<![CDATA[Inverse]]>https://www.inverse.comInverseFri, 24 Apr 2026 23:56:57 GMT<![CDATA[Weird Things Selling Out on Amazon Because They're So Badass]]>https://www.inverse.com/shopping/weird-things-selling-out-on-amazon-because-theyre-so-badasshttps://www.inverse.com/shopping/weird-things-selling-out-on-amazon-because-theyre-so-badassFri, 24 Apr 2026 23:56:53 GMT

Let’s be real. There’s nothing more satisfying than scoring something a little weird, wildly useful, and—most importantly—cheap. If your vibe is getting Amazon treasures that make your life easier, funnier, or just a tiny bit more extra, you’ve come to the right list. From kitchen gadgets that are legit genius to decor that’ll have your visitors asking, “Wait, where’d you get that?” (with a healthy dose of envy), it all lives here. So go ahead, embrace your inner maximalist—we’re about to dive into the best affordable, quirky finds the internet has to offer.

A rocker light switch cover with arcade buttons

Ditch boring light switches: This arcade-themed switch plate fits on any standard rocker-style light switch, allowing you to control it in the most fun way possible. It’s simple to install (you only need a standard flathead screwdriver) without any wiring.

Solar-powered wind chimes that look nice day & night

These wind chimes look pretty, both day and night. They gently sway in the wind, putting out a soothing crystal sound for you to enjoy. And when the sun goes down, the six LED bars illuminate, cycling through seven vivid colors. This pick is solar powered, lasting up to eight hours.

A ball launcher that will tire out even the zoomiest of cats

Turn playtime into pure chaos (the fun kind) with this LOL-worthy ball launcher toy set. It comes with 30 soft, plush balls and a launcher that sends them flying up to 15 feet — in other words, endless entertainment for your zoomy feline. The lightweight, quiet balls are gentle on floors and furniture, while the launcher makes you the ultimate playmate.

A high-tech security camera disguised as a light bulb

Install this light bulb just like any regular bulb — but get so much more than just lighting. It’s actually a secret security camera. It pairs with your phone, giving you a full view of the surrounding area. There’s even two-way audio to communicate with visitors and a night vision mode.

A set of LOL-worthy pens to lighten the work mood

Add some delightful chaos to your workday with this set of sarcastic pens that say exactly what you’re thinking... but can’t say out loud in a meeting. Each pen features hilariously snarky phrases that are equal parts rude and relatable, making them the perfect desk accessory for anyone powered by caffeine and passive aggression. They write smoothly, look great in your pen cup, and make unbeatable gag gifts for coworkers, friends, or anyone who thrives on inappropriate humor. Basically, they’re pens with personality (yours).

A cuddle-worthy pet couch that’s easy to wash

Your pet will adore cuddling up in this corduroy bed — it might actually keep them off your couch. The three-sided design provides plenty of support for your furry friend’s head and neck, and the nonslip bottom prevents it from moving around, even if you have a burrower. The cover is removable for washing.

Colorful wax to give your hair a fun, temporary hue

Add a fun look to your hair with these four colored waxes. Your order comes with green, blue, purple, and pink. The wax is easy to wash out but doesn’t leave a sticky residue during use.

A unique fireplace-inspired wax melter

This wax melter has a fireplace-inspired look (particularly when the light inside is glowing) for a unique element. The electric hot plate works quickly to melt down the wax, releasing the scent throughout your space.

A 3-D animal head for an unexpected decor addition

Made from resin with a bronze finish, this 3-D rabbit head surely will be a conversation starter in your home. It mounts directly on the wall, and there are other creatures to pick from in the listing should you want to group a few of them together.

Light bulbs that actually look like flickering flames

If you’re tired of boring lighting, these LED flame bulbs are your sign to turn up the drama. They flicker like real fire, with four different modes to choose from: flame, breathing, steady light, and gravity-sensing. The glow always rises from bottom to top for a crazy realistic effect, especially inside a frosted lamp or lantern. They’re energy efficient, long-lasting, and give off that perfectly cozy vibe without the smoke or mess.

A cassette tape doormat for a fun first impression

Keep dirt where it belongs — outside — with this doormat that’s as practical as it is stylish. Available in 13 fun designs including a throwback cassette mix tape or an LOL-worthy phrase, it adds personality to any entryway. Made from durable felt and rubber, it stays put thanks to its nonslip backing while effortlessly trapping dirt, dust, and moisture from shoes.

A hanging beaded curtain that adds mystical vibes to any room

Bring a little sparkle and sophistication to your space with this crystal glass beaded curtain. Each strand is made from real glass — clear, glossy, and durable — strung on stainless steel wire for long-lasting beauty. The arched, 20-string design fits most doorways and instantly adds elegance to any room, whether it’s your bedroom, living room, or balcony. Easy to install without drilling, this shimmering curtain catches the light beautifully and transforms any doorway into a statement piece.

Toilet bolt covers that add art to an unexpected spot

Toilets aren’t necessarily badass by any stretch, but these bolt caps make them look far cooler. Each one features a colorful mountain scene complete with birds and a sun. Just stick them over your existing toilet bolts for an unexpected design touch.

A reviewer-backed migraine stick for cooling relief

Infused with menthol, coconut oil, and essential oils like peppermint and eucalyptus, this migraine stick can help fight soothe migraine symptoms. “This roll-on has been a lifesaver when I feel a migraine coming on. The cooling sensation hits fast [...] I like that it’s portable and easy to keep in my bag for work or travel,” noted one commenter.

A roll-up mat to save your puzzle progress

Can’t finish a puzzle in a single sitting? No problem. Use this roll-up mat to save your spot until next time. It’s spacious enough for up to 1,000 pieces, and the solid foam rolling tube ensures the pieces stay right where you left them.

A fun keychain that actually works

This keychain gives you a touch of fun no matter where you are. The mini slot machine actually functions and according to shoppers, it really works. “They work great and the items frequently match up making it super fun to play with,” one shopper wrote. With a 4.5-star overall rating, they’re not alone.

A cute crystal ball upgrade for your keyboard

Make work or gaming a lot more fun with this crystal ball keycap filled with either heart- or star-shaped confetti. It’s designed to easily fit into most mechanical keyboards with a plus shaped so it’s a breeze to swap in.

A light-up faux aquarium with moving fish

Shoppers love this faux mini aquarium with realistic-looking moving fish with more than 700 five-star ratings. They give off a gentle glow and effect with hardly any upkeep. “It's gorgeous to look at, I always stare at it, it's mesmerizing. It's also really good for the price,” one shopper wrote.

A portable conch shell light that looks straight out of the sea

Bring some coastal-inspired calm to your space with this portable conch shell light, a beautiful piece that feels straight from the sea. Made from pure white sandstone with an elegant conch shell design, it casts a soft, warm glow that’s easy on the eyes yet bright enough to guide your way at night. The built-in six-hour timer and memory function make it effortless — just set it once, and it turns on and off automatically each evening.

Rechargeable hand warmers that keep you warm & toasty

Stay toasty no matter what kind of weather the day throws at you with these rechargeable hand warmers. The cozy squares heat up in just two seconds and keep you warm for up to eight hours — perfect for walking the dog, winter hikes, or freezing mornings at your desk. Each one has three heat settings, a slim, credit card-style design, and magnets that snap together for easy storage.

A pack of 800 sticky notes you can see through, too

Stay organized in style with this set of 800 transparent sticky notes — perfect for everything from studying to jotting down reminders or marking pages without covering text. Each 3-by-3-inch pad is made from durable, waterproof material that sticks firmly but removes cleanly. You’ll get 14 colorful pads plus a mini dispenser for quick grabs on the go. They’re functional, sleek, and totally obsession worthy for planners and perfectionists alike.

A light-up charging cable with both USB-C & Lightning connectors

Meet your new travel MVP — this four-in-one charging cable that powers everything from your iPhone to your laptop without the cord chaos. It’s got USB-C and Lightning connectors on both ends, so you can charge or transfer data between almost any device in seconds. Made from ultra-durable, tangle-free silicone with a 30,000-bend lifespan, it’s built to last and glows softly with RGB lights while charging. Plus, the 5-foot length gives you freedom to scroll or stream anywhere — couch, car, or carry-on.

A shark-shaped bottle opener with powerful jaws

Bring some bite to your bottle-opening game with this shark-shaped bottle opener. Sleek, sturdy, and super cool, it’s crafted from durable zinc alloy and designed to make cracking open a cold one effortless. Clip it to your keys so it’s always within reach, whether you’re at a backyard barbecue, camping, or just hanging with friends. It’s equal parts practical and conversation-starting.

A colorful, oversized soup bowl perfect for cozying up

The only thing that makes a warm bowl of soup even better is being able to cozy up with it on the couch thanks to a sturdy, comfy vessel — and this soup bowl with a looped handle is it. Available in 10 colorful designs including vibrant nature scenes and bright florals, the soup bowl is microwave safe and can also be used for ice cream, parfaits, or even as decoration.

A pocket-sized scene that’ll make you smile

If you need a little dose of joy, you’ll be glad to have this pocket animal scene on hand. Available in lots of styles including bunnies, dinos, and cats, can you imagine a cuter way to remind yourself to be mindful?

A protective desk mat that adds personality to your workspace

Upgrade your workspace with this extended mouse pad that’s big enough to handle your keyboard, mouse, and all your random desk clutter while keeping your setup looking clean and polished. The ultra-smooth Lycra surface lets your mouse glide like butter for precision gaming or work, while the nonslip rubber base keeps everything firmly in place (no annoying sliding around). The best part? It comes in fun designs like this ramen-inspired option.

A throat spray you’ll want to immediately add to your wellness arsenal

For a little immune-supporting leg up during cold and flu season, keep this bee propolis spray in your bag. Just like bees use propolis to protect their colony, this natural defender helps support your body’s defenses, while helping to soothe scratchy throats and fight off free radicals. Made with sustainably sourced ingredients (and zero refined sugar or alcohol), it’s a sweet, honey-cinnamon boost you’ll actually look forward to taking.

A pink flamingo night-light that’ll make you laugh when you look at it

This pink flamingo night-light is part bedtime buddy, part mood-boosting decor. Made from soft, BPA-free silicone, it’s a truly quirky piece for anyone who love a little flair. The rechargeable design makes it totally portable — tap to adjust the brightness or set the 30-minute timer to drift off peacefully.

A sleek toilet brush that’s so much less of an eyesore

Finally, a toilet brush that doesn’t ruin your bathroom vibe. This wall-mounted brush and holder hides neatly behind your toilet tank, and saves you on floor clutter, too. The brush itself is cleverly angled for better reach.

A supportive pillow for comfier gaming, reading, & more

This plush pillow cradles your arms while you sit, making it far easier to read a book, play a game, and more. It also supports proper posture. The soft cotton cover is removable for washing.

Stylish sunglasses that fit over regular glasses

Glasses wearers know the woes of sacrificing their vision to wear sunglasses (or carrying two pairs everywhere). However, these stylish sunglasses are designed to fit over regular glasses to experience the best of both worlds. The polarized lenses offer UV protection, plus they reduce glare, too.

A large, plush alpaca to cuddle up with

Cuddle with an alpaca? Not sure if that was ever on your bucket list, but I promise you won’t be able to resist this snuggly guy. The alpaca is almost 30 inches long for cuddling up, and it’s filled with plush stuffing for comfort.

The coolest light-up scrunchies

Jazz up an otherwise plain hairstyle with these fun scrunchies that boast built-in LEDs. They can be set to one of seven colors — including white, blue, purple, orange, yellow, pink, and rose red — and various light modes, like fast flashing. And they’ll wrap up to four times around your strands to stay in place. Eight come in a pack.

A colorful beaded phone charger that won’t fray

Ordinary phone chargers fray, but this Lightning charging cable — which is compatible with a range of phone and tablet models — is covered in vibrant beads to last longer. “This is just SO cute! But also great quality, win win [...] I also love the length since I use it by my bed and can scroll late at night in bed and it can stay charging,” noted one commenter.

A ceramic incense burner for palo santo, sage, cones & more

Burn your palo santo, sage, incense cones, and more in a gorgeous way with this handmade ceramic burner. The chimney is designed for even scent dispersal. It also comes in solid colors and a furnace-inspired shape.

Wooden curtain tiebacks that stay put thanks to magnets

Made from wood, these circular curtain tiebacks bring a natural touch to your home. Each one in the pair boasts a built-in magnet to keep it securely in place on curtains of any material. They’re simple to put up and take down as needed.

A soft tablet stand with adjustable heights & storage

Create a portable travel entertainment station with this tablet stand with enough built-in storage for phones, glasses, chargers, and more. It lets you choose between three heights while viewing and folds flat to put away.

Smiley face socks to make your outfit a touch happier

Make your day a little brighter — these comfortable socks feature smiley faces on the backs for a quirky touch. The polyester-cotton blend is soft, moisture-wicking, and lightweight, and the heel-tab design prevents the socks from slipping down mid-wear. Ten pairs are included.

A microwaveable caddy that stays cool to the touch

Don’t burn your hands when pulling leftovers from the microwave. This cool caddy can hold pretty much any bowl or plate, and the handles stay cool to the touch, even after a long microwave time. A raised rim catches spills and boil-overs.

A puzzle lampshade with 15 stylish design possibilities

With 30 parts included, you can actually create 15 different lamp designs, all with this single shade set. “Came with very clear instructions. I used it to cover up the ceiling lights in my rental apartment as cheap but stylish upgrade and it worked perfectly,” noted one commenter.

A cool 3-D-printed snake toy that looks like something out of a movie

This 3-D printed snake is part stress-relief toy, part statement piece. Made from eco-friendly PLA, it’s flexible, poseable, and totally unique thanks to its hinged design and slight color variations. Whether you need a fidget fix during meetings or a quirky desk pet that doubles as modern decor, this little reptile’s got you covered. Great for anxiety, focus, or just vibing out.

A weird cutting board & scissors tool for fast food prep

When a cutting board and scissors combine, the end result is the kitchen tool, which is likely the handiest thing you have in your drawers. Use it to quickly and evenly slice up fruits, meat, veggies, and other ingredients, then throw it into the dishwasher afterward.

A motion-sensing keyhole light that installs in 3 ways

Making entering and leaving so much easier with this motion-sensing key light. Since it attaches with magnets, adhesive, or screws, it’s a versatile option that even works for renters. It uses energy-saving bulbs and comes with a pair of batteries to get you started.

A ceiling net for tons more storage in your car

From snacks to blankets and sweaters, this net is a popular way to add easily accessible storage to your car. It installs with buckles and adjustable straps, and can even double as a tote when you’re out and about.

A portable lounger that inflates using the air around you

Whether camping, going to a music festival, lounging on the beach, or even just hanging out in your backyard, this portable inflatable lounger provides a comfortable spot to kick up your feet. It inflates using just the air around you — just wave it around — and there’s a built-in pillow headrest to support your upper back and neck.

A well-designed medicine cabinet organizer that gives you extra storage

Fully maximize your medicine cabinet for storage with this clear organizer. It boasts three separate compartments, plus a raised tray, so you can put items (like medicine, makeup, skin care, and more) under it, too. The textured bottom stops everything from sliding.

A bottle & can opener combo that works effortlessly

A bottle and can opener combined, this pick is well designed, requiring practically no strength or effort to open up various items. “This utterly simple piece of equipment is phenomenal. Very very clever & works every time,” noted one commenter.

Pickle-grabbing forks that’ll keep your hands clean

Attach these grabber forks to the side of pickle, olive, or other jars (using the included silicone rings) so you can sneak a snack without getting brine and liquid all over your fingers. The forks are made from food-grade stainless steel, which is rust resistant and dishwasher friendly.

Waterproof lights with 15 colors & 2 bonus modes

Make your bath feel like a spa with these remote-controllable waterproof lights that let you choose between 15 colors. You can even choose between constant, smooth gradient, and gentle pulsations. The rechargeable batteries also last for up to 10 hours on a single charge.

Adorable hinge toppers for instant decor

Add a little pop of joy to your home with these brass hinge toppers that can also be added to shelves, frames, and more. There are built-in magnets for easy installation and it’s backed by a 4.6-star overall rating.

A compact microscope with UV & LED lights

With adjustable magnification up to 20 times, this mini microscope is great for on-the-go inspections of everything from pets to vintage finds. It also has built-in LED and UV lights, letting you pull triple duty with a gadget that fits in your hand.

An in-water egg timer to ensure perfect cooking

Whether you favor a soft-, medium-, or hard-boiled egg, this egg timer will help you achieve it. It goes in the water with the eggs as they cook, and it changes color to indicate when they’re perfectly ready. It couldn’t be easier.

A palm-sized archery set that works in both your left & right hands

Practice your aim almost anywhere with this handy mini bow set that works in both your left and right hands. It comes with 10 arrows to get you started, and it’s backed by a 4.5-star overall rating.

A light-up basketball hoop that hangs on a door

Mount this miniature basketball hoop over any door so you have a spot to brush up on your skills. It hangs in place with the included hooks, and there are three different modes, built-in LEDs, and an interactive scoring system to step up the fun.

A car emergency kit complete with a safety hammer

Add some peace of mind for your next car trip with this genius emergency kit that includes a tow rope, headlamp, bandages, a 2-in-1 safety hammer, and gloves. Plus, the zip-up case keeps everything contained.

A light bulb vase for propagation or small greenery

“It's very stylish and useful at the same time,” described one commenter about this light bulb vase that can be used for small flowers, greenery, or even your propagation efforts (the glass body is clear to easily see the roots). The iron base is sturdy and durable.

A double-sided sign to recall if dishes are clean or dirty

To recall the status of the dishes in the dishwasher, use this double-sided sign — flip it to display either “clean” or “dirty” accordingly. It’s magnetic to attach directly to your appliance, and the water-resistant design ensures it won’t get ruined by drips.

An electric shoe dryer with 3 timer options

Nothing ruins your day like stepping into a pair of soggy shoes and that’s where this genius electric shoe dryer comes in. Each order comes with two 360 degree units attached to each other. They’re extendable and comes with 4-, 8-, and 10-hour timer options.

A giant goose plush in 3 sizes

This huggable plush friend is sure to make you smile and comes in three sizes from 35.4 to 74.8 inches. There’s a zipper that lets you remove filling, and you can hand wash the exterior.

Air fryer magnets to hold parchment liners in place

Keep your parchment paper liners away from your air fryer’s heating element with these silicone magnets — they’re worth it for the peace of mind. The magnets attach firmly to iron or metal baskets, and they’re heat resistant up to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. A dozen pieces come in the set.

A cutter & sealer for custom crustless sandwiches

Make your own crustless sandwiches from scratch using this cutter and sealer — it’s far cheaper than getting store-bought ones. Simply fill your pieces of bread with any toppings you prefer, close them up, and press the hole inside the tool to create the sealed sandwich.

A Clever Slidable Visor Extender For Your Car

Think of this as a sun visor for your car’s sun visor. It attaches via velcro loops on either side, and has a zipper at the center; unzipped, you can slide down a rectangle of tinted transparent plastic to block any low-hitting rays. When the sun goes down, slide it back up and secure with the zipper — easy peasy.

Waterproof mushroom lights that’ll add whimsy to your yard

This nine-piece set of mushroom-shaped lights is a whimsical and practical addition to any home. Since they’re waterproof, you won’t have to bring them in when it rains — and they feature a spike at the bottom that’ll help keep them from toppling over. You can switch between eight different lighting modes, to get the mood just right.

Mini capybaras that can fit on the tip of your finger

If you’re into miniatures, check out this 100-piece set of capybaras; the resin-cast design looks unbelievably lifelike, but they’re small enough to fit on the tip of your finger. You’ll get all sorts of options — some are clothed, some au naturel, and some feature cute capybara faces.

Mushroom-shaped propagation vases for an indoor garden

These mushroom-shaped propagation vases will bring a smile to all aspiring indoor gardeners. The set of six is crafted from sturdy high-borosilicate glass, and comes in charming pastel hues that’ll add a subtle pop of color to your space.

Soft silicone toe separators that are so cute

Your at-home pedicure gets way more charming with the addition of these toe separators. Crafted from durable and soft silicone, they’re made to look like dainty flowers — imagine how sweet they’ll look peeping up between your toes. The 32-piece set includes a large and small size, to accommodate both little piggies and big piggies.

A clever night-light that looks like a crystal ball

A tiny fairy perches on a moon, inside what appears to be a just crystal ball — but it’s also a clever nightlight. USB-powered, it features an LED wood base upon which the pretty orb rests, lending a soft glow. It’s just under four-inches tall, a compact size perfect for a bedside table or dresser.

Animal bite earrings that prove jewelry can have a sense of humor

You said you wanted your jewelry to have a sense of humor, and these earrings understood the assignment; when popped in your ears, each pair in the six-piece set is shaped will look like a tiny animal biting your lobe. They feature a push-back closure — so they’ll stay in place without any actual biting.

A cherry blossom tree lamp with adjustable branches

Whether you love the outdoors, or prefer a maximalist approach to home decor, this lamp is sure to delight; it’s shaped like a cherry blossom tree, with LED “blossoms” that emit a soft glow. The “branches” are crafted from copper wire, so you can twist them to create different arrangements, to help it look even more realistic.

A true crime-themed puzzle game for playing detective

A must for the true crime aficionado, this criminal mind puzzle game uses anagrams, hidden codes, and brain-teasers to place you in the position of detective. Test your skills when it comes to questioning witnesses, examining fingerprints, and studying crime scenes; you’ll feel like you’re actually on the beat.

A mini pocket knife that comes in lots of designs

This mini pocket knife is small, but its titanium blade is certainly mighty. Great on a keychain and available in a few patterns, it’s handy for opening packages and quick fixes.

A nonslip car seat cushion with 6,000+ 5-star ratings

Make every ride more comfortable with this seat cushion that doesn’t skimp on features. It has a nonslip silicone dots on the bottom while the memory foam is thick. It can also be used on a chair.

]]><![CDATA[Hulu Just Quietly Added The Timeliest Crime Thriller of the Decade]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/thriller-movies-april-2026-hulu-no-other-choicehttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/thriller-movies-april-2026-hulu-no-other-choiceFri, 24 Apr 2026 22:00:24 GMT
EF NEON

No serious discussion of the best living film directors is complete without Park Chan-wook. From his international breakout with Oldboy through masterpieces like The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave, Park has established himself as a modern master of the thriller genre — as much as any of his films can be contained by a single genre, of course. Because while they usually contain some combination of murder, mayhem, and/or suspense, Park’s films are also bitingly funny. And his latest, No Other Choice, is no exception.

In a typically left-field choice, Park’s most recent film is based on a novel by Donald E. Westlake, the American midcentury pulp author whose work also inspired the nihilistic crime classic Point Blank (which Inverse just recommended earlier this week). The Ax was first published in 1997, and had already been adapted into a movie by the French director Costa-Gavras when Park bought the rights to the novel all the way back in 2009. With all that in mind, then, it’s ironic how perfect No Other Choice ended up being for our current dystopian late-capitalist moment.

Park updates the location to modern-day South Korea, where company man Yoo Man-su (Lee-Byung-hun) is abruptly laid off from his job after decades of service. Man-su struggles to find another job in the paper business, and 13 months later he’s been reduced to begging for a job from one of his former underlings at Moon Paper, the last paper company in the area — and, it seems to the desperate Man-su, the world — that’s actually hiring.

The groveling does him no good, but the incident gives Man-su an idea: His field is highly specialized, which means that, in terms of real competition, only a handful of people are truly qualified for the job Man-su believes to be rightfully his. There are only three, in fact, including the current manager — and if all of them just so happened to disappear mysteriously around the same time, then, well, the company would have — wait for it — no other choice but to hire Man-su.

Then he won’t lose his family house, which he bought back after his parents were forced to sell it during their own period of economic struggle. He won’t have to take his daughter, who everyone says is a prodigy, out of her expensive cello lessons, thus destroying her potential. He’ll even be able to get the family dogs back — he re-homed them with his wife’s parents after dog food started getting too expensive.

Oops! Lee Byung-hun burns the evidence in No Other Choice. | NEON

One of the most interesting things about No Other Choice is the way it frames Man-su’s choices as understandable and frivolous at the same time, neither validating nor condemning the murder spree he decides is — again — his only choice if he wants to get his life back on track. Mostly, it uses that murder spree as fuel for pitch-black comedy, like the scene where Man-su, his target, and his target’s wife all fight over the same handgun; Man-su wants to murder the man for his resume, but the couple is trying to murder each other, too.

All this is filtered through Park’s lavishly sensual style, giving the audience such absurd, yet undeniable pleasures as a shot filmed from inside the glass where a character has just taken his first drink after nine years of sobriety. It’s the kind of bold choice that only a master filmmaker like Park can pull off, fueled by a rage that feels very timely — this April, both Disney and Meta axed thousands of jobs, including Disney’s entire home-video division — and also universal.

Park Chan-wook on the set of No Other Choice. | NEON

That last observation is a little depressing, but it comes from Park himself: “Whenever I told people about the story, no matter the time period or country they came from, they would always say how relatable it was,” the director told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview last fall. That relatability may not apply specifically to layoffs, however, but to the fear of losing one’s status in society and everything that goes along with it.

Becoming a serial murderer because you can no longer bear the indignity of filling out your job history when you already uploaded your resume to the portal might be extreme, but every job hunter has felt a twinge of that basic emotion at one time or another. So even if you aren’t already a fan of Park Chan-wook or Lee Byung-hun — and you might be; he’s one of South Korea’s most recognizable actors, appearing in everything from Squid Game to the G.I. Joe movies — give No Other Choice a chance. You just might find it cathartic.

No Other Choice is now streaming on Hulu.

]]><![CDATA['Spider-Noir' Trailer Reveals A Surprising 'Brand New Day' Villain Connection]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/spider-noir-trailer-brand-new-day-multiversehttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/spider-noir-trailer-brand-new-day-multiverseFri, 24 Apr 2026 18:13:15 GMT
Amazon Prime Video

There’s a lot of freedom with a multiverse. As proven by multiple franchises, introducing parallel worlds is a great way to excuse different remakes, like the appearance of the Fox X-Men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or to show multiple versions of the same character, as Peacemaker did in Season 2.

In Sony’s Spider-Verse, these two techniques are both being used in different ways, resulting in a key villain appearing in Spider-Noir, a series premiering in May, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a movie premiering in July.

Spider-Noir, the live-action series starring Nicolas Cage as hard-boiled private eye Ben Reilly, recently released a first look at its villains: Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson), Sandman (Jack Huston), Tombstone (Abraham Popoola), and Megawatt (Andrew Lewis Caldwell). Some of these are incredibly deep cuts: Megawatt only appeared in a single Spider-Man comic, Spider-Man Unlimited Vol. 1 #2, published in 1993.

But while that character is brand-new to adaptations, another one is very familiar. Tombstone has become a key henchman in the Spider-Verse animated movies, and the voice actor, Marvin Jones III, will reprise the role in live action in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the next MCU Spider-Man movie.

But in Spider-Noir, Tombstone will look a little different, played by British actor Abraham Popoola. Of course, this isn’t a canon issue, because Spider-Noir is set in a completely separate universe as the MCU, but it is a curious appearance only a few months before another live-action debut.

The biggest issue is probably the fact that while Tombstone is usually depicted with albinism and Jones himself does have albinism, Popoola does not. According to Spider-Noir co-showrunner Oren Uziel, this decision came down to practicalities. Spider-Noir is taking the interesting route of releasing two different versions concurrently, one is “Authentic Black and White” and another in “True-Hue Full Color.” With two different aesthetics to worry about, character decisions like this become clear. “Black and white is interesting,” Uziel told IGN. “And certain things show up differently and present certain challenges. And I think [we] ruled that out before we even got too far down the road with talking about that.”

Spider-Noir’s version of Tombstone looks different from the one in the comics, Into the Spider-Verse, and Brand New Day. | Amazon Prime Video

It’s definitely a different take on this character, but that’s the advantage of a series like this. Characters don’t have to look like they stepped out of a comic book; in fact, having them look like they stepped out of a 1930s noir film is far preferable. This may mean an adaptation that isn’t exactly faithful, but the whole point is to show a different perspective.

It’s unlikely that this version of Tombstone will change the way Brand New Day’s Tombstone is viewed, but repeating the two villains could mean that we’ll see him play a bigger role in Brand New Day than we expected, with his Spider-Noir counterpart serving as a reminder of his role. If Electro — a much more well-known electricity-using villain — is being replaced with Megawatt, then surely there’s a reason Tombstone is being kept the same.

Spider-Noir premieres May 27 on Amazon Prime Video.

]]><![CDATA[Apple's Intergenerational Sci-Fi Epic Just Dropped A Crucial Clue For Its Spinoff]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/for-all-mankind-irina-morozova-season-5-star-cityhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/for-all-mankind-irina-morozova-season-5-star-cityFri, 24 Apr 2026 17:00:25 GMT
Apple TV

As a series focused on the historic geopolitical tension between the U.S. and the USSR, For All Mankind has always been unique because, overwhelmingly, the show presents a timeline in which Soviet Communism didn’t dissolve, and the space race continued much in the way that it had in the 1960s. In Season 5, it’s sometimes hard to remember that the brinksmanship of the ‘60s and '70s is interconnected with the alternate 2012, in which humans from various Earth nationalities are banding together to free Mars. But in Episode 5, “Svoboda,” one flashback to events between Season 4 and Season 5 provides a crucial detail about the real power players on Mars, and could retroactively give us a clue to the upcoming spinoff series Star City.

Spoilers ahead.

“Svoboda” is a Slavic word that means “freedom,” but Episode 5 begins with the character of Irina Morozova (Svetlana Efremova) being thrown into a Gulag following the events of Season 4. Quick recap here: Irina is a KGB operative who was working with Roscosmos to gain intelligence information from NASA throughout the first three seasons.

For All Mankind’s spaceflight timeline is unfolding in two directions. | Apple TV

The main person Irina handled was Sergei (Piotr Adamczyk), who was Margo’s (Wrenn Schmidt) love interest throughout the series. Basically, after Margo was accused of selling state secrets to the USSR in Season 3, Irina recruited Margo to work for Roscosmos in Season 4. But, because Irina had Sergei murdered, Margo defied her and secretly allowed for the Goldilocks asteroid to be stolen, which neither the U.S. nor the USSR actually wanted. This is why Margo is in a U.S. prison in Season 5, but it also explains, ironically, why Irina ended up in a Gulag after Season 4, too. In short, Irina was partly blamed for the Goldilocks scandal and locked up. But, as the new flashback reveals, she used her crafty KGB training to smuggle information while in prison, and upon her release — catching up to the present — she ascends to a new position of power with Kuragin, the Soviet version of Helios, which, in For All Mankind, is a little like SpaceX.

So, although Iriana first appeared in Season 4, her influence goes back to Season 1, where we’re told she worked in Star City as an intelligence operative. Her journey is pretty topsy-turvy at this point: KGB, to Roscosmos, to prison, and finally, to Kuragin. But what’s interesting now, with her arrival on Mars as part of the Kurigan delegation, is that she has major influence on both the future and past of the franchise. The second she arrives on Mars, Governor Polivanov’s wife, Natalya (Olga Fonda), gets nervous. Clearly, Iriana has dirt on both of these political power players, and the fact that they’re all from the same country is likely meaningless to her.

Governor Leonid Polivanov(Costa Ronin) and Natalya Polivanova (Olga Fonda) in For All Mankind Season 5. | Apple TV

On top of this, Aledia (Coral Peña) is doubly freaked out that Iriana is now on Mars, scheming to help Kuragin, which mostly means pushing the pro-automation agenda even further than before. Aledia obviously hates Iriana because she was responsible for Margo going back to prison for treason, which, technically, Aledia committed.

The bottom line is, walking in the shadows, very casually, is a character who has a lot of power, influence, and dirt on many of the main characters in For All Mankind. And, because her influence extends backwards in time too, it seems like the events of 2012 could be setting us up for new revelations when Star City goes back to 1969. For All Mankind may be a show about futuristic spaceflight and the machinations of governance on other planets. But it's also an intergenerational epic of intrigue, and it seems that not all the secrets of this timeline have been fully revealed. Yet.

For All Mankind Season 5 streams on Apple TV. Star City debuts on May 29, 2026.

]]><![CDATA[Will There Be An 'Invincible' Season 5? Why It Will Come Sooner Than You Think]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/invincible-season-5-release-windowhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/invincible-season-5-release-windowFri, 24 Apr 2026 15:30:24 GMT
Prime Video

The fourth season of Invincible might not have ended with a bang, but the animated superhero series left a mark all the same. Season 4 closes on the kind of cliffhanger that can drive a fan crazy in the best way, saddling its titular hero, aka Mark Grayson (voiced by Steven Yeun), with a stomach-twisting dilemma. The intergalactic conflict between the Coalition of Planets and the planet Viltrum has been resolved, in a way — but Mark still finds himself outplayed by Grand Regent Thragg (Lee Pace). Now, what’s left of the Viltrum Empire resides on Earth, hiding in plain sight. And that’s just one of so many issues Mark and his allies will eventually have to face.

Invincible has always been a great superhero show, but it finally feels like it’s hit its true stride. Season 4 carries with it an undeniable momentum; its cliffhanger of a finale has only stirred up more anticipation. But will fans get to see the aftermath of Thragg’s ultimatum — and, if so, when? Here’s everything we know about the future of Invincible.

Will there be an Invincible Season 5?

A new season of Invincible is on the way — and it’ll honor the show’s established release window. | Prime Video

Invincible lovers can breathe a sigh of relief: the series was renewed for a fifth season in 2025, nearly a year before Season 4 would premiere on Prime Video. There’s no official release date for the upcoming season, but based on the release window of previous installments, it’s probably coming sooner than we think.

According to Robert Kirkman (who created the comics that Invincible is based on, and now serves as a writer and producer on the show), Season 5 has been in the works for some time. It takes at least three years to complete all the animation required for eight episodes of Invincible, after all; if the show intends to stick to its established release schedule, it has to start production well in advance. Since Season 2, Invincible has released a new season one year after the next. Kirkman intends to keep that streak alive with Season 5.

“We’ve hit our window and we’re gonna keep hitting the window,” Kirkman said on The Brandon Davis Show. “You should be able to watch the show — if we’re fortunate enough to continue beyond Season 5 — every year is the ideal.”

The aftermath of Thragg’s ultimatum won’t be a mystery for much longer. | Prime Video

If all goes to plan, then Invincible Season 5 will hit Prime Video sometime in 2027. As Season 3 premiered in February and Season 4 in late March, it’s safe to assume that Season 5 will follow suit and drop in the winter or early spring.

Frankly, the sooner the better for this series. The question of how Mark intends to solve Earth’s new Viltrumite infestation will likely haunt us for the rest of the year — and sure, we could crack open the comics to find out what happens, but there’s also something nice about seeing this story in motion. Invincible the series is also telling a slightly-tweaked version of Kirkman’s original tale: Season 5 might be completely different from the comics, so it might be better to wait. Fortunately, it doesn’t look like that wait will be very long either way.

Invincible is now streaming on Prime Video.

]]><![CDATA['Clayface' Is Now The Start Of The DCU Timeline And We Have Questions]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/clayface-timeline-dcu-supermanhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/clayface-timeline-dcu-supermanFri, 24 Apr 2026 13:30:24 GMT
Warner Bros. Pictures

With just one movie released so far, James Gunn’s vision of the DCU is certainly taking a more unpredictable direction than the straightforward assembly of the Avengers that Phase 1 of the MCU gave us. Prior to last year’s successful Superman, there’s been exactly one season of the animated Creature Commandos series, and after Superman came the second season of Gunn’s Peacemaker series, a show that debuted at the tail end of the previous DCEU only to be folded into the franchise’s new direction. Now there’s Supergirl and Lanterns on the horizon, with the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow arriving in July of 2027. And yet the overarching narrative connecting the first chapter of the DCU Gods and Monsters, hasn’t quite revealed itself yet.

Now there’s another film fast approaching that promises to complicate things even more: Clayface. A standalone villain origin story in the vein of Todd Phillips’ Joker, the story of Clayface was pitched by horror film veteran Mike Flanagan back in 2023 (he wasn’t able to direct due to his work on the upcoming Exorcist film and Carrie streaming series), and by February of 2025 it was an official project slated to be directed by filmmaker James Watkins based on a screenplay by Flanagan and Drive screenwriter Hossein Amini. Clayface has had a strange journey to the screen; for a while, it was unknown whether or not the film would be a part of Matt Reeves’ The Batman continuity, a part of the DCU, or a total standalone film, but now we finally have an answer – one that just happens to raise a few more questions.

Clayface Takes Place Before Superman

Clayface might be a standalone villain origin story, but it’ll also be responsible for answering some important questions about DCU canon. | Warner Bros. Pictures

After the first teaser trailer for the film was released yesterday, James Gunn reiterated on Threads during an interaction with another user that Clayface does, in fact, take place in the mainline DCU, but also revealed that the film takes place chronologically prior to 2025’s Superman. This is a particularly interesting point because a precise year for the setting has yet to be disclosed, and what’s more, there has been no confirmation of the status of the DCU’s Batman – no casting, no references, nothing. The movie is an origin story (focused on the tragedy of up-and-coming actor Matt Hagen, who turns to a mad scientist for help after his face is disfigured by a gangster) so it would still make sense if Batman doesn’t appear, but this could be the first official look at Gotham in the current DCU.

Back when the film was shooting last year, some leaked set photos showed off a street full of 1970s-era cars along with contemporary Gotham City media vans, as well as a detail that sent Battinson fans into overdrive: a Gotham Gazette paper with the same logo as the one displayed in works within The Batman universe.

What About the DCU Batman?

While Gunn has seemingly confirmed Clayface’s place in the DCU (citing the film’s incongruity with the grounded, non-superhuman approach of Matt Reeves’ universe), there are still a lot of questions circling the timeline of the project, specifically whether or not it takes place at a time when Batman is active. Considering that Matt Hagen is an actor, there’s always a chance that any period anachronisms could be explained away by him being on set filming a movie-within-a-movie.

Unless Supergirl or the Green Lanterns take a detour, Clayface will be our first glimpse at the DCU’s version of Gotham. | Warner Bros. Pictures

Until we know more than the breadcrumbs provided by the trailer, it's hard to know just how far back in the timeline the movie will take viewers. In other words, does Clayface take place decades before Superman’s arrival? Or just a few years prior? And if this movie is set well into the past, how will it connect to the present?

This may seem like a standalone movie like Joker, but Gunn placing this at the start of the DCU means its deeply connected to the new lore. And, the fact that James Gunn loved Flanagan's pitch enough to fold it into the DCU has got to be proof that it'll be a more consequential film than anyone realizes.

Clayface will release in theaters on October 23rd, 2026.

]]><![CDATA[5 Years Ago, The Worst Lovecraftian Horror Movie Hid An Important Lesson]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/the-deep-ones-5-year-anniversaryhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/the-deep-ones-5-year-anniversaryFri, 24 Apr 2026 12:30:25 GMT
ILY Films

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear experienced by mankind’s fandoms is fear of the bad adaptation. Five years ago today, H.P. Lovecraft fans faced that fear thanks to The Deep Ones.

Lovecraft, simultaneously a towering influence and a dated relic, holds a strange position in pop culture. “Lovecraftian” is slapped on marketing material for movies, books, and games at the slightest opportunity, yet competent adaptations of his actual work are almost nonexistent. But because Lovecraft’s fiction exists in the invaluable cinematic universe that is the public domain, anyone can take a crack at it, even when they really shouldn’t.

Marketed as H.P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones, this 2021 film is a loose modernization of The Shadow over Innsmouth, one of Lovecraft’s best and most borrowed-from stories. Directed by Chad Ferrin, the auteur behind an Easter Bunny slasher and a segment of Troma’s arthouse anthology Tales from the Crapper, it’s terrible as an adaptation but instructive as to why we keep struggling with horror’s most infamous creator.

Alex (Gina La Piana) and Petri (Johann Urb) arrive at a remote California vacation rental, seeking solace after a miscarriage. Hosts Ingrid and Russel (Silvia Spross and Robert Miano, easily the film’s MVP) are welcoming, but excessively interested in Alex’s health. Petri is soon enthralled by the local commune, but Alex becomes convinced that something fishy is afoot.

You’ve seen this movie before, and you’ve seen it done better. Sloppy, sleazy, and suspenseless, it asks its stars to hit lines like “They’re into all this Nerconomicon stuff,” and they fail to rise to that formidable bar. More often than not, it feels like a soap opera spoof of Ira Levin (the movie name-checks The Stepford Wives, and Ferrin cited Rosemary’s Baby in an interview). If you stick around to watch the credits, you’ll be rewarded with a gag about jerking off.

Petri bonds with his hosts. | ILY Films

There are moments of visual flair and genuine weirdness, but the movie feels more hamstrung by its Lovecraft trappings than inspired by them. The famous names and lines are quoted, but thematically, it’s empty. Not to pick on Ferrin, but when asked about Lovecraft, he says that ambiance and dread are important Lovecraftian elements (other horror writers famously disdain those things) and that a good Lovecraft story, instead of spelling things out, “hits you days later how scary it was.” His movie then culminates in its heroine being sexually assaulted by a fish-monster.

Why does Lovecraft remain such a challenge to filmmakers? His stories are rarely cinematic, relying on insinuation and horrors that his narrators struggle to describe (except for, ironically, The Deep Ones’ source material, which features a memorable chase scene). But with some of horror’s greatest hits never showing their hand, that feels like a cheap excuse. Who says The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity suffered for never revealing their monster?

Much of the problem is thematic. Lovecraft’s oft-unpronounceable creations are the stars of a sprawling mythos that any hack can dip into when they’re stuck, and The Deep Ones references Cthulhu like it’s a way to hack profundity into a plot. But it's human characters who have to carry a movie, and Lovecraft’s protagonists are almost invariably unstable, isolated men who feel out of place in their own time and haunted by all the endless time yet to come.

That’s hard to communicate on film, especially when you’re already concerned with making the half-dozen pool noodles you can afford look like quasi-convincing tentacles. And the latter is where most adaptations focus their efforts, because, as argued by The Movie Sleuth's Chris Jordan, Herbert West: Re-Animator inadvertently poisoned the well back in 1985. A huge cult hit for director Stuart Gordon, Re-Animator took one of Lovecraft’s worst stories and reworked it into a gross-out gorefest. It works for what it is, but assuming that it represents Lovecraft’s worldview is like assuming that a Bugs Bunny cartoon represents a genuine outing to the opera.

Next time, just go with the corporate hotel chain. | ILY Films

Adaptations, then, tend to get split into two camps: tits and tentacles, where movies like The Deep Ones forever chase Re-Animator’s schlocky success, and the rarer, more ambitious adaptation, like the still fairly zany Color Out of Space, okay-ish episodes of Cabinet of Curiosities, and obsessive indie efforts like 2005’s silent Call of Cthulhu. But those are few, far between, and perhaps best known for the one we’ll never get: Guillermo del Toro’s Mountains of Madness.

Some tangentially related fiction does live up to its Lovecraftian marketing: the world-weary heroes of Annihilation and True Detective Season 1 fit the label better than yet another doomed couple checking into an Airbnb, even if the former only draw loose inspiration while The Deep Ones rattles off verbatim quotes. But now we’re back where we started. Why are we awash in Lovecraftian stories, but not Lovecraft adaptations?

Ultimately, the adjective is more marketable than the man. Lovecraftian, whether that means existential horror or surface-level references, is an easy sell; Shub-Niggurath is a villain in both the latest Alone in the Dark game and the South Park game named after assholes. The lore is part of pop culture’s background radiation, an easy nod for fans to pick up on. On a nuts-and-bolts level, however, Lovecraft’s best stories are tough to film, at least without a decent budget; The Deep Ones could barely afford proper lighting, let alone a thrilling chase. And who’s going to pony up millions for conventional tellings of nearly century-old novellas after Gordon found success by slathering on the sleaze?

So it seems we’ll continue to have “Lovecraftian” slapped on countless creations, whether they keep you up late contemplating the cosmos or just happen to feature green monsters. And directors lacking in talent or budget will continue to raid Lovecraft’s library for straight-to-streaming trash. It’s not ideal, but it is understandable. Lovecraft himself, for all his philosophical musings, only wrote Re-Animator to make a quick buck.

The Deep Ones is streaming for free on Plex.

]]><![CDATA[Netflix's New Survival Thriller Answers A Viral Internet Debate]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/apex-review-netflix-charlize-theron-actionhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/apex-review-netflix-charlize-theron-actionThu, 23 Apr 2026 23:00:25 GMT
Netflix

Hanging from the ominously named Troll Wall rockface in Norway, Sasha (Charlize Theron) struggles to hold up the weight of her unconscious husband (Eric Bana), dodging chunks of ice as they hurtle down from the precipice above. “Tommy, wake up!” she yells. “You’re dragging us off the mountain!” Right off the bat, this prologue sets the tone for a thriller where the action is convincingly perilous, but the dialogue leaves much to be desired.

Director Baltasar Kormákur is a seasoned expert in the realm of survival thrillers, having previously made The Deep (about a guy whose boat capsizes off the coast of Iceland), Adrift (where a couple get lost at sea during a hurricane), and Everest (which dramatizes a 1996 climbing catastrophe) — not to mention the less plausible Beast, where Idris Elba battles a homicidal lion in a South African game reserve. None of these films bill themselves as high art, but Kormákur knows his way around an outdoor action setpiece, grounding his new Netflix film Apex in the gritty technicalities of extreme rock climbing and kayaking.

Written by Jeremy Robbins (TV’s The Purge), Apex follows mountain climber Sasha on a trip through the Australian wilderness, a few months after her near-fatal experience in Norway. Setting off into a picturesque but notoriously deadly national park, she ignores the wall of missing persons posters on her way in. Maybe she’s just confident in her abilities — or possibly she’s flirting with the Reaper. Either way, she’s not prepared for what actually awaits. Instead of merely navigating through white water rivers and hauling herself up crevasses, she finds herself being stalked by a serial murderer (Taron Egerton), who targets campers as his prey.

Usually known for more lighthearted and heroic roles (Kingsman: The Secret Service; Robin Hood; Rocketman), this marks a refreshing turn for Egerton, playing a sadist who baits his trap around Sasha’s vulnerability as a woman traveling solo. Some of the film’s most effective moments stem from this power dynamic, beginning with a scene where Sasha gets harassed by some hunters at a roadside convenience store. She has every reason to be standoffish when these macho creeps offer to “help” her navigate the park; a tense encounter that layers patronizing mansplaining with a more predatory subtext.

When these men refuse to back down, Taron Egerton’s Ben makes his first appearance, introducing himself as a cheerful hiker bro who respectfully takes Sasha’s side in the confrontation. Soon enough, however, we’ll discover that he respects her in a very different way: as a worthy quarry for his ritualistic habit of hunting human game.

This set-up brings to mind the viral “man or bear” thought experiment, which asks women whether they’d prefer to be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear. According to the admittedly unscientific source of TikTok commenters, most women choose the bear, sparking extensive discourse about gendered expectations of male brutality. In Apex — a film whose title refers both to the summit of a mountain, and to Ben’s self-identification as an apex predator — the greatest danger is clearly the man.

Sasha is right to rebuff the sleazy hunters who approach her during the story’s opening act, and she’s wrong to trust Ben’s friendly demeanor. None of these men have her best interests in mind, and elsewhere, we see how sexism endangers her in more subtle ways. She’s evidently used to hearing men cast doubt on her abilities, so when a local ranger advises her to avoid a location where dozens of people have gone missing, she’s already primed to ignore his advice.

Charlize Theron and a particularly freaky Taron Egerton elevate a mostly middling Netflix action flick. | Netflix

Playing to her strengths as a champion of tough, physically demanding roles, Theron spends half the film clambering across rock faces and paddling for her life, while Egerton capers around like a bulked-up version of Jack O’Connell in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Unlike some Netflix action movies, where the stars are visibly just collecting a paycheck, these two are both fully committed to the bit. That’s a saving grace for Apex, because the script really can’t hold its own when the pace slows down. For instance, there’s a moment where Ben tells Sasha that she’s “special, just like my mum.” Okay, sure. Love the suggestion of a Freudian motive for why this dude chases people through the forest with a crossbow.

Apex doesn’t measure up to the heights of Charlize Theron’s action career, but it’s a solid effort for a straight-to-streaming release, outstripping last year’s disappointing sequel to The Old Guard. Everyone onboard seems to know the score, prioritizing realistic stunts in a story that essentially parodies a worst case scenario for lone female hikers.

Between the more ridiculous elements of Ben’s mountaineering Saw trap, there’s a thoughtful thematic link between the two leads. Both are obsessed with danger, and both seek to challenge themselves, ignoring conventional expectations of self-preservation. Separated from the comforts of civilization, they’ve finally met their match, using all their enviable strength and outdoor acumen to prove themselves worthy of survival.

Apex premieres on Netflix April 24.

]]><![CDATA[7 Years Later, Jon Favreau Reveals His Biggest Marvel Regret]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/jon-favreau-mcu-regrethttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/jon-favreau-mcu-regretThu, 23 Apr 2026 21:18:25 GMT
Marvel Studios

Jon Favreau is a man of many talents. Currently, he’s one of Grogu’s two dads (sharing custody with Dave Filoni) and is directing the upcoming movie The Mandalorian and Grogu. But before that, he was on the other side of the Disney franchise coin, directing Iron Man and Iron Man 2. On top of directing, he’s also an actor, so he was a natural fit for Happy Hogan, Tony Stark’s right-hand man.

Even after he stepped away from behind the camera, he would still appear as Happy in the MCU, even up to 2024’s Deadpool and Wolverine. In one of those appearances, he suggested a major change to one of the MCU’s most iconic moments — something he now looks back on with regret.

Jon Favreau tried to prevent the sacrifice of Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame, but the Russos went ahead with it anyway. | Marvel Studios

When you think of Avengers: Endgame, probably one of the first images you think of is Tony Stark sacrificing himself to save the world. It was a shocking permadeath, unlike all the heroes who were Blipped, and led to both the rise of “I Love You 3000” as a saying and the official end of the Infinity Saga. But if Favreau had his way, that wouldn’t have happened at all.

“I called the Russos. I was like, ‘I don’t know about — I don’t think people — I don’t know if people are going to like — I don’t know! I think it’s going to really impact people because there were kids who grew up with that character,” he said during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. It’s easy to see why he would react like that: it may be difficult to remember, but before the MCU, Iron Man was a little-known hero. It’s not like Batman or James Bond, where he’s had many faces: Robert Downey Jr. was Tony Stark, and Favreau was the man who ushered him into the spotlight.

Seven years later, however, he takes a different view. “It was handled so well by them,” he said. “And Gwyneth [Paltrow] and Robert [Downey Jr.] did such a wonderful job acting, and I think it added a poignancy to it. I think they did a wonderful job. I was wrong. I was wrong. I was choked up! Even though it’s a movie, those characters have been part of my life for so long.”

Without the sacrifice of Tony Stark, we probably wouldn’t have Robert Downey Jr. as Doom. | VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images

Now, of course, Favreau would have an emotional investment in Tony Stark, but many fans had a similar reaction. Little would any of us know that this sacrifice did more than just provide a bittersweet ending to Avengers: Endgame, but it would actually set up the next Avengers movie. With Robert Downey Jr. now unable to return to the role of Tony Stark, he’s now playing Dr. Doom.

So if the Russos had listened to Favreau’s original complaint, then we wouldn’t have Avengers: Doomsday in its current form. Sacrificing Tony Stark may have been sad at the time, but it was the price to pay for the return of half the population then and the introduction of Doom now.

Avengers: Doomsday premieres in theaters on December 18, 2026.

]]><![CDATA['Elden Ring' Set Photos Tease A Major Change To Crucial Characters]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/elden-ring-set-photos-locations-charactershttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/elden-ring-set-photos-locations-charactersThu, 23 Apr 2026 19:06:13 GMT
Bandai Namco Entertainment

It's a wonderful time to be a fan of the acclaimed developers over at FromSoftware. They’ve got a highly anticipated Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, The Duskbloods (a vampiric action RPG set in what looks like the Victorian Era), arriving later this year, and it was recently announced that there’s going to be an animated adaptation of 2015’s Bloodborne, a game widely seen as one of the medium’s great works. But Yharnam won't be the only one of FromSoft’s worlds getting the cinematic treatment, as fans will soon get a chance to visit the Lands Between at their local multiplex.

Directed by Ex Machina’s Alex Garland, and produced by A24, Bandai Namco Filmworks, and a host of other folk (including the game’s co-writer and A Song of Ice and Fire architect George R.R. Martin), an official Elden Ring movie is on the way. The project is set to become A24’s most expensive movie ever, with a rumored production budget of over $100 million. At first glance, the obvious question would be how an adaptation of the game could even work, considering that FromSoft’s games rely on environmental storytelling as opposed to traditional cutscenes and exposition. But based on the set photos that have leaked, Garland might just be going out of his way to clear up some of the game’s ambiguity.

Elden Ring reveals its lore through location details and item descriptions, which is difficult to communicate on film. | Bandai Namco Entertainment

Yesterday, only a few days after the full cast and release date were announced, photos began leaking from the film’s London set. A few pictures of sets and background props had already leaked, but these new photos provide the first glimpse at the game’s major locations (including the royal capital of Leyndell, Stormveil Castle, and the Academy of Raya Lucaria) and major characters (such as the Loathsome Dung Eater and Emma Laird as Queen Marika).

The playable narrative of Elden Ring takes place after an event known as the Shattering, in which Queen Marika destroys the title artifact (an interconnected system of magic runes that govern the natural laws of reality) and disappears, leaving her demigod children locked in a perpetual struggle for control over the fragmented runes. Fans assumed the film would take place long before players pick up a controller — players meet many of Marika’s children, as well as characters important to pre- and post-Shattering events, but most of them are corrupted husks, and the world itself is so stagnated and degraded that reality has effectively been broken.

Marika’s destruction of the Elden Ring is the game’s inciting incident, so the movie hinges on whether it takes place before or after. | Bandai Namco Entertainment

Because of this, players don’t get a firsthand perspective on the royal family and the day-to-day reality of Marika’s rule. However, if the set photos are to be taken at face value, the film could, at least partly, take place before the Queen’s disappearance and expand on all the characters we meet who are too far gone to resemble their pre-Shattering selves. There’s even a chance the film could depict the Night of Black Knives, the assassination of Marika’s favored son Godwyn the Golden, and the direct catalyst for her destruction of the Elden Ring (essentially the game’s version of the Red Wedding).

There’s something deeply intriguing about the possibility that the film might present Marika, her offspring, and her royal court as real, breathing characters with desires, goals, and hidden agendas, because to the game’s playable character, they essentially just serve as obstacles to be overcome. If done right, Elden Ring’s worldbuilding and characterization could come to life with the same rich intricacy as Game of Thrones. Only time will tell how satisfying the finished product will be, but it appears that Alex Garland will provide a look at the Lands Between with a clarity that players have never experienced before.

Elden Ring is scheduled to hit theaters on March 3, 2028.

]]><![CDATA[42 Years Later, An Iconic Crime Thriller Reboot Is Going Back To Its Roots]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/miami-vice-85-michael-b-jordan-austin-butlerhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/miami-vice-85-michael-b-jordan-austin-butlerThu, 23 Apr 2026 18:17:15 GMT
Universal Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock

The buddy cop formula is timeless. If you have one guy who works by the book and another who plays by his own rules, their hijinks will inevitably be riveting regardless of whether they’re solving crimes in the distant past or the far-off future. But while some of our most iconic buddy cop duos get updated to suit the times, other stories are forever tied to their setting, and attempting to update them would just feel wrong.

That’s certainly the case for Miami Vice, which, even in the contemporary 2006 movie directed by Michael Mann, still dripped with its initial setting. Now, another movie adaptation with an all-star cast will bring the story back to its natural habitat.

Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler will star as Tubbs and Crockett, roles originally played by Philip Michael Thomas and Don Johnson. | Universal TV/Kobal/Shutterstock

According to Deadline, Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler will take on the roles of Ricardo “Rico” Tubbs and James “Sonny” Crockett in Miami Vice ‘85, a new movie adaptation of the original series directed by F1’s Joseph Kosinski and written by Nightcrawler’s Dan Gilroy.

The movie, according to its official description, “explores the glamour and corruption of mid-’80s Miami in an all-new version of Miami Vice, inspired by the pilot episode and first season of the landmark Universal Television series that influenced culture and set the style in everything from fashion to filmmaking.” The iconic show followed two undercover cops as they dove into the seedy underbelly of Miami, and even if you’ve never seen it, you’ve definitely heard the theme song.

Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx starred in Michael Mann’s gritty Miami Vice reboot. | Globe Photos/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

That the description highlights the pilot and first season specifically is interesting. The pilot alone provides plenty of source material — as was common at the time, Miami Vice launched with a two-hour TV movie. Season 1 was your typical case-of-the-week structure, with guest stars that included Pam Grier, Ed O’Neill, Ellen Greene, and Bruce Willis, so we’ll have to see how those one-off stories influence a single feature-length movie.

The very fact that the movie is called Miami Vice ‘85 certainly signals its intent. While Michael Mann’s version updated the timeline and focused on its gritty crime thriller elements, we’ve now reached the point where the most refreshing take on the source material is actually the nostalgic one. With multiple A-listers attached to such an ‘80s project, you’d better get your banana clips and Members Only jackets ready.

Miami Vice ‘85 hits theaters on August 6, 2027.

]]><![CDATA[A New Godzilla Cinematic Universe Is Coming — But Not In The Way You Expect]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/new-godzilla-cinematic-universe-tohohttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/new-godzilla-cinematic-universe-tohoThu, 23 Apr 2026 18:09:43 GMT
CHRIS DELMAS/AFP/Getty Images

In terms of dream jobs, it’s hard to beat “Chief Godzilla officer.” Keiji Ota has held that title since 2017, and while his recent interview with the Japanese site NewsPicks does put business first and cool Godzilla facts second, the plans the Toho executive lays out for the next 50 (or even 100!) years of the franchise — already one of the longest-running in history — are exciting enough that we can put all that aside. (Ota has been photographed many times next to Godzilla figures, so maybe he is a monster kid at heart.)

First of all, Ota says that Toho will be taking a cue from Legendary’s Monsterverse and expanding the cinematic universe of its Godzilla films. It’s not clear what form this new universe will take just yet, but it does have a name: “Godzilla World.” Later in the interview, Ota says that the audience for Godzilla is aging — at least domestically — so we can expect at least a few of these efforts to be new media: “To attract new fans in their teens and twenties, I want to try my hand at video content other than movies ... such as TV streaming series and games,” Ota says. (Interviews were run through Google Translate.)

Interestingly, it sounds like “Godzilla World” will exist separately from the two most recent Japanese Godzilla movies, Shin Godzilla (directed by Hideaki Anno) and Godzilla Minus One (from Takashi Yamazaki, who also directed the upcoming Godzilla Minus Zero). “If Toho itself were to create [an] original story for Godzilla, in addition to the Godzilla films made by Hideaki Anno and Takashi Yamazaki, they could systematically develop spinoffs as well,” Ota says, suggesting something akin to the Lucasfilm Story Group that would develop Godzilla storylines at a company level.

He also refers to independent creators being given the rights to the IP — “various creators are welcome to join in at any point,” Ota says — saying he hopes for multiple versions of Godzilla to exist simultaneously for different audiences and age groups. Ota also expressed admiration for Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, 2014) and Michael Dougherty (Godzilla: King of the Monsters), saying that they “know what Godzilla is all about on a visceral level” and can be trusted with the material because they watched the Godzilla movies Toho “repeatedly and inexpensively” licensed on TV stations around the world in the ‘90s.

Another big development, which Ota first eased earlier this month, is that starting with Godzilla Minus Zero Toho’s Godzilla movies will release simultaneously in theaters in Japan and North America — or as close as simultaneous as you can get when the International Date Line is involved, anyway.

For a certain generation of Godzilla fans, this level of international cooperation is a big deal. For years after Hollywood’s first, extremely embarrassing attempt at a Godzilla movie in 1998, Toho subtly (and not-so-subtly) made fun of the American Godzilla in Millennium-period Godzilla movies. It all peaked in 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars, in which the Japanese Godzilla swats Roland Emmerich’s puny “‘Zilla” aside with a single swipe of his tail:

Now it’s “Godzilla’s World,” and we’re all living in it.

]]><![CDATA[Quinn? 'The Boys' Season 5 Just Introduced The Creepiest Supe Yet]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/the-boys-season-5-quinn-powers-explainedhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/the-boys-season-5-quinn-powers-explainedThu, 23 Apr 2026 15:59:45 GMT

Supes in The Boys more or less follow the classic superhero playbook: fun costume, PR campaigns, and at the center of it all, a trademark superhero name. But with that name comes a lot of baggage. All of a sudden, you’re no longer a person, you’re a character and asset for something bigger, be that Vought or just the greater good. With that in mind, it’s no surprise why Starlight now prefers to be called by her birth name, Annie January.

But not all Supes get superhero names. In fact, The Boys Season 5 Episode 4 introduces a Supe known only by his first name because he wasn’t deemed valuable enough to be a superhero — and that’s what fuels his terrifying power that changes our heroes as we know them.

Warning! Spoilers ahead for The Boys Season 5 Episode 4.

In the search of V1, the original version of Compound V that could make a Supe immune to the contagion Billy Butcher is planning to release, he and his gang descend upon Fort Harmony, the location of the first V1 tests. But they’re not the only ones looking: Homelander and Soldier Boy are hot on their tail.

Homelander and Soldier Boy try to get V1 before The Boys. | Amazon Prime Video

But once the Boys enter the fort, they find themselves snipping at each other, falling to their most base instincts. What’s more, there are bodies of others who ventured into the lab, but they weren’t attacked by an outside force. Instead, they murdered each other. Frenchie immediately has a theory for what is happening: toxoplasmosis, a parasite (usually found in cat poop) that has pyschoactive and behavioral effects in humans. Everyone else starts fighting each other for no reason, but Frenchie is immune due to his extensive substance use.

His first theory was that V1 had mutated the local plants, but he soon realizes the true source is something else completely: Quinn, one of the first test subjects for V1. He was injected along with Soldier Boy, but while Soldier Boy went on to great fame, Quinn was discarded as a failure. Since then, he’s laid dormant, attached to a wall in Fort Harmony and seething with rage over Soldier Boy, who wasn’t even a soldier; he was just a rich kid who wanted to be powerful.

That hate has mutated into spores that imbue whoever comes into contact with them with similar rage, meaning not only does he have the power to affect the behavior of those around him, but he’s not even in control of it. His resentment is so strong that he doesn’t even intend to defeat those around him, they just attack each other instead.

Quinn’s rage powers are only subdued by Soldier Boy’s nuclear blast. | Amazon Prime Video

But just as it was Soldier Boy who fueled Quinn’s suffering, it’s also Soldier Boy who finally lets him rest. Frenchie goads him into using his nuclear blast on Quinn, one of the few weapons that can defeat someone injected with V1. It’s only then that the other characters can finally see sense again.

Quinn may not have a superhero name, but that’s honestly what makes him one of the most terrifying Supes we’ve seen in The Boys so far. He was completely ignored by the superhero industry, and that all-consuming anger is what gave him his powers in the first place. It’s important to remember that for every Soldier Boy, there are plenty of Quinns, and Vought has its fair share of victims its hidden under the rug.

The Boys Season 5 Episode 4 is now streaming on Prime Video.

]]><![CDATA[The Most Important Sci-Fi TV Reboot Of The Century Will Stream For Free — But There's A Catch]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/battlestar-galactica-streaming-paramount-pluto-tv-2026https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/battlestar-galactica-streaming-paramount-pluto-tv-2026Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:15:25 GMT
Sci-Fi Channel/Kobal/Shutterstock

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost two decades since Battlestar Galactica ended in 2009, and 23 years since the miniseries launched in 2003. Created by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick back in 2003, BSG was a risky reboot of the 1978 Glen A. Larson series of the same name. Analogously, bringing back BSG in 2003 with a different premise, new versions of the classic characters, and a darker, grittier vibe, would be a little like if someone wanted to remake Babylon 5 today, but without the involvement of J. Michael Straczynski, and with different canon and mythology. In other words, prior to 2003, Battlestar was a known franchise, with a loyal following, but it wasn’t a mainstream sci-fi franchise.

That all changed in 2003 with the debut of Battlestar Galactica miniseries, which only got bigger in 2004 as the ongoing show launched, and quickly cemented itself as the new standard for epic science fiction TV. Since then, from The Expanse to the various new Star Trek shows, and yes, Andor, it's been a Battlestar world. Moore’s newest sci-fi series, For All Mankind, also carries some of the BSG magic, complete with deep-cut Easter eggs. And now, if you want to revisit the adventures of the rag-tag fugitive fleet anew, nearly the entire BSG saga will be streaming for free as of May 1, 2026. Here’s what to know.

Battlestar Galactica Streaming on Paramount+ and Pluto TV

Katee Sackhoff as Kara “Starbuck” Thrace in Battlestar Galactica. | Sci-Fi Channel/Kobal/Shutterstock

As of May 1, 2026, the vast majority of the Battlestar Galactica franchise will be streaming on both Paramount+ and Pluto TV. The standard Paramount+ account costs $8.99 a month, which includes some ads. That said, Pluto TV is completely free, which means you’ll be able to binge Battlestar from the beginning there, free of charge. Here’s what’s included on both Paramount+ and Pluto TV:

  • Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries (2003)
  • Battlestar Galactica Seasons 1-4 (2004-2009)
  • Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (TV Movie, 2009)

And, for those who want to take a deep dive into the risky BSG prequel series, Caprica, that show will be streaming on Paramount+ on May 1, though not on Pluto.

This means that the original 1978 series will not be part of this streaming deal, and if you want to watch that, the classic version of the show, you’ll have to rent episodes on Prime Video, Apple TV, or YouTube. (Or snag a DVD or Blu-ray.)

This new streaming suite of BSG also excludes the 2007 standalone movie Battlestar Galactica: Razor, which was a midquel that told additional stories of the Battlestar Pegasus, a sister ship of the Galactica introduced in Season 2. Razor also had deep cut flashbacks to before the show began and featured Nico Cortez as a younger version of Edward James Olmos’s Bill Adama. (These flashbacks are not to be confused with the 2012 web series Battlestar Galactica: Blood &Chrome, which featured Luke Pasqualino as young Adama.)

So, bottom line: The entirety of Battlestar Galactica and the miniseries that launched it will all be streaming for free on May 1. But where should you start?

Battlestar Starts With the Miniseries, Not “33”

Mary McDonnell as Laura Roslin, being sworn in as the President in the pilot episode of Battlestar Galactica. | Sci-Fi Channel/Kobal/Shutterstock

For newer fans, you’d probably think that if you started with Season 1, Episode 1 of BSG, you’d be all set. And while it’s possible to watch the show that way and not be totally confused, the truth is, Episode 1 of the regular series, “33” starts with the premise of the show already established: The surviving Humans of the 12 Colonies are on the run after the Cylons have destroyed everything. But how did that happen? When did we learn that Cylons also had humanoid “skin job” models? That’s where the miniseries comes in.

The regular series launched in 2004, thanks to the strength of the three-night miniseries in 2003. That’s basically the epic pilot episode for Battlestar Galactica, and it sets up everything you need to know. The miniseries is not an after-the-fact prequel or standalone: It’s where the show actually began.

Battlestar Galactica will begin streaming on Pluto TV and Paramount+ on May 1. Caprica currently streams on Peacock. Razor is available for rental on Prime, Apple TV, and elsewhere.

]]><![CDATA[Apple's Bold Sci-Fi "Paranoid Thriller" Is Streaming Sooner Than You Think]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-city-release-date-cast-for-all-mankind-timelinehttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-city-release-date-cast-for-all-mankind-timelineThu, 23 Apr 2026 14:11:33 GMT
Apple TV

The scope of the alternate history spaceflight series, For All Mankind, cannot be overstated. Starting in 2019, the series has charted a timeline in which the USSR beat the US to the Moon in 1969, and then explored how various dominoes fell after that point. From an alternate 1980s featuring a functional Moonbase to landing on Mars in the 1990s, and now, with Season 5, a full-on Mars rebellion looming, this show is as thought-provoking as it is bold. But the For All Mankind universe is now expanding in a different direction; the spinoff series Star City will explore the events of this timeline from the Soviet perspective, and that new show will actually stream right on the heels of its parent series upcoming new season.

Star City is set to stream this year, in 2026, right after For All Mankind Season 5 concludes. Here’s what to know about the ambitious new show, including the cast, the vibe, the trailer, the release date, and how it fits into the For All Mankind timeline.

What is Star City?

The titular location of Star City. | Apple TV

Star City takes its title from a real place in the USSR where Roscosmos trains its cosmonauts for space travel. For All Mankind has actually visited its version of Star City several times before, notably in Season 2, when NASA astronaut Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) goes to Star City as part of a joint mission between the US and the USSR. Star City is also central to the espionage machinations that involve Margo (Wrenn Schmidt), Sergei (Piotr Adamczyk), and former KGB leader Irina Morozova (Svetlana Efremova), who first appeared in Season 4.

The new show will go back to the 1960s to look at the Soviet point of view of the formative events that shaped For All Mankind. Apple is calling the show a “paranoid thriller.” And based on the first trailer, it seems like this is a spy show as much as it is a space show.

What is the Star City timeline?

The Roscosmos mission control in Star City. | Apple TV

According to Apple TV, the new series will go back to the events leading up to the events of For All Mankind Season 1. The show was first announced in 2024, but Apple’s most recent press release offers way more details, letting us know that the new series “takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers, and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humankind forward.”

This makes it seem like Star City will take place prior to 1969 and lead up to that moment, which, in a sense, solves a minor mystery within the For All Mankind timeline. In actual history, the USSR didn’t have the technology in place to land on the Moon. But now, we’ll see how, in this timeline, that was even possible. To put it another way, Star City is answering a crucial sci-fi question that makes the rest of the For All Mankind timeline possible: What did the speculative USSR Moonshot actually look like?

Who is in the cast of Star City?

Rhys Ifans in Star City. | Apple TV

While cameos from For All Mankind cast members are possible, as of now, we don’t know which characters (if any) will crossover. Certain characters have to appear. We know that in the FaMk timeline, the first man on the Moon was Alexei Leonov, who is a real historical figure, and in our history, the first human to complete a space walk. So, Leonov will certainly be a character in Star City. Additionally, For All Mankind Season 1 revealed that the first woman on the Moon was Anastasia Belikova, a fictional character. So, we should certainly expect to see a version of her in this series.

Here’s the confirmed cast, according to Apple’s official press release.

  • Rhys Ifans
  • Anna Maxwell Martin
  • Agnes O’Casey
  • Alice Englert
  • Solly McLeod
  • Adam Nagaitis
  • Ruby Ashbourne Serkis
  • Josef Davies
  • Priya Kansara

Star City Trailer and Release Date

Star City will stream on Apple TV with a two-episode premiere on Friday, May 29, 2026. This means that Star City will debut on the same day as the For All Mankind Season 5 finale. There will be eight episodes in Star City, with the final episode streaming on July 10, 2026.

For All Mankind streams on Apple TV.

]]><![CDATA[Apple Reveals Its Bold New Sci-Fi Spinoff Is Actually A Spy Show]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-city-apple-tv-trailer-spy-show-for-all-mankindhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-city-apple-tv-trailer-spy-show-for-all-mankindThu, 23 Apr 2026 14:00:25 GMT
Apple TV

As For All Mankind speeds into its complex future on Mars in Season 5, the new spinoff series, Star City, is looking back to the beginnings of the show. As announced previously, this show will tell the story of For All Mankind’s alternate timeline from the Soviet perspective. The title itself is taken from the central hub of Roscosmos, the USSR’s space program, located near Moscow. The show is set for release on May 29, and now, Apple TV has dropped the first full-length trailer.

The most surprising thing about this trailer is that it reveals that Star City isn’t really like For All Mankind at all. Instead, this show looks to be a nail-biting spy thriller, set in the 1960s and early 1970s. If you didn’t know that the USSR didn’t land on the Moon in 1969, you might think this was a historical drama that just happened to be about spaceflight. In short, the alternate timeline created by For All Mankind is the backdrop for this show, but based on the trailer, the series itself seems to be a spy thriller.

Star City Trailer Reveals Space Spies

Star City will take place largely in parallel to For All Mankind Season 1, which began in 1969. But, as the title suggests, the action seems to be focused on the tightly controlled facility of Star City and the concerns that USSR officials have about leaking intelligence about the space race to the United States.

For All Mankind itself is no stranger to stories about espionage. Even in Season 1, Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and others were concerned about USSR spies on the Moon. By Season 2 and onward, Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt) gets caught up in a complex espionage plot, one that forces this former NASA hero to work for Roscosmos in Season 4. Since Season 4, For All Mankind has also heavily featured the character of Irina Morozova (Svetlana Efremova), a former KGB mastermind, who later pulled strings at Roscosmos. Whether or not we’ll get a younger version of Irina in Star City remains to be seen, but based on the tone of this new trailer, it seems very possible.

It also looks like the timeline of 1973 in For All Mankind will be hinted at a bit. One scene in the trailer mentions that the chief designer (Rhys Ifans) has plans for a Moon Base, which may be stolen by the Americans. The Jamestown NASA base in Season 1 of FaMK is a very big deal, so now, it seems that Star City will add a new wrinkle to that origin.

That said, the overall message of the new trailer is that Star City is very much its own show, a tense thriller all about secrets, surveillance, and spaceflight.

Star City will hit Apple TV on May 29, 2026.

]]><![CDATA[5 Years Later, A Controversial Video Game Movie Already Feels So Much Older]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/mortal-kombat-movie-5-year-anniversaryhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/mortal-kombat-movie-5-year-anniversaryThu, 23 Apr 2026 12:30:24 GMT
Warner Bros. Pictures

When Mortal Kombat arrived on the scene in 1992, gift-wrapped in an arcade cabinet that served up pixelated carnage to players far too young to witness it, it was practically an overnight success. Its eclectic cast of thunder gods, multicolored ninjas, and even a cheeky parody of action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, its introduction of “juggling” into fighting game conventions, and its iconic, increasingly brutal fatalities earned it a well-deserved spot on the Mount Rushmore of fighting games, a place it has maintained through a rough transition into 3D and into the franchise’s modern reboot era.

Conversely, when the first Mortal Kombat movie arrived three years later, it was criticized for being hokey and thin on plot, not to mention the stiff acting and PG-13 violence. Despite its flaws, it was a commercial success that managed to replicate the absurd, action-figure-smashing energy of the games remarkably well, largely by not taking itself too seriously. Three decades later, however, we’re in an age where Hollywood takes everything seriously. Released five years ago today, 2021’s Mortal Kombat reboot is a fascinating reflection of what happens when the pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction.

Despite director Simon McQuoid’s best efforts, the MK reboot can’t help but feel like a movie from a bygone era of both video game adaptations and mainstream studio blockbusters, and that’s because it kind of is. A new cinematic interpretation of the franchise had been in the works as early as 2011, initially developed by Kevin Tancharoen, who worked on the fan-favorite Mortal Kombat: Rebirth short film and the resulting MK: Legacy webseries. You can practically feel the time the film spent languishing in development hell, because, in many ways, it’s the last relic of a very 2010s approach to video game adaptations.

On the surface, Mortal Kombat straightforwardly brings the premise of the games to life: pop culture’s second favorite God of Thunder, Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), must assemble a team of virtuous warriors from across Earthrealm to compete in the 10th Mortal Kombat tournament, a lethal interdimensional martial arts competition that occurs every 50 years to decide whether the despotic realm of Outworld gets to invade Earth (although the reboot takes place entirely before the tournament, a bewildering decision that evokes the ever-applicable Surf Dracula meme).

The setup of the original game is such a ridiculous, threadbare justification to toss a bunch of martial arts movie cliches into the ring together that the immense self-seriousness of the 2021 film is so noticeable in contrast — just like 2008’s Max Payne or the 2005 Doom, it feels like the result of a studio underestimating how accessible the source material is and compensating by trying to “ground” the premise.

You’d think Raiden would’ve developed a more fruitful strategy after losing nine tournaments in a row. | Warner Bros Pictures

One of the most grating ways the film does this is through the new character of Cole Young (Lewis Tan), a washed-up MMA fighter who serves as the audience surrogate. But this role could have easily been filled by Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, or Johnny Cage (which seems to be the direction of the sequel). Not only is he a generic archetypal “fighter” in a game filled with some of the most unique, larger-than-life fighting game characters ever created, but the movie also invented a convoluted lineage to connect him to MK co-creator Ed Boon’s favorite character, Hanzo Hasashi/Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada), a decision that makes him feel like a fan-fiction OC.

The movie’s obsession with grounding the premise extends to something as simple as the game’s approach to magic and special abilities. What exists as inherent skills in the games, such as Kano’s eye laser or Sonya Blade’s wrist blasters, are instead presented as an ironically much cheesier magic system in which combatants have to “train” their “arcana.” The arcana training montage carries the sense that it was born of a studio note from a hapless executive confused as to why Liu Kang can shoot fireballs without explanation, despite the fact that characters having random superpowers is part of the franchise’s Saturday morning cartoon by way of Hong Kong action cinema appeal.

The presence of Cole Young was a major source of criticism from fans. | Warner Bros. Pictures

But what’s really frustrating about Mortal Kombat is that the movie gets so much right. There are more than a few bone-crunching, gruesome action setpieces; the opening duel between Scorpion and Bi-Han/Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim) is a fanboy’s dream, an elegantly choreographed dance that sees a pre-undead Hanzo slaughter a small army of ninjas before taking on his bitter rival. The fatalities are also where the film leans into the franchise’s inherent ridiculousness, and there should be way more moments like Kung Lao splitting a vampire assassin in half on his razor-bladed hat before announcing his “Flawless Victory” to no one.

Surprisingly enough, another area where the film thrives is in the camaraderie between characters, especially the Earthrealm heroes. There’s not nearly enough meaningful interaction and banter, but when it does happen, it’s very welcome. It feels like the movie is afraid of being interpreted as “silly” the same way the 1995 film was, but the silliness of seeing a Special Forces operative interacting with a Shaolin monk and an Australian gang assassin is part of why the series has been a beloved fighting game staple for over 30 years now.

Hiroyuki Sanada’s performance as gaming’s favorite undead revenant is one of the movie’s best parts. | Warner Bros Pictures

In the attempts to wash the franchise of the perceived stink of the original film and its widely panned sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Warner Bros. lost some of the inherent ‘90s-era ridiculousness that’s crucial to Mortal Kombat. It was the last gasp of an approach to video game adaptations that’s largely died off, and hopefully the upcoming Mortal Kombat 2 recognizes that it’s okay to be a little unserious in the franchise that introduced Babalities to the world.

Mortal Kombat is streaming on HBO Max.

]]><![CDATA['Invincible' Season 4 Ending Explained: What is Thragg's Ultimatum?]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/invincible-season-5-ending-explained-thraggs-ultimatumhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/invincible-season-5-ending-explained-thraggs-ultimatumThu, 23 Apr 2026 10:30:24 GMT
Prime Video

Ultraviolence is inevitable in Invincible. From the moment it revealed that its Superman parallel, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), was actually an evil alien intent on colonizing Earth, brutality became one of the things that defined the series. And Season 4 doesn’t drop the ball; in actually ups the ante by transporting it to the stars.

Fans who’ve been waiting for Invincible to adapt the infamous Viltrumite War weren’t disappointed, either. Episode 7 delivered an appropriately harrowing conclusion to that intergalactic battle. Planets blew up! Our favorite characters nearly perished in gruesome ways! Grand Regent Thragg (Lee Pace) delivered a punch so powerful it was essentially a vortex! It was the kind of event that so many have been waiting to see on-screen, and it came dangerously close to overshadowing the comparatively quieter finale that followed. But just because the war is over doesn’t make its aftermath any less harrowing. Invincible Season 4 subverts the animated violence that’s always felt inescapable, opting instead for something much more psychologically scarring.

Spoilers ahead for Invincible Season 4 Episode 8.

The Invincible Season 4 finale, explained

The Viltrumite War ends not with a bang, but an impossible ultimatum. | Prime Video

Though Omni-Man, his son Mark (Steven Yeun), and their allies do deliver a crippling blow to the Viltrumite Empire, they also might make things worse for themselves. By destroying the planet Viltrum at the end of Episode 7, Thragg and his followers have no home to return to. Crucially, they can’t retaliate by murdering Mark or his family. “There are too few of us left,” Thragg says mournfully — and he’s not wrong. Viltrumites are darn near extinct: there are fewer than 10 full-blooded aliens left by the time the dust settles, but that makes it all the easier for them to disappear somewhere in the galaxy.

Mark is haunted by the idea that Thragg will show up on Earth to destroy everything he loves, just as he did to the Grand Regent... and at the end of Episode 8, his fear manifests in a far graver form. Thragg appears just as Mark is recovering from his post-traumatic stress, revealing that the Viltrumites have spent the past few weeks hiding out on Earth. Like Omni-Man before them, they intend to repopulate with humans. Their children won’t be nearly as strong — Mark and his little brother Oliver (Christian Convery) are each half-Viltrumite and significantly more vulnerable — but Viltrum will survive, kinda. Most importantly, they’ll coexist with humanity in peace, so long as Mark doesn’t instigate another battle.

Naturally, that’s a nightmare for Mark, who’d rather rid the universe of Viltrumites once and for all. And though Thragg gives him the right to refuse this compromise, doing so would mean starting the war all over again — this time on Earth, with what could be millions of casualties. Mark is completely alone, so he has no time to ask his dad, or any of his mentors, what to do. He’s forced to accept Thragg’s terms. When we next see these characters in Season 5, the last surviving Viltrumites will have made homes of their own on Earth, hiding in plain sight, and quietly intermingling with the human race.

But wait — why was Mark alone?

Mark is Earth’s sole (Viltrumite) defender at the end of Season 4. | Prime Video

Invincible Season 4 does a lot of work to bring the Grayson family back together, but by the end of it, they’re scattered to the winds again. Oliver is gravely injured in the battle on Viltrum; when Mark and Nolan return to Earth, they’re forced to leave him behind on the planet Talescria, home to the Coalition of Planets. The doctors there are far more advanced than those on Earth, anyway. But when Debbie (Sandra Oh) learns about Oliver’s fate, she demands to be taken to Talescria, even if it means traveling with Nolan, her kind-of ex-husband. The pair had a blow-out fight in Episode 5, with Debbie telling Nolan that she never wanted to see him again. (Considering he called her a pet, murdered millions, and traumatized their son with a brutal beating, she could have been much meaner.) But Oliver’s injuries force these two crazy kids back together when they least expect it. Perversely, it’s also set up Invincible for the second-chance romance we never knew we needed.

Nolan has been yearning for Debbie and not-so-quietly praying for her forgiveness since Season 2, so their reunion has been a long time coming. What makes it so gratifying is that Debbie is loath to take Nolan back, making true reconciliation much harder to come by. But that reconciliation still feels inevitable, even for those who don’t know the future as laid out by the comics by Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker. Ideally, Invincible won’t rush one of the most fascinating redemption arcs it has: Nolan and Debbie’s rekindled relationship could be an incredible parallel to the much scarier goings on back on Earth. As the series continues, outright violence is taking something of a backseat to various Viltrumite-human relations — but that’s becoming just as exciting as the punches thrown and lines drawn in the sand.

Invincible Season 4 is streaming on Prime Video.

]]><![CDATA[Netflix’s New 'Stranger Things' Spinoff Brings Back The Missing Magic]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/stranger-things-tales-from-85-review-netflixhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/stranger-things-tales-from-85-review-netflixThu, 23 Apr 2026 07:01:25 GMT
Netflix

In the wake of the Stranger Things Season 5 finale, it became very clear that the show in 2025 was nothing like what it was in 2016. The story was bigger, the stakes were bigger, and all those child actors were considerably older. But that’s just an occupational hazard with shows with young casts: you can’t freeze them in time. Or can you?

Enter Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85, an animated spinoff series that picks up right after Season 2, the season many fans agree to be the end of the show’s Golden Age. Upon first watch, this series really delivers what Stranger Things grew out of in later seasons, as long as you don’t ask too many questions about the canon.

Tales from ‘85 follows the Hawkins gang of Mike, Eleven, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and Max as they return to school after winter break. Unfortunately, their beloved science teacher, Mr. Clarke, is going on sabbatical, and he’s being replaced by the lovably quirky Ms. Baxter. It’s not long before Ms. Baxter’s punk daughter, Nikki, runs into a sticky situation with our band of heroes, and together they form the Hawkins Investigators Club. They investigate some odd happenings going on around town, and discover that, unfortunately, though the gate to the Upside Down may be closed, that doesn’t mean that everything’s safe.

It’s not difficult to see where the inspiration for this series came from. The “midquel” setting, stylized animation style, and self-contained story are all eerily similar to Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the spinoff animated series that showed a new side to the Star Wars prequel trilogy. This is the show’s best idea: just as Clone Wars was able to expand the Star Wars universe, Tales from ‘85 reveals new threats that may not be as terrifying as Vecna, but are perfect for an animated series.

If Tales from ‘85 is Stranger Things’ take on The Clone Wars, then Nikki Baxter is its Ahsoka Tano: a spunky new character only added in the spinoff, even though she’s never referenced in the flagship media that came before, or after. Voiced by Marty Supreme breakout Odessa A’Zion, she’s a great addition to the gang, adding a level of world-weariness from her constant moving from town to town, and a penchant for tinkering that supplies the show a Ghostbusters-esque edge. Also brilliant is the science behind the main threat, which is just believable enough, while still incorporating some Dungeons and Dragons monsters.

Nikki Baxter is an excellent addition to the already quite large Stranger Things ensemble. | Netflix

That said, not all the issues with late-stage Stranger Things are fixed with a move to animation. It feels like every episode has at least one moment where a character is almost about to fall to certain doom, only to be rescued at the last second by Eleven’s telekinetic powers. And while the alternate casting is fantastic, the absence of Joyce and Jonathan Byers is quite conspicuous — even ten episodes is not enough to include the entire expansive cast.

The biggest issue is, unfortunately, one that is unfixable: the plot implications. It’s sad hearing Nikki talk about how she doesn’t even bother to make friends anymore because she knows she’ll move again eventually, and everyone will forget her, but that conversation becomes heartbreaking when you consider that these friends go on to save the world multiple times without ever mentioning Nikki or using any of the tools she made them. The Clone Wars got around this by having Ahsoka leave the Jedi Order, but there’s no clean way to do something similar here.

But if you can suspend your disbelief about that, then this show is the perfect palate cleanser for the series finale, something that brings the show back to what it was always supposed to be: kids on bikes solving mysteries and getting themselves into hijinks.

Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85 is now streaming on Netflix.

]]><![CDATA[35 Years Ago, Star Trek Dropped An Absurd Twist It Didn’t Even Need]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-trek-the-next-generation-qpid-35-year-anniversaryhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-trek-the-next-generation-qpid-35-year-anniversaryWed, 22 Apr 2026 22:00:24 GMT
Paramount/CBS

In 1991, Star Trek: The Next Generation was in the middle of its golden era. After producer Michael Piller transformed the series into a character-driven show in Season 3, the episodes of Season 4 represented the fulfillment of that promise. When one thinks about the cozy, ensemble feeling of TNG, that aesthetic largely comes from Seasons 3 through 5; a time when anything was possible on the show, but the stakes were almost always deeply personal for the characters. By going smaller, TNG was able to get a much bigger audience, around 20,000 million viewers in syndication per week at its height. And so, when you have characters as beloved as these, one of the best ways for the show to have fun was to put everyone into absurd scenarios.

Enter “Qpid,” a Next Generation episode which aired during the week of April 22, 1991, and is commonly remembered as the One Where the Crew Does a Robin Hood Adventure. This episode could probably be called a TNG classic, mainly because it features Worf (Michael Dorn) uttering one of his funniest lines ever: “I am not a Merry Man!” And yet, when you rewatch “Qpid” today, one fact will hit you at warp speed: This episode didn’t even need the Robin Hood thing to be interesting, and in fact, that conceit doesn’t even begin until about halfway through the episode.

Spoilers ahead.

Crusher (Gates McFadden), Picard (Patrick Stewart), and Vash (Jennifer Hetrick) share one of many awkward moments in this episode. | Paramount/CBS

If you’re watching “Qpid” for the first time, and with the knowledge that it is an episode in which the trickster space god Q (John de Lancie) forces Picard (Patrick Stewart) to play the role of Robin Hood, you might wonder if you were watching the right episode. And that’s because the initial story of “Qpid” doesn’t seem to be about Q, or any kind of historical playing-dress-up shenanigans. To put it another way, the famous Sherlock Holmes episode in Season 2, “Elementary, Dear Data,” begins with Geordi (LeVar Burton) and Data (Brent Spiner) playing Holmes and Watson on the Holodeck. The Season 1 episode, “The Big Goodbye,” puts Picard into the 1941 hardboiled detective world of Dixon Hill within the first two minutes. But it’s not until 20 minutes into “Qpid” that the Robin Hood fantasy conceit is even revealed, and there’s nothing that specifically teases a Robin Hood twist at all prior to the moment where Q makes certain hats appear on the heads of Crusher (Gates McFadden) and Troi (Marina Siritis) before whisking the entire crew to Sherwood Forest.

So before the Robin Hood twist midway through, what is “Qpid” about? Well, the plot of the episode is actually about quite a lot, well before the Robin Hood shenanigans start: Picard’s girlfriend Vash, (Jennifer Hetrick) from the Season 3 episode “Captain’s Holiday,” returns and instantly gets offended that Picard didn’t tell anyone on the ship that he met someone during his adventure on Risa. This conflict alone is already amazing; Crusher shows up for her morning tea with Picard, finds Vash already there, and within moments, is sitting down, drinking Picard’s tea, and gossiping. Could this episode have simply been about Picard being totally embarrassed by having a girlfriend who is also a scam artist who steals archaeological artifacts? A big deal is made of Picard being “embarrassed” by Vash, but part of that is because Picard is a rule-follower and Vash is a renegade, sort of like Star Trek’s version of Batman and Catwoman.

Again, this premise could have carried the entire episode — and if you don’t think TNG would do an episode just about Picard’s weird dating habits, please see Season 6, Episode 19, “Lessons.” The point being, TNG very well could have just done an episode about Picard having to deal with having a quirky, rogueish girlfriend, even without an overt sci-fi element.

The first sign of some Robin Hood stuff, about 20 minutes in, Troi (Marina Sirtis) finds a strange hat on her head. | Paramount/CBS

But then Q appears, and no, he’s not instantly noticing that Picard is reading a Robin Hood book (Picard isn’t), but instead is focused on the idea that he owes Picard a favor. This references the events of the Season 3 episode “Deja Q,” in which Q was exiled from the Q Continuum and, briefly, forced to live as a mortal. So, in terms of Captain Picard’s wacky social life, this episode is a sequel to two Season 3 episodes simultaneously..

In fact, the idea that Q wants to do something nice for Picard is again a great premise on its own. “You are simply the most impossible person to buy a gift for!” Q declares at some point. And perhaps, even more hilariously, Q offers to help Picard rewrite a speech on ancient archaeology. Make no mistake, a huge portion of the runtime of this episode is devoted to these two conflicts: Q trying to repay Picard, and Picard being super annoyed, while Vash gets increasingly annoyed with Picard for ghosting her and acting like he doesn’t still like her in front of his friends.

And, finally, this results in Q deciding that he’ll gift Picard with an experience: the Robin Hood scenario, in which we are assured that this is a no takesies-backies situation; if the crew gets mortally wounded in the Robin Hood world, Q can’t bring them back to life. From there, the more memorable aspects of the episode unfold: Stewart does his best Errol Flynn impression, Hetrick is a welcome addition to the Trek ensemble, de Lancie is having the time of his life sowing discord and chewing the scenery, and the rest of the crew is...well...they’re mostly there to play dress up.

Geordi (LeVar Burton), Worf (Michael Dorn), and Data (Brent Spiner) as Robin’s Merry Men in "QPid." | Paramount/CBS

Yes, “Qpid” gave us Worf in that outrageous costume, and Data as Friar Tuck, but if we’re ranking sci-fi fantasy episodes of TV shows that really give us the true Robin Hood flavor, the 2014 Doctor Who episode “Robots of Sherwood” will beat this TNG romp any day of the week. And that’s because the weird thing about “Qpid” is that it's not really a Robin Hood episode, the way “Elementary Dea Data” is very much a Sherlock Holmes episode. It’s fun to see the crew in these costumes, and it's great to see Stewart sword-fighting, but at the end of the day, the set-up for this episode is just as funny, if not slightly more funny, than the result.

Could “Qpid” have worked without the Robin Hood idea? Hardcore TNG fans will certainly disagree, but one has to wonder if this isn’t really two great episodes fused into one. As it stands, “Qpid” probably isn’t one of the greatest TNG episodes of all time, even if it is one of the most iconic. But, in some alternate universe, perhaps, Q snapped his fingers slightly differently, and we got a quiet, strange episode all about Picard navigating his own strange social life, without the need to put on a silly costume or a fake mustache.

Star Trek: The Next Generation streams on Paramount+.

]]><![CDATA[2026's Most Surprising Video Game Movie Hit Is Quietly Changing The Industry]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/iron-lung-markiplier-vod-release-youtubehttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/iron-lung-markiplier-vod-release-youtubeWed, 22 Apr 2026 20:54:24 GMT
Markiplier Studios

In the last few years, Hollywood has witnessed the rise of the YouTube filmmaker: directors who got their start producing short-form content on the platform only to make the jump to longer narrative features. In the last six years alone we’ve gotten Talk to Me and Bring Her Back from the Philippou brothers (known online as the comedy and SFX duo RackaRacka), as well as last year’s Shelby Oaks from YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann. 2026 has already continued the trend with the upcoming Backrooms adaptation directed by 20 year old Kane Parsons, as well as one of the highest grossing horror films of the year: Iron Lung, directed by Mark Fischbach, better known as the streamer Markiplier.

Adapted from the popular video game of the same name, Iron Lung follows a convict named Simon in an apocalyptic future where a cataclysmic event named the “Quiet Rapture” caused every star in the sky, as well as most planets, to vanish into thin air. Using an aging submarine, Simon is forced to explore a literal ocean of blood on an unexplored moon, only to discover that he’s not the only living creature navigating the depths. Self-distributed by Markiplier himself, the film was a box office smash, making over $50 million on a $3 million budget and once again showing the world the power of independent film — a power that the streamer is now looking to leverage into the world of film distribution.

Self-distributing a film isn’t an easy decision, but Iron Lung proved that in some cases it can be an immensely successful one. | Markiplier Studios

As reported by Bloody Disgusting (from a video published by Markiplier himself), Fischbach is planning on handling the digital and physical distribution himself, just like he did with the film’s theatrical distribution, which was released through his own Markiplier Studios. The difference here is that he plans on creating a digital aggregator, which would allow him to host Iron Lung on YouTube’s Film and TV platform — and he wants to use that aggregator to allow other indie filmmakers to host their films on YouTube as well. As for a physical release of the film, Markiplier is handling that by himself also: he’s aiming to set up a DVD/Blu-ray machine in his home, which will be visible in future video uploads, that will autoproduce multiple copies of the movie for physical media sales.

While fundraising and the actual production process is a massive hurdle for independent filmmakers, it’s not the only hurdle: finding a company willing to distribute a project is a separate battle in and of itself, and oftentimes films that are fully finished still take time to be released because of a lack of distribution, if they’re ever released at all. Not only would Markiplier’s plan make Iron Lung accessible to watch for fans who didn’t catch it in theaters, but it would also blow open the doors that gatekeep filmmaking to Hollywood and allow other artists a chance for their projects to find an audience outside the regular distribution system. The plan hasn’t gone through fully just yet (according to Fischbach he’s in the final stages of talks with YouTube), but if it does succeed it’ll certainly mark a radical shift in the mechanics of the film industry.

There is no set VOD or Blu-ray release date yet for Iron Lung.

]]><![CDATA[The DCU's Next Film Teases A Shocking Body Horror Twist]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/clayface-trailer-body-horror-dcu-batmanhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/clayface-trailer-body-horror-dcu-batmanWed, 22 Apr 2026 20:38:12 GMT
DC Studios

Trusting the process is a tough ask when a massive movie franchise is in the mix. When it’s a franchise that’s been rebooted more than once — like the DC Universe — trust is all the harder to come by. There’s no doubt that director James Gunn doesn’t have an eye for superpowered storytelling, but the anticipation for an interconnected world that looks good and honors the source material has long reached a fever pitch. Fans want a strong foundation for the heroes and villains of the DC Universe. They want to see Batman; most crucially, they want to see what the DCU’s version of Gotham looks like as soon as humanly possible.

It may be some time before DC debuts its Dark Knight (in live-action, anyway), but it’ll soon give us the next best thing — and with a delicious horror twist. After Supergirl flies into theaters this summer, the DC Universe makes the move from the sunny Metropolis to Gotham City. Rather than focus on Batman and his crime-fighting antics, however, Clayface will focus on a more grounded corner of this seedy world, and the skin-tingling origins of an infamous Batman villain.

DC Studios’ first teaser for Clayface serves up our first look at the new Gotham City, but all that pales in comparison to the flashes of body horror sprinkled throughout. That’s right: Clayface is the first horror movie set in the DC Universe. Tom Rhys Harris is Matt Hagen, a character fans should recognize from Batman: The Animated Series. While Hagen wasn’t the first incarnation of Clayface (that honor belongs to Basil Karlo), he was the first to gain the shapeshifting powers we associate with the character, thanks in great part to The Animated Series.

We’ll get to see the gruesome origins of those powers in Clayface. Per the official synopsis, the film “unravels one man’s horrifying descent from rising Hollywood star to revenge-filled monster.” When Hagen loses his movie-ready good looks in a brutal attack, he turns to a bleeding-edge pharmaceutical company for help. The problem, of course, is that their tech works a little too well. His face isn’t restored so much as it is transformed into a malleable, clay-like substance. These powers help on his quest for revenge, but effectively burn the bridge back to Hagen’s old life.

Clayface keeps much of its plot under wraps, but its first teaser does a lot to quell any doubts about this new phase of the DCU. There’s a chance that Batman — or other members of his rogue’s gallery — are skulking about in Gotham as Hagen embarks on his “descent,” but director James Watkins has crafted a tale that should stand well enough on its own. It’s an unorthodox way to reintroduce fans to this corner of the DC Universe, but with Clayface leading the charge, we could be getting the darkest version of Gotham we’ve ever seen... and that’s an exciting possibility.

Clayface creeps into theaters on October 23.

]]><![CDATA[Danielle Cage? 7 Years Later, 'Daredevil: Born Again' Settles An Unresolved Netflix Plot]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/daredevil-born-again-danielle-cage-explainedhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/daredevil-born-again-danielle-cage-explainedWed, 22 Apr 2026 20:31:04 GMT
Marvel Studios

One of the best parts about the original Netflix Defenders shows was the way that they were able to replicate the synergy of the cinematic side of the MCU on streaming television. Just like in the comics, there’s a certain satisfaction to seeing Foggy Nelson show up in Jessica Jones, or seeing Claire Temple hop between Daredevil and Luke Cage. It allows viewers to feel like these worlds are lived in and that these characters occupy the same space, as opposed to telling audiences this without proving it, a problem the MCU has been facing recently.

However, when those shows were canceled about 6 years ago, the Defenders disappeared for a time, along with the dangling plot and relationship threads left behind with their shows. When the revival series Daredevil: Born Again debuted, fans wondered if Matt Murdock would be joined by his allies in the official jump to the MCU. But now that we have official confirmation of their reappearance in season 3, there’s a strong chance that the histories of Luke, Jessica, and Danny will mostly remain intact like Daredevil’s. And with the release of episode 6 of Born Again’s second season, it’s been established that at least one plotline from the previous Netflix shows (a pretty crucial one in the comics) will be followed up in an important way.

Jessica Jones’ return in episode 6 of Born Again finally brings her relationship with Luke Cage full circle. | Netflix

Warning! Spoilers ahead for Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Episode 6.

In last night’s episode, during an attack on her suburban home orchestrated by the mysterious Mr. Charles, it was revealed that Jessica Jones now has a daughter by the name of Danielle, in honor of her godfather Danny Rand. It’s obvious that the little girl (played by twin actors Anabelle Ivlev and Isabella Ivlev) is Jessica’s daughter with Luke Cage, although we don’t see Luke, and if Jessica’s catch-up conversation with Matt is as straightforward as it sounds, it might be because Harlem’s Hero is currently under the employment of the U.S. government.

Who is Danielle Cage In The Comics?

In a dystopian alternate future ravaged by Thanos and Ultron, Dani Cage inherits the mantle of Captain America. | Marvel Comics

As far as the source material is concerned, Danielle was conceived as the result of a drunken hookup between Luke and Jessica (the discovery of her pregnancy caused her to break up with her then-boyfriend Scott Lang, which in turn prompted Luke to confess his love for her), and was officially born in 2006’s The Pulse #16, with her parents marrying in New Avengers Annual #1.

Although in the mainline Marvel Comics canon she’s only three years old, Danielle has already been a player in a few storylines — Jessica Jones: Purple Daughter was a three-issue limited digital series in which Danielle suddenly develops purple skin, which causes Jessica to confront the possibility that her daughter might somehow be connected to her abuser Zebediah Kilgrave, aka the Purple Man. There’s also an alternate universe version of Danielle from Earth-15061 introduced in 2015’s Ultron Forever event, hailing from a future in which Thanos slaughters most of Earth’s heroes (her parents included); after training with Natasha Romanoff, Danielle becomes the new Captain America, wielding his shield alongside becoming a shield herself due to her father’s unbreakable skin.

In the 20 years since they’ve been married, Luke and Jessica have become one of the premiere couples in not just Marvel Comics, but across superhero comics as a whole, and Danielle was the catalyst for their long-standing romance becoming official in the eyes of the law and their Avengers teammates.

What Does Danielle’s Existence Mean For The Future?

While it’s unknown yet if Luke and Jessica are married currently in the MCU, the fact that Danielle now exists is the perfect culmination of Luke and Jessica’s will they/won’t they love affair in the Netflix shows, and their roles as superhero parents provides a natural and interesting step forward for the characters. If their appearance in Daredevil: Born Again Season 3 is anything to go by, we could see much more of them — and Danielle — in the future.

New episodes of Daredevil: Born Again premiere every Tuesday on Disney+.

]]><![CDATA[12 Years Later, Star Wars Is Finally Getting One Fan-Favorite Character Right]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/mandalorian-and-grogu-zeb-star-wars-ralph-mcquarriehttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/mandalorian-and-grogu-zeb-star-wars-ralph-mcquarrieWed, 22 Apr 2026 20:12:42 GMT
Lucasfilm/Ralph McQuarrie

When Star Wars Rebels debuted in 2014, it quietly launched a new era of Star Wars canon. While The Force Awakens would continue the mainline saga after Return of the Jedi, the aim of Rebels was to tell new stories well after The Clone Wars and before A New Hope. These days, that time period is fairly crowded (Solo, Andor, et al.), but at the time, the Rebellion’s early heroes were brand new. Many of the Rebels crew have appeared in live-action since then, most notably in Ahsoka Season 1. And now, after making a brief live-action debut in The Mandalorian Season 3, one fan-favorite Rebels character is finally getting to kick ass the way we always imagined.

The first full scene from The Mandalorian and Grogu has been released, and regardless of what the fandom thinks of it as a whole, it does show us what Zeb will look like in the movie. If you’re a fan of Rebels, this is a huge win. Here’s why.

Mandalorian and Grogu footage, explained

On April 22, new footage from The Mandalorian and Grogu revealed what appears to be a major chase scene. In it, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) tries to get Grogu to press the correct switches on a landspeeder to shake off some pursuers. For those who don’t like the sub-genre of clueless-Star-Wars-character-presses-the-right-buttons-and-saves-the-day, this scene won’t win anyone over. There are shades of young Anakin from The Phantom Menace, or even Jar Jar Binks.

Reactions to this scene are already mixed, and it seems the hype for Mando & Grogu varies from fan to fan (Inverse’s own Lyvie Scott was skeptical, but is very optimistic after a set visit). But while some fans might agree that this chase scene isn’t the greatest thing in the world, what’s the one thing it gets right? That element is Garazeb Orrelios.

Why Zeb Looks Great in the Mando Footage

Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) and Zeb (Steve Blum) in The Mandalorian Season 3. | Lucasfilm

Still voiced by Steve Blum, who provided the voice of Zeb in Rebels, the character’s big-screen debut is actually his second appearance in the live-action Star Wars universe. Back in 2023, Zeb appeared in the Season 3 Mandalorian Episode called “Chapter 21: The Pirate,” in which he was just standing around at a bar chatting with Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee). Unlike the Rebels versions of Hera, Ahoska, Ezra, and Sabine, who all appeared in Ahsoka Season 1, the live-action Zeb is more or less exactly as he was in the animated series.

But in “The Pirate,” Zeb just stood there and talked. In The Mandalorian and Grogu, he’s firing blasters, crawling around, and generally being the cool, grumpy Rebel action hero that fans love. This, oddly, is the coolest thing about this new footage: it shows off just how confident Lucasfilm and ILM are with the live-action version of Zeb, which is the kind of motion-capture character we take for granted these days.

But we shouldn’t take this for granted. Zeb’s basic design comes from initial concepts that artist Ralph McQuarrie had for Chewbacca, so when we see Zeb in live-action, we’re seeing, in a way, a looking-glass version of the original Star Wars. Fans can (and will) quibble about everything happening in The Mandalorian and Grogu, but the coolness of Zeb and the legacy he carries should be celebrated. The only thing that needs to happen now is for Zeb to drop the infamous Star Wars swear word “karabast” as much as possible.

The Mandalorian and Grogu hits theaters on May 22, 2026.

]]><![CDATA['Rings of Power' Season 3 Is Coming Sooner Than You Think]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/rings-of-power-season-3-release-date-windowhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/rings-of-power-season-3-release-date-windowWed, 22 Apr 2026 19:47:04 GMT
Prime Video

Despite its status as one of the biggest — and inarguably the most expensive — TV shows of the streaming era, The Rings of Power runs a remarkably tight ship. Two years passed between the show’s premiere and the premiere of its second season, and Prime Video reportedly intends to stick to that two-year timeline when it comes to Season 3. The Lord of the Rings prequel series got the official greenlight for a third season in 2025, but production had been underway for some time before that. It’s for that reason that fans will be able to return to Middle-earth much sooner than anyone thought... and why Season 3 could be the best of the series yet.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Rings of Power is on track to premiere sometime in 2026. While Season 3 has been rumored to hit Prime Video early next year, insiders close to THR suggest “it’ll be a little sooner than that.” We could see the new season as soon as Fall 2026, which would align perfectly with the late-August premiere of its previous season.

Rings of Power is jumping into the future

After two seasons of set-up, Season 3 will finally cut to the chase. | Prime Video

There are other reasons to be excited for the new season of The Rings of Power: it’s notably picking up after a major time jump. According to the official synopsis, Season 3 is “jumping forward several years from the events of Season 2,” which ended with the power-hungry Sauron (Charlie Vickers) officially waging battle against the armies of Elves and Men. Our heroes are left licking their wounds as Sauron goes into hiding once more, but Season 2 left things on a hopeful note — especially for those well-versed in their Rings lore. With the Elven leaders united, they vow to create a stronghold to stand in defiance of Sauron’s growing power. That will eventually become Rivendell, and thanks to Season 3’s time jump, we won’t have to wonder what this version of that Elven city will look like.

Ideally, The Rings of Power will fast-forward through Rivendell’s construction and establish a new normal on the go. It might also pick up after the founding of another major Lord of the Rings locale, the kingdom of Gondor, which was finally teased in the Season 2 finale. And there’s much more to this story that could benefit from a leap forward in time, from Gandalf’s painfully drawn-out origins to the slow fall of Khazad-dûm. With all that table setting out of the way, The Rings of Power can finally focus on what we’ve all been waiting for: the height of this battle with Sauron. According to THR, it seems like we’ll get to the action that much quicker, which is a good update all around.

The Rings of Power Season 3 is expected to hit Prime Video in late 2026.

]]><![CDATA['Evil Dead Burn' Trailer Reveals The New Sequel Is Coming Sooner Than You Think]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/evil-dead-burn-teaser-release-datehttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/evil-dead-burn-teaser-release-dateWed, 22 Apr 2026 16:55:51 GMT
Screenshot: YouTube

With only five films released over the course of 45 years, the Evil Dead series is one of the few horror franchises that can claim that it’s never had a bad installment ... yet. The closest the series has come to a critical miss was in 2013 with the dark, gritty reboot Evil Dead, directed by Fede Alvarez; that film scored an indifferent 64 percent with critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, although 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, directed by Lee Cronin (you know, of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy?), brought both back into the fold with a respectable 85 percent/75 percent split.

Compared to the decade-long hiatus between the last two Evil Dead movies, the three years that have passed between Evil Dead Rise and the upcoming sixth installment in the (film — Don’t forget Ash Vs. Evil Dead) series, Evil Dead Burn, seems like nothing. Carrying on another tradition of giving up-and-coming horror filmmakers a boost, French director Sébastien Vaniček takes over for this newest film after his creepy-crawly debut feature Infested in 2023. That film took place in the cramped confines of a high-rise apartment block in suburban Paris, and was packed full of the inventive camerawork and high-intensity horror action that have characterized the latter-day Evil Dead movies.

The first teaser for Evil Dead Burn has a similar sense of urgency, following a woman (Swiss actress Souheila Yacoub) in a single, unbroken take as she wakes up with a head injury in a dark, dusty house, then crawls across the floor of a living room, squirming and ducking as Deadite mayhem unfolds all around her.

Like Infested, the teaser seems to promise a relentless, high-intensity viewing experience — the soundtrack is made up mostly of screaming and crashing, with Yacoub’s panicked gasping underneath — utilizing the bigger budget that comes with an American studio picture. The stunt work is especially impressive, as characters pop into and out of the frame before being snatched up and dragged away (or thrown through pieces of furniture) by hungry Deadites. The only real concern here is that the cinematography is very dark, making it difficult to see what’s happening on all but the best calibrated screens.

Warner Bros. certainly seems to have faith in Evil Dead Burn, moving it up two weeks from its original release date on July 24 to a new date of July 10. This puts the R-rated horror movie up against Disney’s live-action Moana remake in theaters, although the overlap there should be minimal.

Here’s the official synopsis:

“EVIL DEAD BURN unleashes the franchise’s most savage and terrifying ride to date, blazing onto big screens with an all-new chapter of carnage and demonic mayhem. After the loss of her husband, a woman seeks solace with her in-laws in their secluded family home. As one by one they are transformed into Deadites—turning the gathering into a family reunion from hell—she comes to discover that the vows she took in life…live on even in death.”

Evil Dead Burn opens in theaters on July 10.

]]><![CDATA[3 Years Later, An Almost-Canceled Movie Is Finally Coming To Theaters]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/coyote-vs-acme-trailerhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/coyote-vs-acme-trailerWed, 22 Apr 2026 16:16:05 GMT
Ketchup Entertainment

Of all the major studios, Warner Bros. has established a reputation for being especially brutal toward its projects. Studios like Disney have erased original programming from streaming services to save a buck, but Warner Bros. has gone one step further, canceling finished projects for the tax write-off. It started with Batgirl, then multiple Scooby-Doo projects. Another movie, Coyote vs. Acme, almost followed, but after fan backlash, it was spared from being buried in the archives by indie distributor Ketchup Entertainment.

This live-action/animation hybrid was initially slated for release in July 2023, but is now set for August 2026 — and we finally have our first look at what we almost missed out on. Check out the trailer below.

Coyote vs. Acme isn’t your typical Looney Tunes movie. It’s actually based on a New Yorker article by humorist Ian Frazier, following Wile E. Coyote as he finally takes legal action against the Acme corporation after being repeatedly let down by their products in his pursuit of Roadrunner. In the trailer, we see lawyer Kevin Avery (Will Forte) take the case, suing Acme and its bloodthirsty lawyer Buddy Crane (John Cena) for damages. There are also plenty of appearances by classic Looney Tunes characters, including Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny.

This isn’t a caper full of hijinks — or, at least, it isn’t just a caper full of hijinks. It appears as though a good portion of the movie is an actual legal drama with cartoon characters on the stand. Wile E. Coyote may be unable to speak, but he’ll still raise his voice against the big guys.

The story also has an all-star team of writers to match its cast. Samy Burch, the Oscar-nominated writer of Todd Haynes’ May December, wrote the script from a story by her, Moon Knight head writer Jeremy Slater, and current Co-President of DC Studios James Gunn.

John Cena plays smarmy lawyer Buddy Crane in Coyote vs. Acme. | Ketchup Entertainment

And Ketchup Entertainment is no stranger to a Looney Tunes release: sci-fi Looney Tunes adventure The Day the Earth Blew Up was originally slated for HBO Max, but Warner Bros. instead decided to shop it around to other distributors, leading to a theatrical release that garnered largely positive reviews.

Between the quirky story, blended medium, and high-profile cast and crew, Coyote vs. Acme will hopefully draw audiences to theaters. But its biggest selling point may be its controversial origin story: this is a movie that almost became lost media, that Warner Bros. didn’t want you to see. As comedian Gianmarco Soresi said on X, “I feel like I have a moral responsibility to see this movie.”

Coyote vs. Acme premieres in theaters on August 28, 2026.

]]><![CDATA[Everything We Know About Netflix's Gundam Movie]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/netflixs-gundam-movie-release-date-plot-casthttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/netflixs-gundam-movie-release-date-plot-castWed, 22 Apr 2026 14:30:25 GMT
Shochiku

Some things were born for the big screen. Marvel and its cinematic universe definitely fits the bill, as does Star Wars (despite the franchise’s relative success on streamers like Disney+). But lately those juggernauts have struggled to maintain their foothold at the box office, and the same might be said for an even bigger risk — like the live-action reboot of a beloved anime. That might not be the only reason why something as enduring as Gundam has gone from Legendary Pictures, the same studio behind other mecha movies like Pacific Rim, to Netflix... but it can’t be discounted, either.

Watching Netflix roll out the red carpet for a live-action Gundam movie feels almost fantastical. The streamer is no stranger to blockbuster fare: it’s churned out a handful of compelling actioners and sci-fi epics that easily could have dominated on a big screen. But Gundam might be their wildest gamble yet. The first live-action installment of a decades-spanning giant robot franchise, it won’t be easy to appease longtime fans and bring in new ones. With its buzzy, recently announced cast, Netflix is hoping to put its best foot forward. Whether it can defy the odds for well-meaning anime adaptations remains a mystery — but for now, here’s everything we know about Netflix’s Gundam movie.

What is the Gundam release date?

Surprisingly, there’s no word on when Netflix plans to release its Gundam movie. The streamer announced that production officially began in April 2026, so it’s safe to assume that we could see it assemble on Netflix either in 2027 or 2028.

Who is directing Gundam?

Sweet Tooth showrunner Jim Mickle will helm the live-action Gundam movie. | Netflix

Although Kong: Skull Island director Jordan Vogt-Roberts was previously attached to helm the Gundam movie, he departed the project in 2024. Netflix is now keeping things in the family for Gundam, tapping Jim Mickle to write, direct, and produce the film. Mickle co-developed the Netflix series Sweet Tooth alongside showrunner Beth Schwartz, so he’s no stranger to the streamer’s inner workings — or to heightened worlds that demand a suspension of disbelief.

What is Netflix’s Gundam about?

Gundam is set to make history as the first live-action adventure within this long-running animated universe. Per its official synopsis, the film tells an original story — but it sounds a lot like a reboot of the original anime, Mobile Suit Gundam. It’s set in the franchise’s native timeline, the “Universal Century,” a far-flung future where humanity has colonized planets throughout the galaxy. When Earth’s space colonies rise up to start an intergalactic conflict, two rival mech pilots on opposite sides of the fight are “pulled into a high-stakes race across the stars that could define the fate of humanity. With awe-inspiring battles, intimate human emotion, and an epic cinematic scale, this is Gundam like it’s [never] been seen before.”

Who is in the cast of Gundam?

Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria, Immaculate) and Noah Centineo (Street Fighter) have been attached to Gundam for some time — and they’ll likely play the rival pilots doling out damage in giant fighting robots.

Below, find a list of the other actors who will join them on this galaxy-spanning adventure:

  • Jackson White (Tell Me Lies)
  • Shioli Kutsuna (Invasion)
  • Nonso Anozie (Sweet Tooth)
  • Michael Mando (Spider-Man: Brand New Day)
  • Javon “Wanna” Walton (Euphoria)
  • Oleksandr Rudynskyi (The Agency)
  • Ida Brooke (Dune: Part Three)
  • Gemma Chua-Tran (Heartbreak High)
  • Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter, Star Wars: Rebels)

Is there a trailer for Gundam?

As production has only just begun on Gundam, Netflix hasn’t released a trailer for the upcoming film yet. Inverse will have an update whenever new promo drops.

Will there be a Gundam 2?

So far, Netflix’s Gundam is shaping up to be a standalone film, but there’s plenty of franchise potential at play. Gundam is just the latest in a long line of stories set in this world, and if audiences take to Mickle’s take on it — and, more importantly, if production doesn’t break the Netflix bank — there’s every chance it could sire a sequel or even a trilogy.

]]><![CDATA[5 Years Ago, Netflix Found Its Next Big Franchise. So Why Was It Canceled?]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/shadow-and-bone-5-year-anniversaryhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/shadow-and-bone-5-year-anniversaryWed, 22 Apr 2026 12:30:24 GMT
Netflix

Ever since Game of Thrones took television by storm, every TV network and streaming service has been trying to find their next big fantasy hit. But few have been able to replicate the cultural success of HBO’s — and indeed all of TV’s — last great watercooler show.

But five years ago, Netflix launched a show that seemed like it could come close: a historically-inspired fantasy series that incorporated vast mythical worldbuilding with a strong, incredibly likable cast of characters. So why isn’t this Netflix’s newest big thing now? Unfortunately, it all came down to timing.

Lowly cartographer Alina Starkov finds herself a Chosen One in Netflix’s Shadow and Bone. | Netflix

In April 2021, Netflix released Shadow and Bone, a polished fantasy series based on the “Grishaverse” novels by Leigh Bardugo. The books followed Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), a young orphan who discovers that she’s a Grisha, a specific kind of person gifted with a kind of inherent magic. But more than being a typical Grisha who are limited to a specific ability — whether it be controlling fire, water, or emotions — she’s actually the Sun Summoner, the long-awaited controller of light.

She discovers this power on a trip through the Shadow Fold, a dark, stormy area full of monsters that divides her homeland. When she emerges through the other side, she instantly finds her life changed, bringing her face to face with General Kirigan (Ben Barnes), aka the Shadow Summoner, her counterpart and love interest.

In its first episode alone, showrunner and writer Eric Heisserer paints a gorgeous portrait of the land of Ravka, infused with Victorian elements and cultural aesthetics. But the series’ greatest strength is its subplot, following the ragtag group known as the Six of Crows as they set out on their own mission. Their adventures weren’t included in the first Grishaverse novel at all, but incorporating their story made this epic tale perfect for television.

Despite a planned Six of Crows spinoff, the world of Shadow and Bone was cut off prematurely. | Netflix

Shadow and Bone Season 1 instantly attained a massive fanbase, and was followed by an ambitious — if a tad overstuffed — Season 2. It seemed like this could become Netflix’s next Stranger Things, and fans got only more excited in March 2023 when Heisserer announced he’d been quietly working on a Six of Crows spinoff.

Then, the strikes came. The dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes shut down Hollywood for months, and once things settled, certain shows were delayed or outright canceled. For Netflix, that meant a slew of shows that were in development, as well as Shadow and Bone. “The series spent five weeks in the weekly Top 10 for English-language series without getting to No.1,” Deadline speculated at the time. “That, coupled with the potential delay of Season 3, likely factored into the decision not to move forward.”

But maybe this is how it was meant to be — Shadow and Bone now exists as a snapshot of a fantastical world instead of a bloated franchise full of spinoffs. It may be stunted, but what exists is wondrous. And if Alina Starkov had the choice to sacrifice her adaptation for fair treatment in Hollywood, she would in a second.

Shadow and Bone Seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Netflix.

]]><![CDATA[59 Years Later, A Surreal Crime Thriller Masterpiece Is Getting A Huge Upgrade]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/point-blank-4k-blu-ray-criterionhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/point-blank-4k-blu-ray-criterionTue, 21 Apr 2026 22:00:24 GMT
Herbert Dorfman/Corbis Historical/Getty Images

For obvious reasons, Los Angeles is a popular setting for movies. It’s usually depicted as a sunny paradise, lined with palm trees and populated by beautiful people in bikinis and swim trunks. Even L.A. nightmares like David Lynch’s masterpiece Mulholland Drive find beauty in its bright sunlight and blooming flowers. Not so much Point Blank.

Directed by an Englishman — then-newcomer John Boorman — and starring Hollywood’s premiere tough guy Lee Marvin, Point Blank envisions L.A. as a striking, but stark landscape of concrete and mirrors whose cold, sharp modernist lines match the citizens’ sense of violent alienation. Boorman had what critic Mark Harris calls “an alien’s keen eye” for the city, rendering it in drab shades of dirty grayish white and sickly orange and green.

The story is also both familiar and alien: Protagonist Walker (Lee Marvin) is a take on the character of “Parker” from Donald E. Westlake’s popular series of pulp novels. But Boorman’s kaleidoscopic direction and Marvin’s stoic, nearly wordless performance turn the normally hot-blooded pulp genre into something much stranger, following Walker on a quest for revenge against a faceless crime syndicate known as “The Organization.” They stole his life and left him for dead, and now he wants what’s coming to him: $93,000. Cash. And he’ll kill anyone who refuses to give it to him.

How Was Point Blank Received Upon Its Release?

Point Blank was met with a mixed reception at the time. It electrified fans of French auteurs like Jean-Pierre Melville who remade crime cinema in the early ‘60s, inspired by the same films noir that birthed director John Boorman’s second feature. In this way, Point Blank is a hall of mirrors, a British director taking the innovations of European filmmakers and reflecting them back onto Hollywood.

But although the film’s stylized editing and nonlinear storytelling were far from unprecedented — both are signatures of the French New Wave, which was fairly well-known in America by 1967 — Point Blank still offended more old-fashioned critics like The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther (what a name!), who called it “lurid, tawdry, and sleazy” with “no considerate moral sense,” adding, “holy smokes, what a . . . calculatedly sadistic film it is!”

Crowther isn’t totally incorrect: The film’s own detachment from its stark violence makes it feel all the more brutal. But he does fail to account for the dreamlike surrealism that Boorman introduces into the narrative, jumping around in time and adding strange, seemingly inconsistent details so that, by the end of the film, the audience begins to question what, if anything, actually happened. The film takes on pleasure in its violence, simply observes it and moves on.

Why Is Point Blank Important to See Now?

Sharon Acker’s trancelike performance feels very modern in the age of dissociation. | United Archives/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Point Blank’s nihilistic fingerprints are all over movies like John Wick, another film about a violent, but soft-spoken man on a single-minded quest for something that’s very important to him, for reasons that no one else really understands. An exchange of dialogue between Marvin’s Walker and “Organization” executive Brewster (Carroll O’Connor) late in the film plays like it could have come from Chad Stahelski’s movie:

Brewster: What do you really want?
Walker: I really want my money.

Point Blank’s dreamy, detached quality was also very ahead of its time. Throughout the film, characters — particularly women — wander around in a daze, their eyes vacant and unfocused in a late-’60s version of what The New York Times recently dubbed the “Gen Z pout.” Marvin is also a stony presence, saying little and showing no emotion whatsoever: In one of the film’s most famous scenes, co-star Angie Dickinson snaps and takes out her rage on Marvin, slapping him and hitting him with her purse and fists until she sinks to the ground, exhausted. He doesn’t respond.

In an era where cultivated detachment and over-it dissociation are chic, Point Blank fits right in.

What New Features Does Criterion’s 4K UHD Disc Have?

Point Blank joins the Criterion Collection in April 2026, upgrading from previous releases with a new 4K restoration of the film supervised by director John Boorman. The special features are a combination of new and archival materials, including new reflections on the film from Jim Jarmusch (Father Mother Sister Brother).

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director John Boorman, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Audio commentary featuring Boorman and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh
  • Interview with Boorman conducted by author Geoff Dyer
  • New interview with critic Mark Harris
  • New reflections on Point Blank by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch
  • New program on the midcentury Los Angeles architecture featured in the film, with historian Alison Martino
  • The Rock (1967), a short documentary on Alcatraz and the making of the film
  • Interview with Marvin from a 1970 episode of The Dick Cavett Show

Point Blank is available now from The Criterion Collection.

]]><![CDATA[A Key Star Wars Storyline Has Been Completely Dropped]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/mandalorian-season-4-droppedhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/mandalorian-season-4-droppedTue, 21 Apr 2026 20:23:14 GMT
Lucasfilm

There’s a lot of anticipation surrounding The Mandalorian and Grogu, however tentative, because of what the film represents to the Star Wars saga. It’s the first big-screen adventure the franchise has offered fans in seven years; if all goes to plan, it’ll keep the door open for the other films coming down the pipeline. But Din Djarin and Grogu’s lightspeed jump into theaters might also represent the closing of a door. These characters did, after all, get their start on Disney+. The Mandalorian delivered three well-received seasons, and almost got a fourth — one that, according to director Jon Favreau, would have set up the ongoing conflict in another Star Wars series, Ahsoka. But somewhere between Mando’s Season 4 renewal, the SAG-AFTRA strikes, and the WGA strikes, Lucasfilm opted to retool the show into a more standalone story.

Per Favreau, that retool took a lot of work. The scripts for the entire fourth season of Mando were already written, and, as he explained in the latest issue of SFX Magazine, “You can’t just take those scripts and turn them into a movie.” Naturally, it picked up like the fourth season of any TV show would: “it assumed you’d watched the whole show, and it was teeing up what was happening moving into [the second season of] Ahsoka.” More importantly, it would have featured Ahsoka’s Big Bad, Grand Admiral Thrawn, as a growing threat to this corner of the galaxy.

Din and Grogu’s adventures could officially be coming to an end. | Lucasfilm

Back then, Lucasfilm was working towards an Avengers-inspired team-up film that would have integrated the events of The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and maybe even The Book of Boba Fett. There’s still a chance that team-up might happen, but changing the scope of Din and Grogu’s story might also have changed their future. In short, this could be the end of The Mandalorian as we knew it.

Favreau has continuously stressed that The Mandalorian and Grogu is meant to be a standalone adventure. The director claimed that it’s more like the first season of a new show than a spinoff of a long-running one — and that might not just be lip service. Favreau is adamant about bringing new fans into this world, even those who’ve never seen The Mandalorian. “There’s still a lot of Star Wars in there,” he told SFX, “but that doesn’t diminish from the experience of watching it as a standalone film.”

The Mandalorian and Grogu’s importance to the larger galaxy, however, might be diminishing instead. Compared to Ahsoka Season 2 — which Favreau says is dealing with the Imperial Remnant on “a higher level” — the stakes in The Mandalorian and Grogu are much lower. “This is more of a ground-level experience of what’s going on,” he says of the film. “You’re seeing the backdrop.”

Ahsoka has “grabbed the baton” from The Mandalorian, for better or worse. | Lucasfilm

Where The Mandalorian once had a major responsibility to push this new Star Wars era forward, Favreau claims that Ahsoka has since “grabbed the baton” and will be “taking the next step” towards the major conflict with Thrawn. Din and Grogu are now free to continue on their one-off adventures, more or less, with minor obligations to the larger galaxy.

Still, we shouldn’t expect another season of The Mandalorian after this. With the dynamic duo leaping onto the big screen, the genie is effectively out of the bottle. Retooling Season 4 into a feature film created a kind of branched reality, and it’s hard to say how much of a future Din and Grogu have in it. As Ahsoka takes the reins to further set up a Thrawn-centric adventure, The Mandalorian and Grogu is starting to feel more like the end of the road for its titular heroes. There’s every chance that they’ll continue to pop up as the fight against the Imperial Remnant heats up. As for their solo adventure, however, it sounds like Lucasfilm is quietly pruning the timeline to make room for Ahsoka and Thrawn.

The Mandalorian and Grogu hits theaters on May 22.

]]><![CDATA['The Last Of Us' Season 3 Could Give One Evil Character Some Much-Needed Depth]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/the-last-of-us-season-3-lev-yara-mother-castinghttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/the-last-of-us-season-3-lev-yara-mother-castingTue, 21 Apr 2026 19:16:23 GMT
HBO

While countless games use zombies as a source of conflict, few of them view the genre as anything other than a source of bullet sponges to mindlessly shoot at. That’s part of why The Last of Us was such a breath of fresh air; not only did it provide an ecological spin on the zombie, but it focused on the complexity of the desperate, grieving, and dangerous human beings left behind in the aftermath of the apocalypse. Yes, zombie movies have been doing this since George A. Romero created the genre, but video games often choose the disposable entertainment of mowing down hordes of walking corpses instead of wrestling with the moral complications of the people and institutions that survive, which The Last of Us and its sequel pride themselves on.

Those complications define the first game, and the second one takes it further with a storyline centered on revenge, tragic misunderstanding, and the consequences of selfish actions. The second season of the HBO adaptation re-told the first half of Part 2 and introduced us to the conflict between the Washington Liberation Front, a local militia governing Seattle, and the Seraphites, a group of religious fundamentalists who blame the initial outbreak on the excesses of modern society. Their perpetual conflict is both crucial to the plot and a thematic parallel to Ellie and Abby’s bitter hatred for each other, and now a new bit of casting information reveals that Season 3 will introduce us to a Seraphite who serves as a major catalyst for the story’s second half.

Abby and Ellie’s brutal conflict resembles the unending struggle between the WLF and the Seraphites. | HBO

Variety recently revealed that Li Jun Li will be playing Miriam, a devout Seraphite and the mother of Lev and Yara, two game characters also set to debut in Season 3 (where they’ll be played by Kyriana Kratter and Michelle Mao). Li was just recently seen in the horror space, fighting vampires rather than zombies as Grace Chow in Sinners.

In The Last of Us Part 2, Miriam raises her children within the Seraphite sect and instills a reverence for the Seraphite’s sacred Prophet in them, only to be devastated when Lev reveals that he identifies as a boy. Miriam banishes him, and loses Yara too when she leaves to protect her brother. In response, their mother has them both branded as apostates and begins starving herself to atone for her children’s perceived sins. After Lev and Yara save Abby, Lev tries to return to the Seraphites to convince his mother to leave and come with them, but she instead berates and attacks him, leading to Lev accidentally slaying her in self-defense.

Lev’s tragic reunion is one of the most heartbreaking moments in a heartbreaking game. | Sony Interactive Entertainment

Lev and Yara’s mother is unnamed in the game, and has a relatively small role. However, the casting of an actress like Li Jun Li is the perfect opportunity to give Miriam more depth and relevance. Her rejection of Lev’s gender identity is important to his development as a character, but a television show can show how the decision to alienate her children drives her further into religious fanaticism while fleshing out her role in her community.

Yara and Lev’s journey as children born into a religious cult and eventually abandoned is a perfect showcase of how human beings are often capable of the greatest harm in The Last of Us. Hopefully, the show not only adapts their storyline, but expands on it to make it as emotionally weighty as it can be.

The Last of Us season 3 is set to debut in 2027.

]]><![CDATA[5 Years Later, Star Wars Just Highlighted A Bizarre Timeline Problem]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-wars-maul-timeline-gaphttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-wars-maul-timeline-gapTue, 21 Apr 2026 18:49:46 GMT
Lucasfilm

Maul: Shadow Lord takes place at an interesting point in the Star Wars timeline, in the handful of years after Order 66 but before the start of the Rebellion. Like the rise of most fascist regimes, it initially seems like the dawn of a new age, but that image quickly sours. It’s an interesting inflection point for the series, but it’s also relatively early in Star Wars canon. Before this, there was the prequel trilogy, the events of The Acolyte, and then the High Republic saga — that’s pretty much it.

That fact makes one line in the series much more confusing — and, potentially, reveals an entire chapter of Star Wars canon we haven’t seen yet.

In Episode 5 of Star Wars: Maul —Shadow Lord, Jedi Master Eeko-Dio Daki is reflecting on the slow, gradual takeover of the Empire. “Worry not,” he says. “Throughout my long life, I have seen the galaxy endure many changes. Tyranny is always defeated. We must remain hopeful.”

Eeko-Dio Daki has clearly seen a few things in his presumedly long life. | Lucasfilm

This doesn’t seem out of place for a Star Wars line — hope is, after all, the most prominent theme in the entire saga. But when Daki describes seeing the galaxy endure many changes, what does he mean? The first question is just how old he is in the first place. His species, Mosyk, has never appeared in Star Wars before, but we can get some clues about how long the species’ lifespan can be from a meta detail. In a trivia post on StarWars.com, it was revealed that the crew behind the show nicknamed him “Dino Jedi.” If he’s the Star Wars equivalent of a dinosaur and still kicking, then it’s probably safe to assume he measures his life in centuries.

With that in mind, what big changes could he have witnessed before Order 66 and the rise of the Empire? There’s not much within canon. Currently, the earliest we’ve seen in the official timeline is The High Republic: Convergence, which takes place 382 years before the events of A New Hope. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not long at all — Yoda was still very much middle-aged at that point.

Jedi Master Eeko-Dio Daki may be foreshadowing more Star Wars projects set in the distant past. | Lucasfilm

And within The High Republic series of books and comics, tyranny isn’t exactly a pressing threat. While there were plenty of terrifying villains, they were more akin to pirates and raiders than powers looking to rule over the entire galaxy. The High Republic is the era when the Jedi were at their peak, and that reign lasted until the Empire rose up.

So if Daki isn’t referring to anything that happened after the High Republic, what could he mean? Is this our first sign that the Star Wars universe will expand to ancient history? We know that James Mangold’s upcoming movie will cover the beginnings of the Jedi themselves — perhaps that will serve as a prelude for one of the other epic wars in the Legends continuity, like the treacherous fight between the Jedi and Sith for control of the galaxy itself.

It’s easy to forget that by the beginning of the prequel trilogy, the Republic had existed in an era of (relative) peace for centuries. If tyranny has been defeated after changing the galaxy more than once, then it’s clearly something that happened before anything we’ve seen before. But as always, history holds more than you could ever realize.

Maul: Shadow Lord is now streaming on Disney+.

]]><![CDATA[28 Years Later, A Cult Fantasy Classic Is Getting A Magical Second Life]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/practical-magic-2-trailerhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/practical-magic-2-trailerTue, 21 Apr 2026 18:42:48 GMT
Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock

What makes a good movie into legacyquel material? For the past decade, the phenomenon seemed to belong exclusively to Dad Movies and genre classics — but this year, the tables will officially turn. In Hollywood’s mad scramble to turn standalone movies into franchises and cash in on some good, old-fashioned nostalgia, it’s going where few might have ever expected: to the chick flicks of the early, early aughts.

This May, The Devil Wears Prada is getting a sequel decades in the making, and it won’t be the last of its ilk finding a second life. There’s also the upcoming sequel to Practical Magic, inarguably one of the most beloved cult classics for witches of a certain generation. Unlike the Meryl Streep-starring fashion farce that came years after it, Practical Magic didn’t make much of an impact at the box office. But that didn’t stop it from becoming the go-to spooky feature for many a 2000s sleepover.

In the 1998 original directed by Griffin Dunne, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman starred as two sisters born into a family of witches — and while their magical antics rightfully belong on any Halloween moodboard, the curse haunting their clan worked overtime to disturb their fun. Thanks to a spell cast by a heartbroken ancestor, any man who falls for the women of the Owens coven is effectively doomed. Practical Magic took that premise to both tragic and comic lengths, following the recently widowed Sally (Bullock) and wild child Gillian (Kidman) on an enchanted escapade. Its sequel, meanwhile, aims to break the curse once and for all.

The original Practical Magic was mostly about Sally working to open her heart again after losing her first husband to the Owens family curse. She fell for the very detective investigating what looked like suspicious murders — at least from the outside looking in — and the fact that Aidan Quinn won’t be reprising his role as Gary Hallet seems to confirm his tragic fate. It’s the same fate that likely awaits Lee Pace’s mysterious new character (who may or may not be wooing Gilly). It’s also something that Sally’s daughters (played by Maisie Williams and Joey King, taking over the roles originally played by Alexandra Artrip and Evan Rachel Wood) will have to deal with as they fall in love for the first time.

That is, unless the Owens family can do something about it. Per the official synopsis, “the Owens sisters must confront the dark curse that threatens to unravel their family once and for all.” The sequel’s first trailer teases an even bigger adventure; as long as it retains the spooky charm of the original, Practical Magic 2 could be the box office hit its predecessor never was.

Practical Magic 2 hits theaters on September 11.

]]><![CDATA[Apple’s Best Post-Apocalypse Show Is Making A Huge Change For Season 3]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/silo-season-3-trailer-apple-sci-fihttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/silo-season-3-trailer-apple-sci-fiTue, 21 Apr 2026 15:16:24 GMT
Apple TV

There’s one big question that haunts every post-apocalyptic story: the apocalypse itself. Maybe you start with the apocalypse unfolding in the first episode before leaping to the future, like The Last of Us or Fallout, maybe you keep the true nature of the apocalypse secret until a key moment, like in Paradise, or maybe you don’t acknowledge what happened at all, like in Twisted Metal.

But Apple TV’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi series Silo is trying a new tack entirely. Season 3, premiering in July, splits the story between the post-apocalyptic present, where Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) returns to her home silo after being exiled for a “cleaning,” and the pre-apocalyptic past, where politicians do what they can to prepare for the worst. Check out the first teaser for the series below:

These extended flashbacks aren’t coming out of nowhere. The final moments of Season 2 flashed back to Washington, D.C., in the near future, where a congressman met with a journalist to discuss the tragic events that had happened recently. He gives her a gift — a duck Pez dispenser. He explains it away as something he panic-bought in a corner store, but for Silo fans, this seemingly meaningless prop is a huge tie to the show’s main storyline. Centuries in the future, it’s this Pez dispenser that persists as an artifact from “The Before Times.”

Incorporating the origin story is a tactic pulled straight from the books. Hugh Howey’s second book in the Silo trilogy, Shift, doesn’t actually include Juliette until the very end, instead focusing on events without her, intercut with flashbacks. But when you have Rebecca Ferguson on your show, you use her, so much of Season 2 was spent following her in a neighboring silo. It looks like Season 3 will now go back and cover those flashbacks from Shift while keeping Juliette’s story moving.

As teased in the Season 2 finale, Season 3 of Silo will be split between the present and the “Before Times.” | Apple TV

These flashbacks are uniquely interesting for Silo. We’ve heard discussions of the Before Times before, but nobody in the silo actually remembers what happened to force the population underground in the first place. So this isn’t an issue of the characters knowing something the audience doesn’t — instead, we’ll have the dramatic irony of knowing just what went down. Hopefully, we can watch Juliette and the rest of the silo dwellers figure it out for themselves, too.

Silo has a firm game plan in mind, as it’s already renewed for a fourth and final season. That means that everything we see in Season 3, even the prequel storyline, is the beginning of the end. Silo has always delivered some epic finales, and with this much runway and an even bigger scope than before, it’s likely everything is building to a series finale for the history books.

Silo Season 3 premieres July 3 on Apple TV.

]]><![CDATA[36 Years Later, An Underrated Batman Villain's Backstory Could Finally Make Sense]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/the-batman-2-harevy-dent-father-casting-backstoryhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/the-batman-2-harevy-dent-father-casting-backstoryTue, 21 Apr 2026 14:30:25 GMT
Warner Bros.

With pre-production well underway, hopefully, The Batman Part 2 takes advantage of its status as a direct sequel and continues Batman’s development into a new kind of hero. We already know for sure that the film is expanding its roster of supporting characters, introducing Sebastian Stan as Harvey Dent and Scarlett Johansson as his wife, Gilda. Even though everyone knows that Harvey’s ultimate fate is to become the villainous Two-Face, some new confirmed casting implies that, ironically enough, we’ll get to witness the character’s origin firsthand in a way we never did with Bruce – an origin that has never properly been adapted on the big screen.

Recently, Deadline reported that veteran actor Charles Dance is in final talks to portray Christopher Dent, Harvey’s father and an important character who has never been adapted in a live-action DC film before. Dance, best known for playing Tywin Lannister (another terrible father from HBO’s Game of Thrones), is the latest in a line of potential castings for the character that have included Viggo Mortensen and Daniel Craig. While Christopher Dent isn’t exactly a recurring supporting character in the Batman mythos, his few appearances are crucial in contextualizing why Harvey turns out the way he does.

The Batman Part 2 might parallel the start of Bruce’s journey as Batman by giving us a glimpse at Harvey Dent’s childhood. | Warner Bros. Pictures

In the comics, Christopher Dent (who first appeared in 1990’s Batman Annual #14) is a violent alcoholic who suffers from undiagnosed dissociative identity disorder, abusing Harvey as a child by flipping a coin to decide whether or not he'd beat his son for minor infractions. He’s not a character who shows up all that frequently, but DC’s modern continuity has established that the Dent family descends from a long line of lawyers and politicians who have shaped Gotham City’s history in their own way, Christopher included. The abuse Harvey suffered at the hands of his father resulted in him developing a split-personality of his own, a ruthless and aggressively overprotective one that would eventually subside as Harvey grew up and got out from under his father’s thumb, only to reappear after the accident that would turn him into Two-Face — in a twisted way, Christopher is Harvey’s own Thomas Wayne.

There are only two live-action adaptations that have ever tried to engage with Christopher Dent’s presence or Harvey’s early struggles with DID: the Arkham games and Batman: The Animated Series. Reeves has a great opportunity to be the first filmmaker to wrestle with the tragic childhood complications of Harvey’s backstory, and could specifically emphasize the parallels between his difficult upbringing and Bruce’s comfortable life, which could create some dual-sided conflict between the characters if Harvey resents Bruce’s privilege while also working with Batman.

Unlike previous cinematic depictions of the character, Reeves has the chance to adapt the immense childhood trauma that birthed one of Batman’s most tortured villains. | DC Comics

Even though Christopher Dent is deceased in the source material, there’s no indication that Reeves will go the same route. Alongside being the abuser responsible for Harvey’s fractured psyche, there’s a chance that Christopher could still be around and somehow still ingratiated in Gotham’s political infrastructure, still manipulating his son for his own ends (there’s even been fan speculation that Harvey’s father could be a part of the Court of Owls).

Alongside the many surprises that The Batman Part 2 will have in store, hopefully, it also delivers the kind of thoughtful, complex origin story for one of Batman’s greatest rogues that previous depictions have always fallen short of.

The Batman: Part 2 is set to release on October 1st, 2027.

]]><![CDATA[20 Years Ago, One Horror Movie Was Shockingly Faithful To Its Gaming Inspiration]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/silent-hill-2006-movie-retrospective-gaminghttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/silent-hill-2006-movie-retrospective-gamingTue, 21 Apr 2026 12:30:25 GMT
TriStar Pictures

Video games as a medium have come a long way from the days of Spacewar! and Pong, and although its still largely a commercial enterprise, gaming has largely benefitted from a push to be legitimized as a true art form in the same way as literature, music, or film. Nowadays, when the concept of “video games as art” comes up, you can expect to hear some obvious answers: The Last of Us, 2018’s God of War, and Disco Elysium being a few frequently cited contemporary examples. While those games are fantastic in their own right, it feels as if the late 90s and early 2000s were when the medium truly put its foot down and demanded to be taken seriously, and there’s one particular franchise from that era that quickly became hard proof of the artfulness of video games: Silent Hill.

The original 1999 release and its 2001 follow-up, Silent Hill 2, have frequently been called some of the greatest video games of all time, and it’s not difficult to see why. Even in a post-Resident Evil landscape, the cerebral and surreal atmosphere of those first two games was an artistic accomplishment unto itself, one that the entire survival horror genre (including the series’ own sequels) has been trying to replicate for over two decades now. It’s ironic that at a time when video games themselves were struggling to be seen as legitimate art, some of the worst video game adaptations were also being released, pushed by studio executives who never truly understood what it was about the source material that made them so popular to begin with – which makes it all the more shocking that Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill film was one of the only movies of its time to truly get it right.

At a time when fans had Paul W.S. Anderson’s RE series to look forward to as the highlight of video game adaptations, it’s remarkable that 2006’s Silent Hill adaptation preserved so much of the original game’s story. Both center around a parent taking their adopted child to the sleepy, fog-choked town of Silent Hill (located in Maine in the games and West Virginia in the film), only to wake up after a close-call car accident to find their child missing, forcing them to explore the community and its tragic occult secrets even as reality fades in and out of a nightmarish alternate dimension around them. There are naturally some adaptational changes, the immediate one being the switch from game protagonist Harry Mason to film protagonist Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell), but its fidelity to the games was pretty unique at the time – a positive for fans but a negative for unfamiliar critics, who found the mythology too dense to parse.

Truthfully, Silent Hill is far from a perfect film. Characterization is non-existent, with our cast rendered as mostly one-note archetypes – Rose is a desperate mother who loves her daughter Sharon (as she tells us numerous times), Cybil Bennett (Laurie Holden) is a no-nonsense police officer in way over her head, Alice Krige’s Christabella is a fanatical religious fundamentalist, and so on and so forth. There’s also the matter of the movie’s downright terrible dialogue: at least 60% of the screenplay is Rose repeating to various townspeople that “she needs to find her daughter,” and the other 40 percent is heavy-handed exposition designed to make sense of Silent Hill’s intricate backstory, a Herculean task considering how differently a plot can play out in a video game versus a film.

The decision to gender-swap the lead from the game was born out of Christophe Gans wanting to explore the condemnation of femininity found in many Abrahamic religions. | TriStar Pictures

But the staying power of Gans’ adaptation is in precisely how well it works on a purely visual and experiential level. Whatever can be said about the flaws of the script, Silent Hill does a masterful job at evoking the feeling of playing the game, particularly in how faithfully it replicates the location itself. Multiple of the iconic locales from the first two games are recreated in detail by the immensely committed production design – the decaying Midwich Elementary School, the eerie and clinical Alchemilla Hospital, and the Balkan Church, all of which feel like real, tangible locations lost to time.

Naturally, a high-concept adaptation from 2006 is going to suffer from some dated CGI, but it works exceptionally well in Silent Hill’s favor. Just like in the game, the town occasionally transforms into a hellish, industrial alternate dimension named the Otherworld, a living nightmare reflective of the horrors committed by the Brethren, a fundamentalist religious cult ultimately responsible for the town’s current state. While some viewers might see “bad” digital effects, they contribute to a necessary feeling of unreality – watching the environment around Rose peel away to reveal the blood-colored rust aesthetic of the Otherworld is far more interesting than a lot of more “polished” but flat CGI used in films today.

Pyramid Head doesn’t appear in the games until Silent Hill 2, but the 2006 film borrows ideas from both the second and third game. | TriStar Pictures

Even though the writing isn’t great, one thing the script and Gans’ direction nail is the psychological underpinnings of the story. In both the game and film it’s revealed that Silent Hill is cursed as a result of their ritual murder of a young girl named Alessa who was burned at the stake, the doppelganger of Rose/Harry’s daughter – there’s an oppressive atmosphere of guilt and anguish that hangs over the town and manifests in the grotesque supernatural creatures that roam throughout (including the ever iconic Pyramid Head). It’s not just for the sake of a frightening aesthetic or terrifying setpieces; every creative choice in the film is designed to echo the sins of the past, and even Rose’s quest to save her daughter is an echo of how Alessa’s mother abandoned her to her ultimate fate.

It’s easy to look around at the landscape of 2026 and feel spoiled by a number of recent video game movies that have gotten their material “right,” but back in 2006, it was a barren wasteland occupied by adaptations wholly disinterested in what made the originals work in the first place. Despite its glaring flaws, Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill was rare for the time, in that it was made by a director who wanted desperately to evoke what made the original game feel so artful and affecting in the first place. There’s a reason why so many fans of the games still cling to the film even now, and it’s not simply because it’s filled with recognizable creatures or locations – it’s because it was an earnest labor of love, made by someone who recognized the staggering artistic weight of the 1999 game and wanted to bring its psychologically torturous atmosphere to the big screen.

Silent Hill is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

]]><![CDATA[Marrok? 12 Years Later, Star Wars Is Rebooting A Chilling Villain Origin]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-wars-canon-first-inquisitor-maul-shadow-lord-marrokhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-wars-canon-first-inquisitor-maul-shadow-lord-marrokTue, 21 Apr 2026 00:37:54 GMT
Lucasflm

Right after the fall of the Republic, Darth Vader had some help in hunting down and destroying the Jedi who escaped Order 66. As first revealed in Rebels in 2014, the Inquisitors were tracking surviving Jedi from the end of the Clone Wars right up to the start of the true birth of the Rebel Alliance. But who were the first red lightsaber-wielding Inquisitors?

Up until recently, the Wookieepedia-fueled answer to this question would probably lead you to say, the Grand Inquisitor, the character voiced by Jason Isaacs in Rebels and played by Rupert Friend in Obi-Wan Kenobi. Or when Tales of the Jedi debuted in 2022, you may have thought that the Clancy Brown-voiced Inquisitor with the scary bird-helmet was the earliest Inquisitor, since at one point, the 2024 book The Star Wars Encyclopedia called him “The First Brother.” But that was a mistake, because the real “First Brother,” and perhaps the earliest Inquisitor ever, has reappeared in Star Wars: Maul —Shadow Lord, which, in terms of the actual chronology, is his “first” appearance.

Confused? Here’s why Marrok — who we first glimpsed in Ahsoka — is marking one of the earliest instances of the Inquisitors in Star Wars canon.

Spoilers ahead for Shadow Lord Episode 6, “Night of the Hunted.”

Who is Marrok?

Marrok’s first appearance in Ahsoka was also his last in his own personal timeline. | Lucasfilm

Also known as the “First Brother,” Marrok is the Inquistor who is featured heavily in Shadow Lord Episode 5 and Episode 6. He’s clearly sent by the Empire to track down the two Jedi we’ve been following throughout the show. This also makes him a huge headache for Maul, since Maul was, until the appearance of Marrok, the only character who was busting out a double-sided red lightsaber.

The funny thing is, like many of the Inquisitors, we don’t know a ton about Marrok, and the first time we saw this character was in live-action during Ahsoka Season 1. And the odd thing about that fact is that Ahoska Season 1 takes place about five years after the fall of the Empire, and the version of Marrok we’re seeing in Shadow Lord takes place about 19 years before Ahoska. So, the Marrok in Shadow Lord is about 30 years younger than the version of him we see in Ahsoka.

The thing is, in Ahsoka, Marrok’s demise makes it seem like he was being controlled by some Dark Side spell, because when his armor was pierced, it appeared that dark green mist was inside his armor, suggesting that Morgan Elsbeth perhaps used Dathomirian techniques to reanimate him. Either way, the Marrok we see in Ahsoka is basically working as a mercenary, whereas the Shadow Lord version of Marrok is this early Inquisitor in his prime.

Shadow Lord Episode 6 Ending: Who is Marrok’s Boss?

Marrok, reporting to an unseen supervisor in Shadow Lord. | Lucasfilm

After Maul and Devon escape from Marrok, we see the Inquisitor reporting his progress to an unseen person whom he calls “Master.” This person is communicating via hologram, and the episode ends before we get a glimpse of who it is. Now, if this turns out to simply be the Grand Inquisitor, then Marrok becomes just one more red-bladed warrior who follows orders. But, he could easily be taking orders from Palpatine directly, or even more likely, Darth Vader.

We know Maul’s fate when it comes to the Rebels timeline, but what we don’t know is how many Inquisitors he fought before that point. And, it’s important to point out that in this part of the timeline, Darth Vader is just starting out as the Emperor’s right-hand man, and it’s possible, perhaps even likely, that before Shadow Lord is over, Vader and Maul might cross sabers, making the introduction of Marrok a bit of a Sith-y red herring.

Star Wars: Maul —Shadow Lord airs new episodes on Mondays on Disney+.

]]><![CDATA[Amazon's 'Spider-Noir' Universe May Be Getting A Lot Bigger]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/spider-verse-noir-explandinghttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/spider-verse-noir-explandingMon, 20 Apr 2026 20:36:15 GMT
Prime Video

Spider-Noir isn’t quite the direct spinoff to Sony’s animated Spider-Verse movies. While Nicolas Cage was introduced as a black-and-white variant of Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, this live-action reimagining has recast him as a very different character, Ben Reilly. That technicality muddies the line connecting the 2018 film to Prime Video’s upcoming show — but it hasn’t curbed the enthusiasm for other stories inspired by that shared universe.

According to Spider-Noir co-showrunner Oren Uziel, the new series has opened the door for more Spider-Verse spinoffs. “I’m focused on Spider-Noir, but I know there are others in the works,” Uziel recently revealed in the latest issue of SFX Magazine (via Games Radar). While a few have already been tentatively announced — like a Spider-Punk movie to be co-written by actor Daniel Kaluuya — it sounds like Sony has big plans to build the Spider-Verse out far beyond its films.

Spider-Noir is just the first story of many to spin off from the Spider-Verse movies. | Prime Video

“I’ve talked a bit to the people working on them, and I think they are very exciting,” Uziel continued. Per the showrunner, these spinoffs will follow “a little bit of that same formula” that Spider-Noir is introducing. The new series is basically a 1940s detective story with “a Spider-variant” thrown into the mix, and we can apparently expect a similar tactic for the projects that follow.

What that could mean for the Spider-Punk film is anyone’s guess, but it’s easy to imagine a mix between Marvel’s most recent Spider-Punk comic series, published in 2022, and a tamer Gregg Araki movie. Other Spider-variants could get a similar treatment: in a perfect world, Sony might be working on a Magical Girl Anime with Peni Parker at the wheel, a Looney Tunes-esque romp featuring Spider-Pig, or a Bollywood epic for Spider-Man India.

That there seem to be multiple in the works, according to Uziel, makes this one of the most exciting developments Sony has announced of late. A “whole new world” is coming to life; though the mainline Spider-Verse movies are approaching their end, the multiverse they created shows no signs of slowing down.

Spider-Noir premieres on May 27 on Prime Video.

]]><![CDATA[Everything We Know About The 'Elden Ring' Movie]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/elden-ring-movie-release-date-cast-plothttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/elden-ring-movie-release-date-cast-plotMon, 20 Apr 2026 19:50:10 GMT
Bandai Namco

Despite their characteristic approach to environmental storytelling, the developers at FromSoftware have been praised for over a decade for the remarkable depth of their worldbuilding. The existential struggle between humanity and power-hungry demigods reaching for immortality in Dark Souls, the horrific consequences of scientific scholars and religious fanatics exploiting Eldritch alien entities in Bloodborne; many of FromSoft’s games contain complex behind-the-scenes lore that players only uncover with rigorous exploration. Elden Ring, FromSoftware’s most recent game, is different in one key way: that world was co-created by George R.R. Martin, the architect of Game of Thrones and its many spin-offs.

Given Elden Ring’s immense and immediate success, it was practically a given that fans would see more of the Lands Between in some capacity, but no one would’ve predicted a major motion picture announcement from indie darling A24. Yet the project, directed by Alex Garland, has already begun production, and the first glimpses of the set promise a faithful depiction of the setting. While the film is still shrouded in secrecy, some recent updates have given fans insight into when to expect, as well as who might be portraying the major players of Elden Ring’s epic mythology.

When Is The Elden Ring Release Date?

According to Variety, Garland’s Elden Ring adaptation will hit theaters on March 3rd, 2028, six years after the game’s release.

If brought to life correctly, the dangerous and breathtaking world of the Lands Between could rival Middle-Earth and Westeros. | Bandai Namco Entertainment

What Is The Plot Of Elden Ring?

Considering the nature of FromSoftware’s sparse plotting, which prefers to let players parse the story through exploration and gameplay rather than cutscenes, it’s hard to imagine that Garland’s film will be a direct adaptation of the game itself. There’s no confirmed synopsis yet, but it’s likely the film will take place before the game, which is the side of the lore that Martin consulted on and co-wrote.

The game takes place in a mystical kingdom called the Lands Between, which the benevolent Queen Marika once ruled over. The Queen served as guardian of the Elden Ring, an arrangement of powerful magic runes that govern the world's natural laws, and a manifestation of the influence of an ancient metaphysical being known as the Greater Will. But after the most virtuous of her demigod children was assassinated using a piece of the Elden Ring separated and locked away to ensure immortality in the realm, Marika’s grief led her to shatter the Elden Ring and abdicate the throne, jump-starting a perpetual conflict between her children known as the Shattering. The game picks up an indeterminate amount of time after Marika’s disappearance, with players inhabiting the role of a lowly Tarnished (a displaced people) tasked by the Greater Will to slay Marika’s corrupted children and reforge the Elden Ring.

A film adaptation is the perfect chance for fans to meet bosses they’ve already faced before they were corrupted by power, like Starscourge Radahn. | Bandai Namco Entertainment

Widespread speculation suggests that the film will take place during the Shattering itself to avoid contradicting ER’s playable narrative. That makes sense: it’s the part of the lore where Martin’s penchant for tragic familial dysfunction is the most felt, and it would also provide Garland, A24, and Bandai Namco Entertainment the opportunity to bring the game’s awe-inspiring sense of sword-and-sorcery scale to the forefront.

Who Is In The Cast Of Elden Ring?

The release date announcement was accompanied by the film’s full cast, albeit without any characters attached. If speculation is to be believed, then a stacked cast would make sense for Marika’s many descendants, many of whom can be encountered in the game amid the throes of corruption. We’ll likely get to meet them before that on-screen, which could mean that we’re at least partly in store for the same kind of political plotting that made Game of Thrones such a beloved phenomenon. As of right now, Elden Ring is confirmed to star:

  • Kit Connor
  • Ben Whishaw
  • Cailee Spaeny
  • Tom Burke
  • Havana Rose Liu
  • Sonoya Mizuno
  • Jonathan Pryce
  • Ruby Cruz
  • Nick Offerman
  • John Hodgkinson
  • Jefferson Hall
  • Emma Laird
  • Peter Serafinowicz

Regardless of when the movie takes place, it’s all but certain that fans can expect to see key players like the heroic Godwyn the Golden, the tragically cursed Malenia, and the hulking warrior Radahn. One of the film’s most exciting aspects is the potential to see bosses and NPCs given a new dimension and explored as fully rounded characters by a cast of frequent Garland collaborators. It’s still hard to say with certainty what we’ll see when Elden Ring finally lands in theaters two years from now, but it does seem like it’ll be an adaptation with the potential to add even more depth and complexity to a gaming experience already filled with it.

Elden Ring hits theaters on March 3, 2028.

]]><![CDATA[15 Years Later, A Polarizing Dystopian Franchise Is Getting Retconned In A Major Way]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/divergent-franchise-book-sequels-retconhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/divergent-franchise-book-sequels-retconMon, 20 Apr 2026 19:02:30 GMT
Red Wagon Entertainment/Kobal/Shutterstock

The early 2010s were an absolute gold rush for YA dystopian books. In the wake of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, there were as many dystopian books in 2012 as there were vampire books in 2008. But among the many contenders like The Maze Runner, Matched, and Scythe, only one reached Hunger Games levels of cultural obsession: Divergent, the trilogy of dystopian novels by Veronica Roth.

While this book series sparked a huge fandom and a trilogy of movie adaptations, its third and final novel, Allegiant, made a risky decision that, while bold, completely divided the fanbase and, for many, soured them on the franchise entirely. But now, over a decade later, we’ll learn how that tragic end could have gone down with one single different choice.

The cover for The Sixth Faction, the first of two books exploring an alternate Divergent universe. | HarperCollins

At BookCon 2026, Veronica Roth announced a new duology of books connected to the Divergent universe. However, they’re not what you think. “Not a prequel, not a sequel, not a spinoff, not a different POV but an alternate universe of Divergent where Tris chooses a different faction,” Roth told USA TODAY.“I think the question of ‘who is Tris without Dauntless’ is an interesting one.”

Divergent follows Beatrice “Tris” Prior, a young girl in a futuristic society where everyone is split into factions: Abnegation, the faction of selflessness; Amity, the faction of peace; Candor, the faction of honesty; Dauntless, the faction of bravery; and Erudite, the faction of intelligence. Born into Abnegation, she chooses to join Dauntless, and that choice leads to her sparking a rebellion against society as she knows it. Alongside her love interest Four, her mission goes well until Allegiant, when Tris perishes, with Four narrating the rest of the book.

This new book, entitled The Sixth Faction, will explore what would have happened if Tris didn’t have a chance to choose Dauntless at all. Instead, the synopsis teases a much more immediate issue. “In The Sixth Faction, a tragedy strikes at her Choosing Ceremony and everything changes,” USA TODAY says. “The decision she makes thrusts her into an underground rebellion, where she meets a boy hiding his own secrets. This boy? He’s described only as having a number for a name.” It’s good to know that Tris and Four find each other in every universe, or at the very least, two universes.

Theo James and Shailene Woodley played Four and Tris in the movies Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant. | Murray Close/Red Wagon/Lionsgate/Kobal/Shutterstock

It’s easy to see why Roth chose to revive this universe. Dystopian fiction is having another big moment, with The Hunger Games expanding its universe with two prequel novels (and subsequent movie adaptations), The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Sunrise on the Reaping. Prequel movies won’t really make sense for Divergent, as everything had been relatively peaceful until the events of the books, and sequels and spinoffs are off the table since the reaction to Tris’ passing in Allegiant proved she’s the heart and soul of the story. It may seem convoluted, but a Sliding-Doors-esque alternate universe story is really the best way to expand the universe.

How will this version of Tris differ? What fate will society as a whole face when a Choosing Ceremony is upended like that? Could we see this new story on the big screen with a brand new cast? What once was a series that ended over a decade ago has found new life in a new canon.

The Sixth Faction will be available for purchase on October 6, 2026.

]]><![CDATA[Deadpool Will Have A Sequel — But Not In The Way You Think]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/ryan-reynolds-next-deadpool-moviehttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/ryan-reynolds-next-deadpool-movieMon, 20 Apr 2026 18:39:22 GMT
Marvel Studios

While Deadpool & Wolverine debunked fears that Deadpool’s best years were behind him, the future for Ryan Reynolds’ iconic character hasn’t been straightforward since. There have been rumblings and theories, but there’s no telling when Deadpool will pop up next. Reynolds seemed to tease that his katana-swinging anti-hero would play a role in Marvel’s upcoming Avengers film, Doomsday, and he’s also, according to some insiders, quietly at work on a treatment for a new Deadpool-centric film. Whatever form his next outing takes, however, he’ll be taking a back seat.

Reynolds confirmed as much in an appearance on Today, echoing prior reports in his own words. “I have some stuff kind of written,” the actor revealed, “but I don’t think I am ever going to center [Deadpool] again.”

That instinct aligns with much of what Reynolds has already said about Deadpool. The actor sees his foul-mouthed mercenary as a perpetual “outsider,” and as he explained to The Hollywood Reporter in 2024, folding him into a group like the Avengers or the X-Men would signal “the end of his journey.” His third film brought him close to that end without crossing the line, but with both the Avengers and the X-Men approaching a new era, it might finally be time for Deadpool to pick a side and step out of the spotlight.

Deadpool is “great in a group,” and his next outing could put him with one of X-Men’s most beloved. | Marvel Studios

What may sound bittersweet could actually be the best thing for Deadpool. “He is a supporting character,” Reynolds told Today’s Willie Geist. “He is a guy who is great in a group.”

He’s not wrong, and there’s one particular group that fans are hoping he could end up joining. Though the X-Force tried and failed to come together in Deadpool 2 — all but three members perished in their first mission — it’s a team that’s far too valuable to waste. Positioned as the happy-ish medium between Charles Xavier’s X-Men and Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants, the X-Force is a force for change that typically does whatever it takes (including bending the law) to defend the world. The team is typically led by no-nonsense mutants like Cable or Domino, with members comprised of Xavier’s former students and outcasts like the New Mutants. Deadpool is a frequent face on the line-up, and as Reynolds says, he functions best there as a supporting player.

Getting Deadpool to join the X-Force might be easier said than done, but Marvel is already rebooting the X-Men within its cinematic universe, which makes for the perfect blank slate for mutantkind. We could see the X-Men’s edgier counterpart in the MCU eventually, and it could be the perfect home for a more evolved version of Deadpool. If not, it’d still be interesting to see where the vigilante ends up next — and with whom.

]]><![CDATA[5 Years Later, Apple's Sci-Fi Hit Just Revealed A Secret Character And A Killer Cameo]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/for-all-mankind-avery-explained-danielle-poole-cameohttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/for-all-mankind-avery-explained-danielle-poole-cameoMon, 20 Apr 2026 18:00:24 GMT
Apple TV

Although For All Mankind Season 5 is boldly moving forward with new characters who represent the latest generation of the series, that doesn’t mean the rich legacy of the series is going away. In fact, as Episode 4 puts Alex Baldwin (Sean Kaufman) into a more active role, another previously unreal character makes her debut. And with the help of a very important cameo, this revelation is not only pivotal but also tender and down-to-earth.

Here’s why the debut of For All Mankind’s newest character, Avery Jarrett, as played by Ines Asserson, is such a big deal, and why it reverberates back to the iconic events in the Season 2 finale, five years ago.

Spoilers ahead.

In For All Mankind Season 5, Episode 4, “Open Source,” the situation on Mars gets dicey as Alex learns that Dev (Edi Gathegi) is planning on replacing various miners on Mars with automation. But, back on Earth, a division of the Marines called OPEF — Off-Planet Expeditionary Force — is gearing up to induct new members. And one of those members is Avery, who, when she was a baby, way back in Season 3, wasn’t born with the name Avery Jarrett, but as Avery Stevens. This means she’s the granddaughter of Gordo (Michael Dorman) and Tracy (Sarah Jones), the heroic astronauts who perished in the Season 2 finale, saving the Jamestown Moonbase from a meltdown. It also means her father was Danny Stevens (Casey W. Johnson), who, in Season 3, betrayed Ed (Joel Kinnaman), Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall), and the first humans on Mars, partly because of his depression and addiction issues. So in revealing Avery to the audience, it makes sense that there’s also more than a nod to the past.

Sarah Jones as Tracy Stevens in Season 2. Avery is her granddaughter! | Apple TV

After getting grilled by her superiors about her family background, Avery concludes that someone close to her must have talked about her mixed feelings about her biological father. It’s here that we see that Avery is close with Danielle Poole, a character who has been in For All Mankind since the beginning, who we last saw as the commander of the Happy Valley Mars base in Season 4. But, clearly, at this point, Danielle — who would be in her 60s or 70s by this point — is simply retired, and living a normal life. This is one of those twists of realism in For All Mankind, and similar to the fact that Ellen Waverly (Jodi Balfour) — former astronaut and later President of the United States — doesn’t appear in a major role after Season 3. Some characters simply move on with their lives and become private citizens.

Danielle’s presence in this episode is also a smart counterpoint to the passing of Ed Baldwin in Episode 3. Obviously, Ed and Danielle were partners and friends over the years, but they also had a ton of tension, and in Season 4, Ed was partly responsible for the riot that got Danielle shot.

Starting in Season 1, in the now-famous episode “Hi Bob,” Danielle, Ed, and Gordo, while stranded on the Moon, re-enacted an episode of The Bob Newhart Show in order to keep themselves from going nuts, which, of course, made them all go nuts. The phrase “Hi Bob” later became a kind of inside joke within the show, but also with the fans. Ed and Danielle would often greet each other with a simple “Hi Bob.” Famously, with Season 4, when Ed tries out this greeting, amid a ton of tension between him and Dani, she says, “Don’t you f*cking ‘Hi Bob’ me!” In a reference to this moment, Marshall repeated that line on an Instagram post from the official For All Mankind account, revealing her appearance in Episode 4 of Season 5.

Here’s the thing: It’s a good joke, and a nice callback for hardcore fans of the show. But, crucially, Danielle does not say “Hi Bob” (or “Bye Bob”) in the episode in reference to Ed’s passing. Instead, Avery is surprised to see a photo of Ed on Danielle’s mantle, with a flower placed next to it. Danielle tells Avery that the line between love and hate isn’t so clear, which makes perfect sense considering what she and Ed have gone through.

With both this cameo and the full introduction of Avery into the show’s mythos, For All Mankind proved that although its continuity is an integral part of its story structure, callbacks aren’t inserted just for the sake of it. Yes, we may have gotten some deep-cut Easter eggs in Episode 3, which referenced spaceflight history and secrets from Ed’s past. But, despite that, this show isn’t about fan service, because at this point, it’s very clearly marching straight into a shaky and unknown future.

For All Mankind streams on Apple TV.

]]><![CDATA[7 Years Later, 'Avengers: Doomsday' Is Sneakily Retconning The MCU]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/avengers-endgame-rerelease-new-footage-avengers-doomsdayhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/avengers-endgame-rerelease-new-footage-avengers-doomsdayMon, 20 Apr 2026 16:59:23 GMT
Marvel Studios

It’s no secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has meandered a bit since Avengers: Endgame. The 2019 movie was a culmination of years of planning for the franchise, but afterward, it was difficult to see what the next big thing would be. WandaVision and Spider-Man: Far From Home revealed what the post-Blip world looked like, and it seemed like Loki and Ant-Man: Quantumania hinted at the next big thing: Kang the Conqueror.

But when real-life scandal foiled those plans, Marvel went back to what worked with Avengers: Doomsday, starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Endgame’s the Russo brothers. Now, in an effort to smooth the transition (and tempt fans into a rewatch), Avengers: Endgame is getting pulled off the shelf and tweaked.

With Chris Evans returning as Steve Rogers in Doomsday, this re-release could reveal what really happened to him. | Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Moviestore/Shutterstock

Back in December 2025, Marvel announced that Avengers: Endgame would get a re-release in theaters ahead of the December 2026 release of Avengers: Doomsday. Re-releases aren’t unusual, especially for big franchises, but in the world of the MCU, it’s only really happened with Sony’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, which was re-released with an extended action sequence.

Last week, at CinemaCon 2026, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced that the Endgame re-release will follow this pattern, including brand-new footage. However, we didn’t know what that footage would contain until now. According to Deadline, at the Sands Film Festival in St. Andrews, Scotland, Joe Russo revealed that the new footage won’t just be a deleted scene. “It’s critically important to re-release the movie, and, in fact, we’ll be re-releasing the film with footage that is set in the Doomsday story that we have added to Avengers: Endgame,” he said.

The new footage was announced at CinemaCon, but now we know it’ll tie into Doomsday. | Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

That makes this event more than just a re-release. Now, it’s a retcon, the equivalent of the Star Wars Special Editions that edited Hayden Christensen as ghost Anakin at the end of Return of the Jedi. He wasn’t there initially, but his addition smoothed the transition from the original trilogy to the prequel trilogy.

Of course, it’s easy to see the practical reason for this choice. Especially in the era of streaming, most Marvel fans could watch Endgame whenever they wanted from the comfort of their homes. But the promise of new footage of any kind, especially the kind that changes canon we thought was settled for seven years, is enough to bring fans back to theaters. It’s not the first time Marvel has bet big on fans buying a movie ticket just for a glimpse of Doomsday: there were an unprecedented four different teasers released alongside Avatar: Fire and Ash on a weekly basis.

Endgame was a massive success, currently the top-grossing movie of all time, a lead that will only grow with a re-release. But how will meddling from the future affect the story, and will this become the “accepted” version of Endgame in the future? That will only be determined by the fan reaction.

Avengers: Doomsday premieres in theaters on December 18, 2026.

]]><![CDATA[Peacock Just Quietly Added One Of The Best Gothic Horror Movies Of The Decade]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/horror-movies-april-2026-peacock-nosferatuhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/horror-movies-april-2026-peacock-nosferatuMon, 20 Apr 2026 12:30:25 GMT
Andrew Toth/WireImage/Getty Images

This week at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, an audience of theater owners and journalists was presented with a teaser for Robert Eggers’ latest, Werewulf. “In 13th-century England, a mysterious creature stalks a foggy countryside as local folklore becomes a terrifying reality for the villagers,” states the film’s logline, and while the teaser has yet to be released online, Variety was there and described the footage:

“The trailer echoed Eggers’ past movies, with plenty of black-and-white shots of mauled corpses, desecrated graves and frightened townsfolk terrorized by an unseen beast. A nude Taylor-Johnson convulses and transforms into the werewolf, with spit filling his fanged mouth, but his full monstrous look wasn’t shown.”

Werewulf isn’t set for release until Christmas, which leaves many long months suffering under black parasols in the summer heat until goths and the goth at heart can indulge in another of Eggers’ meticulously crafted historical nightmares. But hark! What cold gust of wind comes whistling down the moors? It’s Eggers’ 2024 reimagining of Nosferatu, here to wrap morbid cinephiles in its chilly embrace.

In terms of Gothic romance, Eggers’ Nosferatu is one of the darkest films to come out of Hollywood in recent memory, explicitly linking death and desire for what’s essentially a $50 million feature-length dramatization of the French phrase la petite mort. Of course, it also draws from F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent masterpiece Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, which itself was inspired by Bram Stoker’s iconic 1897 vampire novel Dracula. (Although Stoker’s widow, who sued Murnau for copyright infringement and won, argued that it was a little more than that.)

Eggers’ version of these stories takes inspiration from all of them, setting Nosferatu in Germany circa 1838 and embellishing it with painstakingly crafted miniatures and looming shadows straight out of an expressionistic silent film. The basic structure of the film, about newlyweds Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) and Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) and the monster who comes between them after Thomas is sent to Transylvania on a business trip, is borrowed from Stoker’s novel, but the ultimate arc of this tale of dark devotion is wholly original.

Nosferatu’s tale of dark devotion put a delicious new spin on the story. | Focus Features

As always with Eggers’ films, the production design, costumes, and cinematography are all slavishly faithful to the era, with Eggers using special lenses to capture the film’s dark, brooding figures and sickly maidens by firelight and candlelight. The scene where Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlock first enters the picture is absolutely breathtaking, full of menace and tension; Orlock himself is a terrifying figure, a wheezing, dusty walking corpse whose deep voice and fur robes conceal a startlingly skeletal frame.

And yet, Skarsgård’s Orlock still inspired his share of thirst traps and fan edits, and not just because internet fandom inspires people to become their most unhinged selves. Although he’s much less suave, Count Orlock is much like his more famous counterpart, Count Dracula, in that he represents inevitable, all-consuming passion, the kind of love that transcends death itself. That’s one interpretation, anyway. Nosferatu can also be read as a metaphor for depression and mental illness in general; cheerless companions who follow us from childhood all the way to the grave. And there’s something strangely comforting about seeing that kind of darkness represented in a film, even one as morbid as this one. At least in the shadows, we’re not alone.

Nosferatu is now streaming on Peacock.

]]><![CDATA[MGM+ Just Quietly Released A Perplexing New Season Of Its Most Surprising Hit Sci-Fi Series]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/from-season-4-mgm-plus-harold-perrineau-interviewhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/from-season-4-mgm-plus-harold-perrineau-interviewSun, 19 Apr 2026 22:00:25 GMT

After the success of Lost, ABC’s all-time great mystery sci-fi series, there was a wave of similar shows that tried to replicate the same “mystery box” formula. In fact, we’re still riding that wave with shows like Silo and Yellowjackets. However, for years now, one series has secretly been the best of Lost’s many children: MGM+’s From.

Like Lost, the folk horror series had a trapped, claustrophobic setting, and like Lost, there’s an ongoing mystery that’s never fully revealed itself. But most importantly, it starred a Lost alum: Harold Perrineau, who played construction manager Michael in the ABC series and town leader Boyd in From. The series follows a still-unnamed Town where wayward travelers get lost but can never leave. What’s more, there are monsters that roam at night, forcing the community to work together to stay alive, and, perhaps, finally get home.

“It is a horror show in title, but a character study in reality,” Perrineau tells Inverse. “It’s about a group of people who are in a desperate situation where they're trapped in a tiny little town, and they are being hunted.”

From Season 3 was a masterclass in a mystery/horror finale, unveiling a key supernatural element while raising the stakes and changing the status quo. But Season 4 of this series often gets caught spinning its wheels in a confusing amalgam of angst, dread, and misery. Even Boyd, the beating heart of the show, is affected by this. “Boyd has to pick it up and keep going forward. How do you do that? And that's the journey he's on right now. Smashed brain, peace, body, spirit, but he has to go on,” Perrineau says. “He doesn't really have a choice. His son is here. People he loves are here, and he has to.”

There are a few bright sparks, though. For a series about a town that you can enter and never leave, new arrivals are a big deal, and this season brings in Sophia (Julia Doyle) a preacher’s daughter whose naïveté is a great way for new viewers.

“This season, the hunter has turned the key just a little and heat up just a little bit more,” Perrineau says. “They are maybe the most evil hunter you have ever experienced. And that is the town itself.”

There are plenty of scares in From Season 4. | MGM+

He’s right: the villain in Season 4 takes on a new form, and it’s one of the most chilling antagonists of TV this year. However, this antagonist is nothing compared to the atmosphere of paranoia that seeps into every frame of From. “Trust is a thing that comes up a lot, and there is none,” Perrineau says. “There's no place to land that's safe or comfortable or trusting because even if you think you're somewhere that you feel safe, you have to ask yourself, ‘Am I thinking correctly?’ Because you just can't trust your own mind.”

Perrineau says that his approach to Boyd came down to one question: “Why keep going?” This isn’t a permanent problem. With shows with big, looming conflicts, the ultimate solution is to call it and bring on the endgame. With From renewed for a fifth and final season, it looks like it will finally make its way in that direction.

From is now streaming on MGM+.

]]><![CDATA[55 Weird Things You Didn’t Know About That Make Your Home Nicer in Under 5 Minutes]]>https://www.inverse.com/shopping/weird-things-you-didnt-know-about-that-make-your-home-nicer-in-under-5-minshttps://www.inverse.com/shopping/weird-things-you-didnt-know-about-that-make-your-home-nicer-in-under-5-minsSun, 19 Apr 2026 18:15:42 GMT

Not every home improvement needs to be a full-blown project. Think of all the tiny annoyances that get stuck in your craw — crooked picture frames, scuffs on wood, overcrowded cabinets… now’s the time to deal with them. Amazon is chock full of weird, wonderful products designed to fix exactly those problems. And the best part? None of them requires a toolbox, a free weekend, or a design degree. In fact, most take less than five minutes to put into action. Once you try them, you’ll wonder why you didn’t grab them sooner.

A wall-mounted toilet brush that eliminates bulky floor holders

Everyone needs a toilet brush, but it doesn’t have to be a focal point in your bathroom. This brush is designed to hang discreetly on the wall rather than sit on the floor. By not taking up any floor space, it keeps things looking a little less cluttered. The brush’s angled handle helps the bristles reach under the toilet rim, while the holder doesn’t damage the wall — it goes up with included adhesive.

A roll-out cedar walkway that creates an instant garden path

This roll-out walkway creates an instant path over muddy, rocky, or uneven ground. Cedar slats naturally resist cracking, splitting, and weathering, while steel wire ropes and rubber spacers keep it flexible underfoot. A textured surface adds nonslip grip, and included ground stakes anchor it securely in place. Just unroll, and it’s ready to go.

Wood filler that refreshes surfaces without shrinking or cracking

This wood putty belongs in every garage or workshop, especially for DIY enthusiasts. The two-part formula fills holes and cracks, repairs breakage, and can substitute for entire missing chunks of wood. Mix equal parts by hand, shape as needed, and walk away. In 24 hours, it dries to a rock-solid finish you can paint, sand, drill, or stain. The kit includes putty, gloves, a spatula, and two sanding blocks.

Peel & stick trim that adds instant detail to plain walls

This peel-and-stick trim is the epitome of bougie on a budget. Just cut the length you need, peel the backing, and press it into place. Suddenly, your walls look like they’re from a historic home. You can also use it to trim mirrors, doors, windows, and floors. Durable PVC construction helps maintain its shape and color without fading or deforming, and the adhesive backing holds securely for a polished finish.

Smart plugs that let you manage home devices from anywhere

Forget getting up to turn off the lamp — these smart plugs slip into any outlet and let you control devices through your phone or via voice command. Tell Alexa to cut the fan, set the coffee maker to start before your alarm, or schedule the Christmas lights to shut off at midnight. Each provides a more stable Wi-Fi connection than older models, and multiple users can connect to the same plug for a smoother-running home.

Solar garden lights that cast decorative patterns at night

These solar lights turn your outdoor space into something seriously magical. Keep them in a sunny spot during the day to charge, and by night, they’ll cast intricate patterns on the ground. Place them in gardens, along walkways, near flower pots, or around patios — wherever eyes can admire their warm glow. There are six lights per set, and they’re rated IP55 to withstand rain, wind, and typical outdoor conditions.

A wooden doorbell cover that hides bulky chime boxes

This carved wooden doorbell cover gives ordinary chime boxes an effortless makeover. It’s made of sturdy material and features an intricate carved pattern, adding instant character to your walls. Simply pop it on over your existing box and secure it using the included mounting hardware. It’s an unexpected touch that will make people look twice. One fan raved, “The doorbell cover is absolutely stunning. It replaced a 60's style one with an updated modern look.”

A couch cushion gripper that stops constant sliding

If you’re constantly fussing with sliding couch cushions, this gripper pad is a quick, effective fix. It’s available pre-cut in six size options, and installation requires no tools — simply lay down a pad and let its double-sided grip keep everything in place. It also works under rugs or patio furniture, making it a versatile home upgrade that works indoors and out.

Wood-grain contact paper that mimics butcher blocks

This wood-grain contact paper is one of the fastest ways to fake a refresh. Just peel, stick, and smooth it out for surfaces that look like warm butcher-block wood. Use it on desks, cabinets, shelves, and more. The thick vinyl material is waterproof and oil resistant, and a printed grid on the backing paper helps you measure and cut straight pieces for accurate installation.

A shower mirror that stays clear in steamy bathrooms

If you shave or wash your face in the shower, this fog-resistant mirror is a fantastic little upgrade you’ll wish you had sooner. It’s made from shatter-resistant acrylic, offering a safer alternative to glass, and it stays clear even when the bathroom is full of steam. A small built-in hook keeps your razor within easy reach, and the whole setup installs with a suction cup mount in seconds.

Cordless gallery lights that highlight artwork without wiring

This pair of gallery lights gives your framed artwork and photos the spotlight they deserve. Each is wireless, so you don’t need to deal with outlets, and an included remote lets you set the mood you want. Choose from five brightness levels, three color temperatures, and multiple timer settings. Setup is quick, and a magnetic mount makes it easy to remove the lights for recharging. Your walls will instantly feel like they’ve been styled by a professional curator.

Compression bags that shrink bulky bedding for easy storage

The weather is changing, the linen closet is tight on space, and your out-of-season bedding has nowhere to go — that’s where these compression bags come in. Just pack one with your bedding or clothes, zip it, and compress it to reduce bulk. The large interior can hold up to five queen-size comforters. The clear window lets you see what’s inside without digging through everything, and the sturdy handles make it easy to slide in and out of closets or under the bed.

A door closer that automatically shuts the door behind you

When privacy is paramount, this spring door closer is a must-have. Once installed, it gently pulls the door shut every time, reducing noise, keeping pets from sneaking out, and adding peace of mind to your day. The compact design mounts directly to the door and frame, and the tension is adjustable for a perfect fit. One Amazon shopper raved, “[It] gently closes even my heavy patio door silently. Will save me hundreds on my HVAC bill! Took 5 minutes to install.”

A suction-mounted cabinet that adds storage to unused toilet space

This compact cabinet turns unused space above your toilet into an organized hub for bathroom essentials. It sits right on top of the tank, instantly creating extra storage without shelves or drilling into walls. The removable top tray keeps everyday items within reach, while a generous hidden compartment handles the extras — toilet paper, wipes, feminine products, and more. Included suction cups keep it securely in place.

An adjustable curtain rod with elegant bird finials

Curtains aren't the only way to dress up your windows — this decorative rod adds a charming finishing touch with minimal effort. Made from metal with a black finish, it extends from 18 to 45 inches to fit a wide range of window sizes. It also holds up to 30 pounds, making it suitable for heavier drapes. The real highlight is its bird-shaped finials, available in four colors to complement any interior style.

Picture hangers that grip drywall without studs

If hanging a picture feels like work, try swapping nails and anchors for these brilliant wall hooks. Just push a hardened steel claw into drywall or plaster, and it locks in place. When you want to move things around later, it pops out easily with a screwdriver, leaving only a tiny hole behind. There are 20 pieces per set, and each holds up to 40 pounds, making them suitable for displaying artwork, mirrors, and other wall decor.

Silicone bumper pads that protect surfaces from scratches

These tiny silicone bumper pads put the kibosh on slamming cabinet doors, drawers, and lids. Just stick one where surfaces meet and the impact softens instantly, turning sharp bangs into quiet, cushioned closes. Nearly invisible once installed, they also protect cabinets, furniture, and walls from everyday scuffs and wear. Each set includes 256 bumpers — enough to cover practically every surface in your home.

Under-cabinet lights that run up to 45 days on a single charge

These wireless LED lights flip on the moment you walk by — and dim down low enough to keep the peace while everyone else is sleeping. Stick them up with the included magnets or adhesive plates, and charge them via USB-C for up to 45 days of power on a full battery. Choose from five brightness levels and two light modes: motion-sensor or always-on. It’s an easy way to add extra light without the hassle of hardwired fixtures.

A stainless steel broom organizer that holds up to 30 pounds

This sleek stainless steel wall mount turns a chaotic pile of cleaning tools into a clean, organized collection in minutes. It features five slots and four hooks — enough for a mop, broom, rake, dustpan, and whatever else has been living in a random corner or closet. Simply mount it to the wall with the included adhesive, or screw it in for a more permanent, secure setup.

A solar address sign that lights your house number automatically

This solar address sign makes your home impossible to miss. Crisp black numbers on a clean white plaque pop during the day, then glow after dark — no switch needed. Choose warm or cool white, stake it in place, and let the sun handle the rest. A full charge delivers up to two days of runtime.

Fabric shoe organizers that hold up to 24 pairs each

A new season calls for a shoe refresh, and these organizers keep the pairs you're not wearing from piling up by the door. Made from reinforced Oxford fabric with adjustable dividers, they fit everything from flip-flops to knee-high boots. A clear PVC lid keeps contents visible, a two-way zipper locks out dust, and riveted handles make them easy to carry. The set includes two organizers, each holding up to 24 pairs — enough for the whole family, or just one serious shoe collector.

Solar stair lights that sense motion up to 26 feet away

Add these solar lights to steps, fences, and other outdoor spots for convenient illumination without hardwiring. Choose from three modes: motion activation, a gentle all-night glow, or a combination of both. A built-in rechargeable battery gets its juice from the sun, and an IP65 waterproof rating helps them withstand wet conditions. There are six lights per set, and anchors are included for secure wall-mount installation.

Bamboo drawer dividers that adjust with spring tension

These adjustable dividers are a quick fix for jumbled drawers. Just place them inside and extend them for a snug fit. A built-in spring mechanism keeps them firmly in place without tools, making installation and repositioning simple. Made from natural bamboo, they also add a clean, polished look to everyday storage. There are four dividers per set, and they boast more than 9,000 five-star ratings on Amazon.

A UV toothbrush holder that sanitizes bristles every 3 hours

This toothbrush sanitizer is an easy way to keep your brush cleaner between uses. Automatic UV cleaning and ventilation cycles run every three hours, so it's always fresh when you reach for it. Wave the lid to open, check the LED display for battery and cycle status, and charge it just once a month. Compatible with sonic, electric, and manual brushes, the dual-slot compartment lets you sanitize two at a time.

A macrame holder that keeps dish towels off the floor

If your dish towels keep ending up on the kitchen floor, this decorative holder can help. It’s made from soft, handwoven cotton yarn with smooth beechwood rings at each end. Loop it securely over standard door handles for instant use, no hardware or installation required. One happy shopper wrote, “It securely holds my decorative dishtowel on my oven door that was previously being knocked off on a regular basis. This is a brilliant idea.”

A magnetic screen door that seals automatically behind you

This magnetic screen door lets you enjoy fresh air without letting bugs sneak in (or pets sneak out). Heavy-duty mesh keeps airflow moving, while a full-length magnetic closure strip runs the entire length of the screen for a secure, gap-free seal. It comes in multiple sizes to fit standard doorframes and installs in minutes with Velcro tape, no tools required.

Pretty drawer liners that are softly scented with lavender

These liners add a pleasant touch to everyday storage, releasing a gentle lavender scent with every drawer pull. They’re made from quality paper stock with a floral print, and they can be cut to size to fit different furniture pieces. There are 10 sheets in a set, so you can divvy them up between dresser drawers, shelves, closets, and storage boxes for a fancy fragrance wherever you need it.

A tiered bamboo shelf that utilizes neglected corner space

This angled shelf turns wasted corner space into smart, stackable storage. Made from warm bamboo, it features three tiers to stack dishes, bowls, pantry staples, and more. Assembly is quick and tool-free, and the shelf has five-star ratings from more than 7,000 Amazon shoppers. One raved, “Exactly what I was looking for! Very sturdy and easy to put together. Perfect for a dead corner that I had by the fridge.”

A stone bath mat that absorbs water instantly

This folding stone bath mat is quickly becoming a popular alternative to fabric styles. Made from diatomaceous earth, it provides a solid surface that instantly absorbs moisture and speeds up evaporation. A textured top increases friction to reduce slipping, while a nonslip backing keeps it in place. No more musty odors, mold, or machine-washing a soggy mat.

A bamboo bath caddy that stretches to fit any tub

If you have time for a bath, make it an event by adding this caddy to your ritual. Made from sustainable bamboo, it stretches to fit your tub and provides ample space for all your self-care essentials. It includes a wine glass holder, a tablet and book rest, and an open tray for items like candles. A lacquer coating protects against water damage, while nonslip grips keep it stable while you soak.

Magnetic spice racks that mount to any metal surface

Slap these spice racks onto the side of your fridge for instant storage that clears your counter or pantry. Each is made from rustproof metal, holds up to 8 pounds, and sticks to any smooth metal surface, so they work just as well on a washing machine or anywhere else you need a shelf without the drilling. Each set includes four racks for effortless setup across multiple spaces.

A stackable storage box that keeps medicine organized

This three-layer organizer provides a safe, convenient place to store medication, vitamins, and first-aid supplies — and frees up your bathroom medicine cabinet. It features nine compartments across three detachable trays, side buckles to shut each tier, and a top handle for portability. You can also use it for arts and craft supplies, sewing notions, and more.

A suction cup bath mat with drainage holes for free-flowing water

This clear, oversized bath mat helps provide a safe, stable surface along with a clean, low-profile look. Hundreds of suction cups line the length of your tub, holding it firmly in place, while drainage holes let water flow straight through to the drain. The pebbled hexagon surface is soft underfoot, the whole thing is machine washable, and it air dries easily — just hang it over the side of the tub between showers to speed up evaporation.

A 4-compartment organizer that stores zip bags of every size

This organizer takes a junk drawer full of food storage bags and transforms everything into a tidy setup. It features four compartments accommodating gallon, quart, sandwich, and snack-size zip bags, each with a wide slot for easy dispensing. The top lid is removable for easy restocking, and you can store it two ways: lay it flat in a drawer, or stand it up vertically in cabinets and pantries.

Motion-activated toilet lights that glow in 16 colors

These motion-sensor lights make nighttime bathroom trips, well, trippy. Clip one onto any toilet bowl, and it glows automatically when motion is detected. Choose from 16 colors (or cycle through them all in carousel mode) and five brightness settings. There are two per set, so you can light up multiple bathrooms, and they run on three AA batteries for long-lasting cordless operation.

Rubber cord organizers that keep appliances looking tidy

Cords come with every countertop appliance, but these rubber wraps keep them from becoming a tangled mess. They stick directly onto mixers, coffee makers, and other kitchen gadgets with nano tape, keeping cords neatly wrapped when not in use. A six-hour cure time provides a secure hold that still peels off cleanly when needed.

A retractable clothesline that holds up to 40 pounds

This retractable clothesline disappears when you don't need it, but actually holds its shape when you do. The stainless steel cable pulls out to over 15 feet and handles up to 40 pounds of laundry, from delicates to bedding. When things start to sag under a heavy load, a simple twist of the tightening device pulls it taut again. Choose from two installation methods: adhesive glue mount for smooth surfaces (tile, marble, glass), or drill mount for permanent installation.

A faucet-mounted sponge holder that drains itself dry

These silicone caddies buckle directly onto your faucet neck, putting an end to soggy cleaning supplies and crowded counters. Each one is roomy enough to hold your sponge, brush, soap, and cleaning cloth, and it features drainage holes at the bottom to speed up drying. It has well over 2,000 five-star Amazon ratings, and there are two in a pack for added value.

A thermal label printer that runs without ink or toner

Connect this rechargeable label maker to your phone in under a minute, pick from 550 templates and 95 fonts, and start printing labels that make you look like a master of organization. It uses thermal printing technology, so no ink or toner is required, and the labels are waterproof for lasting results. It’s also half the size of traditional label makers, making it a compact and convenient choice for home, office, and school projects.

A glass honey dispenser that releases from the bottom for less mess

This bottom-flow honey dispenser is a brilliant way to avoid sticky jars, caps, and counters. Made from glass, it holds 8 ounces and releases liquid with a squeeze of the lever. You can also use it for syrups, sauces, oils, and other condiments. One shopper summed it up nicely, writing, “Overall, this is a luxurious and beautiful jar. Moreover, the quality and the price are good.”

A shower footrest that attaches to the wall with a suction cup

This handy footrest takes the balancing act out of shaving in the shower. A vacuum pump suction cup locks it firmly to smooth tile or marble at whatever height works for you, while a built-in warning indicator tells you if suction needs adjusting. It supports up to 220 pounds, and its foldable pedal design saves space when not in use.

A steel organizer that mounts over any cabinet door

This convenient rack give random kitchen supplies and cookware a proper home. Made from sturdy stainless steel with a silver finish, it hangs over cabinet doors or mounts to flat surfaces to hold bakeware, cookie sheets, pan lids, and more. Foam padding on the hooks protects your cabinet's finish.

A closet divider system that keeps your accessories upright & protected

This adjustable acrylic organizer turns a mountain of handbags into a boutique-worthy display in minutes. Each set includes two bases and eight dividers with rounded, decorative edges. Simply space each section to fit your bag, then snap the dividers into place. Purses stand upright, stay protected, and are easy to grab. They work just as well for books, files, and anything else that needs sorting.

A cutting board with a built-in collapsible colander

This clever cutting board lets you wash, drain, and chop without having to move anything to the sink and back. A collapsible colander snaps onto the board, letting you rinse and drain right where you're working, then folds flat and tucks away when you're done. Nonslip rubber corners keep the board in place while you're slicing and dicing, and the whole setup goes straight into the dishwasher when you're finished.

Under-shelf mug holders that slide onto any flat cabinet edge

These iron mug hooks are a damage-free storage solution that uses your existing cabinet shelves to create extra space. They slide right onto the edge of any flat shelf, lock in place with adhesive and screws, and hang your drinkware neatly underneath. There are three in a set, and you can also use them in entryways and on closet shelves to store everything from keys to accessories.

Soft carpet treads that add warmth to your staircase

These carpeted stair treads sit directly on any smooth stair surface, creating instant warmth and added safety with every step. Just peel away the backing and the sticky bottoms will hold them in place. They withstand machine washing, vacuuming, and spot cleaning without fading or fraying, and their traditional pattern gives plain staircases an impressive glow-up.

A vertical organizer that neatly stacks tumbler lids

If you own multiple tumblers and you’re familiar with the headache of storing lids, this organizer deserves a space in your cabinet. Slide each lid onto the wire post for vertical storage that reduces clutter. It features a non-scratch design and is compatible with lids from Stanley, Yeti, Hydro Flask, and other standard tumbler brands.

Solar deck lights that charge in just 4 hours

These compact solar lights are a simple, low-profile addition to outdoor spaces, providing up to 10 hours of glow per charge. Screw them onto any deck, fence, or stair riser, let them soak up four to five hours of sun, and they’ll handle the rest. A dusk-to-dawn sensor turns them on at sunset and off at sunrise, while sturdy plastic housing helps them withstand rain, wind, and light snow. There are 16 lights per set, which is plenty for creating a welcoming, well-lit area.

A stone faucet mat that absorbs splashes & dries fast between uses

Keep your sink setup looking polished with this slim diatomite tray. Made of two connecting pieces, it wraps around your faucet to instantly soak up splashes and drips, no rags required. The flat surface is sturdy enough to serve as storage for soap, sponges, and other essentials, while the curved design adds a modern, sculptural look to your kitchen or bathroom. “My sink looks more elegant with this stone mat,” wrote one fan. “It absorbs water quickly without any spills, and it definitely works very well.”

Smart bulbs you can operate from your phone & that sync color to music

These smart bulbs are total magic, allowing you to create any atmosphere in any space from the convenience of your phone. Set one to warm white for a quiet evening, blast through 16 million colors while entertaining, or let it sync to your playlist for a fun light show. There are four in a box, and they work with Alexa, Google, and the AiDot app for easy operation. One satisfied shopper wrote, “I would highly recommend this product for anyone that wants an easy, stress free way to light up your home.”

L-shaped corner shower shelves that hold up to 40 pounds

These L-shaped stainless steel caddies keep shower essentials organized in style. They bond to any smooth corner wall with heavy-duty adhesive and stay rust-free and shiny for years. Twelve hooks handle razors, loofahs, and brushes, while a separate soap dish keeps your bar dry and out of the way. The three-piece set holds up to 40 pounds, more than enough for even the most stocked shower shelf.

An outlet that adds a 10-pound charging shelf to your cover plate

This clever organizer replaces your existing outlet plate with a convenient mini charging station. Made from sturdy white plastic, it features a small shelf that can hold up to 10 pounds. A back opening allows you to access your cords, and built-in toothbrush slots make it a natural fit for the bathroom. However, it works just as well in the kitchen, bedroom, or anywhere else counter space is at a premium.

Adhesive pot lid holders that stick to any wall or cabinet door

If you’re tired of pot and saucepan lids taking up your cabinets, this three-pack of adhesive holders is a fantastic solution. Stick one to the inside of a cabinet door, a kitchen wall, or any other flat surface, and it's ready to use in just one minute. Each holds a lid up to 13 inches, giving you one less clunky thing to find a home for.

A stainless steel towel holder that mounts under your cabinet in seconds

This sleek stainless steel paper towel holder mounts cleanly under any cabinet, saving valuable counter space. Peel and stick for a no-drill install, or screw it in for a more permanent placement. Either way, it stays put, keeps your roll within easy reach, and looks sharp. Rust-proof metal keeps its shine, and the holder works for plastic wrap and hand towels, too.

An olive oil dispenser that pours cleanly every time

Preserve the quality of your olive oil with this fancy decanter. The green glass bottle blocks sunlight, which degrades flavor, and the stainless steel spout delivers a controlled stream without drips. A screw cap with an inner cork creates an airtight seal, and a funnel is included for clean refills. It’s an elegant way to store and pour oils, vinegars, and dressings.

]]><![CDATA[30 Years Ago, A Cult-Classic TV Series Tried, And Failed, To Break Into Hollywood]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/mystery-science-theater-3000-the-movie-30-year-anniversaryhttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/mystery-science-theater-3000-the-movie-30-year-anniversarySun, 19 Apr 2026 12:30:24 GMT
Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

There was a time when all screens were not created equal. By 1996, Mystery Science Theater 3000 had become a beloved mainstay of late-night cable with a devoted cult following. Its seventh season (eighth, if you count the KTMA episodes) had just aired on Comedy Central. But in the pre-streaming era, TV didn’t count — at least, not in the way movies did.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 began its life on public access in Minnesota, and was about as far from Hollywood as a production could be while still airing on a Time Warner TV network. For the uninitiated, MST3K was the original movie-riffing show, taking a group of smart-aleck puppets and pairing them with an everyman host — creator Joel Hodgson for the first five seasons, followed by Mike Nelson, Jonah Ray, and current host Emily Marsh — who’s held captive on a spacecraft called the “Satellite of Love” and forced to watch cheesy B-movies as part of a mind-control experiment conducted by the show’s coast of mad scientists. It’s where Manos: The Hands of Fate was first introduced to connoisseurs of trash, along with hundreds of other artifacts.

Both the show and the movies it riffed on were made outside the mainstream, and this underdog attitude was very much present in the show’s creative team. Discussions about turning the show into a big-screen experience were present in the writers’ room basically from the moment that it became clear, as writer and performer Kevin Murphy put in in 2021, that Mystery Science Theater 3000 “was going to be around for a little while,” but not everyone wanted to make a bid for the mainstream: In that same oral history, Hodgson says that, “the reason I left the show was because of the feature. There were creative differences.”

Still, director Jim Mallon was adamant that MST3K would work on the big screen, because “the more people that are in the room watching Mystery Science with you, the more fun it is.” References, some of them quite obscure, were (and are) a big part of the show’s humor: From hyper-local Midwest in-jokes to nods to high-art figures like Jacques Tati and Phillip Glass, Mystery Science Theater 3000 refused to talk down to its audience or dilute its identity in an attempt to become more universal. That is, until Universal Pictures got involved.

Although Hodgson had taken meetings with Paramount before leaving the show in 1993, ultimately Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie landed at Universal, which steered the team away from an early idea that would blow the interstitial segments with Mike and the ‘bots into a feature-length narrative and into what was basically an episode of the show blown up for cinema screens. (Ironically, at only 78 minutes, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie is shorter than an average episode of the show.)

The studio also wanted the MST3K crew to riff on something that was already in the studio’s catalog; eventually, they landed on This Island Earth, a 1955 sci-fi movie starring Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason, and Faith Domergue that, unlike most MST3K fare, was actually well-received by critics upon its initial release. In retrospect, however, its flying saucers and glowing green rays were just goofy enough to get the movie-riffing treatment.

Mike, Tom Serve, Crow, and Gypsy may have never become household names, but Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie was still an important part in deciding the franchise’s legacy. | Best Brains/Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock

Curiously, only about 55 minutes of this 86-minute film actually made it into Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. The riffs were rather underwhelming as well, cut down by studio executives who were concerned about alienating audiences who were less educated in pop-culture ephemera than your average MST3K fan. A reference to Parliament-Funkadelic bassist Bootsy Collins was excised, for example, as were multiple host segments and the original ending from the film’s script. “We were not used to justifying or having to explain jokes,” writer and co-star Mary Jo Pehl said in 2021. I think that was really frustrating for us because we have the sensibility that if you got it, great. If you didn’t get it, you’ll get the next joke. I don’t think we were used to it being so under a microscope.”

And so, while fans did turn out for opening weekend, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie failed to launch MST3K into the mainstream. It’s wasn’t strictly for the fans, but it wasn’t strictly for newbies, either. Universal also did little to promote the movie, choosing instead to put all of its promotional efforts for the week into the Pamela Anderson movie Barbed Wire — the kind of movie that the MST3K crew made their careers out of mocking.

All was not lost, however. Although Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie is rarely cited as one of the show’s greatest episodes — and that’s really what it is, an episode of the show — it still brought a new generation of fans to the series. One of them was future host Jonah Ray, who said in 2021 that, “I loved all the shows, but the movie is such a solid memory of mine.” So while Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie didn’t make Mike, Tom Serve, Crow, and Gypsy into household names, it did its part to ensure the show’s longevity, ensuring that VHS tapes of the movie would circulate for decades to come.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie is now streaming on Tubi.

]]><![CDATA[100 Bougie Things for Men on Amazon That Are Actually Bargains]]>https://www.inverse.com/shopping/bougie-things-for-men-on-amazon-that-are-actually-bargainshttps://www.inverse.com/shopping/bougie-things-for-men-on-amazon-that-are-actually-bargainsSat, 18 Apr 2026 22:15:42 GMT

Guys don’t need to miss out on the bougie side of life — even the “dude’s dudes” out there. The vibe here is about bringing a little polish into everyday life. This can take the form of grooming products, home goods, tech accessories, or really any life-enhancing item with some thought behind it. If you are a fellow (or have a fellow) that could use a bougie infusion, there’s something for you here — and they all have impressively low prices.

A large mouse pad that makes Excel a little easier

If you use Microsoft Excel often, then this mouse pad is an office essential. It’s covered in tons of Excel shortcuts that will come in handy for everything from editing to formatting to the basics. There are also some diagrams for desk exercises that will remind you to perform them in the middle of a long day. And thanks to the large size, this works as a desk protector as well.

A mini measuring tool that uses a laser

Despite being only about the size of a credit card, this digital measuring tool utilizes a laser to accurately measure up to 98 feet. It provides a reading within seconds, and the built-in battery is rechargeable via USB-C so you don’t have to mess with single-use batteries.

A versatile prybar that attaches to your keychain

Made from solid stainless steel, this minimalist pry bar is designed for practical uses — scraping labels, prying staples, or turning screws with ease. Compact and versatile, it fits on most key rings, lanyards, or bags, giving you a reliable everyday tool for tasks from opening boxes to light outdoor jobs.

A foam sponge that effortlessly cleans your windshield

Snag this windshield cleaner and keep it stashed in your car for all of the mornings you can barely see out of the front of your car. It’s made of a soft foam and instantly erases fog, mist, and excess water, leaving your windshield super clear. It doesn’t leave any scratches behind and it can be used on any glass surface.

Solar deck lights that elevate your outdoor space

These deck lights are wildly versatile. Add easy illumination by placing them around your deck, on a set of stairs, or along a fence. They come in a pack of 16, so there are plenty to use, and they’re convenient since they’re wireless and run on solar power. They give off a nice bright light, are a breeze to install, and they’re waterproof.

A fancy chef’s knife with a shockingly low price

Good quality kitchen knives can be pricey, but this chef’s knife is a budget-friendly option that promises to work fabulously. An ultra sharp blade made of high-carbon stainless steel allows you to use this for a variety of kitchen purposes, like chopping up produce or slicing meat. It has a nice rosewood handle and an eye-catching hammered blade.

A multitool pen that takes the place of 6 gadgets

Handy to have in your car, at home, and in your toolkit, this multitool pen acts as six tools in one small, convenient package. There’s a bright LED light, screwdriver, bottle opener, self-defense tip, hex wrenche, and more — and of course it also works a ballpoint pen.

Compact night-lights with a futuristic look

These compact night-lights give off a soothing light that doesn’t feel too harsh in the middle of the night. There’s a dusk-to-dawn sensor for automatic on-and-off, while three brightness levels let you customize the glow. This one is red, but it’s available in nine other colors as well.

This stainless steel fire pit that adds atmosphere to any hang

No space (or budget) for a full-size fire pit? No problem. This tabletop fire pit is compact enough to fit anywhere and boasts a sleek shape. Crafted from stainless steel, it’s portable, smokeless, and works with both wood and pellets. You can buy it in one of two sizes.

A car charger that can power up 4 devices at once

Go for a charger that works for both front seat and backseat passengers. This car charger has two USB retractable charging cables that can be pulled out to more than 31 inches long, allowing anyone in back to use their devices while they power up. There are also two ports (USB - and C) where you can plug your own cable, allowing this to charge four devices at once.

A compressed air tool for easy, efficient cleaning

This electric air duster delivers powerful cleaning with its 100,000-RPM motor and three adjustable airflow levels. A built-in battery provides 20 minutes to 40 minutes of continuous use, supported by USB-C fast charging. This makes a reusable, eco-friendlier alternative to canned air, complete with LED lighting for dark areas.

An ultra-sharp meat knife with a wooden handle

Forged from premium high-carbon steel, this meat knife will slice through meats (or really any ingredient for that matter) with absolute ease. The oak wood handle boasts an ergonomic shape for comfortable maneuvering. Use the included sheath for safe storage or carrying.

A lightbulb with an eye-catching fireworks effect

This unique fireworks LED light bulb adds eye-catching flair with its vibrant, 3-D firework effects. Ideal for patios, parties, bedrooms, and more, it fits any standard socket and features energy-efficient LEDs that provide up to 10,000 hours of playful illumination.

This elevated basket for storing toilet paper

Good-looking storage solutions can make your bathroom instantly bougier, and this toilet paper basket fits the bill. It neatly conceals up to nine mega rolls, while the slim design fits right next to the toilet to provide easy access. The bamboo lid gives it an elevated aesthetic.

A handy multitool carabiner with bottle opener, rope cutter, & more

Keep this carabiner multitool on you at all times, whether you’re spending time outdoors hiking and camping or just heading to work. Small enough to fit in your pocket, this acts as eight tools in one — there’s a key loop, bottle opener, hook to hang a lantern or other item, a can opener, rope cutter, and more, and it can be clipped right onto your backpack or anywhere convenient.

A rechargeable wireless vacuum & air duster in 1

This compact vacuum is great for cleaning a car or anywhere else you want a wireless, lightweight option, but since it also doubles as an air blower, it can also blast out crumbs from a keyboard and dust from tight corners. It can run for up to 30 minutes per charge for plenty of cleaning power either way.

Budget-friendly sheets with almost 170,000 stellar ratings

This sheet set has racked up an impressive amount of five-star ratings for what reviewers call a “high-quality feel and “sleek, elegant” aesthetic. Made of soft microfiber, they promise to be breathable and smooth, with a fade-resistant shade that holds up to regular washing. Available in 30 different colors and a variety of sizes, it’s tough to beat the low price point, especially considering the included pillow cases.

An elevated quarter-zip pullover in a soft cotton blend

The ribbed texture and contrast collar on this quarter-zip sweater make it look put-together and interesting — easy to dress up a bit. And since it’s made with a 60% cotton blend, it’s still soft and comfy enough to be loungewear. This has a heavyweight feel to keep you cozy, and the low price point is hard to beat.

  • Available sizes: X-Small — XX-Large
  • Available colors: 5+

A handy tool bag that rolls up for storage

This roll-up tool bag features four spacious compartments plus two detachable pouches with D-loops for added flexibility. Its compact, rollable design makes transport easy while keeping tools organized. Crafted from heavy-duty materials, it withstands tough conditions — ideal for mechanics, garages, workshops, or keeping essentials neatly stored in your truck.

A sleek shower mirror that won’t fog up

Ideal for shaving scruff or applying your skin-care routine, this fogless mirror is so convenient. A specially designed anti-fog coating is meant to keep it crystal clear even when the water is steamy hot. Adhesive strips on the back make it easy to hang on the wall, and once applied, it won’t budge. It also has a hook to hold your razor so it’s always on hand.

A relaxed linen-blend shirt that looks so pricey

This classic button-down shirt, made with cotton and linen, will quickly become a staple in your wardrobe. Versatile and comfortable, it has a relaxed fit that elevates any outfit with effortless cool. It’s lightweight and breathable, is available in 28 different colors, and has a size range of small to 6X.

  • Available sizes: 5-6 — 15
  • Available colors: 10

Closet shelf dividers for creating neat stacks

If clothes are piling up (and falling over) on your closet shelves, you need these dividers. Made from clear acrylic, they hook over the shelves and create 9.2-inch barriers to help keep garments neatly stacked and separated. One reviewer wrote, “These clear shelf dividers are exactly what I needed to keep my closet neat and organized! They are sturdy, easy to install, and stay securely in place on my shelves. The clear design makes them blend seamlessly with any decor, giving my closet a clean and clutter-free look.”

An absorbent mat to keep countertops chic, clean, & dry

Deploy this stylish absorbent mat on your countertops to protect from spills and stains. It’s designed for using under appliances like coffee machines or as a drying mat by the sink — though makes a nice base for serving a potluck, too. It’s made of a smooth and absorbent surface that’s easy to wipe clean, has an antislip bottom, and is available in 17 different colors.

A cocktail smoker kit with a torch & 6 wood chip flavors

Create delicious smoke-infused drinks with this cocktail smoker kit. If you’ve never used one before, shoppers confirm that it’s very easy to use — so get ready to impress guests with your new skill. It includes a hand carved wood chimney, a torch, six whiskey stones, two stainless steel mesh screens, a cleaning brush, a long-handled spoon, and wood chips in six flavors.

A breathable bed pillow that offers maximum support

This best-selling pillow combines a traditional bed pillow with a contoured one for the best of both. It helps cradle your head, maintains the natural curve of your neck, and aligns your spine to wake up feeling refreshed.

Flexible lights to illuminate your grill at night

Nighttime grilling will become a joy once you start using these LED grill lights. A magnetic base allows them to firmly stick onto most grills, while the flexible gooseneck lets you direct the stream of light where you need. These are battery operated, ultra bright, and the small size makes them easy to travel with if needed.

Sleek mini trash cans that fit in your car’s cup holders

Keep your car neat without adding clutter by using these mini trash cans. Small enough to fit in a standard cup holder, these offer enough space for the little pieces of junk that can otherwise leave your car looking messy. They come with more than 30 garbage bags, and the push top makes them easy to open even if you’re at the wheel.

Magnetic measuring spoons that click together for storage

Upgrade your kitchen with practical essentials like these magnetic measuring spoons. Unlike spoons on a ring, they stack together for secure storage that takes up less space in a drawer. Each spoon features two ends — one for liquid and one for dry ingredients — and the set includes a leveler for precision.

Anti-chafe cream with a powdery finish & near-perfect rating

An aluminum-free cream that turns to a fine powder once applied, this lotion deodorant is meant to help protect against sweat and neutralize odors wherever you need. It’s made with nourishing ingredients like coconut, aloe, and tapioca, all of which can help protect and hydrate skin. The powdery finish also helps prevent chafing and itching, and the sandalwood has a lovely scent.

A low-profile outlet extender with pivoting ports

With its six pivoting outlets, you can plug almost anything into this outlet extender without having to worry about blocking the other outlets. It has a low-profile design to fit behind furniture or appliances, and built-in surge protection keeps everything safe.

A classic wooden Mancala board game set

This Mancala game board is crafted from high-quality rubber wood so it’ll look luxurious and stand the test of time. It also includes 80 glass stones in a variety of colors. Unlike classic versions, each grid is designed to hold more stones so you won’t have to worry about them falling out while playing. Since it’s foldable, it’s easy to store and travel with.

Magnetic visor clips that hold your sunglasses

Keep your shades at the ready and help prevent damage with these sunglasses clips. They affix to your car’s visors and feature a magnetic closure that clicks together to keep your frames secure. Highly rated, they come in multiple colors to match your interior.

A vegan leather duffle bag with a convenient shoe compartment

“Do not hesitate to buy this bag. It truly looks as good in person as it does in the photos — it really looks like a much more expensive bag,” wrote one reviewer about this vegan leather duffle bag. Not only is it stylish and durable, it’s practical too. It has a large compartment with pockets, a trolley sleeve so it can attach to the handle of your luggage, and a shoe compartment so you clothes won’t get dirty.

A leveled-up back scratcher with 3 attachments

Get every single itch with this handy back scratcher. With a telescoping head and a handle that extends over 30 inches, you can comfortably use this to reach anywhere on your back. It also comes with three different heads: one is double sided, with one side for aggressive scratching and one for mild, there’s a rake scratcher, and the last is a metal claw. The retractable handle also makes it ideal for travel.

A tissue holder for your car’s visor that’s easy to install

Since it’s designed with slide-on clamps, this leather tissue holder is easy to install on your car’s visor. If you prefer, you can attach it to your car’s door, sunroof, or on the back of a seat. It keeps tissues accessible without taking up a lot of space.

Durable, heavy duty playing cards that can last forever

Once you start using this set of durable playing cards, you’ll never use regular ones again. Made of thick, nonslip PVC and PET, these have a heavy-duty feel and are waterproof to withstand a spill or two. They won’t fly away in the wind, but are still flexible enough to make shuffling easy. The black and gold design also makes them seem more expensive than they are.

The bright LED flashlight that fits in your pocket

Compact yet powerful, this 400-lumen pocket flashlight is ideal for everyday carry. Crafted from aluminum alloy and ABS plastic, it’s lightweight and durable, withstanding drops and daily use. One-touch controls let you switch between main and side lights, while multiple modes include red and blue strobes. There’s a USB-C rechargeable battery, and it’s waterproof with shock resistance.

Freezeable whiskey glasses that won’t water down drinks

Ice cold whiskey is a drink of choice for many. But even the larger ice cubes can melt and water down the drink before you’re done. These freeze glasses are cleverly designed to prevent that. Just place these in the freezer for a few hours. Fill the inner container with your drink of choice and enjoy it super cold, with no extra ice required. A silicone sleeve makes it comfortable to hold.

Brilliant rolling grill baskets for veggies & more

These innovative grill baskets offer loads of convenient features. Slimmer than your average grill basket, each still has close to a 1-liter capacity. Sleek beechwood handles allow you to rotate them 360 degrees so every bit gets cooked, and they’re removable for easy storage. These nest inside each other when empty, too, making them even more convenient.

This slim wallet with a holder for your AirTag

This slim wallet has so many things going for it, starting with the non-bulky profile that fits nicely in your pocket. Made from full-grain leather, it’s also outfitted with a holder for your AirTag, helping you keep tabs on your stuff at all times. You’ll also find slots for cash, cards, and your ID.

An attractive desk pad that elevates your office space

Make your office look clean and sophisticated with this attractive faux leather desk pad. Slim and sleek, it makes an ideal and attractive spot for your keyboard, mouse, laptop, and more. A nonslip bottom keeps it firmly in place, and the smooth surface wipes clean in seconds. It’s available in 30 different colors so you can find what fits your aesthetic.

An electric lunch box for hot meals on the go

This electric lunch box makes it possible to indulge in a hot meal without needing a microwave. It heats the contents in 20 to 30 minutes, and it can be plugged in at a home or office or even in your car’s 12-volt port. It comes with a stainless steel inner container and a plastic container for snacks, along with utensils. The leakproof seal keeps everything contained.

A cork globe with push pins to keep track of all your adventures

Not only will this mini cork globe add a decorative touch to a shelf or table, it’ll also tell your story. It includes push pins in three different styles so you can place them to note all of the places you’ve visited to keep track of your travel adventures. It rotates 360 degrees and includes a stand.

The perfect adjustable phone stand with a tiny price

Enjoy hands-free phone time with this simple yet practical phone stand. It makes it easy to get the perfect angle whether you’re streaming, FaceTiming, or recording video, with easy access to the charging port as well. It also conveniently folds flat to a compact size, so it’s ideal to take along when traveling.

A supremely useful multitool shaped like a yeti

This cheeky little carabiner will come in handy if you’re hiking, camping, boating, or just spending time in nature. It has a keychain to easily hang it off a backpack or your belt loop, and it functions as a ruler, 1.5 inch carabiner, bottle opener, cord cutter, flat-head and Phillips screwdriver, can opener, and more.

A desktop dry erase board with hidden storage compartments

Use this desktop dry erase board to jot down important reminders. It’s less messy and will save your money compared to sticky notes. Since it has a hidden compartment with three sections, it can be used to store paper clips, pens, and other small items to keep your desk free of clutter. As a bonus: it can be used as a keyboard stand to keep your wrists in a more comfortable position.

An LED light strip that gives your TV a theatrical effect

Add a cool vibe to your TV area with this LED light strip. At 16.4 feet long, these should extend around the back of almost any TV, creating a colorful backlight that looks good whether the TV is on or off, and is even said to improve screen contrast. It’s easily controlled by an app or remote control with tons of different colors to choose between.

A cargo net that secures to the ceiling of your car

Packed car? No longer, thanks to this cargo net for your car ceiling. Perfect for road trips and other adventures, it secures to your vehicle’s grip bars to create a double-zip net for anything and everything. Use it to stash blankets, snacks, and lightweight sports gear.

A rechargeable, flameless lighter that’s wind- & waterproof

This compact electric lighter is a must for anyone who spends a lot of time outside, whether you’re hiking, camping, walking, or just hanging out in your backyard. It’s a flameless lighter that works on a rechargeable battery, so there’s no open flame to worry about, making it windproof for breezy conditions. It’s also waterproof, small enough to fit in your pocket, and easy to use, with the ability to stay charged for about two hours of use.

A wood grain pocket knife with a carabiner

It’s easy to keep this knife handy since it’s compact enough to fit in your pocket and designed with a carabiner so it can be attached to your belt loop, keys, or bag. It’s perfect for camping so you can cut rope or slice food or for everyday tasks like opening packages or sharpening a pencil. When it’s closed, the sharp blade is tucked away safely so you won’t cut yourself.

Calvin Klein boxer briefs Amazon shoppers love

Made of premium cotton, these boxer briefs are soft, breathable, and lightweight, with a wide elastic band for comfort and flexibility. These come out to about $10 a pair, but shoppers swear they’re worth the price point. “The material is adequately thick, keeps its color, is comfortable without scratchiness, and does not overly ride up from excess construction or movement,” one shopper wrote, while another added that they “hold up well after multiple washes.”

  • Available sizes: Small — XX-Large
  • Available colors: 15+

Solar garden lights with an eye-catching effect

Add a touch of whimsy to any garden by installing these lights. They’re powered by an attached solar panel that keeps them lit for hours at night — so there’s no need for any complicated wiring during installation. The best part? Their flexible stems allow them to sway in the wind, making the bulbs look like glowing fireflies at a distance.

The memory foam bath mat with a cobblestone look

This cushioned memory foam bath mat is thick and soft so it feels great under your feet, and it’s super absorbent, so it can sop up water before it makes a mess. The cobblestone pattern is not only cool to look at, but also offers some nice pressure on your feet. And it has a nonslip backing so it stays securely in place.

A breathable cooling blanket that helps keep you comfortable

Anyone who tends to run hot at night is sure to appreciate this throw blanket. It’s made from soft, breathable rayon that absorbs your body heat, working to keep you comfortably cool throughout the night. Choose from four colors: gray, blue, white, or dark gray.

A cordless lamp with a bendable filament

Bring mood lighting anywhere with this understated lamp that doesn’t need to be plugged in. The rechargeable lamp has a simple cylinder design and operates on three settings: bright light, low light, and a soothing “breathing” mode. Perhaps the best part: The magnetic filament can be twisted into a variety of shapes for on-demand art.

Shoe stackers that pretty much double your storage

Packed closet space doesn’t mean you can’t store your kicks properly. These shoe slots let you stack each pair, effectively doubling the amount of storage you have available. They platforms have traction to keep your soles in place and since the slots are angle adjustable, you can store a range of shoes, from slippers to low boots.

Grilling planks that infuse smokey flavor into foods

Enhance meals with these grilling planks that are designed to infuse foods like salmon, pork, and veggies with a smokey flavor. You can use them in gas grills, charcoal grills, and ovens. Since you can place foods directly on them to cook, you can also use them for serving which means less dishes to worry about.

Giant wooden dice crafted from sturdy, water-resistant wood

These large dice are perfect for entertaining outdoors. They don’t require a complicated set up or hard-to-follow rules to play. They include a double-sided dry erase board so it’s easy to keep track of scores. Since they include a collapsible bucket, it’s easy to roll and store them. They’re crafted from durable, water-resistant wood so they’re built to last.

A simple box for neatly storing a variety of cords

Avoid a drawer full of jumbled, tangled cords by using this cable storage box. Seven dividers allow you to customize compartments how you need, and it comes with seven cables ties as well, which keep your cords neatly wrapped up. This can sit in a drawer or on your desk with a minimalist look.

An premium leather toiletry bag you can personalize

You can personalize this toiletry bag with your initial and name and choose from a range of fonts and designs to suit your style. It’s crafted from genuine leather and reviewers reported that it’s well-made. It’ll keep your grooming tools, chargers, or any small items organized while traveling or on the go.

This plant propagation station that makes cool decor

Propagate your plant trimmings in style with this gorgeous propagation station. It’s made from a combination of beech wood and heat-resistant borosilicate glass, with a warm yellow LED backlight — so feel free to set it out on a shelf for display or even to use as a night-light. And since no assembly is required, you can start using it right out of the box.

An iconic Carhartt pocket tee with over 98,000 5-star ratings

Not all t-shirts are created equal and this 100% cotton tee is proof. It has garnered thousands of five star ratings and reviews because shoppers are impressed with its fit, quality, and durability. Unlike others, it’s thick enough that it’s not see through yet breathable and it doesn’t have an annoying tag to worry about.

  • Available sizes: Small — 5X-Large
  • Available colors: 20+

A faux leather journal with lined paper & an elastic closure band

Designed with a waterproof faux leather cover, this journal is durable and looks and feels like it should cost way more than it does. It features an engraved tree design on the front, an elastic closure band, an integrated book mark, and lined pages. It lays flat so it’s easy to write in and the acid-free pages are suitable for a variety of inks.

A silicone mold that creates large, totally clear square cubes

This ice cube tray utilizes a special freezing technology that squeezes out air and impurities to make the ice cubes crystal clear. Since they’re larger than typical cubes, they’ll melt slower so they won’t dilute beverages. It makes eight 2-inch square cubes and since it’s crafted from silicone, they cubes pop out easily.

Unconventional, bougie playing cards with black & gold foil designs

Upgrade poker night with these playing cards that are a twist on a traditional deck. They’re black and feature gold foil detailing that makes them stand out. Since they have a smooth finish, they’re easy to handle and shuffle. Plus, they’re crafted from durable cardstock so they’re not flimsy like others.

A mount to keep your phone in perfect view while driving

Keep the screen of your phone on clear display with this car mount. It uses MagSafe technology compatible with iPhones 12, 13, 14, and 15, keeping your phone securely in place for a hands-free experience. This can attach to the dashboard or in the vent clips, is very simple to use, and holds your phone securely as you drive.

Dimmable light strips for luxe under-bed illumination

This under-bed light strip is perfect for creating a relaxing environment and giving you some subtle light at night. You can mount it underneath the bed, then use the small remote to turn it on and off. There’s a timer feature, you can adjust the brightness, and switch up the colors to set a vibe. Best of all, it’s motion activated for late-night trips to the bathroom or kitchen.

Cushioned slippers with more than 105,000 5-star ratings

These cushioned slippers boast more than 100,000 perfect ratings, making them a total Amazon bestseller. They’re made with supportive memory foam, which conforms to your foot — the clog style makes them easy to slip on and off, but the heel collar still keeps feet secure. They also have a sturdy rubber sole so you can wear them out of the house with no problem.

A book filled with stunning images, maps & facts about 63 national parks

This book will make a great conversation starter — leave it on your coffee table for guests to flip through. It features beautiful images of 63 national parks plus maps, facts, and things to do so you can plan your next trip. “The pictures are stunning and each park has several pages of valuable yet varying information ranging from wildlife, best times of year to visit, popular hikes, historical facts, etc,” wrote one reviewer.

Essential oil steamers that make your shower feel like a spa

These shower steamers are a great way to transform your daily shower into a more luxurious experience. They get placed on the floor of the shower, and release their scent and dissolve as hot water and steam hits them. This variety pack comes with eight different scents, like relaxing lavender and invigorating citrus, all of which will make your whole bathroom smell great.

A ceramic-lined insulated mug that keeps drinks hot for hours

Nothing is worse than sipping on your coffee and having it get cold way before the last drop, especially if your not near a microwave. This insulated, double-walled travel mug is designed to help beverages maintain their temperature — reviewers reported that it kept their coffee hot for hours. Since it’s lined with ceramic, you won’t have to worry about a metalic taste. Oh, and it’s dishwasher-safe because who wants to worry about yet another thing to wash?

A car trash can with mesh side pockets for extra storage

An organized vehicle feels more expensive, which is why this car trash can comes in clutch. Not only does it give fast food wrappers and parking garage tickets a dedicated bin with a waterproof lining and easy opening, but it also comes with mesh pockets on the side so you can stash extra snacks, tissues, and more. It comes in 2- and 3-gallon options and a variety of colors.

2-in-1 travel toothbrush holders that can also hold toothpaste

Give your toothbrushes a hygienic place to call home when you’re on the road, thanks to these roomy holders. They have a simple, sleek design and snap together for storage. When separated, they can be used as cups for rinsing or storing your toothbrush on a hotel bathroom counter. Each one even has a detachable handle.

This memory foam wedge pillow for your car

Make commutes significantly better with this memory foam wedge pillow. This ergonomic cushion is designed to help relieve tailbone discomfort while still keeping you in a comfortable position for driving. One reviewer wrote, “Before using this cushion, I often ended up with nagging back pain after long drives, but now I can sit for hours without discomfort. The material feels durable and breathable, so it doesn’t get too hot, even after extended use.”

A budget-friendly printer that connects to your phone

Despite its ultra-small size, this thermal printer can print any image you want instantly... no ink needed. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth and uses an app for printing. Included are 10 rolls of paper. All of this for just about $20? It’s a steal.

A sun visor extender that actually works

Vehicle’s sun visor never actually big enough to effectively block the light? Install this visor extender for an instant fix. It’s designed to block 100% of the sun’s UV rays, yet it still allows you to see the road for safety’s sake.

Solid colognes for luxe scents at home & on the go

This solid cologne set offers an easy, mess-free way to smell fantastic anywhere. The smooth balm applies easily and delivers long-lasting fragrance without being overpowering. Featuring four scrummy scents —including Spiced Vanilla — this compact bar cologne makes leveled-up grooming simple at home, work, or on the go.

A cushioned center console cover for an elevated, more comfortable ride

Upgrade your driving comfort with this cushy car center console cover. Featuring a memory foam core wrapped in breathable fabric, it cushions your arm and reduces elbow strain on long drives. It’s designed to fit most vehicles and SUVs, while the anti-slip design keeps it securely in place.

A reviewer-loved bathtub pillow that supports your head & neck

You deserve a relaxing bath after a long day and this pillow will make laying in your bathtub more comfy. It’s designed to cradle your neck, head, and shoulders with its 3D, thick cushion design. You won’t have to worry about it slipping and sliding because it features six strong suction cups to help it stick to your tub. Since it’s machine washsable, it’s low maintenance too.

A cleverly designed back stretcher to soothe & refresh

Experience targeted lumbar relief with this ergonomic back stretcher, designed for optimal comfort and support. Featuring a soft traction strip, cushioned foam pad, and breathable 3-D mesh cover, it’s designed to gently decompress the spine to help reduce tension, improve flexibility, and soothe sciatica or lower back pain.

This soothing tabletop fountain that enhances ambience

Bring serenity and style to any space with this indoor tabletop fountain. Its built-in pump circulates water across realistic resin rocks, creating a gentle stream and soothing sounds for stress relief and ambience. It’s easy to use — just plug in and enjoy the calming vibes and colorful reflections from the spinning crystal ball.

A slim, portable keyboard that folds up

Stay productive on the go with this handy foldable keyboard. This compact, pocket-sized design folds easily and includes a phone holder for convenient viewing. Compatible with iOS, Android, and Windows devices, it has quiet, responsive keys and a stable connection up to 10 meters. Rechargeable, it provides 40 hours of use or 180 days on standby.

A compact screwdriver set for glasses, electronics & more

Use this handy mini screwdriver kit to fix electronics, adjust glasses, and even customize watch links. It includes 24 heads in Phillips, Torx, hex, flat, and star shapes for tons of versatility.

A wedge pillow that fills the mattress & headboard gap

Tired of fishing pillows out from the gap between your mattress and headboard? Then this pillow is a must-have. Not only does it fill up that open space, but a pocket on both sides also gives you somewhere to stash remotes, phones, or any other small item. Choose from three colors: white, gray, or blue.

The handy pocket that adds storage inside your car

Phones, charging cables, cash — this organizer has space for all of them and more. The adhesive backing lets you mount it behind your seats, onto your center console, or nearly anywhere else you’d like inside your car. Plus, the faux leather finish makes it seem more expensive than it is.

A classic highly rated cast iron skillet that’s naturally nonstick

This multipurpose skillet is perfect for everyday cooking. It’s pre-seasoned, naturally nonstick, and non-toxic. Since it promotes even heating, you can expect consistent, reliable results. It includes a silicone handle holder to protect your hands from heat and to improve your grab when lifting. We think it’s worth mentioning that it has gained over 135,000 five-star ratings because it’s durable and easy to use and clean.

Unique packets that add vibrant colors to campfires

Don’t even think about heading out for that camping trip until you’ve packed these packets. Simply toss a few into your campfire, and the flames will light up in vivid shades of green, purple, blue, and more. Plus, the effects can last for up to a full hour depending on how many you use.

A colorful hummingbird feeder crafted with handblown glass

Featuring vibrant colors in a swirled design, this hummingbird feeder will add a whimsical touch to your deck or yard. The bright colors will attract birds and the moat hook will keep ants out of the nector. It features five ports so multiple birds can feed at once. The hand blown glass bottle is easy to remove, fill, and clean.

A stone air freshener that attaches to your car’s visor with a metal clip

This solid air freshner features a sleek design that’s sophisticated. It includes a metal clip so you can attach the scent block to your car’s visor. Since it’s formulated with natural essential oils, it’s free of additives and harsh chemicals. It can keep your car smelling fresh for up to 30 days.

Genius whistles that help keep deer away from your car

If you live in an area that has a lot of deer, consider adding these whistles to your car. They let out noise as you drive, alerting deer to your presence on the road so that they stay away from your car — and each order includes adhesive for easy installation. “They’re small, discreet, and don’t affect the look of the vehicle at all,” wrote one reviewer. “Installation was super easy and they feel secure even at highway speeds.”

Heat-proof holders to protect your hands from microwaved food

These microwave bowl holders, which come in a pack of four, nestle around the bowl or plate you’re using to heat up your food. When it’s done, you can pull the dish out holding the soft holder and not the plate, preventing any potential burns. They also help prevent spills and other messes and can be used on other surfaces when eating.

A glass bottle for pouring & spraying cooking oil

This oil dispenser bottle makes it so much easier to practice portion control when cooking or eating — and, on top of that, it makes things a lot less messy. Fill it with your favorite cooking oil, and then you can either dispense it as a spray or poour it out. It’s glass, so it’s durable and easy to clean, and an easy-pour handle makes it a breeze to hold.

A unique puzzle that doubles as a planter

Instead of doing another puzzle that you simply take apart when you’re done, try putting this 3D puzzle together. When you’re done figuring out where all of the pieces go, you’ve created a 3D planter that can actually be put to use. It comes with a cup with holes and a sealed drip tray so that you can actually place real plants inside here and use it as a piece of decor.

A smudge bowl that looks like a tiny fireplace

Perfect for burning sage or palo santo, this smudge bowl resembles a mini fireplace. You can place the sage or palo santo inside, light it, and it will burn up through the hole in the top, making it look very legit. This is so cute to put out on display, it’s easy to clean, and it makes a nice gift option.

Slim & powerful hand warmers that recharge via USB

Compact yet powerful, these hand warmers last up to eight hours per charge. A clever magnetized design makes it easy to keep them together in storage. Just over half an inch thick and a little over 2 ounces, this are ideal to slip into your pocket to keep warm wherever the day takes you.

A craft cocktail guide book with recipes & bartending techniques

Since opening in 2006, the now-famous Death & Co bar has gained popularity for their unique cocktails. This book contains 500 of their recipes with step-by-step guides, pictures, and bartending techniques. Not only will you learn how to make cocktails that’ll impress friends and family, you’ll also learn the philosophy of drink making and how to buy and use spirits.

A sharp rocker knife that allows you to use one hand to slice & dice foods

You’ll feel like Gordon Ramsay when you use this mezzaluna knife because it’ll make it easier to slice, dice, and chop various foods. The curved blade allows you to rock it back and forth so you can use one hand to cut. It features a sturdy handle crafted from walnut wood, a sharp stainless steel blade, and a wooden storage base.

A durable cotton canvas chef’s apron with 3 spacious pockets

Keep your clothes clean while you’re cooking with this stylish chef’s apron. It’s made of cotton canvas so it’s lightweight yet durable. Since it’s designed with three spacious pockets and two leather loops, you can store utensils, tools, spices, and more so you won’t have to step away from the stove or grill to gather supplies. The loops can also be used for your headphone so the cord will not get in your way while you’re chopping ingredients.

A reusable notebook that allows you to digitize notes with an app

This notebook features 36 dry-erase, lined sheets so you can reuse it over and over again. When you download an app (that shoppers confirm is easy to use, by the way), you can digitize your notes to store them in your preferred cloud service. You’ll be able to reduce waste and save money while still staying organized.

A ceramic mug with a pocket to keep your hand warm

This ceramic mug is a must-have for chilly days or if you’re someone whose hands are usually cold because it’s designed with a contoured pocket that retains heat from your drink to keep your fingers warm. It comes in options for left and right handed users as well as one for both hands. It’s safe to use in the dishwasher and microwave.

]]><![CDATA[What Mummy Movies Get So Wrong About That Very Real Revenge Plot]]>https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/pharaohs-curse-science-the-mummy-movieshttps://www.inverse.com/entertainment/pharaohs-curse-science-the-mummy-moviesSat, 18 Apr 2026 22:00:25 GMT
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images

When audiences head to theaters to watch Lee Cronin's The Mummy, they’ll be seeing a familiar story. The Evil Dead Rise director’s latest film is about a family’s young daughter who disappears in the desert, only to suddenly reappear eight years later. But “what should be a joyful reunion,” the official premise warns, “turns into a living nightmare.” One look at the movie’s poster, featuring the corpse-like girl wrapped in rune-inscribed bandages and the warning “some things are meant to stay buried,” makes the source of the problem obvious.

The film’s awkward title is a concession to the fact that Hollywood is making multiple mummy movies. A third sequel to the beloved Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz Mummy is slated for 2028, while Cronin’s film has been billed as a “reimagining” of the classic Universal Monster series. But those are just the tip of the pyramid. Mummies have appeared in countless films, books, and games, jumping out at everyone from Dungeons and Dragons players to Goosebumps readers. These fictional mummies are almost invariably hostile, as they seek revenge for having their eternal slumber disturbed. But … why? How did the image of a bandaged corpse doling out curses become a pop culture staple?

“The reality is that it's a good, fun story,” Yale Egyptologist Nicholas Brown tells Inverse. “As humans, we have this fascination with horror and scary things we can't quite explain. Ancient Egypt in general has fascinated people for centuries now. There are many ancient civilizations, and even some modern civilizations, where mummification is common, but because Egypt has the most famous mummies, that fuels the fantasy.”

Lee Cronin’s mummy is not one you want to encounter in a museum. | Warner Bros. Pictures

Mummy Madness

Some of the first mainstream mummy stories were actually romances. The hero of Théophile Gautier’s 1840 story “The Mummy’s Foot” has a dreamy fling with an ancient Egyptian princess after purchasing the title appendage in an antique store, while Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Ring of Thoth” is about an immortal Egyptian trying to go to the afterlife to join his beloved.

While ancient Egypt has fascinated humanity since the days of only slightly less ancient Egypt, a new wave of Western interest was triggered in 1798, when Napoleon seized the region from the receding Ottoman Empire and unleashed an army of scholars. The famous Rosetta Stone was discovered the next year, and while the French were soon expelled, it remained easy for colonial scientists and adventurers to explore the land and report their findings. Florence Nightingale, for example, was an amateur enthusiast, and stories like “The Mummy’s Foot” were a reflection of Europe’s romantic portrayal of colonization.

Egypt later became a British protectorate, and with all sorts of Egyptian relics — mummies included — being looted and sent to Europe, stories about the consequences of disturbing the dead were inevitable. Bram Stoker and Louise May Alcott, then better known for her tawdry thrillers, were among the many writers to churn out Egypt-tinged horror stories, with Alcott’s 1869 Lost in a Pyramid one of several to specifically posit a curse upon any who upset a mummy’s rest.

All of this kicked into overdrive in 1922, when Howard Carter became the first man in millennia known to set foot in the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

King Tutankhamun’s tomb is now a major tourist attraction. | Anadolu/Anadolu/Getty Images

“The financier, Lord Carnarvon, he actually dies in 1923 amid the excavation of the tomb,” Brown says. “Newspapers go wild with it. They say it's a curse, Tutankhamun is coming after Lord Carnarvon. Obviously, it’s imagination and fantasy. We don't have any inscriptions or texts from King Tutankhamun’s tomb that say ‘if you open this tomb I'll curse you.’ I'm inclined to believe that it was fabricated to sell newspapers. And then of course there are the famous movies from the early 20th century where mummies are coming back to life.”

The scale and grandeur of Carter’s find made it a media sensation, and when several men linked to the excavation, including Carnarvon’s half-brother, later died too, their unfortunate demises were rolled into the supposed curse. Brown, however, notes the story’s obvious flaw.

“Howard Carter worked in there for 10 years, and lived a pretty good while after,” Brown says. “And he was the first person to go in. So you'd think of all the people to be cursed, he would be the one.”

“The financier, Lord Carnarvon, he actually dies amid the excavation of the tomb. Newspapers go wild with it.”

Brown himself has done work on King Tut’s tomb that re-contextualizes some of its artifacts, and he describes himself as “yet to be cursed.” Perhaps the real takeaway is that we should be grateful to live in an age of antimalarials and other medicines that might have prevented such sudden deaths. But as Brown alluded to, a fresh wave of mummy pop culture capitalized on Carter’s famous discovery.

All sorts of creators again tackled the subject matter; one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most memorable stories, 1924’s “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs,” was ghostwritten for Harry Houdini as the purportedly true story of Houdini encountering ancient mummies and pharaohs during an Egyptian vacation gone wrong. But it was Boris Karloff playing the risen Imhotep in 1932 who cemented the mummy as a monster, not a lover. The Mummy was a hit that spawned a steady stream of sequels, reboots, and knockoffs, and we’ve been wrapping our kids up in cloth for Halloween ever since.

Boris Karloff’s Mummy defined a generation of Egypt-themed horror. | Universal Pictures

Beneath the Bandages

While there really were ancient Egyptian grave robbers, particularly when times were tough, those wealthy enough to enjoy extravagant tombs relied more on laws and norms than traps and supernatural threats to defend their posthumous possessions. Get caught peddling gold stolen from the dead, and you might very well be executed.

“We do have some very limited texts where the tomb owner is speaking to visitors along the lines of 'If you cause harm to this tomb, I'll come after you' or 'I'll ensure you have a bad afterlife,’” Brown says. “Those inscriptions, or at least the ones I know of, date centuries before when King Tut's tomb was built.”

That said, Brown doesn’t see the significant gulf between fact and fiction as a negative.

"We're so lucky that Egyptology is such a popular topic. I'm a fan of the Fraser and Weisz Mummy movies. I'm thrilled they're making a fourth one. I get it, it's for entertainment, I don't sit down to watch The Mummy and expect to learn something. If and when we can portray accurate information, I think that's good. But it helps keep me and my colleagues in work if we're piquing people's interest with movies and TV shows and documentaries.”

Imhotep was re-awakened in 1999, and now a fourth modern Mummy movie is coming. | Universal Pictures

Like many Egyptologists before him, Brown says he was a kid who “became obsessed with mummies and pyramids and golden treasure” before visiting Egypt in his 20s, “falling in love with the country,” and making a career out of what entranced him. If the fantasy can lead someone to reality, they may find the world beyond scary mummies just as enthralling.

“I love the human aspect of ancient Egypt,” Brown says. “The more you dive in, the more you realize that people really haven’t changed. There's a small village of workmen called Deir el-Medina — these are the guys and their families who built tombs in the Valley of the Kings. They're highly specialized craftsmen and artisans [who] left behind so many letters and administrative notes. And one is a court proceeding the village was holding against Paneb, who was like the town drunk. In addition to being accused of having slept with God knows how many people's wives, there's a line about how he got drunk, sat on the town wall, and threw beer jars at people going by. Stories like that help us build this connection between ancient people and us today.”

“I would just encourage everyone to remember that when you’re able to see a mummy, they were once a human being.”

Indeed, when a millennia-old tablet from the city of Ur complaining about the quality of a merchant’s copper became a modern meme, it was because the man’s feedback almost reads like a Yelp review. And that ability to see glimpses of humanity through vast stretches of time is what Lee Cronin thinks fascinates us too, even if he’s repurposing the feeling for horror. As he told /Film, ancient Egyptians “didn't get buried expecting to show up in a museum. They were going there to rest for eternity. So I thought it was really interesting that we could go and dig something up that shouldn't be found.”

Brown isn’t anticipating any rampages from the mummies we’ve actually dug up, although he suggests that enthusiasts remain respectful regardless. Millennia from now, after all, it might be your exhibited remains inspiring a terrifying tale.

“Our fascination with mummies is great,” Brown says. “I would just encourage everyone to remember that when you’re able to see a mummy in person, they were once a human being. It's always nice to show them a little courtesy. Take a moment to reflect on the fact that they lived thousands of years ago, and say a little prayer to wish them well in their afterlife.”

The Mummy (1932) is available on YouTube. The Mummy (1999) is available on Prime Video.

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