DC Studios has found one half of its buddy space cop duo, having recently landed Kyle Chandler to fill the role of Hal Jordan in the HBO series, Lanterns. With Chandler on board for the “I’m too old for this shit” part of the team, the studio has now turned its attention to landing a star for the role of John Stewart ahead of an expected January 2025 start of principal photography.
Part of the process of finding an actor for the co-starring role will likely involve readthroughs that will help test for chemistry between Chandler and the potential Stewarts. And while DC Studios almost certainly cast a wide net in its search for the former Marine turned Lantern, a new rumor claims that its narrowed down the choices to an impressive short list of talent.
According to social media scooper MyTimeToShineHello, Damson Idris (FX’s Snowfall) and Aaron Pierre (Rebel Ridge) sit atop the studio’s wishlist for Stewart while Ted Lasso star Toheeb Jimoh, Sope Dirisu and Kelvin Harrison Jr., who played Martin Luther King in Genius fill out its presumptive top five.
Once attached to star alongside Mahershala Ali in Marvel Studios’ woebegone Blade, Pierre recently turned heads with a breakout role in Netflix’s Rebel Ridge. Ironically enough, Pierre delivered a star-making performance as a former Marine in Rebel Ridge and now may be staring at stepping right into those shoes again as Stewart.
With the writing team of Chris McKenna and Eric Sommers back for a fourth go-around and Destin Daniel Cretton on board to direct, the creative team for Sony and Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man 4 looks to be in good shape. With the studios hoping to get principal photography underway in the first half of 2025 to get the film ready for 2026, the next step is assembling talent around star Tom Holland. While the supporting cast of the first MCU-set Spider-Man trilogy had several key members play large roles in each film, Spider-Man: No Way Home remade Peter’s status quo, leaving room for potential new friends and enemies.
The spell cast by Doctor Strange at the behest of Peter Parker in the final act of the Spidey threequel was intended to make everyone forget they knew the man behind the mask of the Wall-Crawler. And as revealed before the film wrapped, the spell was a success. Happy Hogan, MJ and Ned all interacted with Peter with no recognition of their friend. With his friends safe from enemies who would otherwise exploit them to get at Peter and Aunt May having been killed by The Green Goblin, Peter is set up for a brand new day…which may just include a new love interest!
According to social media scooper MyTimeToShineHello, as Spider-Man 4 heads for a May 2025 start of production, the project is searching for a new female lead.
While the scooper didn’t provide any follow-up details, it hasn’t stopped fans from speculating that the character may well be one that’s been both slated to rumored to appear in Spidey movies in the past: Felicia Hardy, aka Black Cat.
A cat burglar with a bit of a vengeful streak, Hardy has engaged in an on-again, off-again romantic relationship with Peter. The plot for Spider-Man 4 has yet to be revealed though rumors about the film involving either a street-level civil war or a crossover battle with Sony’s Eddie Brock/Venom, played by Tom Hardy. In either case, it’s not clear what role Black Cat would play but then again, neither plot is confirmed nor is it clear that she is the new female lead. With the studios moving quickly toward production, however, it wouldn’t be too surprising if more information about the project was revealed soon.
Though Lucasfilm chose not to renew their most recent Star Wars streaming series, The Acolyte, the studio’s Disney Plus projects have certainly been an overall success. Andor remains the crown jewel of the bunch but live-action projects such as The Mandalorian and Ahsoka have also been generally well received as have animated series like The Bad Batch and Tales. Under new Chief Creative Officer Dave Filoni‘s watch, Lucasfilm has not hesitated to bring animated characters to live action or to cross over into Legends continuity or pull from other canon media to borrow characters or ideas to help flesh out their D+ series and it sounds as though the studio is planning to do it again.
According to trusted insider Daniel RPK, Lucasfilm is preparing to use Jedi Cal Kestis in an upcoming Disney Plus series. A survivor of Order 66, Kestis first appeared in the video game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and then again in its sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
I’ve seen a lot of chatter online about that. It could be really interesting. It’s not something that’s front and center right at the moment, but what’s interesting in the company that we do is that everybody across all these different lines of business, we all talk to one another. That often doesn’t happen in situations like this, but because so many of the people at Lucasfilm, are used to working together, we’re very transparent about what the storytelling is that’s going on — whether it’s in the streaming space or the movie space, or books, animation games, whatever it is. Eventually, it’ll be some kind of immersive entertainment.
-Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy on the possibility of Cal Kestis appearing in a live-action Star Wars project, EW, April 2023
Due to the popularity of the gaming franchise, Kestis is an incredibly well-loved character and one that fans have hoped would appear in a live-action project for quite some time now. The buzz around fans’ hopes grew so loud that it reached the ears of Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, who during Star Wars Celebration 2023 teased the possibility saying “There are many things we talk about just in terms of how we use technology with ILM inside the company. So this constant cross-pollination of ideas to determine just exactly what stories move into the movie space, what stories move into the TV space — you never know, because the creative process is very similar in all of those different spaces. And so you don’t have a crystal ball. You see what works, and then if it does, you draw from that.“
Though it sounds as though the plan is for a live-action debut for the character, no mention of a particular project was made. Kestis is a human character whose canon adventures in the video games occur around 9 BBY. While it’s not clearly defined, Kestis would be in his early to mid-40s in the New Republic era that is currently unfolding on Disney Plus. Whether it is relevant or not, actor Cameron Monaghan, who portrayed Kestis in the games, is 31 years old, making it entirely reasonable that he might appear in something like Skeleton Crew or Season 2 of Ahsoka, which Filoni is currently writing.
After staying quiet on their plans beyond 2025, Marvel Studios has quite clearly been working hard behind the scenes on getting its 2026 slate put together. Once the studio made the decision to pivot to Doctor Doom as the new centerpiece of the Multiverse Saga in Avengers: Doomsday, other pieces started to become easier to put into place. And so while projects such as Blade, Armor Wars and a Shang-Chi sequel face uncertain futures, other projects have started to gather some momentum.
According to Production List, production on Spider-Man 4 is currently slated to begin in January 2025.
Paired with additional news from Production List that Avengers: Doomsday is slated for an April start of principal photography, it looks as though Holland will have a three-month window to film his scenes for Spider-Man 4 before jumping into work on the fifth Avengers film. That timeline is indeed consistent with the filming windows for the three previous MCU-set Spidey films, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home and Spider-Man: No Way Home.
As encouraging as things sound, Production List is NOT a trade and neither Marvel nor Sony have provided any official updates on Spider-Man 4. So as compelling as it is to believe a growing collection of circumstantial evidence, don’t mark anything on your calendars just yet.
As Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel Studios first R-rated movie, continues its record breaking theatrical run that has seen it become one of the ten highest grossing MCU films to date, attention has begun to turn to home release. With only Inside Out2 pulling in more money for Disney this past year, fans had begun to wonder if Deadpool & Wolverine would follow the same digital release schedule as the Pixar sequel which would have made it available for purchase on September 17th. However, with the Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman buddy comedy still pulling in decent returns overseas, fans will have to hold out just a little longer before seeing Jackman’s abs in the comfort of their own homes.
Revealed via Disney’s social media platforms today, Deadpool & Wolverine will be available to rent/own in various digital platforms such as Fandango, Apple TV and Amazon Prime beginning on October 1st.
Be the first to watch #DeadpoolAndWolverine from the comfort of your living r-hugh-m.
Following a three week digital-only window, physical copies of the film will be available on October 22nd. As of now, no date has been revealed for the movie’s debut on Disney Plus.
After a rough 2023, Marvel Studios turned to the X-Men to help reclaim its position at pop culture’s top dog in 2024. Deadpool & Wolverine was always expected to do big business at the box office (and it did just that, currently sitting as the 5th highest-grossing MCU project of all time) but it was another X-Men project that provided a spark of renewed hope when the studio needed it most.
According to Nexus Point News, Season 2 of X-Men ’97 is unlikely to hit Disney Plus before 2026, citing changes to the story following the firing of showrunner Beau DeMayo earlier this year.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Season 2 of X-Men ’97 was in post-production and eyeing a 2025 debut on D+. However, in May, Marvel TV and Animation head honcho Brad Winderbaum cautioned fans to exercise patience, saying the series was “still in animatic phase“, adding that “animation takes so long to make.” Should this new report hold true, it looks like fans will have to exhibit a bit more patience than they’d probably care to do.
So far, Marvel Studios’ Multiverse Saga has not quite lived up to the expectations as a follow-up to the Infinity Saga. While the studio’s first three phases had bumps in the road, the combination of a pandemic, the tragic loss of one of the studio’s biggest stars, work stoppages in Hollywood and some really bad decisions have led to the perception that Marvel Studios has lost its way. Keenly aware of that perception, Disney dialed up an intervention and began to make key changes behind the scenes. So far, it would be hard to argue with the results as a string of good projects has begun to erase the (short) memory of the public and reestablish the MCU as a pop culture giant; however, with another two-plus years of projects planned to finish up the Multiverse Saga, there’s still plenty of work to do.
Part of that work is continuing to separate the future from the bad decisions of the past…which has led them to reach further into the past. Following the studio’s decision to part ways with Jonathan Majors, who was contracted to play multiple versions of Kang and serve as the big bad of the Multiverse Saga, Kevin Feige turned to Infinity Saga legends Anthony and Joe Russo and Robert Downey Jr. to save the day by rebuilding Avengers: The Kang Dynasty as Avengers: Doomsday. Pivoting to a new villain at the core of the Multiverse Saga opened up the playbook a bit for the studio, allowing for characters who perhaps weren’t slated for major roles to find one (and it also pushed some characters right out of the stories planned for the next few years. And for one character in particular, that reportedly may mean a redemption arc that will thrill a large segment of MCU fandom.
According to insider My Time to Shine Hello, the Russos and writer Stephen McFeely have carved out a large role for Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff in Avengers: Doomsday.
Following the events of WandaVision, which saw the character hold the entire town of Westview hostage within her grief-induced hex, Wanda’s study of the Darkhold corrupted her. By the time she appeared again in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda had become the Scarlet Witch and acted as the film’s main antagonist. Though based on comic book lore, the decision by writer Michael Waldron to utilize the character as a villain was controversial. Already a popular character, Wanda’s fanbase grew significantly during WandaVision‘s weekly run on Disney Plus. Following the film’s release, Waldron addressed the fanbase’s issues with Wanda’s heel turn, saying “I guess I would say to the WandaVision fans, like, I get it. Watching a character you love do bad things sucks. That elicits a strong feeling, which is what we’re trying to do in the movies. We never would have done it if it didn’t feel like the next step in her character journey.“
To me, my interpretation of the story of WandaVision was, that Wanda is confronting her grief in that show, but I don’t think she’s necessarily conquering it. It’s a show about her living in denial to some extent and she’s conquering her denial, but I don’t think that she’s properly reckoning with her anger over what she’s endured, and that anger is what she carries with her as she walks away with the knowledge that she is the Scarlet Witch and with the Darkhold, this evil book. And I think it’s that anger that the Darkhold preys upon and pushes her on what is a, to me and I think to Wanda, a very justifiable, noble journey. She just wants her kids.
-Michael Waldron on Wanda Maximoff’s villainous role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Though there’s no mention of what Wanda’s role in Avengers: Doomsday might entail, the character does have an interesting comic book history with that film’s title character, Victor Von Doom, that current and future events in the MCU’s ongoing shared narrative could easily be setting up. With things at Marvel Studios more unsettled than ever and with the powers that be apparently deciding to accelerate the ending of the Multiverse Saga, it’s best not to become too attached to any one particular idea at this time; however, a redemption arc for the Scarlet Witch is one idea that continues to look fairly promising.
With James Gunn‘s Superman in post production and reportedly shaping up to be a very solid start for DC Studios, Gunn and DC Studios’ co-chair Peter Safran have some time to devote to getting the next round of projects ready to roll. The studio’s HBO streaming series, Lanterns,which is scheduled for a January shoot in Atlanta, has been making headlines lately and recently found its Hal Jordan in Kyle Chandler. Now, the studio’s next theatrical project has some casting news of its own.
According to THR, Matthias Schoenaerts has signed on to be the main antagonist in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.
Based on Tom King’s DC Comics series of the same name, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is set to film in the UK in January ahead of a June 27, 2026 release. Milly Alcock landed the lead role of Kara Zor-El in January 2024, beating out Emilia Jones and Meg Donnelly to play the cousin of Kal-El. Alcock’s Supergirl is expected to first appear in 2025’s Superman.
According to the trade report, Schoenaerts will play a villain known as Krem of the Yellow Hills. While that’s not a name that sounds as scary as Darkseid or Doomsday, Krem is a fairly ruthless baddie and, he did cross the line by inflicting damage on Kara’s dog, Krypto, in the comics, leading to Kara’s Shooter moment.
Much has been made about the changes that have taken place behind the scenes at Marvel Studios since Bob Iger returned to Disney. The number of series and films has been reduced, productions have been paused, rewritten and reshot and the fates of others seemingly lie in the balance as the Multiverse Saga is being reworked on the fly. Slightly less attention has been paid, however, to the not-so-subtle shift in the typically tight-lipped studio’s marketing approach.
Projects such as Agatha All Along and The Fantastic Four: First Steps seemed to serve as guinea pigs for fun new strategies to engage the public far sooner and more directly than what the studio had done in the past. Additionally (and perhaps driven by leaks) teaser trailers for upcoming films, such as 2025’s Captain America: Brave New World, started making their way online earlier than in the past.
Thunderbolts*, another 2025 project has also utilized some non-traditional strategies to gather some momentum. Earlier this year, star Florence Pugh released a staged, behind-the-scenes video from the film’s set which revealed a slight change to the film’s title with an asterisk being added. That asterisk has driven dialogue online as fans speculate and theorize about just what its inclusion might mean and the studio has certainly embraced if not encouraged the discourse. In addition to that bit of fun, the studio also sneakily dropped an extended teaser for the film on September 23rd, more than seven months before it hits theaters. And while the fine folks at Marvel Studios did their best to keep their secrets, they did leave one clue in the background that reveals the identity of a mysterious new organization that will be introduced to the MCU in the film.
At the 1:33 mark of the trailer, after Pugh’s Yelena Belova recovers from the attempt by Wyatt Russell’s John Walker to kill her, a symbol can be glimpsed on a crate over Belova’s left shoulder.
Though the symbol is at an odd angle, upon a little zoom, zoom, zoom and a boom-boom, it can be recognized as a fancy combination of the letters O, X and E. And while it may not be as easily recognizable to fans as other members of Marvel’s alphabet soup club such as S.H.I.E.L.D. or S.W.O.R.D., O.X.E. is an established organization from the pages of Marvel Comics and it has ties to one of the main characters in Thunderbolts*.
Iterations of O.X.E. exist in both Marvel Comics’ 616 and Ultimate universes and while the true nature of either entity isn’t actually too clear, they were both founded by… Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. After first appearing in The Falcon and The Winter Solider, the MCU’s version of Val–played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, has been busy recruiting her own team of operatives such as Walker and Belova. And if it wasn’t already clear enough after watching the teaser, Val is using her O.X.E. facility as a holding tank for Lewis Pullman‘s “Bob” and has sent all her cronies there to die, whether by Bob’s hands–or eyes–or by each other’s, as she seeks a new position within the U.S. Goverment. It’s also very likely that the masked gunmen who are given the unenviable task of shooting up Bob are Val’s O.X.E. goons.
Of course, the teaser has plenty of other fun reveals such as Val’s now comic-accurate hair, improved new looks for Ghost and Taskmaster, the Sentry belt logo and a renovated Stark/Avengers Tower. From the looks of it, Black Widow 2 Thunderbolts* may have greatly benefitted from the delays it faced as it the script was rewritten and polished up by several writers over the past couple of years. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see what role, if any, Val and O.X.E. play in the MCU or if it was just an easy organization to write in as a one-off.
Thunderbolts* is set to arrive in theaters on May 2, 2025.
First announced by DC Studios’ co-chairs James Gunn and Peter Safran in January 2022, the streaming series Lanterns is poised to play a major role in the DCU’s Chapter One: Gods and Monsters. Described by Safran as a “terrestrial-based investigation story” in the vein of HBO’s True Detective, the series will be focused on Green Lantern Corps members Hal Jordan and John Stewart who “find this ancient horror on Earth, and these guys are basically supercops on “Precinct Earth” which will play “a really big role leading us into the main story” of the studio’s initial shared narrative.
THR’s Borys Kit and Rick Porter reported that Primetime Emmy award winner Kyle Chandler will be suiting up as the DCU’s Hal Jordan.
John Stewart and Hal Jordan are two of DC’s most compelling characters, and Lanterns brings them to life in an original detective story that is a foundational part of the unified DCU we’re launching next summer with Superman.
-James Gunn and Peter Safran on HBO’s Lanterns
Chandler won his Emmy in 2011 for his portrayal of Texas football coach Eric Taylor in the NBC series, Friday Night Lights. Over the past decade, Chandler has had plenty of other memorable roles, starring as FBI Agent Denham in The Wolf of Wall Street and in both Godzilla: King of Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong. With Chandler on board, the studio will continue its search for an actor to portray John Stewart, though Elvis star Kelvin Harrision Jr. was recently rumored to be a top choice.
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