts about him. “I watched Gilmore Girls growing up, and I think that teenage years don’t give you a great perspective, because you’ve got a lot of hormones in you, and you’re just making impulsive decisions based on how [people] look,” she says. “In hindsight, after rewatching Gilmore Girls, including the Netflix special, I was like, ‘Oh, wait a second, I wasn’t thinking correctly.'”

Milo Ventimiglia played “bad boy” Jess Mariano on the beloved Amy Sherman-Palladino series, who rolls into the fictional town of Stars Hollow and disrupts the fairly tranquil relationship between Rory (Alexis Bledel) and Dean (Jared Padalecki). Jess and Rory’s passionate yet tumultuous spark ultimately crushes Dean’s spirit, but when Jess finally forces him out of the picture and embarks on a romance with Rory, their relationship is marred by poor communication, and he eventually leaves town, breaking Rory’s heart.

While the core characters of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice clash over their different Jess opinions, the squabble is definitely more of a reflection of their own relationships than Rory’s. “These guys have become invested in Gilmore Girls,” explains director BenDavid Grabinski, who sides with Marsden’s Mike when it comes to the Jess debate. “They’ve watched it because they love [Alice], but they’re also talking about the pros and cons of different relationships.”

Vaughn adds, “We’re fighting about Gilmore Girls, but we’re talking about so much more. It’s a way for the characters to focus on something that’s really about themselves without realizing it.”

Ventimiglia himself has recently weighed in on the Jess vs Dean debate, noting that these days he’d be fine with his own daughter being Team Dean rather than Team Jess because he and Padalecki are such good friends: “I think it’s nice that more than 20-plus years later we all still can talk about this show we were growing up on and come together as grown men just to recognize that and still have loving words for one another.”

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice will be streaming on Disney+ and Hulu from March 27.

Project Hail Mary Changes a Dark Moment from the Book

This article contains Project Hail Mary spoilers.

At the end of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s crowdpleasing sci-fi movie Project Hail Mary, Rylan Grace (Ryan Gosling) has to make a difficult decision: go back to Earth along with his Taumoeba organism samples and reunite with his fellow humans, or track down his new alien friend Rocky and warn him about a xenonite leak that will lead to fatal consequences for Rocky and his entire race.

Given how close Grace has become with Rocky, it doesn’t feel like a very difficult choice. Grace launches the Hail Mary’s beetle probes and charts a course for Rocky’s ship, understanding that he probably won’t be able to survive much longer. The final piece of Grace’s past and his cowardly decision to reject a place on the Hail Mary are revealed as he realizes once again that he is capable of bravery and self-sacrifice after all.

But in the film’s closing moments, we see that everything has turned out surprisingly okay for Grace on Rocky’s home planet, Erid, where the Eridians have built him a biodome so he can survive in an environment with a high-pressure, ammonia-heavy atmosphere. Grace lives out his days on a pleasant beach, cloaked in the fog he loves, knowing that beyond the dome lies only the darkness of Erid and the appreciation of the aliens he helped save. Rocky starts to discuss options for sending Grace home, but it’s clear he’s content to stay and teach science to the kids on Erid.

It’s an upbeat ending that would have been slightly darker if the movie, like the book, had revealed how Grace was surviving without human food. The Eridians have gone the extra mile in Andy Weir’s tome, helping to produce synthetic vitamins to keep him nourished, but also cloning his muscle tissue in a lab so he can eat meat patties called “me-burgers.” That’s right, Grace is also technically eating himself to stay alive.

Project Hail Mary is pretty faithful to Weir’s bestselling book, but you can understand why the filmmakers chose to leave this particularly dark twist on the page. It would be a very odd piece of information to process during the movie’s joyous conclusion. But hey, some might suggest that eating yourself is much less dark than eating another living creature for sustenance!