Welcome to Multiverse News, Your source for Information about all your favorite fictional universes

As has become par for the course these last few weeks, Marvel Studios released the third Avengers: Doomsday trailer, which focuses on the X-Men, Tuesday morning after an exclusive week run attached to theatrical showings of Avatar Fire and Ash.

Sebastian Stan is in talks to join The Batman Part II opposite Robert Pattinson and Scarlett Johansson, making him the second Marvel Cinematic Universe alum to jump to Matt Reeves' Gotham. The Oscar-nominated Apprentice star, best known for playing Bucky Barnes aka the Winter Soldier in multiple Marvel films, would join returning cast members Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright and Andy Serkis ahead of spring production for an October 2027 release.

Avatar: Fire and Ash crossed the 1 billion dollar mark at the global box office after 18 days in theaters, led by 40 million dollars domestically in its third weekend for a total of 306 million dollars and 777.1 million dollars internationally, making it Disney's third billion-dollar release of 2025. Meanwhile, Netflix's Stranger Things series finale generated between 25 to 28 million dollars from a limited two-day theatrical run across 600 theaters on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, with exhibitors selling concession vouchers rather than traditional tickets and keeping all revenue themselves as an olive branch between the streamer and theaters.

Simu Liu has publicly endorsed his Copenhagen Test co-star Melissa Barrera to play Wonder Woman in James Gunn's DC Universe, praising her stunt training as Wonder Woman-esque and calling her a total badass who puts in the work. DC Studios boss James Gunn confirmed in July that Wonder Woman has not been cast yet and won't be discussed until the script is finished, with Supergirl screenwriter Ana Nogueira tapped to write the new Wonder Woman film.

Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another dominated the Critics Choice Awards on Sunday night, winning Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, while Timothée Chalamet won Best Actor for Marty Supreme and Jessie Buckley took Best Actress for Hamnet. Ryan Coogler's Sinners and Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein tied for the most wins with four awards each, with Jacob Elordi scoring a surprise Best Supporting Actor victory for his performance as the Creature in Frankenstein. On the television side, The Pitt won Best Drama while The Studio took Best Comedy, with Adolescence earning four awards including Best Limited Series.

Horror director James Wan has expressed interest in directing Avatar 4 if James Cameron decides to step back from the franchise, telling Screen Rant he would love to take a crack at the billion-dollar series. Cameron has indicated he may scale back his hands-on involvement with future Avatar films to pursue other projects, potentially delegating more directorial duties to second unit directors or another filmmaker while remaining as producer.

Paramount+ has renewed Mayor of Kingstown for a fifth and final season consisting of eight episodes, down from the usual ten episodes per season. The Taylor Sheridan crime drama starring Jeremy Renner and Edie Falco will conclude after its upcoming season, which follows the bloody Season 4 finale that aired in December 2025.

Amazon Prime Video has announced the cast for its Tomb Raider series starring Sophie Turner as Lara Croft, with Sigourney Weaver joining as Evelyn Wallis, a mysterious woman seeking to exploit Lara's talents, and Jason Isaacs as Atlas DeMornay, Lara's uncle. The series, created and co-showrun by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, will also feature several characters from the video game franchise including Bill Paterson as butler Winston and Martin Bobb-Semple as tech support Zip.

Welcome to Multiverse News, Your source for Information about all your favorite fictional universes

The second Avengers: Doomsday teaser trailer dropped everywhere on Tuesday and features the God of Thunder himself, Chris Hemsworth as Thor. Where the Captain America trailer played much like a silent film, this one gives us a monologue’s worth of dialogue from Thor as he prays for strength to fight one last enemy. On the Happy, Sad, Confused Podcast this week, Ryan Coogler detailed what Black Panther 2 might have been before the death of Chadwick Boseman. T’Challa and his young son would have fought Namor side by side, with Namor being an “insanely dangerous” version of the character. Coogler reiterated that the film they made meant he “got a chance to make a movie about women…I love that movie so much.” Boseman was too ill to even read the original script that Coogler finished. Though he’s working on resurrecting The X-Files for television, Coogler said of Black Panther 3 that he has “this movie on my heart.”

With a fairly quiet Christmas at the box office, Avatar: Fire and Ash continued to wear the crown, climbing to a global total of $760 million, while A24’s Marty Supreme starring Timothee Chalamet had a studio best opening to $27.1 million. Other films with big names opened including Anaconda featuring Paul Rudd and Jack Black; The Housemaid, starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney; and Song Sung Blue, which was star-studded with Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. None did as well as Chalamet’s period piece and certainly not James Cameron’s continued epic.

Danny Ramirez will not return to HBO's The Last of Us season 3 due to scheduling conflicts. His role will be recast.

The highly anticipated Peaky Blinders feature film, now officially titled Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, has been set for theatrical release in select cinemas on March 6, 2026. Netflix also released the first teaser trailer for the film.

Apple TV and Legendary Entertainment are expanding the “Monsterverse” universe, announcing a new show starring Wyatt Russell, who will reprise his role as Colonel Lee Shaw in a prequel series. Writer/producer Joby Harold is set to serve as showrunner.

Apple TV has released the first trailer for season 3 of Shrinking, which shows the first look at Michael J. Fox, who was added to the cast alongside Jason Segal and Harrison Ford.

Welcome to Multiverse News, Your source for Information about all your favorite fictional universes

Five Star Review from Parakleets: Love the show and longtime listener to the network! I’m a big fan of the MCU and very excited for Doomsday. I can’t wait to see the teaser trailers, but can’t figure out why y’all are so mad about it? Does podcasting make you guys more critical or cynical about the “biz”? As quite the opposite of being a filthy casual, I’ll happily watch whatever trailers the MCU gives me and then judge the marketing promo after all the teasers are released.

The Countdown BeginsThe hotly anticipated first teaser trailer for Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Doomsday has officially arrived and with it some substantial reveals. The trailer originally debuted attached ahead of select screenings of Avatar: Fire & Ash last weekend, as expected, before being released online Tuesday morning. Prior to Tuesday morning’s drop, reputable film industry trades like Variety already wasted no time running will spoiler-filled headlines addressing the spoilers and the week preceding the official release was plagued with leaked versions of varying quality sweeping the Internet; so, we’ve waiting long enough ourselves - spoilers inbound if you’ve somehow managed to avoid them. The trailer is here whether we like the release strategy or not; what do we think of our first official look at Doomsday?

Brainiac On the DancefloorJames Gunn’s quest to find the DCU’s Brainiac has come to end, as Lars Eidenger’s begins as he’s been cast to play the classic villain in Superman sequel: Man of Tomorrow. The German actor, largely unfamiliar to American audiences but acclaimed for European work like Babylon Berlin, will face off against David Corenswet's Man of Steel and Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor in the sequel releasing July 9, 2027. Gunn has a penchant for taking gambles on relative unknowns and launching them to stardom, can he do it again for such an iconic and formidable foe?
A Blue Christmas on Pandora?
The aforementioned James Cameron's Avatar: Fire & Ash ignited the box office with a $345 million global opening weekend but opened roughly 22 percent below The Way of Water's $441 million debut. Early projections suggest Fire & Ash will finish around 1.7 to 1.8 billion worldwide rather than joining the elite $2 billion club like its predecessors, raising serious questions about whether Disney will greenlight Avatar 4 and Avatar 5. Has Cameron’s box office dominance finally cooled off, or will the holiday legs carry Fire & Ash to the heights The All-Mother demands?

Putting the Eye in IMAX
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey dropped its eagerly awaited first official trailer, showcasing Matt Damon in the title role battling to return home after the Trojan War in an epic shot entirely with new IMAX film camera technology. The highly anticipated adaptation features a stacked cast including Tom Holland as Odysseus' son Telemachus and Anne Hathaway as his wife Penelope, with the film already selling out 70MM Imax tickets at AMC and Regal ahead of its July 17, 2026 release. Can Nolan's ambitious vision of Homer's classic tale deliver another legend at the Box Office like Oppenheimer?