Harry Potter movie star Rupert Grint will reprise his character of Ron Weasley next year, as he joins the Broadway cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Grint is the second Harry Potter movie cast member to return to their childhood role for Cursed Child, the official J.K. Rowling-penned play that picks up the series' story years later, as Harry and Ron's children attend Hogwarts.

Last year, Draco Malfoy actor Tom Felton returned as his fan-favorite Slytherin, supercharging interest in the Broadway production. Now, it seems like the play's producers are keen to pull off the same stunt again, with Grint also the right age to play Ron as a young father.

"Ron Weasley has been a part of me since I was 11 years old and I can't wait to meet him again in this stage of life," Weasley said, via The Hollywood Reporter. "There is something so full-circle and so special about stepping back into Ron's shoes now when we are both fathers; it is somehow both very familiar and completely new. And the joy of being back on Broadway, this time in a role that defined so much of my life is truly exciting."

Grint will begin his stint back as Ron on February 2, 2027, initially for a 17-week run until May 30. However, this does mean his time in the play's company will sadly not overlap with Felton, whose much-extended time in the cast finally ends on January 3, 2027.

While Grint is still best known for his Harry Potter role, the actor has continued to appear in a string of TV and film projects, such as Apple TV horror series Servant, M. Night Shyamalan movie Knock at the Cabin, and this year's upcoming Johnny Depp-starring Ebenezer, in which he plays Bob Cratchit.

"In joining our extraordinary company onstage at the Lyric Theatre in New York City, Rupert is not simply revisiting a role from his past," producers Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender said in a statement. "He is continuing a journey he began as a child and carrying it forward with all the life and experience he has gained since filming concluded, including a career that has taken him from film to television to acclaimed stage work on both Broadway and the West End. His return creates a powerful bridge between the story audiences first fell in love with and the story of family, legacy and the passage of time that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child carries forward."

Of course, a fresh generation of young actors will soon take on the roles of Harry, Ron and Draco in HBO's Harry Potter TV series reboot. Set to launch this Christmas, the show will adapt the franchise over the course of the next decade.

Image credit: Sebastian Reuter/Getty Images

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

We all love Avengers: Endgame, but some Marvel fans are now suggesting that the four minutes of footage added to its upcoming Encore re-release risk being oversold by its directors.

Endgame is one of the best Marvel movies of all time — perhaps the best — and so it's not surprising to see it return to theaters this fall ahead of Avengers: Doomsday's arrival. Not only will this new chance to watch the film inject a few more million into its box office total (perhaps enough to overtake Avatar once again!), the experience will likely remind cinema audiences of the excitement felt at the close of the Infinity Saga, as a decade of storytelling came to a natural conclusion.

But after the reveal that Avengers: Endgame Encore will be just four minutes longer than the movie's original runtime, fans are revisiting recent comments by directors Joe and Anthony Russo — who suggested that an Endgame watch (or rewatch) was "required viewing" to follow Doomsday's own story — with a healthy dose of scepticism.

A clip of the Russos discussing Avengers: Endgame Encore at San Diego Comic-Con last month is now being shared widely on social media, where the duo discussed why they thought fans should see the film again with Fandango.

"It's going to connect the story of the two movies," Joe Russo said of Avengers: Endgame Encore. "There's a natural progression from Endgame into Doomsday, which is also inclusive of all the other stories that have been playing out.

"But I think it's important to see Endgame in theaters again for two reasons," he continued. "One, if you want to have a lot of fun cheering and screaming and reliving all the emotions you had the first time you saw it. Two, I think it's required viewing for following the story in Doomsday.

"If you saw Endgame when it was originally released, you couldn't see this coming," Anthony Russo added.

Anthony and Joe Russo break down what fans can expect to see in Avengers Endgame: Encore.

Tickets are on sale NOW! Assemble your friends, and get your tickets now👇 https://t.co/CgcsDpHycS pic.twitter.com/AaFAk5c1rf

— Fandango (@Fandango) August 25, 2026

Marvel has not detailed what the new footage added to Avengers: Endgame Encore will comprise, though there's a growing sense among fans that it is likely to be scenes shot during Avengers: Doomsday's production that may also end up within Doomsday itself. Many fans believe this is likely to focus on the journey of Steve Rogers — perhaps showing him returning the Infinity Stones, or returning home to Peggy Carter afterwards, only for his peace and quiet to be swiftly disturbed.

In general, though, there's a sense among fans that Marvel would not actually make Avengers: Doomsday incomprehensible without prior MCU knowledge, and certainly not without actually requiring fans to rewatch a movie that released years ago with a few minutes of extras added on. Doomsday will do very well at the box office regardless, of course, but would hardly benefit if its plot hinged on something that only those who attended a screening of Endgame Encore could understand.

"It's literally four extra minutes of footage that will be in a YouTube short within two days," wrote one Marvel fan, in the top comment of a new and lengthy reddit thread discussing the Russo's claims. "I mean I'm probably still gonna go see it just because Endgame was great, and I'd love to see it again in Dolby, but they are really overselling this extra footage, I think."

"Yeah. Not getting a babysitter," a second fan wrote. "Spending $30-$40 for four minutes of footage. A little tone deaf to say 'required viewing'. I'll wait for the leaks."

"Normal fans aren't going to go shell out $100 for something they can watch for free on Disney+," wrote another fan. "They are going to be unaware there's a few minutes of additional footage. They'll be there for Doomsday though."

"The last thing this world needs is f***ing DLC for movies," added yet another.

"What do you expect them to say?" countered another fan. "'Skip this one guys, it's only 4 extra minutes and you can just watch a recap video on YouTube.' Like of course they're gonna oversell it lol it's their job."

"Am I gonna go see it? Yes," one fan wrote on X/Twitter. "But are you guys false advertising infinity vision and just trying to make more money because it's only [four] minutes, absolutely."

Marvel has currently made no suggestion it will detail exactly what its new Encore footage will contain, likely meaning audiences will find out for themselves when the film's re-release rolls around next month. Will you be going as well? Avengers: Endgame Encore arrives in theaters on September 25 (with Iron Man and Infinity Gauntlet popcorn buckets) before Avengers: Doomsday finally lands on December 18.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups will be released on August 26.

A gangland action saga spread across five decades, Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups runs 194 minutes but plays like a trailer for something else. While it’s technically a complete story — a rarity in the modern South Indian blockbuster landscape, where every other major release is actually a “Part 1” — the film is edited with the kind of snappy impressionism that becomes completely disorienting when you need to make sense of who’s who, or quite simply who’s standing where. Granted, the presence of bearded A-lister Yash of the KGF duology (often credited as “Rocking Star” Yash) goes a long way toward making it tolerable at times. The actor has layered charisma and explosiveness in his dual roles as ruthless mafioso Raya, and eventually his spurned son Rumi or “Ticket,” who seeks revenge for his abandonment. However, making sense of Toxic visually and narratively is a major challenge.

On the plus side, Toxic has a visual splendor given its period setting. The story runs from the 1920s all the way through India’s independence in 1947, and even goes a few decades further, tracing the changing face of the former Portuguese port of Goa as a reimagined haven for a heightened drug trade awash in slick suits, fedoras, tommy guns, and lavish speakeasies. It’s India’s western coast by way of 1920s Chicago, a fanciful façade that makes Toxic among the most expensive Indian movies ever made (certainly the most expensive one released thus far; it’s out-spent only by S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR follow-up, Varanasi, arriving in April, and the Hindu epic Ramayana: Part 1, also starring Yash and releasing in November). Alas, all this effort feels wasted on a completely unfocused movie whose soul resides in its opening and closing minutes but whose intervening three hours are a headache and a half.

Opening at a circus in medias res, Toxic finds a young boy nicknamed Ticket (his face painted like a sad clown) being handed over by his manic acrobat mother, Nadia (Kiara Advani), to his vengeful father, Raya (Yash) — the first of several characters introduced angrily chugging a bottle of booze. This angst-laden intro engenders curiosity; something painful has clearly transpired in these characters’ pasts, setting the stage for an explosive future. But the blanks are soon filled in at lightspeed. The powerplay for Goa’s drug trade, going back several decades, involved Raya’s unseen father alongside several Portuguese gangsters, each with their own family entanglements. Eventually, Raya and his steely older sister, Ganga (Nayanthara), become major players vis-à-vis a series of crisscrossing betrayals.

The film is quick to jump into its action set pieces, which feature blood and violence aplenty as well as the kind of macho heroic posing one might expect from a “pan-India” production emanating from the country’s south, but things go quickly awry. Like many films aimed at multiple markets, Toxic was shot simultaneously in multiple languages — in this case, Kannada and English. The latter version is appropriately flowery for a story touted as a violent fairy tale, but its attempts at poetic dialogue end up simply explaining the meaning and subtext behind the story at hand as characters deliver every line like it’s either a quip or a lofty proclamation. This has a numbing effect: After a while, no bit of dialogue actually stands out.

Equally anesthetic is the litany of breakneck action. For the majority of its runtime, Toxic’s story is told by way of some rival faction or another opening fire on Raya’s crew as he overcomes the odds, but actually tracing who’s who — or why anyone is doing anything at all — is a fool’s errand. You could certainly turn your brain off to the movie’s flip-book unfurling, but watching Toxic might just require you to turn your eyes off from time to time too. The sheer number of cuts with no legible point of focus or geography is disorienting to say the least.

Sadly, the film’s sloppy assembly doesn’t end at its visual construction. Musically, it’s stuck in the early-to-mid aughts, drawing from the soundtracks of international blockbuster and arthouse darlings of the era — In The Mood for Love, Donnie Darko, Requiem for a Dream, even The Dark Knight — without much by way of originality or coherent sonic identity.

Ordinarily, the blame for all this would lie at the feet of the director, but in this case, it’s hard to imagine that Toxic — at least, the completed version now in cinemas — is at all the brainchild of filmmaker Geetu Mohandas. Her last film, the Malayalam-language gangster movie Moothon, masterfully disguised a queer drama steeped in intimate anguish. But even as one of the few women to helm such a major Indian release, it’s hard not to speculate about her actual influence (or lack thereof). Toxic feels like the product of a studio system bowing to tropes in the realm of hero worship and machismo, despite occasional attempts to subvert these expectations, with larger set pieces that depend entirely on misogynistic violence. It gets pretty gross on occasion, in a manner designed to satiate some kind of chauvinistic blood lust.

Yash’s Raya is defined by philandering and sexist jabs, but the gaze of Mohandas’ camera is markedly shifted from the male-centric lens of Indian mass media. Her focus during both sex and action is hairy chests and rolled-up sleeves instead of oily washboard abs, and her female characters are afforded more bodily dignity than the average heroine. However, these bare minimums don’t amount to much in a story where actually tracing the characters’ relationships is a game of Whac-a-Mole. Actresses like Nayanthara, Advani, Huma Qureshi, Tara Sutaria, and Rukmini Vasanth play women defined by their proximity to male gangsters — I’d list them all, but mapping the tree of the movie’s character dynamics would take several days — and they all eventually oscillate between stoic poise and outright yelling for minutes at a time until the drama becomes too grating to endure.

This aural unpleasantness applies to Yash as well, who consumes the lion’s share of the screen time as both the film’s mournful protagonist as well as his vindictive son. Although Ticket only appears in the final act despite the hopscotching timeline, it’s the rare role for which Yash has a thin goatee instead of a full beard, making him look practically unrecognizable (along with some digital de-aging). But is this enough to dramatically separate Ticket from his father? The answer is more complicated than “yes” or “no.” That both men harbor the same incandescent rage is part of the movie’s point about the cycles of male violence trickling through generations, and together, Yash and Mohandas manage to craft something special with these performances, even if we’re only exposed to glimmers of that brilliance thanks to the haphazard cutting.

As Raya, Yash offers hints of a hidden self-loathing beneath his violent, womanizing exterior, while as Ticket, he creates a unique physicality through a character whose swift parkour motions feel like something out of a fever dream. Amid the movie’s snowy and rainy settings, Ticket is the only human element that feels appropriately heightened beyond the expected limits of Indian action blockbusters. It might be one of Yash’s finest performances to date; unfortunately, it’s stuck in a movie where violence, although serving the thematic purpose of generational trauma, also seems to explode randomly, both from and against characters we’ve never seen before, and whose motives and place within the story are head-scratching to say the least. Ultimately, the result is a banal story that sometimes explodes with jarring noise.

The Dog Stars releases in theaters August 28.

Ridley Scott is hardly a novice when it comes to depicting determined men (and occasionally women) shouldering various degrees of emotional repression while doing whatever it takes to survive in hostile spaces. Really, take your pick from a career that spans nearly 50 years. More often than not, his films resonate — he’s earned the right to call himself an “influencer,” however ridiculous the quote. But his latest, The Dog Stars, which has seemed to catch the general public flat-footed, is a miss that’s too many steps removed from its emotional center to find any fresh truth in the crowded post-apocalyptic survival genre.

The Dog Stars, based on the 2012 Peter Heller novel, is not necessarily the tense action-thriller about a man (Jacob Elordi), his dog, and the unlikely ratio of hot people fighting to stay alive in a lawless, overgrown dystopia that the trailer makes it out to be. Instead, it’s largely a slow-moving survival story set years after a strange virus decimates society, leaving behind said hot people to grieve while a whole other subset of remaining people seemingly loses their minds, banding together to become violently deranged hordes who live to loot from those who are trying to keep a peaceful existence. Requisite lonesome acoustic guitar soundtrack straight from The Last of Us included, of course, along with a few other baffling country music needle drops.

The first 20 minutes alone are an extended side quest following Elordi’s mechanic Hig and his good boy Jasper on a supply run, loping through an abandoned Denver for Coca Cola products and medical supplies amid unquestionably gorgeous wide shots of the city. Hig flies through Rocky Mountain forests in his tiny yellow prop jet, his signature move being to kill the engine and just coast above it all with Jasper in the co-pilot seat, listening for a radio signal from a place called Grand Junction that’s rumored to harbor the last vestiges of civilization. It’s perfectly suited for IMAX, which is how I saw The Dog Stars. But these recurring vistas feel like excuses to shoot this for the premium screen experience using the nature cheat code, despite this being a film that would have otherwise crushed on streaming, where people aren’t captive audiences and might not be forced to feel too deeply or think about basic world-building questions, such as: What’s the deal with this mysterious killer flu anyway? How did those looters turn so feral? How does Hig still have a full supply of coffee beans (and does he have French Roast)?

It’s not entirely that this movie is patently uninterested in the society that came before, but it is more focused on how those who remain cope with the present, content to reminisce over their past lives in dull conversations. When Hig returns from his supply run to the homestead he shares with Josh Brolin’s hardened (and occasionally funny) ex-Marine Bangley, the two quibble over being happy with what they have and how best to lock down their property from the threat of the looters they call Reapers that need to be “dealt with like roaches.” (Bristling bros, very hot right now!) Hig journeys out and finds his way to the father-daughter duo Jack (Guy Pearce, also doing an occasionally funny grumbly paranoid dad) and Cima (a perfectly serviceable Margaret Qualley). As they pull up tree stumps and sit under the stars together, Cima and Hig talk about their dead spouses. Hig flirts with her by talking about… golf. The Dog Stars script, written by Mark L. Smith, is the film’s dead weight, full of leaden dialogue that’s fine in a novel and sounds wildly contrived coming out of a real person’s mouth.

After a sleepy first hour, things pick up with coinciding standoffs of our central characters — Hig, Cima, and Jack in their neck of the woods, Bangley holding down his compound — vs. the Reapers, where we finally get a taste of the guns-blazing action promised in the trailer. In a stylish first-person sequence, Bangley, going full military ops mode, dons a night vision monocular that turns people into smearing neon green and their blood into proverbial paintball splatter. Hig and co. need to outrun a reaper pincer maneuver that ends with the first shock-laugh of the movie. These moments are, as you’d expect, exciting and well-directed, but the question of what are the intruders even doing hangs over these scenes. I don’t need every single character motivation explained — abstraction can be great! — but the lack of anything beyond “these are the bad guys consumed by inscrutable runes” who are depicted as whooping shirtless tattooed fiends is, speaking generously, not from this era of filmmaking. All of this does lead to a wild third-act shift that has some verve when the Hig trio reaches Grand Junction, headlined by Allison Janney doing the most capital-A acting of the whole movie in a ‘50s stewardess getup.

I can’t discuss a movie called The Dog Stars without talking more about Jasper the dog. As in any movie with a trusty companion, I brace myself for whatever may come, hoping for the best yet expecting emotional terrorism. But, like every other connection in this movie, even man’s best pal is kept at a somewhat icy emotional distance. For all the jostling to reckon with the sheer amount of societal loss, it all ends up feeling like something to shrug off — even the stuff with the dog. Oh well, at least we have The Sheep Detectives.

Backrooms officially has a streaming release date.

The breakout horror movie directed by 21-year-old-Kane Parsons is coming to HBO Max on Friday, September 25. It will debut on HBO linear channels the following day at 8pm ET.

The streaming release comes just under four months after Backrooms was initially released in theaters, where it dominated the box office. It grossed over $80 million in its opening weekend and quickly become A24’s highest-grossing movie of all time. It finished its theatrical run at just shy of $400 million globally, and remains one of the highest-grossing movies of the year so far.

Toward the end of its stint in theaters, Backrooms received became available to watch in extended “Everything Must Go” screenings, featuring over 15 minutes of extra footage in the style of Parsons’ original YouTube series. That extra footage is already available to watch on YouTube for free, and it's unclear whether it'll be added to HBO Max in any capacity.

For now, Backrooms is available to rent or buy digitally from platforms like Prime Video. A spread of 4K Blu-rays with "over three hours of special features" are also available to buy from the A24 Shop.

We were pretty big fans of Backrooms, with critic Lex Briscuso describing it as “a truly terrifying cinematic rabbit hole” in her 8/10 review for IGN. It's one of our best-reviewed movies of the year so far, and generally currently sits at an 87% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

All in all, it should come as no surprise that there are already talks of a potential sequel, though Parsons has also expressed his interest in adapting the iconic 2007 Valve game, Portal. Other creepypasta-inspired movies have also been getting the green light since the Backrooms success, most notably a Siren Head movie helmed by Weapons' and the upcoming Resident Evil movie's director, Zach Cregger.

Blythe (she/her) is an Audience Development Coordinator at IGN who, when she isn't following streaming news, spends way too much time in character customization screens and tracking down collectibles.

The upcoming re-release of Avengers: Endgame will coincide with the debut of two flashy new popcorn buckets.

In 2019, Avengers: Endgame was released, but this was just before the big popcorn bucket craze. Now, every movie needs to have an absurd, expensive popcorn bucket themed after something in the film. The upcoming re-release of the MCU film will allow fans the chance to purchase an Iron Man helmet popcorn bucket or one based on Iron Man's version of the Infinity Gauntlet, which he uses to sacrifice himself and kill Thanos. The Iron Man helmet also projects a message that reads, "I love you 3,000."

Tickets are now on sale for the Avengers: Endgame re-release. The film hits theaters on September 25 and will include roughly five minutes of new footage, which will lead directly into Avengers: Doomsday. Marvel is keeping a tight lid on what exactly this new footage will feature, but it may introduce Doctor Doom or tee up what happens with Captain America after his "happy ending" in Endgame. Chris Evans is set to reprise his role as Steve Rogers in Doomsday and most likely Avengers: Secret Wars, as well.

Marvel is also boasting its new "Infinity Vision" branding for the re-release of Endgame. Avengers: Doomsday will not be getting an IMAX release when it debuts in December, so Marvel and Disney created a marketing initative known as Infinity Vision which will help promote the most "ideal" theaters for the film. It's not a new format, but a certification that elevates auditoriums that meet a quality standard held by Disney and Marvel.

Avengers: Endgame's re-release will allow fans to take advantage of Infinity Vision screens, but it will be released in IMAX, too. There's a chance that Doomsday will still get an IMAX release, as Spider-Man: Brand New Day got a delayed IMAX release and it wasn't promoted ahead of time. It led to viewers going back for repeat viewings, and it wouldn't be surprising if Doomsday employs a similar strategy in early 2027, once Dune's IMAX exclusivity is over.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

UPDATE AUGUST 25, 2026: RoboCop star Dan Stevens has confirmed he's joined the Prime Video show with a social media post.

Stevens took to Instagram to share a video about the announcement, confirming his involvement. He didn't have much to add, but judging by the action figure behind him, it's safe to say he's excited.

"Buzz buzz..." he said. "Dead or alive, you're coming with me."

ORIGINAL STORY: Prime Video's RoboCop TV show has reportedly cast Dan Stevens as its star.

The Downton Abbey star has officially boarded the untitled RoboCop reboot series, according to Deadline. Stevens will play a new version of the cop-turned-robot, Alex Murphy.

Amazon MGM reportedly had its eye on Stevens early in the casting process. While he might be best known as Matthew Crawley, he's also appeared in projects like The Guest, the live-action Beauty and the Beast, the animated Among Us series, and more. The original Alex Murphy was played by Peter Weller, who returned to reprise the role across many RoboCop sequels and spinoffs.

Here's the official logline for the show: "A giant tech conglomerate convinces the city to place a powerful robot on its police force — a robot implanted with the consciousness of a beloved, fallen officer."

Amazon greenlit its Prime Video RoboCop revival in July, though it's said to have been in some form of development since the company acquired MGM back in 2022. Peter Ocko (Moonhaven, Lodge 49) is attached as showrunner, writer, and co-executive producer.

Blumhouse Atomic Monster's Michael Clear, Rob Hackett, and The Conjuring's James Wan are all involved as executive producers, too, with Danielle Bozzone overseeing for the company. Original RoboCop writers Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner are also executive producers.

"What Paul Verhoeven created in 1987 was decades ahead of its time, and its questions about technology, identity, and who corporations really serve have only grown more urgent,” Wan said in July. "With Peter’s distinctive vision and bold approach to storytelling, and alongside Ed and our partners at Amazon MGM Studios, we’re working to honor what made the original iconic and highlight its relevancy in this modern, tech-driven world, while building something unmistakably new for a global audience."

Outside of that aforementioned logline and the promise to deliver an eight-episode series, we know little about how RoboCop will revitalize an '80s action icon for modern audiences. Although it's without a firm release date or even any sort of window to look forward to, picking up Stevens just one month after the greenlighting process suggests the ball is rolling fast for now.

For more, you can read IGN's review for the RoboCop Criterion Collection release. You can also check out what we thought of the character's latest video game in our RoboCop: Rogue City review.

Photo by Dia Dipasupil/WireImage.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

The Simpsons will soon return for a mind-boggling 38th Season on Fox. But if you can't wait that long, you're in luck. The series is about to drop its latest exclusive episode on Disney+, and we've got an exclusive early look.

Check out the slideshow gallery below to see exclusive new images from "Yellow Mirror":

"Yellow Mirror" isn't the first Simpsons special to be exclusive to Disney+, but it is notable for being a full-length episode rather than a short in the vein of "The Simpsons in Plusaversary." As the title suggests, this episode acts as a spoof of Netflix's popular sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror. It features two tales linked by a common dystopian technology theme.

Here's the official description for "Yellow Mirror":

A defective lamp reveals a heartbreaking truth about what Homer believes is reality, and an AI-powered tablet befriends and controls Maggie. The Simpsons struggle to find the light through two dark tales of the curious and bizarre in this Disney+ exclusive.

"Yellow Mirror" will premiere on Disney+ on Wednesday, August 26.

In other The Simpsons news, Bart Simpson voice actress Nancy Cartwright believes the series will ultimately end with Season 40. The show also recently returned to Fortnite, where fans could collect a Simpsons-style John Wick skin.

Fans were also recently given new hope about the long-awaited return of The Simpsons: Hit & Run, with Matt Groening saying, "I think the original game is coming back in some form."

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Avengers star Mark Ruffalo has responded to the suggestion he had invoked "antisemitic tropes" in his ongoing criticism of Paramount's $111 billion Warner Bros. buyout.

Responding to the claim, made in a lengthy and unusual statement by Paramount itself, Ruffalo dubbed the accusation as "appalling and fundamentally dishonest."

The issue stems from Ruffalo's continued pressure on Paramount over its controversial takeover of Warner Bros., a transaction that Ruffalo and numerous other Hollywood stars have said will likely result in consolidation, cost-cutting and job losses, plus particular concern surrounding the independence of Warner Bros.' news organization CNN. Paramount is owned by David Ellison, and the buyout's finances will be backed his father Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of technology firm Oracle and the world's sixth-richest person.

In an Instagram story last week, Ruffalo commented on a video featuring Oracle vice chair Safra Catz, who discussed Oracle's public backing of the Israeli military in the wake of October 7 terrorist attacks, and the subsequent deployment of what she described as Oracle's "really profoundly scary technology" to the Israeli army.

"These 'really profoundly scary technologies' will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you," Ruffalo wrote in response. "Look how she revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.

"We have a chance to stop this," the actor continued. "There are 12 state Attorneys General suing to block this merger. It will be catastrophic for our film industry. Mergers like this one are almost always bad for workers, consumers and the industry they tend to dominate. It's a classic antitrust case. It will hike up the cost of cable and flatten out competition. This means less choice for our audiences. It also concentrates an enormous amount of creative control to companies that say and do things like this strange woman from Oracle."

In a response statement issued to The Hollywood Reporter, a Paramount spokesperson took the unusual step of directly quoting and discussing Ruffalo's Instagram story, branding his message as containing "antisemitic tropes" and suggesting that such statements expose "the true motivation of some who have advocated opposition to this transaction." Paramount's response lies below in full:

"We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute," the Paramount spokesperson stated. "Words like 'genocide' and 'apartheid,' applied to a corporate transaction, aren't just wrong — they're a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe. This doesn't deserve a response in kind — and to be clear, we don't tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.

"This brings us to a moment to lower the temperature, not raise it. We'd rather build than further engage in such rhetoric. This simply exposes the true motivation of some who have advocated opposition to this transaction. On the other hand, our commitment to great content is matched by our commitment to acceptance – to every story, every storyteller, and no blacklists, no exceptions, for anyone.

"We understand people feel strongly about this merger and are hopeful and expect that it will be judged based on the legal merits, not underlying bias. We're asking for the same good faith we're extending: less rhetoric, more understanding. Paramount's future is being written for everyone who wants to make and watch great stories."

It's this statement from Paramount that Ruffalo has now responded again to condemn, in a post on X/Twitter which seeks to separate his criticism of Oracle and its links with the Israeli military from the suggestion that such criticism cannot exist without being antisemitic. Ruffalo's response lies below in full:

"The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest. Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people. This critical and necessary dialogue is then dishonestly framed as being anti-Israel. To be clear, my views come from my own political convictions and should never be interpreted as hostility toward Jewish people, for whom I have deep love and respect. Everything I know about acting, activism, and humanism has been profoundly shaped by the Jewish friends, colleagues, and loved ones who have been integral and family throughout every point of my life.

"This merger has real consequences for real people, and for the entire country. Scrutinizing the Ellisons, including Oracle’s business built on data, surveillance technology and government contracts, and the serious threat to editorial freedom and the loss of a livelihood for thousands of families, is fair and necessary. The $111 billion deal would hand one family control over CNN, HBO and Warner Bros., backed in part by foreign money whose influence on editorial decisions has never been fully explained to the public.

"Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for serious national security review, and regulators still haven't given the public a real answer. Until they do, the merger shouldn’t move forward. Now is the time to dive boldly into all these issues, not step back or concede."

Last month, Paramount's buyout of Warner Bros. was postponed until the conclusion of an antitrust trial, which could keep the deal from closing until the legal process is concluded, or June 2027 at the latest. Ruffalo, meanwhile, was most recently seen in portraying his veteran Marvel character Bruce Banner/The Hulk in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which has now passed $2.22 million at the box office.

Image credit: Simon Ackerman/Getty Images.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Legend of the White Dragon will be released in theaters on August 28.

Let’s get one thing straight up front: Legend of the White Dragon is not a Power Rangers movie.

Yes, for those of my generation that grew up watching Power Rangers, it does include plenty of familiar faces, putting the late Jason David Frank (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) as well as Jason Faunt (Time Force) and Ciara Hanna (Megaforce) front and center in what is a clear nostalgia play to draw in fans of the original shows. There are even moments in the movie where, if you really squint hard enough, it can almost look and feel like a more adult version of a Power Rangers show… not in the way that the largely forgotten 2017 movie did, but in how the visual effects are often quite shaky and there’s a big ol’ heaping of earnest cheesiness poured over it. It all makes this Kickstarter-funded project play more like a YouTube fan film than a standalone work, but there can be a charm to such an endeavor, and there is something admirable in the abstract about a group of people coming together to make a movie like this.

Unfortunately, while there remains plenty of actual charm in the shows this movie’s cast became known for, that’s utterly lacking in the execution here as the entire thing comes apart with shocking speed. Even as it was able to create its own thing, Legend of the White Dragon feels like a sequel weighed down by a whole series of movies that nobody in the audience has actually seen. There are flashbacks on top of flashbacks, pages of stilted dialogue in one belabored exposition scene after another, and woefully stiff fight sequences that never leave much of a mark. While a movie like this doesn’t need to be as thrilling and kinetic as the recent action stunner, The Furious, it’s still tough going when it can’t actually land a believable punch. More closely resembling the works of Neil Breen — the ultra-low-budget filmmaker known for Double Down, Fateful Findings, and Twisted Pair — but with some more money to throw at things, it’s occasionally unintentionally funny, though mostly a drag.

Our hero-turned-pariah is Erik Reed (Frank); he is believed by many to be, if not in hiding, dead following what characters refer to as "Dark Day," which is essentially a battle he took part in that killed 1,263 innocent people. Don’t worry about remembering any of this: Everything, including this exact number, will get repeated over and over as the movie spends far too long arranging and rearranging deck chairs before it feels like it’s actually even properly starting. Though we’re informed Erik was more of a treasure hunter than a superhero — leading to the hilarious line, “he left behind his most precious treasures, his wife and child” — he’ll soon have to step up and become one when he gets hunted down by those looking to take him in or get revenge. It’s all shallow and broad with a simulacrum of a complex and engaging central superhero character. Sure, he has abilities that come from a crystal which make him so powerful that he can fly into the sky, but while the story builds to him being unleashed to do so, the actual movie surrounding him doesn’t come remotely close to taking flight.

It’s at the secluded boxing ring where Erik has been hiding, which comes complete with old newspaper clippings taped on the wall that outline what we’ve already been told has happened, where we get our first fight. What could have been a goofy brawl, with fighters leaping through the air like wrestlers and smashing concrete blocks on heads, doesn’t actually cut loose. For one thing, the smashing of the concrete block comes down on a motorcycle helmet clearly meant to hide a stunt performer, leaving no sense of actual impact. Even more disappointing, the shaky camera work further obscures the stunts rather than letting us see the choreography clearly. Fight sequences not only can but should be a dance, with camera and performer working together; in Legend of the White Dragon, each proves to have two left feet, never once feeling in sync with the other as it all just shuffles along.

The longer this drags on, the more this ostensibly stand-alone movie just feels like it was conceived to bring together the cast without any thought about what that would actually look like. Once the first already clunky action scene comes to a close, there are large stretches where the film just spins its wheels, leaning heavily on the recurring presence of King Bach as a hologram to explain what’s going on. This may sound on paper like it could be a bit silly or even fun, but there’s no playfulness here. No matter how much the cast is all game, the atrocious dialogue and general lack of movement makes it a scattered slog. Even with brief moments where the actors bounce off each other in some more potentially fun ways, it always falls back to flashbacks which bring everything to a screeching halt, or bits with a one-note villain who can’t create a truly menacing presence.

When the final big confrontation and forced tease for a sequel arrives, you’re left wondering how a movie less than 90 minutes long can feel like it’s pushing two hours. Fans of the cast might still just be glad to spend time with their favorite actors, but both they and the performers deserve better than the slapped-together final film we get here. Despite all the legacies it's gesturing toward and the memorable ensemble it showcases, Legend of the White Dragon is nothing more than a forgettable misfire and miles away from legendary.

Zach Cregger's Resident Evil movie will pay homage to the series' first-person gameplay, newly-released footage has revealed.

A fresh video featuring Cregger discussing his upcoming horror adaptation also includes several quick shots from a first-person perspective, with the barrel of a shotgun and pistol raised directly in front of the camera.

The first moment sees a character — presumably Austin abrams' protagonist Bryan — sneaking through a house with a double-barrelled shotgun raised. The next shot we see is from behind the hands of a character — presumably Bryan again — holding a pistol as a zombie woman leaps towards him, and the camera.

𝙵𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚐𝚊𝚖𝚎.

From the mind of Zach Cregger, director of Weapons and Barbarian. Filmed for IMAX – Resident Evil is in theatres 9.18. #ResidentEvilㅤ pic.twitter.com/BHnhoinFS3

— Resident Evil (@ResidentEvil) August 24, 2026

In his commentary, Cregger discusses how his movie will pay homage to how the Resident Evil games typically start players off with a simple pistol, before granting access to a shotgun and later a machine gun. We can see this in the footage shown so far, with the zombie woman seemingly the first undead that Bryan encounters (he hits her on the road) before he takes shelter in a nearby house (and finds a shotgun inside).

And if you're sat there confused as to why first-person is now a thing in Resident Evil, well, the series has evolved a long way since the fixed-camera perspectives of the original Resident Evil 1. Several recent entries have featured a first-person viewpoint, which is also optional in this year's Resident Evil Requiem.

Another behind-the-scenes movie detail has also been released: a document showing the delivery note for Bryan's medical cargo. This is, deliberately, exactly the kind of collectible players find in Resident Evil games, offering a little more detail on what's going on. And indeed, here we see that Bryan's courier charges are being billed to... "Umbrella Corp."

𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝙱𝚛𝚢𝚊𝚗’𝚜 𝚍𝚎𝚕𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚍𝚎𝚝𝚊𝚒𝚕𝚜.

From the mind of Zach Cregger, director of Weapons and Barbarian. Filmed for IMAX – Resident Evil is in theatres 9.18. #ResidentEvilㅤ pic.twitter.com/Nv0r96SBzG

— Resident Evil (@ResidentEvil) August 24, 2026

Umbrella was always going to be a part of this movie, as it is set in Raccoon City concurrently with its big zombie outbreak. But how much the company will actually be involved remains to be seen. Cregger has repeatedly made clear that this film will not cross paths with known characters or re-tell story that's already present in Capcom's games.

Indeed, eagle-eyed fans have known for a while this is something of an alternate universe take on Raccoon City's zombie outbreak — which now happens in snow-covered streets and is set in the modern day, meaning characters use smartphones. (Canonically, the city's zombie outbreak happens within the Resident Evil games in September 1998.)

Has Cregger found the right balance between an original story that also pays homage to the source material for existing Resident Evil fans? There's not long left to wait until we find out. Resident Evil arrives in theaters on September 18. Last month, Cregger revealed how the filming of one particular sequence almost killed Austin Abrams when a stunt went slightly wrong.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

The latest Batman movie is now available to buy digitally. Knightfall Part 1 is a direct-to-video animated DC movie, but that doesn't mean it isn't an excellent take on the Caped Crusader. We loved it enough to award it an impressive 9 out of 10 in our review.

Batman: Knightfall Part 1 - Knightfall is the start of a new trilogy of animated Batman films. It's based on one of the best Batman graphic novels of all time and is absolutely worth checking out.

Avengers: Infinity War director Joe Russo revealed that they changed Spider-Man's death scene on the day it was filmed to try to make audiences cry.

When speaking with CBR for a retrospective on Avengers: Infinity War, Joe Russo and Robert Downey Jr. began talking about the impact of the snap at the end of the movie. Half of the heroes crumble into dust, not to be seen again until the end of the next movie, Avengers: Endgame. While most people knew these characters would return, it didn't stop the moment from being emotional in the theater. The death that got fans the hardest is arguably Spider-Man's, which was by design, according to Russo.

"In the script, it was, 'I don't feel so good,' and he goes 'I'm sorry,'" said Russo. "I don't mind a good cry in a movie theater, so I was like, how do we get them to really, really cry at this scene? I brought [Tom Holland] over, and I said, 'You don't want to go. You're 16 years old; it's the last thing you want, is to die.'"

That moment led to Peter Parker essentially pleading to Tony Stark to save him because he was scared to die. Russo went on to note that they knew Spider-Man's death would hit the hardest, so they spent a lot of time developing the relationship between Peter Parker and Tony Stark to make it all the more impactful when it was finally time to kill him off.

"We milked the s**t out of it; it takes the longest of any [of the deaths]. But also the relationship for the movie, writing backwards, is we know if we're going to break your heart, then we should have a fun relationship that's sort of mentor/mentee, but the mentee is a pain in the butt. And you didn't want him to come all along, and you're trying to protect him, and exactly what you didn't want to happen, happens."

Joe Russo will reteam with his directing partner and brother, Anthony Russo, as well as Robert Downey Jr. for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. The trailers for Doomsday have teased a bit of what we can expect from their Marvel return, but we'll have to wait and see if it can match the heights of Infinity War and Endgame.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

Buddy will be released in theaters on Friday, August 28.

It’s hard to overstate just how subversive and incredible Too Many Cooks was when it aired with zero warning/zero fanfare in the dead of night on Adult Swim in 2014. In 11 minutes, director Casper Kelly staged what starts as a send-up of ’80s and ’90s multicam sitcom intros, but rapidly devolves into a medium-breaking, surrealist nightmare. Though Kelly carried that bait-and-switch energy into 2021’s feature-length “Adult Swim Yule Log,” it’s Buddy that feels like the true spiritual successor to Too Many Cooks. Initially presenting as an episode of a lost children’s enrichment program in the vein of Barney & Friends, Buddy similarly uses the saccharine trappings of that medium as a delivery system for an edgy, clever descent into madness.

Before the earworm theme song which opens Buddy is even done, the film’s 1990s-appropriate 4:3 aspect ratio, soundstage-style camera coverage, and cheery aesthetic all wonderfully establish the bounds of its kids show form. Buddy the Unicorn (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) dopily dotes on the kids that spend all their time at the clubhouse and, along with other anthropomorphized objects, teaches them lessons about dancing or how to responsibly use household cleaning products. The episode ends, the credits roll, and life begins anew the next day. It’s a cycle that, as the kids come to realize, obfuscates more malicious intentions on Buddy’s part. The film’s first act is squarely-focused on reinforcing the slipping of the rose-tinted glasses with which the kids see the world, and Keegan-Michael Key’s vocal performance of the orange unicorn reinforces those tonal shifts well. Key is adept at modulating the lovey-dovey musicality of Buddy’s voice with hints of danger that don’t make things too sinister too quickly, so that when there are bursts of violence early on, they do feel surprising and gnarly.

Buddy wastes no time revealing its central conceit and how it plans to push that forward. One of the kids tires of Buddy pretty much immediately, and the fallout of that slight attracts the curiosity of Freddy (Delaney Quinn), another kid in Buddy’s thrall. Quinn’s performance, like Key’s, is impressive in its control, never getting ahead of where Kelly has pitched the tone at any given point. The rest of the kids who make up Buddy’s gang get the occasional chance to shine, but Freddy’s the only one who really has space to develop her character past a caricature of “kid with fewer lines than the others in an episode of Barney.”

Tone really is the highlight of Buddy: the undercurrent of wickedness which roils into view more and more as the movie goes is very well-managed, and no doubt Kelly’s signature strength. Too Many Cooks has inspired countless imitations in the 12 years since its release, but Buddy proves that Kelly is at the top of his class when it comes to weaponizing smiley, vapid positivity into a dark funhouse of f***ery. The filmmaker revels in revealing more about talking inanimate objects like Strappy (Patton Oswalt), Mr. Mailbox (Eric Bauza), Charlie the Train (Michael Shannon), and to what degree they’re able to see past Buddy’s smokescreen. Oswalt’s Strappy in particular becomes a very enjoyable partner to Freddy and the other kids, and though he never has much dialogue all at once, he makes every line count. Shannon double-dips as a second anthropomorphic character, paired with the movie’s best cameo appearance, in a send-up of a different style of children’s programming that feels especially insane in a movie that already feels especially insane up to that point.

Both Anna Kathleen’s production design and Devon Hawkes Ludlow’s puppet design are real highlights in Buddy, critically important to the movie’s overall success. The primary colors and chunky, cartoonish build quality of the set perfectly thread the needle of Kelly’s obvious inspirations so that no single ingredient in the cosmic gumbo feels too overpowering, which is enough to leave Buddy feeling well-defined enough to stand on its own. Ludlow’s puppet work is multifunctional here and also well-representative of Buddy’s tone, presenting an extremely appealing veneer that has room on the inside for all sorts of viscera and nastiness that’s always satisfying to see spill out into the open. Music is also a huge part of Buddy’s identity, with Kelly’s Too Many Cooks songwriter Shawn Coleman providing sing-songy ditties that feel true to the movie’s lineage and become more important to the experience than you might expect.

Even though the particulars of how Buddy’s mask starts to slip are fun to track, the film’s early adherence to the visual language of children’s shows does wear thin quickly, and pacing does become Buddy’s only significant downfall throughout. That Buddy feels as long as it does even at just 96 minutes is most attributable to how the nature of the story opens doors for the kids to question just why they spend so much time at Buddy’s clubhouse, which in turn leads to them pushing the boundaries of their own existence. The mechanics of how all that fits together gives the movie a stop-and-start quality that leaves the momentum of the full piece lacking. Despite the clarity and strength of the film’s tone being incredibly steady (even if the pacing isn’t), that does draw an outsized amount of attention to the visual inconsistencies that are present. As we the audience watch Buddy, the “home base” look of that fullscreen 4:3 aspect ratio is meant to connote that we’re experiencing the Buddy TV show as reality. But later in the movie, we have cause to see footage from that TV show displayed on widescreen TVs. In those moments, the Buddy TV show is displayed in the more modern 16:9 aspect ratio. This is a nitpick, sure, but the harder a director pushes a high concept like this, the more cohesive small details need to be so as not to break suspension of disbelief. It’s not a major distraction, but creating a world so worthy of close inspection does create a double-edged sword that Kelly occasionally slices himself on.

Buddy’s twists and turns deserve to be preserved as much as possible, but that sense of exhaustion with Buddy’s initial formal identity takes its most interesting turn when Cristin Milioti and Topher Grace’s far-more grounded characters come into play going into act two. When Buddy starts to reveal the shape of where the story is going, Milioti becomes the movie’s MVP. As she becomes aware of Buddy’s true nature, Milioti’s Grace provides the movie with a lot of depth through her skillful, adaptive performance. Her own command of tone is on its strongest display during a truly uncomfortable encounter between her and Buddy, which sees a dark movie go even darker than you may expect. Movies like Five Nights at Freddy’s, Willy’s Wonderland, and Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey have been pushing the stock of “mascot horror” up for years now, but Buddy stands apart in how it calls attention to the dangers of using toxic positivity to distract from darker corners of the day-to-day experience. At a certain point, you do get a really clear sense of where Buddy is going to wind up, but as with life, the journey is the destination here, and Kelly throws more than enough curveballs along the way to keep the somewhat predictable ending from feeling dissatisfying.

Vampire Hunter D is a franchise that has enjoyed a long, healthy lifespan as a series of Japanese light novels, but has never really been explored to its fullest in other media. The last Vampire Hunter D film to be released was 2001's Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Luckily for fans of the wandering hero known only as D, there's been some new momentum surrounding the franchise recently, including both a brand-new Western comics series and a theatrical rerelease.

First up, Dark Horse Comics is releasing a new miniseries called Vampire Hunter D: Fortress of Blood. The series isn't an adaptation of one of Hideyuki Kikuchi's novels, but is rather an original story set in that post-apocalyptic universe. Fortress of Blood is written by Chris Condon (That Texas Blood) and illustrated by Filipe Andrade (The Many Deaths of Laila Starr).

The creative team also includes colorist Jordie Bellaire and letterer Frank Cvetkovic. Andrade illustrated the main cover for issue #1, with variants by Riccardo Federici and Yoshitaka Amano. Here's Dark Horse's official summary of the first issue:

The first official comic series based on Hideyuki Kikuchi’s Vampire Hunter D! A vampire lord has marshalled his forces and is marching on human settlements aiming to leave no survivors! One thing stands among his path to the next city—the old fortress. There, a family of outcasts will need to buy enough time for the humans to flee. And wandering this same path is the beautiful, indomitable hunter—half-human, half-vampire—known as D.

Vampire Hunter D: Fortress of Blood #1 will be released on December 16. You can preorder a copy at your local comic shop.

On the film front, GKIDS revealed that Bloodlust is getting a theatrical rerelease in 2027, just after the film's 25th anniversary.

GKIDS is proud to announce the acquisition of North American rights to VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST. 🩸

The rarely-screened gothic horror classic from Yoshiaki Kawajiri and MADHOUSE will get a full theatrical release in 2027.

More details soon!https://t.co/UAi0WXpGqN pic.twitter.com/jTfCJ7qDWl

— GKIDS Films (@GKIDSfilms) August 22, 2026

There are no further details regarding a release date or possible 4k Blu-ray release, but hopefully Bloodlust returning to theaters will spark new interest in the series and pave the way for another film or anime series. Previously, an anime called Vampire Hunter D: Resurrection was announced in 2015, but work on the series seemingly stalled out during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For more on this cult-favorite franchise, check out IGN's Hidden Treasures retrospective on Vampire Hunter D.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

9-1-1’s Anirudh Pisharody is ready to take on the role of Nightcrawler for Marvel Studio’s upcoming X-Men reboot, and fans are rallying behind him.

The cast of Marvel’s X-Men flick is still being fleshed out, leaving ample room for speculation as to who will be joining the already-confirmed list of stars. A few were confirmed at D23 this year, with Inde Navarrette revealed as Rogue, Maya Boyd as Storm, Christopher Abbott as Professor X, and Adam Driver as Mister Sinister.

There are a few notable mutants who have yet to be revealed as part of the film, one of whom is Nightcrawler. While Alan Cumming reprising the role in Avengers: Doomsday, Marvel’s X-Men movie is expected to be a reboot of the franchise, meaning that a different, younger actor could be stepping into the role moving forward.

Enter Anirudh Pisharody. He’s an Indian-American actor best known for his performances in Never Have I Ever and 9-1-1, with other notable roles in Big Sky, The Goldbergs, Last Man Standing, and Unit 234.

On August 23, Pisharody responded to a fan’s tweet showing a side-by-side of the actor and panels of Nightcrawler from the X-Men comics. “Anirudh would devour as Nightcrawler,” they wrote.

“So, so down,” Pisharody responded in a quote tweet, tagging Marvel Studios alongside the scheming devil face emoji.

so so down @MarvelStudios 😈 https://t.co/OAPM6lvOYP

— Anirudh Pisharody (@AnirudhPish) August 23, 2026

Fans are flooding the comments section to vouch for him, with multiple users tagging Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige on several different platforms to make sure he’s aware of just how eager they are to see him in the role. (Still others are holding out hope that he'll take the role of Prince Naveen in Disney's upcoming live action Princess and the Frog remake.)

“Yes, make your move!” one excited fan wrote.

“I would be down if you could master a German accent,” another remarked.

“Role assigned to you already,” another wrote. “Remember me when it happens…”

Pisharody isn’t the only notable name vying for a role in Marvel’s X-Men movie; in a similar story, Reacher star Agnez Mo also responded to fan calls for Feige to cast her as Psylocke on social media.

“Thanks! I’m just gonna put it out to the universe… Psylocke,” she wrote, tagging the Marvel and Marvel Studios accounts.

Other names already confirmed for Marvel’s X-Men include Samara Weaving as Emma Frost (one of the most accurate castings we’ve seen thus far, to be frank), and Kit Connor as Cyclops.

Thanks! I’m just gonna put it out to the universe… Psylocke. @MarvelStudios @Marvel 💜

(Although @BoinkBuzz that’s my AI pic tho 😫) https://t.co/Lb5oCFEnhk

— AGNEZ MO (@agnezmo) August 23, 2026

With Avengers: Doomsday looming on the horizon, it’s expected that more will be revealed about the new generation of X-Men in the coming months. For more on the project, you can check out what Sadie Sink had to say about her ‘mysterious’ role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day and how she feels now that her big secret is out in the open.

Image Credits: Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images, Marvel

Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.

Spoilers below for Idiots, premiering August 28 in theaters.

Idiots, the new comedy starring Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Mason Thames, and Kiernan Shipka, has a little bit of everything: a star-studded cast, a bone-chilling villainous turn, and Franco performing in what he calls a “top three ‘shit yourself’ scene in cinematic history.”

The upcoming movie, written and directed by Macon Blair (The Toxic Avenger, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore), tells the story of what happens “when two unqualified bozos (Franco, Jackson) are hired to transfer a rich teen (Thames) to rehab [and] their straightforward gig quickly spirals into dangerous mayhem.”

I sat down with Blair and the cast for an exclusive roundtable interview to unpack all of the movie’s big moments (many comedic, some filled with drama verging on horror) and dive into the challenges of bringing an ambitious story with a stacked cast to the big screen on a limited budget.

Why Did the Filmmakers of Idiots Change the Movie’s Title From The Shitheads?

One of the biggest hurdles Blair encountered when making Idiots was what exactly to call it. The film was originally titled (and marketed as) The Shitheads. Blair says that, despite what you might think, it wasn’t outside pressure that forced the name change.

Macon Blair (Writer / Director): In my heart, I still call it the Shitheads. But it is Idiots. We never had any pressure to change it. [We] just started to do the rolling math of the challenges of promoting the movie and the hoops we would need to jump through. Knowing it's a small movie [and] it's coming out in the summertime, could be shooting ourselves in the foot as far as how we're able to promote the movie. Dave, [producer] Alex [Orr], and I took a weekend and brainstormed a bunch of stuff. Dave came up with Idiots and we were like, "It rolls off the tongue, it's clean." And we just don't have to think about it getting squashed on social media or video on demand.

What Dave Franco Told Alison Brie About the ‘Most Explosive’ Scene in Idiots

The plot of Idiots unfolds as a series of intense vignettes that transpire during a road trip. Midway through the film, protagonists Mark (Franco) and Davis (Jackson) stop at a local motel while in the process of transporting Sheridan (Thames), an entitled teenage psychopath, to rehab. The trio invite a stripper named Irina (Shipka) to their hotel room, where Sheridan proceeds to taint Mark’s supply of drugs. What happens next is a wild, chaotic scene that climaxes in an unexpected way.

Mason Thames (Sheridan): Yes [Dave], tell us how you pooped yourself.

Kerinan Shipka (Irina): Mason and I were in the other room drinking Diet Cokes with our phones out. We were just like “Oh my God!”

Dave Franco (Mark): I don't want to build it up too much, but I do think it's a top three “shit yourself” scenes in cinematic history.

Thames: It’s just so aggressive man! It broke the camera.

O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Davis): It's violent. It's violent.

Franco: What's great about it is that all the humor in this movie, even that moment, it's a bunch of really fun character stuff leading to these punctuation moments. This isn't a movie where it's a bunch of one-line jokes. It's all grounded in these really bizarre characters, and we're playing it as real as possible and letting the humor come from that. But then yes, you of course have these "explosive humor" moments that people will definitely be talking about.

Thames: I just remember Kieran's face when she first saw it. We were all just sitting there watching. It was so funny.

Shipka: It was an unbelievable cinematic feat.

Thames: That was one of the best experiences of my life.

Franco: I called my wife, [Alison Brie], after that day and I was like, "Honey, how was work? I think I just did the craziest thing I've ever done on camera." Which is saying a lot because I play a lot of fucking crazy characters. But this character was a gift. There's so much fun to be had. The challenge is to use the real estate for the rest of the movie to at least try to have the audience understand where this guy's coming from.

Mason Thames and Kiernan Shipka Break Down the Scene Where Sheridan Bites Irina

Immediately after Franco’s explosive scene, Shipka and Thames have a jaw-dropping moment of their own. In a truly horrific encounter, Sheridan bites Irina, drawing blood and revealing himself to be not just a spoiled teenager but an outright psychopath.

Blair: I didn't want [the cast] to think about it as if they were in a different kind of movie because then it would be all fractured. I was really interested in the idea that we could have a silly, sophomoric, dumb comedy because I love that kind of thing. But sort of snuck within that would be this molecule of something that was much darker.

Shipka: Reading [that scene], I felt like it was part of this whole kind of introduction to [Irina]. She does this dance, the explosion happens. It's sort of one thing feeding into the next. And you read through and you go, "Oh God, he bites her."

Thames: There’s the switch.

Shipka: I did not feel the level of bone-chilling sinister until I was in the room. I think that's a testament to the way that Mason is playing that character, because it really does shift quickly from this is just a bad day for this girl, to “Oh, no. Something's wrong.” It felt like one of those indie movie moments where we did not have that much time and the camera was handheld and there was a lot of just going in and finding it quickly. And I did kind of leave going, "Did we get that?"

Thames: It was so fast, but we were just so ready for it. For how crazy of a scene it was, it was a really cool memory. I think that was my first day I got to be evil.

Shipka: Yeah. It's so haunting.

Jackson: You went from weirdo to threat.

Mason Thames Reveals Whether He Wants to Play More Villains

Thames, who is perhaps best known for starring in the Black Phone and How to Train Your Dragon franchises, says he reveled at the chance to play a different type of character.

Thames: Yeah, I think he's pretty misunderstood.

Franco: Interesting. Expound on that.

Thames: This guy has a lot going on and is a very complicated character. Macon and I talked a good bit. I just wanted to serve his vision for who we saw Sheridan to be. And getting to work it out with him and kind of put together this puzzle of a kid was so fun and so nice and a really cool experience. Also, just playing a villain was really fun.

IGN: Do you want to play more psychopaths and villains moving forward?

Thames: 100%. This was so much fun. He's pretty crazy, but I want to go further.

How O’Shea Jackson Jr. Cried Real Tears During the Opening Scene of Idiots

Apart from the scatalogical humor and surprising violence of Idiots, the film also contains more sobering, grounded storylines. In the very first scene of the movie, Jackson has an emotional moment opposite rapper and actor Killer Mike where Davis loses his job. It was a challenging scene for Jackson in which he drew from personal experiences.

Jackson: Every tear I have in the movie is from a real place. I went through a couple losses in my family. I'm a parent and now I'm worried about everything all the time. And so a lot of it was me just taking the time to talk to [myself] before I went out on camera. I like to keep the energy light. I like to keep the jokes going and everybody's morale high. And so having to put myself in a corner for a second to get there was new for me. And the things that I have to do in this film are also new for me to share on camera.

And to get there the first day and meet Killer Mike is wild. I love Killer Mike. I don't want him to see me cry, but all I need is for Macon to tell me we got it one time. And [I got] the single tear with the light coming through the church window. I was like, "Oh, I'm in my bag right now.”

How the Cast and Crew of Idiots Made a Big Movie on a Small Budget

For the cast of Idiots, making a smaller movie presented many challenges but also made the process rewarding.

Shipka: I think everybody truly wants to be there. We're all here because we love this material and we want to be a part of this story. And I think that can happen at any scale, but really when we're making a movie like this, it feels that there's just a real sort of authenticity to everybody on set.

Franco: There is something about just having the limitations of a smaller movie that sometimes helps you raise your game. But I remember at the end of certain days, we just didn't have much time left, but we needed to get some big important scene. And we were like, "All right, can we do this in a one-er?" It's like, "Hey, we know our lines. We got this." And then you just get there. You make it happen.

Thames: You remember when I had to do the laugh when my mouth was all bloody? My voice was totally gone by that point. I don't remember what we've been shooting before, but my voice was gone. I couldn't laugh and it physically hurt so bad . But I just kind of used it.

Franco: It gave it this really creepy quality the whole time.

Jackson: As a performer, I never want to hold up camera, especially on a smaller film. You don't want to cost more money than what you have to. And I don't like keeping the crew waiting.

Franco: Knowing that we're coming in with only a few takes, it makes you come in prepared. You've got to be ready for anything. And so we're all very, very locked in.

Shipka: It’s athletic.

Jackson: There’s 3 seconds left on the shot clock. It’s just like, you gotta shoot.

Idiots premieres in theaters August 28.

Michael Peyton is the Senior Editorial Director of Events & Entertainment at IGN, leading entertainment content and coverage of tentpole events including IGN Live, San Diego Comic Con, gamescom, and IGN Fan Fest. He's spent 20 years working in the games and entertainment industry, and his adventures have taken him everywhere from the Oscars to Japan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him on Bluesky @MichaelPeyton

Sicario 3 is real and gearing up to enter production shortly, according to Josh Brolin.

When speaking with Screen Rant, Brolin was asked about the long-awaited threequel and said that it "is happening" and that production will ramp up "soon." Not much else was revealed about the project, but if all of that is true, don't expect Denis Villeneuve in the director's chair. He's currently wrapping up Dune: Part 3 and will then immediately shift over to his James Bond film, which is currently going through the casting process to find its 007 as we speak.

Villeneuve directed the first Sicario, which helped spark initial rise as a prolific director. However, he didn't return for the sequel as he was slammed with projects like Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. The film was instead handed off to Stefano Sollima, who created a competent action thriller, though one that arguably lacked the nuance and unnerving direction that made the first film so special. Still, it did well enough that audiences were open to a third film.

For years, Brolin has teased the possibility of a third Sicario, but this appears to be the closest we've come to it actually happening. It's unclear if Benicio del Toro will co-star once again, who will direct, or who will write it. Back in 2023, it was revealed that Taylor Sheridan (who penned the first two films) and longtime Mission: Impossible writer/director Christopher McQuarrie were collaborating on it, but it's unclear if they were writing a story, producing, or consulting in some capacity.

McQuarrie cut his teeth as a script doctor before his directing career became more active in the 2010s. He has experience performing uncredited rewrites on promising scripts that needed to be punched up, so he may be lending those skills to Sicario 3. Sheridan is pretty busy writing an onslaught of shows for Paramount, meanwhile, but a return for Sicario 3 does not seem out of the question.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

IGN can exclusively reveal an official LEGO-inspired version of the trailer for Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Doomsday.

The trailer – created by Disney Consumer Products, Marvel Studios and LEGO as part of their “All Moments Lead to Doomsday” campaign – can be watched below.

Featuring the voices of the actual Doomsday cast, including Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, the trailer is a shot-for-shot, beat-for-beat recreation of the live-action trailer released in July but in LEGO form, as seen in the side-by-side comparison embedded below.

"The LEGO brick-built trailer is a nod to the creativity of the Marvel fandom and builds excitement for Marvel Studios' Avengers: Doomsday theatrical release," said Paul Gitter, Executive Vice President, Global Brand Commercialization, Disney Consumer Products.

"By bringing together the power of our storytelling and consumer products expertise with world-class licensing relationships, we're able to create innovative fan experiences that extend our stories beyond the screen in ways that are unique to only Disney."

The first live-action Avengers: Doomsday trailer has garnered over 67 million views on Marvel’s YouTube channel.

With Doomsday opening in theaters on December 18 – opposite Dune: Part 3 – we’re beginning to glean a few more details about the Russo Brothers-directed film as we inch closer to release.

There’s David Harbour apparently dropping a huge spoiler, Sebastian Stan admitting he knows next to nothing about the story, fan theories about there actually being two Doctor Dooms, and the news about how Marvel’s San Diego Comic-Con ads cost them $160,000 in fines.

Meanwhile, Chris Evans has opened up about the lengths Marvel went to keep his return as Steve Rogers secret and how Doomsday will be “brutal” for the former Captain America.

But before Doomsday gets here, fans will first be treated to a theatrical re-release of Avengers: Endgame that features four minutes of brand new footage, which officially makes it the longest MCU movie of all time.

After years of waiting to become a superhero herself, Peggy Carter's untimely demise in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was a "complete disservice to the character," Marvel actress Hayley Atwell has said.

Speaking at the For the Love of Fantasy & Sci-Fi convention in London this weekend, Atwell said that she had tried to pitch alternate versions of her character's fight to the death against Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, only for her suggestions to be ignored.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness features an alternate version of Peggy Carter who has become Captain Carter, and wields a version of Captain America's shield that sports a Union Jack logo. Sadly, alongside the rest of her Illuminati (Illumi-what-y?) team, she is quickly wiped out by Wanda.

"I loved the idea that she'd be in the suit and have the shield," Atwell began. "And if I'm really brutally honest, I was so disappointed with how they positioned her and what happened to her in that scene. It's so small, and she gets frisbeed to death."

Of course, the point of her character's presence in the movie is to demonstrate Wanda's power and to show how far the former Avenger has fallen as she wipes out a team of heroes, including Carter, John Krasinski's Mr. Fantastic, and Patrick Stewart's Professor X.

But it's also true that Atwell gets just a handful of lines before Wanda appears and kills them all within seconds. There's a fun moment where Carter gets to quote Steve Rogers' classic "I could do this all day" line, but, seconds later, Wanda sends Captain Carter's shield bouncing back into the heroine's gut, with the suggestion she has been bisected completely.

Atwell says it was the quoting of Steve Rogers' dialogue that particularly irked her, as the obvious response was then "no you couldn't [do this all day]," prompting the feeling that actually she was just "lame."

"I felt that was like a bum steer and a complete disservice to the character," Atwell added. "I tried on set to kind of go, 'Can I just add? Can I just suggest?' And they were like, 'Sure, but no.'"

Atwell will next return to the franchise in Avengers: Doomsday, and it'll be interested to see where the character goes next. Will there be a chance for Carter to suit up again, or will she be left at home holding the baby? (Even if it is the latter, this is probably preferable to Doctor Doom holding it instead.) Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18, and Marvel has put together a list of MCU movies and TV shows you should watch before it arrives.

Image credit: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social