• Half Man, the HBO limited series from Baby Reindeer creator and star Richard Gadd, ended Thursday with a finale that revealed the show’s central mystery: what happened between Ruben (Gadd) and his stepbrother Niall (Jamie Bell) in the locked barn at Niall’s wedding — it turned out there were two bodies
• Gadd, who wrote the project in 2019 before Baby Reindeer, told Variety the ending was “ambiguous” but “felt like the right way to end a show like this” — and told Slate there was only one way it could have concluded
• Critical response to the finale was mixed: TV Insider and Time praised the devastating payoff, while TVLine called it a “sour note” and TV Fanatic found the series “exhausting” — a step down from the universal acclaim Baby Reindeer received
• The six-episode series co-stars Jamie Bell; it premiered on HBO and streams on HBO Max

Spoilers below for the Half Man series finale.

Richard Gadd’s second act on HBO ended Thursday — and it went to a dark place, even by his standards. Half Man, the limited series Gadd wrote, created, and stars in (following the same model as his Emmy-winning Baby Reindeer), wrapped its six-episode run with a finale that revealed what actually happened between stepbrothers Ruben and Niall in the locked barn at Niall’s wedding. The show had kept that mystery at the center of its structure from the beginning; the finale answered it with what Slate called “a staggering scene of brutality and a twist.” There were two bodies in the barn, per Variety.

Gadd told Variety the finale was intentionally “ambiguous” but said it “felt like the right way to end a show like this.” He told Slate that there was, essentially, only one way it could have concluded — that the emotional and structural logic of the show pointed to this ending from early on. Gadd began writing Half Man in 2019, years before Baby Reindeer became a cultural phenomenon, making it a project he’d been carrying for a long time before HBO greenlit it, per Time.

A More Divided Reception Than Baby Reindeer

Where Baby Reindeer earned near-unanimous critical praise and six Emmys, Half Man has generated more friction. TV Fanatic’s reviewer admitted getting lost between episodes one and three. TVLine called the finale a “sour note” for a drama that had been consistently dour throughout. TV Insider’s exclusive conversation with Gadd characterized the ending as devastating and earned; Time called it “brutal” and affecting. The split reflects a show that was never going to be as widely embraced as its predecessor — it was always more difficult, more elliptical, more demanding, per TV Insider.

The post ‘Half Man’ Ends With a Devastating Twist — and Baby Reindeer Creator Richard Gadd Says It Could Only Have Gone One Way appeared first on Cream.

• Hacks ended its five-season run on May 28 with a series finale on HBO that critics called a worthy conclusion to one of television’s most acclaimed comedies — the Emmy-winning show starred Jean Smart as Deborah Vance and Hannah Einbinder as Ava Daniels
• The finale opens with Deborah revealing her cancer has spread and that she plans to end her life at an assisted-suicide facility in Europe, bringing Ava along for the journey — the episode delivers a major fakeout that co-creators say was always the intended ending
• Co-creators Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky, and Paul W. Downs told Collider they had the ending planned from the very beginning of the show, which premiered in 2021: “We always knew this was the ending”
• The finale drew widespread critical praise, with Vulture, Time, and the A.V. Club all calling it a fitting close to the show’s legacy-and-comedy-obsessed run

Spoilers below for the Hacks series finale.

Hacks is over — and it went out on its own terms. The series finale of the HBO comedy aired May 28, ending the five-season story of Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) with the kind of precision that suggests co-creators Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky, and Paul W. Downs knew exactly where they were going the whole time. It turns out they did. “We always knew this was the ending,” they told Collider in a post-finale interview, per Collider.

The episode begins with Deborah telling Ava that her cancer — a lumpectomy that hadn’t been fully successful — has spread. Rather than pursue treatment, Deborah reveals she wants to travel to a European assisted-suicide facility, and she wants Ava with her. The setup plays as a genuine gut-punch for most of the episode’s running time. Then comes the fakeout: Deborah was never going to go through with it. The creators describe it as the ultimate dark joke from a character who has spent five seasons teaching Ava — and the audience — that comedy lives in the gap between what you expect and what actually happens, per E! News.

How It All Ends

The finale is built on callbacks and full-circle moments. The episode opens with a one-shot of Ava walking through her new comedy pilot, mirroring the show’s own origin. Deborah’s cancer plot traces back to a detail introduced in Season 1 — a risk associated with her Tahitian grapefruit-flavored progesterone packets — giving the finale a sense of long-laid groundwork finally paying off. Every major character gets a resolution, with the show landing on what Time called “the perfect dark joke” — bittersweet but earned, per Time. Critics at Vulture and the A.V. Club called it a series finale that honored what Hacks had always been about: the cost of legacy, the comedy of survival, and the strange, combative love between two women at very different points in their lives, per Vulture.

The post ‘Hacks’ Ends After 5 Seasons With a Finale That Was Planned From the Beginning — Here’s How It All Wrapped Up appeared first on Cream.

• CBS issued a statement Thursday publicly defending its cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert for the first time, disclosing that the show lost approximately $40 million a year — and that Byron Allen’s replacement arrangement will swing the timeslot to a $15 million annual profit
• Allen is operating under a “time buy” model: he pays CBS $15 million per year to lease the 11:30 PM hour and sells his own ad inventory; his show Comics Unleashed premiered May 22, the night after Colbert’s series finale
• Colbert’s finale on May 21 drew 6.7 million viewers — the show’s most-watched weeknight episode in its history; Comics Unleashed debuted to approximately 995,000 total viewers and 116,000 in the 18–49 demo
• CBS has faced weeks of speculation that the cancellation was politically motivated; the network’s statement called the move a response to a “cost prohibitive” business model rather than a political decision

CBS broke its silence Thursday on one of the more controversial decisions in late-night television in years: the cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. For the first time, the network put numbers to the story. The Late Show was losing roughly $40 million a year, CBS said — a figure that had been widely circulated but never confirmed. Under the new arrangement, Byron Allen leases the 11:30 PM timeslot from CBS for $15 million annually and sells his own advertising, flipping the math from a $40 million annual loss to a projected $15 million profit, per Deadline.

“We’re proud to partner with Byron Allen on a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost prohibitive to continue,” CBS said in its statement. The network has been under pressure since the cancellation was announced, with critics and commentators questioning whether politics played a role in ousting Colbert, whose show had a distinctly liberal sensibility. CBS did not address the political speculation directly, framing the move purely as a financial one, per Variety.

The Numbers After Colbert

The scale of the audience drop is hard to ignore. Colbert’s May 21 series finale drew 6.7 million viewers — the most-watched weeknight episode in the show’s history. Comics Unleashed, which premiered the following night on May 22, opened to approximately 995,000 total viewers and 116,000 in the 18–49 demo, according to LateNighter citing initial Nielsen Live+Same Day panel data, per TV Insider. Allen has been direct about not trying to recapture Colbert’s audience — he told outlets he has no interest in political humor and is building something different.

Allen, 65, is a Detroit-born billionaire who started his career in stand-up comedy and built a media empire over decades. His Comics Unleashed has been a syndicated panel comedy format for years, and the CBS slot gives it a prime broadcast home. Whether that audience finds him is a question the next few weeks of ratings data will start to answer, per The Hollywood Reporter.

The post CBS Says the Late Show Was Losing $40 Million a Year — Now Byron Allen’s Time Buy Will Turn a $15M Profit appeared first on Cream.

• Marvel Animation has released the first trailer for X-Men ’97 Season 2, confirming that the Emmy-nominated Disney+ series will return on July 1 — two years after the first season concluded
• The trailer confirms Deadpool will appear in Season 2, making it his first animated appearance in the current Marvel continuity; the character’s inclusion had been teased ahead of the trailer’s release
• Season 2 also introduces Danger — a character from the X-Men comics — and features new character costumes; the episode count for the season has been revealed alongside the premiere date announcement
• X-Men ’97 has been described as the most-watched Disney+ animated series; the Season 2 trailer dropped to significant fan response

The X-Men are back — and they brought Deadpool. Marvel Animation released the first full trailer for X-Men ’97 Season 2 this week, and it confirmed what many fans had been hoping for: Deadpool will appear in the new season, marking the character’s return to animation in Marvel’s current continuity, per Collider.

The season premieres July 1 on Disney+. The trailer is dense — new costumes for the core team, the introduction of Danger (a synthetic being from X-Men comics lore capable of generating lifelike simulations), and what appears to be a substantially elevated threat scale from Season 1. Season 1 ended on several unresolved cliffhangers that the second season will be expected to address, per Comic Book Movie.

Deadpool in the Animated Universe

The Deadpool confirmation is the headline grab. Ryan Reynolds voiced the character in the live-action films, but this appearance is in the animated context of X-Men ’97 — a separate continuity. Two years after Season 1 wrapped, the show returns as one of Marvel’s more critically lauded recent projects, per MovieWeb. The July 1 premiere drops X-Men ’97 into a crowded summer streaming landscape — but given the response to that trailer, it has the attention it needs.

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• Helen Mirren publicly backed embattled MobLand co-star Tom Hardy on Thursday by posting a photo of him on Instagram captioned “love you now and always” — her first public statement since reports emerged that Hardy was fired from Season 3 of the Paramount+ series
• The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Hardy has been clashing with producers, including executive producer Jez Butterworth, though a THR source said his fate is “yet to be decided” — not a finalized firing
• New details allege Hardy “refused to come out” of his trailer during production, keeping both Mirren and Pierce Brosnan waiting for hours; the behavior was described internally as “career suicide”
• Hardy has a documented history of on-set tensions, most famously with Charlize Theron on Mad Max: Fury Road; the MobLand situation is being compared to that pattern across multiple outlets

Helen Mirren has three words for Tom Hardy: love you always. The Oscar-winning actress stepped into the swirling MobLand controversy Thursday by posting a photo of Hardy on Instagram — him in character as Harry Da Souza — and captioning it simply: “love you now and always.” It was her first public word on a situation that has dominated entertainment coverage for days, per TMZ.

The drama around Hardy and the Paramount+ crime series escalated this week after The Hollywood Reporter confirmed he had been clashing with producers, including executive producer Jez Butterworth. One source told THR that Hardy’s future on the show is “yet to be decided” — a somewhat softer characterization than the flat firing reports that initially circulated. Still, the details that have emerged in reporting are pointed: Hardy allegedly refused to leave his trailer during production, leaving both Mirren and Pierce Brosnan waiting for hours. The behavior was described internally as “career suicide.”

Mirren’s post notably doesn’t address the specifics — it’s an endorsement of Hardy, not a press statement. But in a situation where most of the noise has been negative, it landed as exactly the kind of public-facing loyalty that Hardy’s camp needed, per The Wrap.

Pattern Recognition

Whether the MobLand situation resolves in Hardy’s favor or not, it has revived coverage of his history of on-set tensions — a list that includes his documented feud with Charlize Theron during the production of Mad Max: Fury Road, which became public years after the fact. MobLand is one of Paramount+’s most-watched series; whether Hardy returns for a potential Season 3 — and how Mirren’s public support factors into any decision — remains unresolved.

The post Helen Mirren Posts ‘Love You Now and Always’ for Tom Hardy as MobLand Firing Drama Intensifies appeared first on Cream.

• Halle Berry, 59, appeared on Today with Jenna & Sheinelle on Thursday, May 28, and during the show’s “Pink Chair Questionnaire” segment, misheard Jenna Bush Hager’s question about her “biggest ick” as something considerably more explicit
• Berry burst out laughing and began to answer the question she thought she’d heard before Sheinelle Jones slapped her with her cards; “I was like, ‘What?’ It sounded like that, didn’t it?” Berry said — Jones shot back: “No! You are naughty!”
• Bush Hager, insisting she had said “ick,” was briefly censored when she repeated the supposed phrase on-air: “Ick! I said ick!” The show cut to a commercial through nonstop laughter
• Berry shared the clip on her own social media; the moment went viral during a busy press stretch for the actress, who has been promoting her 2026 film Crime 101 alongside Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo

Halle Berry came to play on Thursday’s Today with Jenna & Sheinelle — and accidentally created one of the better live TV moments of the year. The 59-year-old Oscar winner joined Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones for a segment called the “Pink Chair Questionnaire,” a breezy game of questions about guilty pleasures, secret nicknames, and trending topics, per Today.

Things were going fine until Bush Hager asked Berry about her “biggest ick.” Berry did not hear “ick.” She heard something else entirely, processed it for a beat, and then started to answer. The studio caught on immediately. Jones slapped Berry with her cards. “I was like, ‘What?’ It sounded like that, didn’t it?” Berry said, still laughing. Jones’s response: “No! You are naughty!”

Bush Hager tried to clarify — but when she repeated the word she’d actually said, she was censored on air. “Ick! I said ick!” she insisted, per OK Magazine. The segment ended with the show cutting to commercial as the laughter continued. Berry later posted the clip herself.

The Clip in Context

The moment landed during a particularly busy stretch for Berry, who has been doing the rounds to promote Crime 101, her 2026 film co-starring Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo. Per The Wrap, the viral exchange also landed in good company: the segment highlighted Today‘s history of live TV slip-ups, including Valerie Bertinelli’s recent accidental on-air cursing. Berry’s version may have been accidental, but her reaction — and her willingness to post it — suggested she wasn’t exactly mortified about it.

The post Halle Berry Thought Jenna Bush Hager Asked Something Very Different on Live TV — and the Whole ‘Today’ Set Lost It appeared first on Cream.

• Sam Elliott, 81, stars as T.L. Norris in Landman season 2 alongside Billy Bob Thornton in the Taylor Sheridan series, and says audiences are gravitating toward the show as an antidote to modern stress — they want to “escape the ‘s—‘ in the world today”
• Elliott says his character’s physical decline and frailty feel “very true” to his own experience: “I’m just old and I’m still lucky to be working,” he told Variety — a line he delivered after reportedly being called “iconic” at a Directors Guild event
• Despite six decades in Hollywood, Elliott says he is still learning from his Landman costars, and frames the show’s appeal around character-driven storytelling and comfort entertainment rather than spectacle
• The Oscar-nominated actor reflected on one of season 2’s most emotionally resonant storylines involving aging and physical vulnerability, saying the material mirrors his own lived experience

Sam Elliott has never been one for self-congratulation, and that hasn’t changed in his ninth decade. The actor, 81, is in the middle of a late-career run that has introduced him to a new generation of fans through Landman — the Taylor Sheridan oil-patch drama that has become one of the most-watched shows on Paramount+ — and he has a theory about why the show connects the way it does.

“Escape” is his word for it. In an interview with Fox News, Elliott said fans are flocking to Landman to get away from the noise — to escape the “s—” in the world today. It’s not a complicated theory, but coming from Elliott, who has spent 60 years playing characters who don’t explain themselves much, it lands.

The show’s second season cast Elliott as T.L. Norris, a character whose age and physical decline are written into his bones. Elliott told Variety that the frailty feels personal. “What I feel like is that I’m just old and I’m still lucky to be working,” he said — a response, delivered without apparent irony, to people at a Directors Guild event who were describing him as “iconic.”

Still Learning

One of the things Elliott keeps coming back to in press for the season is how much he’s absorbed from his costars. Six decades into a career that spans Mask, Tombstone, The Big Lebowski, and an Oscar nomination for A Star Is Born, he says he’s still picking things up on set — a posture that fits neatly with both his reputation and the kind of grounded performance Landman requires from him, per People.

T.L. Norris is not a glamorous role. It asks Elliott to play vulnerability alongside Billy Bob Thornton, who anchors the series as roughneck fixer Tommy Norris. It’s working. The show has been renewed, the numbers are strong, and audiences, by Elliott’s read, are glad to have somewhere to land.

The post Sam Elliott, 81, Says ‘Landman’ Fans Are Tuning In to Escape the ‘S—‘ — and His Character’s Frailty Hits Close to Home appeared first on Cream.

• CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss appointed Nick Bilton — a former New York Times tech columnist, Vanity Fair investigative journalist, and filmmaker — as executive producer of 60 Minutes, marking the latest major shake-up at a program that has been in near-constant turmoil since Weiss’s arrival
• Bilton, who directed the 2021 HBO documentary Fake Famous about influencer culture and has written books about technological disruption, has no prior broadcast television experience — an unprecedented background for the EP chair at America’s longest-running prime-time news magazine
• He replaces Tanya Simon, who had been in the role for less than a year; Simon had spent three decades at the program before being named EP in 2025
• The appointment comes after Anderson Cooper announced his abrupt departure from 60 Minutes and CBS declined to renew correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s contract months after pulling her segment on widespread torture in Salvadoran prisons; Christiane Amanpour has publicly criticized the show’s new leadership
• In his introductory memo to staff, Bilton called the position “the best job in journalism” and framed his mandate around modernization: “The world we are reporting on, and the world we are reporting to, has moved. And if we don’t move with it, in the ways that matter, we won’t be here for the next sixty years”

60 Minutes, the CBS News program that has been America’s most-watched news magazine for 52 consecutive seasons, has a new executive producer — and he’s never worked in broadcast television before.

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss announced Thursday that Nick Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker, will take the EP chair, per The Wrap. Bilton spent years writing about Silicon Valley and technological disruption for The New York Times, then moved to investigative journalism at Vanity Fair. He directed Netflix and HBO documentaries, most notably Fake Famous, a 2021 HBO film examining influencer culture. He will replace Tanya Simon, who had been in the role less than a year — she had worked at the program for three decades before being elevated to the top job in 2025.

Weiss described Bilton as “one of the most entrepreneurial and ambitious journalists working today.” Bilton called the appointment “the honor of my career.”

‘Evolving or Dying Isn’t a Threat. It’s Simple Math.’

In his introductory memo to the 60 Minutes staff, Bilton made clear that modernization is the assignment. “The world we are reporting on, and the world we are reporting to, where people consume their news, has moved,” he wrote. “And if we don’t move with it, in the ways that matter, we won’t be here for the next sixty years.” He framed the challenge in characteristically tech-journalist terms: he’s spent his career watching industries get “obliterated” by technological change, and he intends 60 Minutes to be one of the institutions that adapts rather than disappears.

What that evolution actually looks like, he declined to say — not yet. “I have a notebook full of ideas,” he wrote, teasing changes to the show format, the correspondent pipeline, and the program’s relationship to a media landscape that no longer runs on Sunday-night appointment viewing. He said he’d spend his first 30 days listening and share a direction after that.

The appointment lands at a genuinely difficult moment for the show. Anderson Cooper announced his abrupt departure from 60 Minutes earlier this year. CBS declined to renew the contract of longtime correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi six months after pulling her segment on conditions inside El Salvador’s Cecot prison. Christiane Amanpour has publicly criticized the editorial decisions made under the new leadership, per HuffPost/Yahoo. The network’s owner, David Ellison of Paramount Skydance, has drawn criticism from journalists and media observers who see the changes as ideologically motivated. Weiss has disputed that characterization.

Bilton addressed the trust question directly in his memo, invoking the show’s very first broadcast: “On the very first episode of 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace said: ‘If this broadcast does what we hope it will do it will report reality.’ I can’t think of a better north star for 60 Minutes than that. Above all, that means a commitment to fairness — in story selection, in the edit room, and in the broadcast.” The show first aired in September 1968. Whether Bilton can bring it into 2026 intact is the question everyone in the building is now waiting to see answered.

The post CBS Taps Tech Journalist Nick Bilton to Run ’60 Minutes’ — His First TV Job, and a Defining Bet for the Embattled Show appeared first on Cream.

• Universal Kids Resort officially opens July 1 in Frisco, Texas — the first Universal Destinations & Experiences park built specifically for families with young children
• The park features seven themed lands drawing on Minions, Shrek, Trolls, Gabby’s Dollhouse, Jurassic World, and SpongeBob SquarePants, with rides, attractions, interactive experiences, and character meet-and-greets sized for smaller guests
• A 300-room Universal Kids Resort Hotel is part of the destination; tickets and hotel packages went on sale May 28
• Universal describes it as “inviting a new generation to embark on kid-sized Universal thrills made just for them” — a test of a regional, family-focused park concept distinct from its full-scale destination parks
• The opening puts a major new family attraction in the Dallas-Fort Worth area ahead of the summer travel season

Universal has spent decades building massive destination parks for thrill-seekers. Now it’s going in a different direction — and smaller. Universal Kids Resort, the first theme park Universal Destinations & Experiences has ever built specifically for young children, opens July 1 in Frisco, Texas.

The park is designed for families with small kids, full stop. Seven themed lands bring familiar Universal IP down to a scale that actually works for its audience: Minions, Shrek, Trolls, Gabby’s Dollhouse, Jurassic World, and SpongeBob SquarePants are all represented, with rides, interactive attractions, and character experiences built around children rather than adults who want to get their picture taken.

Per Deadline, a 300-room Universal Kids Resort Hotel is part of the complex, giving families the option to make it an overnight destination. Tickets and hotel packages went on sale Thursday, May 28.

A New Concept for Universal

The resort represents something genuinely new in Universal’s portfolio. The company’s existing parks — Orlando, Hollywood, Japan, Beijing, Singapore, and the upcoming Epic Universe — are built around big-ticket rides and broad appeal. Universal Kids Resort is a regional play, a smaller-footprint concept targeting the part of the family vacation market that has always had to compromise at traditional theme parks because the rides are too big, too fast, or too scary for the youngest guests.

Per The Wrap, Universal is framing the opening as “inviting a new generation to embark on kid-sized Universal thrills made just for them” — language that points directly at parents of toddlers and elementary-age kids who want the Universal experience without the logistics of a full Orlando trip. Frisco, in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, puts the park within driving distance of one of the country’s largest population centers. The July 1 opening drops it squarely into peak family travel season.

The post Universal Kids Resort Is Opening July 1 in Texas — Here’s What’s Inside appeared first on Cream.

• Spider-Noir launched on Amazon Prime Video on May 27 and has set an all-time Marvel audience score record on Rotten Tomatoes: 91% from critics and 92% from audiences — higher than X-Men ’97, the original Netflix Daredevil, and every MCU series
• Nicolas Cage plays Ben "The Spider" Reilly, a seasoned private detective in 1930s New York who moonlights as a masked superhero; the show is not an MCU series but connects to the larger Marvel multiverse
• The supporting cast includes Lamorne Morris, Li Jun Li, Karen Rodriguez, Abraham Popoola, Jack Huston, and Brendan Gleeson; the show was produced by the producers of the Spider-Verse films
• Reviews highlight Cage’s physical comedy and character work — he does in-character impressions of Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart as disguises — as a major factor in the show’s success
• The Financial Times gave it 4/5: "well-crafted enough, adult enough, and just about original enough, to offer a deserved moment of reprieve"; the Daily Telegraph also gave it 4/5

Nobody quite knew what to make of Spider-Noir before it launched. A 1930s noir take on Spider-Man, starring Nicolas Cage, on Amazon Prime Video — it was ambitious in the specific way that can go either beautifully right or memorably wrong.

It went right. The series debuted Wednesday on Prime Video and has already done something no Marvel project has done before: it set the all-time audience score record on Rotten Tomatoes across all Marvel properties. Per Forbes, Spider-Noir sits at a 91% critic score and 92% audience score — placing it above every Marvel series including the beloved X-Men ’97 (91% audience), the original Netflix Daredevil (90%), and Agents of SHIELD (91%).

The show stars Cage as Ben Reilly, a world-weary private eye working in Depression-era New York who leads a secret life as the city’s only masked superhero, known as "The Spider." The series leans hard into its noir influences — black-and-white-tinged visuals, voiceover narration, jazz-era New York — and uses the aesthetic as a foundation rather than a gimmick.

What the Critics Are Saying

The Financial Times gave it four out of five stars: "Audiences have had enough of the churn of movie sequels and their declining quality. But shows like this are well-crafted enough, adult enough, and just about original enough, to offer a deserved moment of reprieve." The Daily Telegraph matched the score: "Spider-Noir is as much a tribute to the golden era of sleuthing flicks as it is to caped crusaders getting their tights in a twist."

Not every review was glowing — per Just Jared’s roundup, Vulture called it "just another disposable exercise in IP maintenance," and the LA Times described it as "something of a stunt." But those were outliers in an otherwise strong reception.

The Cage Factor

Multiple reviews single out Cage’s performance as the engine that makes the show work — specifically, the physical and vocal creativity he brings to Ben Reilly’s habit of adopting disguises. In one episode, he slips into a full Peter Lorre impression — voice, posture, the hand on the back of the head — to talk his way past a suspicious doctor. In another, he channels Humphrey Bogart, flipping up his hat brim, donning thick glasses, and inventing a character called Pete the maintenance man. In a third, he becomes a bumbling Jimmy Stewart type to get past hospital staff.

It’s the kind of unhinged, committed Cage performance that audiences tend to reward, and in this case it’s calibrated to the material in a way that doesn’t feel like a joke.

The show was produced by the team behind the Spider-Verse animated films and, per early analysis of the series, does quietly connect to the broader Marvel multiverse — though it’s not part of the MCU proper. Season 1 is streaming now on Prime Video.

The post Nicolas Cage’s ‘Spider-Noir’ Just Broke a Marvel Record on Rotten Tomatoes — and the Reviews Explain Why appeared first on Cream.