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Bon Voyage, Yann Demange

Marvel’s Mahershala Ali-led Blade has suffered yet another setback as Director Yann Demange has exited the project, marking him the second director to exit Blade. The split is reportedly amicable and occurred some time ago, with Marvel veteran Eric Pearson currently working on the screenplay. Despite this loss, Mahershala Ali remains attached, and the film is still scheduled for release on November 7, 2025.

Pix-ar It Didn’t Happen

Inside Out 2’s $155 million debut this Father’s Day weekend handedly surpassed projections and injected some much-needed adrenaline into the summer box office. The animated sequel’s impressive opening haul was enough to supplant Dune: Part 2 as 2024’s highest opening, as well as earning a spot as the second highest domestic opening for an animated film, behind 2018’s Incredibles 2, another sequel to a beloved Pixar original.

Don’t Rock The Steamboat

According to a Variety exclusive, Dwayne Johnson’s Seven Buck Productions has signed a multi-year, first look deal with The Walt Disney Company to develop theatrical and streaming films. While specific details are not currently available, it is known that the collaboration is not limited to film content and would also give Seven Bucks the opportunity to work across all of Disney’s divisions.

Don’t July to Us, Deadpool!

Box office tracking reports are projecting a $200 to $239 million opening for Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine later this July. The reports, made public via Deadline, were provided by the box office monitoring service, The Quorum, who went as far as to say those estimates are on the more conservative end. The first Deadpool still holds the record for the highest opening for an R-rated film at $132.4 million in February of 2016.

Lightning Round:

Catherine Laga‘aia, a 17-year-old actor from Sydney, Australia, has been cast as Moana in the live-action remake of the 2016 animated hit. She joins Dwayne Johnson, who reprises his role as demigod Maui.

Parker Finn, director of 2022’s Smile, is teaming with Robert Pattinson to remake the 1981 psychological supernatural horror cult classic, Possession. Studios are currently bidding for the project.

Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in a deal that puts a major Hollywood studio back in the business of owning a movie theater for the first time in more than 75 years.

Euphoria actress Hunter Schafer has been cast in a lead role in Prime Video's Blade Runner 2099. She will star alongside Michelle Yeoh.

HBO has officially renewed Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon for a third season.

Warner Bros. Animation and DC Studios are developing an animated series based on Blue Beetle, which would act as a follow up to the 2023 feature film.

Franchise scribe Derek Connolly has been hired to write Paramount’s G.I. Joe/Transformers crossover that Chris Hemsworth recently became attached to.

Miles Teller is set to star in Paramount's An Officer and a Gentleman, a modern update to the 1982 film that starred Richard Gere.

Warner Brothers has confirmed that Adult Swim animated series My Adventures With Superman, currently in its second season, has been renewed for season 3.

Warner Brothers has ordered the animated series Get Jiro! for Adult Swim based on the best-selling DC/Vertigo graphic novels co-written by the late Anthony Bourdain.

Terry Matalas, has been tapped to write an update of the 1985 cult sci-fi movie Enemy Mine for 20th Century Studios.

A live-action TV series based on the cult classic French cartoon Totally Spies! is in development at Amazon with Will Ferrell as executive producer.

Emily Blunt is in talks to star in Steven Spielberg’s next film.

Jordan Peele’s next filmhas been pushed from its original Dec 25, 2024 release date to October 23, 2026.

Amazon MGM Studios has given a pilot order to The Nightbeast, a horror comedy starring Tatiana Maslany.

Sony Pictures has

Kevin Wright, vice president of production and development at Marvel Studios, has left the media giant to pursue producing his own original tv and film ideas. Notably, Wright was an executive producer for the MCU streaming series Loki, which was actually his pitch to Kevin Feige and series star Tom Hiddleston. Wright originally started at Marvel as a development assistant.

Happy Hunger Games! At least certainly for fans of the franchise as author Suzanne Collins announced a new installment in her Hunger Games saga called Sunrise on the Reaping, which will release March 18, 2025. The book is another prequel like The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Alongside this announcement, Lionsgate shared that a film adaptation of the new book is already greenlit and currently set to premiere on November 20, 2026.

At a panel for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim at the Annecy Animation Festival, 20 minutes of the film was shown to the audience. The footage was applauded by the crowd and by Andy Serkis, who was running the panel. Serkis also revealed at the event that Miranda Otto, who played Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy will serve as the story’s narrator and that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh were executive producers on the film, which hits theaters in December.

Maybe franchise fever still exists! One would think so after seeing that Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s latest team up, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, crushed its opening weekend projections, opening at $104.6 million globally. The film punished Furiosa’s opening with a 58% higher box office.

Abbott Elementary actor Tyler James Williams asked Anthony Mackie about the challenges he faced transitioning Sam Wilson from films to television. Paraphrasing, Mackie said “Bringing Falcon to that series, there was so much time to fill. It’s literally so much story and so much exposition and so much character that it’s a daunting task. Luckily it was just a great experience with great leadership.”

Legendary has tapped Grant Sputore to direct the next theatrical outing in the Monsterverse franchise following March’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Sputore most recently helmed the 2019 sci-fi movie I Am Mother.

Kristen Stewart will make her TV series-starring debut in The Challenger, a limited series in which she’ll play Sally Ride, the astronaut and physicist who became the first American woman to fly in space.

Paul Giamatti has joined the cast of Paramount’s Star Trek Starfleet Academy as a recurring guest star role and as the season’s central villain.

Set in the same era as The Acolyte, the next adult novel of Phase III of The High Republic from Star Wars releases on June 11.

Stars of 1998’s cult classic Practical Magic, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, are in talks to star in a sequel.

Entertainment Weekly claims to confirm that Taylor Swift will not be appearing as Dazzler in July’s Deadpool & Wolverine.

Peacemaker Season 2 cast Picard actress Sol Rodiguez and The Office actor David Denman.

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke announced that the show will end after its fifth season.

The Yahya Abdul-Mateen II-led Wonder Man series is rumored to be 10 episodes long.

The Frasier revival on Paramount+ has added two Frasier alumni to the cast. Dan Butler, who played Bulldog, and Edward Hibbert, who played Gil Chesterton on the original show, will return to guest star in season two of the revival series.

Zack Snyder’s director’s cuts of both Rebel Moon films will be released on Netflix on August 2nd. The rated R cuts also received new titles which are Chapter One: Chalice of Blood and Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness.

Saturday Night Live actor Beck Bennett becomes the newest addition to the cast of James Gunn’s Superman. Rumor has it Bennett will play a reporter of note in the movie. Last week Mikaela Hoover and Christopher McDonald were also added to the cast and will also play reporters in The Daily Planet newsroom.

Deadline broke the news that Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy is being courted as Marvel Studios’ first choice to direct the franchise’s next Avengers movie. Though so much isn’t known about the future of the Avengers due to Marvel’s internal shake-up reordering their release schedule of shows and movies as well as the Jonathan Majors legal issues and consequential firing, Deadline did say Levy was given a script from writer Michael Waldron. It is also rumored that more than 60 Marvel characters could appear. 

Captain America: Brave New World began reshoots in Atlanta last week, with new cast member Giancarlo Esposito joining the call sheet for the 22 days of additional photography. Unofficial, leaked set photos confirmed the actor’s involvement after he heavily hinted at an unexpected role within the MCU. While we still have no word on which character Esposito portrays, all signs point to the role being, quote, ‘villainous’ in nature.

This week treated us to a batch of brand-spanking new, high-profile trailers, Let’s break down our thoughts:

Venom 3

Moana 2

Alien: Romulus

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth works have seen their fair share of adaptations, but one character that has long been absent from the proceedings to the chagrin of many readers is The Fellowship of the Ring’s Tom Bombadil. That all changes as Amazon’s Rings of Power Season 2 is set to feature the character, with English actor Rory Kinnear portraying the enigmatic forest dweller. This was revealed in a Vanity Fair exclusive. Tolkien himself was often hazy on the character, who has been described as older than old, and more of an observer than active participant in the many conflicts of Middle Earth. 

We couldn’t have expected to carve out a collectable popcorn bucket niche when we started this show, but here we are: Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds unveiled a cheeky ad teasing a somewhat risqué popcorn bucket for Marvel’s upcoming superhero team-up. The bucket, shaped like a Wolverine head with a comically wide-open mouth, aligns with Kevin Feige's promise of a “crude and rude” design.

Two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali is in talks to join Scarlett Johansson in the upcoming Jurassic movie.

Chris Hemsworth is in talks to lead a Transformers and G.I. Joe crossover sequel to Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, with no release date yet.

Jeremy Renner joins the cast of Rian Johnson's Knives Out 3, his first role since his early 2023 snowplow accident, alongside Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Mila Kunis, Josh O’Connor, and Cailee Spaeny. (Kaylee Spain-ee)

In addition to producing the It prequel series for Max currently titled Welcome to Derry, Bill Skarsgard will also return to reprise his role as Pennywise the Clown from It and It Chapter 2.

In a Variety Actors on Actors interview with Jodie Foster, Robert Downey, Jr. said the following when asked if he would return to Tony Stark: “It’s the character that is most like me and I’ve become surprisingly open minded to the idea.”

Warner Bros. Television is in the early stages of developing a 300 TV series prequel, with Zack Snyder in talks to direct and produce.

Elle Fanning is in talks to star in Badlands, a new Predator universe movie directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who revamped the franchise with Prey.

New Star Wars show The Acolyte is premiering right now, and Marvel Comics announced the wookiee Jedi character, Kelnacca, will be getting a one-shot comic book written by Cavan Scott.

Netflix is currently developing an animated series based on the popular video game Minecraft alongside Mojang Studios, the Swedish developer of the game.

MCU and Lost star Evangeline Lilly announced on her Instagram that she is retiring from acting. 

Peaky Blinders fans can get excited as a film starring Cillian Murphy  is in the pipeline. Plot details and more casting isn’t known, but Murphy will also co-produce the film,

Now that Godzilla Minus One has hit Netflix, we're back with another Multiverse Review! Join Jay and J Scotty as they gush about this surprisingly poignant and emotionally resonate celebration of the Japanese icon.



#film #filmreview #Godzilla #GodzillMinusOne #Japan #Toho #foreignfilm #podcast

We finally received an update on the second of the two WandaVision spinoffs in development, with the news that Marvel has enlisted Star Trek: Picard executive producer Terry Matalas as showrunner for the untitled Vision series. Details remain sparse, but we know that Paul Bettany will reprise his role as the albino synthezoid and Marvel Studios is eyeing a 2026 Disney+ release.



The 2024 summer movie season continues to struggle as newcomers Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and The Garfield Movie, essentially tied for the number one spot for the holiday weekend, each debuting at a muted $31 million; the worst Memorial Day weekend at the box office in almost 30 years. Furiosa particularly came in lower than estimates as a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road and receiving the same B+ Cinemascore.



Advance tickets for Deadpool & Wolverine became available last Monday, resulting in an estimated 200,000 tickets sold for roughly $9 million and enough to break the record for first-day, R-rated ticket sales. Subsequently, at still two months out, it leads 2024 in all presales with all signs pointing to it being the year’s first $100 million plus opening weekend.According to The Hollywood Reporter, Adam Wingard, director of the last two MonsterVerse films, will not return for the third installment due to timing issues. The split is amicable, with a future return possible.



Netflix revealed a first look at Liam Hemsworth as Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher. Hemsworth replaces Henry Cavill for the final two seasons, with season 4’s release date currently to be determined.



Glen Powell revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that he recently turned down major roles, including the upcoming Jurassic World film and a reboot of The Bourne Identity.



Damon Lindelof, one of the co-creators of Lost and The Watchmen is officially behind the creative team for the upcoming Green Lantern series for DC Studios. Chris Mundy, the showrunner behind Netflix’s crime series

Ozark, as well as long-time DC comic author Tom King round out the creative team.



Netflix released the first trailer for Beverly Hills: Axel F, featuring Eddie Murphy returning as Axel Foley. The new film, following the original 1984 release and its sequels, will stream starting July 3.



Dexter: Original Sin, a prequel to Showtime’s Dexter announced casting of Patrick Gibson playing young Dexter, Molly Brown; his sister Debra, and Christian Slater portraying their adoptive father. The premiere date is yet to be announced.



Warner Brothers dropped a new trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice that features a more extended look at the cast. The film debuts in theaters on September 6.



Rian Johnson announces his next Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, releasing on Netflix next year with Daniel Craig reprising his role and lots of other big Hollywood names being added to the cast daily, including Fleabag’s Andrew Scott.



Rupert Friend, star of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, will join Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey in Gareth Edwards' new Jurassic film for Universal.



Jeffery Wright joins The Last of Us season 2 as Isaac, reprising his role from the video game.

Welcome to Multiverse News, Your source for information about all your favorite fictional Universes.

Milly Alcock will show us her superhero landing when Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow premieres on June 26, 2026. Other than Sasha Calle’s portrayal in The Flash, this means we’ll see Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El on the big screen for the first time since 1984. The film will be released just a year after we see James Gunn’s vision for the man of steel himself. 

In a move that seems telling of the new direction of MCU, the Marvel Television banner has been reintroduced and will be used for live action series such as Daredevil: Born Again, Agatha All Along, and Ironheart. The banner was previously used for MCU-adjacent shows Agents of SHIELD, Cloak & Dagger, and others. Brad Winderbaum, head of TV, streaming, and animation for Marvel Studios, said the idea is to let audiences know they can “jump in anywhere” in the MCU and still understand what’s going on. Winderbaum also alluded to a Marvel Studios rebrand that encompasses Marvel Television, Marvel Animation, and Marvel Spotlight.

HBO’s streaming service Max released a teaser trailer for the upcoming Dune television spinoff show, Dune: Prophecy. The show is described as taking place 10,000 years before the events that lead to Paul Atreides’ rise to emperor and will follow two Harkonnen sisters as they work to establish the Bene Gesserit. Inspired by the book Sisterhood of Dune, the show has mostly been kept under wraps until now.

Movie goers probably should have bought a ticket for themselves and their imaginary friends last weekend as John Krasinski’s new film IF didn’t quite reach expectations with a $35 million opening in the U.S. Although this means it took first place at the box office, the movie cost $110 million to make and a global box office of $55 million is still a stumble. There may be hope yet for the kid-centered flick with a lot of schools across the country ready to enter summer break.

Hot off the heels of an incredibly well received first season of X-Men ’97, Marvel Studios seems to have found the voice of their live-action X-Men in screenwriter Michael Lesslie. Lesslie’s writing credits include Assassin’s Creed, The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, as well as the upcoming Now You See Me 3. While both parties are still in talks, if the addition pans out, it will be the most significant step to actualizing the X-Men in the MCU since Disney’s acquisition of Fox in 2019.

Poker Face and Russian Doll star Natasha Lyonne has joined the cast of Fantastic Four in an undisclosed role.

Lionsgate is developing a John Wick spinoff movie around Donnie Yen’s assassin character, Caine. Yen will reprise his John Wick: Chapter 4 role in the untitled project set to shoot in Hong Kong in 2025. The franchise expanding film, with no director yet announced, will follow the events of John Wick 4 as Caine has been freed from his obligations to the High Table.

1996 golf comedy Happy Gilmore is officially getting a sequel at Netflix with Adam Sandler returning to reprise his role.

Amazon’s Marvel drama Silk: Spider Society — from Sony Pictures Television — is no longer moving forward at the streamer but Sony does plan to shop the series to another studio or streaming service.

Sony Pictures announced last week that I Know What You Did Last Summer, a reboot of the film with the same name as the original 1997 horror slasher, is set for theatrical release domestically on July 18, 2025. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson will direct and Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze, Jr. are currently in early talks to return.

Last week, Disney announced that Hulu is teaming with the estate of author James Clavell to extend the FX series Shōgun for two additional seasons. A writer's room is currently being assembled. Shōgun is currently the most viewed show in FX's history.