• Anne Hathaway is executive producing an Ella Enchanted series in development at Disney+
• The show is written by Ilana Wolpert with Beth Schwartz as showrunner, co-produced by Miramax Television and Paramount Television Studios
• The new version reimagines the 2004 film as a coming-of-age story set at a boarding school
• Hathaway is in the middle of a major Disney renaissance, with Devil Wears Prada 2 and Princess Diaries 3 also in the mix
• The series is still in early development — no cast or premiere date announced yet

Anne Hathaway is heading back to the fairy tale that first made her a household name. The Oscar winner is executive producing a new Ella Enchanted series in development at Disney+, based on the beloved 2004 Miramax film in which she starred as the title character. Deadline broke the news exclusively, and the project already has a serious creative team behind it.

Ilana Wolpert — who co-wrote the hit rom-com Anyone But You and got her start on Disney+’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series — is writing the script. Beth Schwartz, who served as executive producer and showrunner on Netflix’s Sweet Tooth and Dead Boy Detectives, is on board as showrunner. Both are also executive producing alongside Hathaway, Jonathan Rice, and Adam Shulman via Somewhere Pictures, as well as iGen Studios, the company behind Netflix’s popular YA series My Life with the Walter Boys.

A Familiar Story, Reimagined

The series keeps the core premise of both the film and Gail Carson Levine’s original novel — 16-year-old Ella of Frell is cursed at birth with the “gift” of absolute obedience, forced to comply with any command given to her. But where the film leaned into Cinderella-style romantic fantasy, the Disney+ version is going somewhere different.

When Ella is sent to boarding school after her mother’s untimely death, she starts uncovering the truth about her curse, builds an unlikely found family, and navigates an extremely inconvenient crush on the prince of her kingdom. Think less glass slipper, more coming-of-age drama with a fantasy edge. The comparison that’s already being made in development circles? Wednesday‘s fresh take on the Addams Family — a classic IP reframed through a school setting with a darker, sharper tone.

The boarding school element is actually faithful to Levine’s book, even though it never made it into the 2004 movie. Four chapters of the novel follow Ella at a finishing school for girls, where she’s mercilessly bullied but also finds a best friend. That’s the emotional backbone the new series is building on.

Anne Hathaway’s Disney Moment

It’s genuinely hard to overstate how much of a Disney resurgence Hathaway is having right now. She launched her career with the studio as a teenager — first with The Other Side of Heaven, then with The Princess Diaries, which became a global phenomenon. Now, more than two decades later, she’s practically the face of the studio’s current era.

The Devil Wears Prada 2, in which she reprised her role as Andy Sachs alongside Meryl Streep, opened on May 1 and exceeded every expectation — debuting at number one at the global box office with $233.6 million worldwide and helping Disney become the first studio to cross $2 billion globally in 2026. She’s also set to return as Mia Thermopolis in the long-awaited Princess Diaries 3.

Hathaway herself addressed the full-circle moment when she opened Disney’s upfront presentation last week, introducing new CEO Josh D’Amaro. “Like so many of you, I was introduced to Disney as a child, learning how to dream and tell stories,” she said. “Playing Mia in Princess Diaries became this magical portal that opened up my whole life and now with the Devil Wears Prada franchise; these two films that have shaped my career the most are at the same wonderful home, and I am so honored to be a part of the family.”

And the Disney projects aren’t the only things keeping her busy. Hathaway is currently starring in A24’s Mother Mary, where she plays a pop star, and has three more films on the way this year: The Odyssey, The End of Oak Street, and Verity.

The Miramax Connection

The co-production setup here is worth paying attention to. Miramax is now 49% owned by Paramount, and the two companies have been actively mining the Miramax library under new CEO Jonathan Glickman. Ella Enchanted is the second major series adaptation Miramax Television and Paramount TV Studios have developed together — the first being Cop Land, from the film’s director James Mangold. The original 2004 movie already had Disney ties, having been made when Miramax was still part of the Disney empire, with Buena Vista International handling international distribution.

The series is still in early development, so there’s no cast announcement or premiere window yet. But with Hathaway’s name attached, a creative team with real YA and fantasy credentials, and Disney clearly invested in the project, Ella Enchanted fans have every reason to be paying attention.

The post Anne Hathaway Is Bringing ‘Ella Enchanted’ to Disney+ appeared first on Cream.

• A brief VFX shot of Frank Castle falling off a rooftop in The Punisher: One Last Kill has gone viral for looking like a video game cutscene
• The Hollywood Reporter confirmed it was a practical in-camera shot — Jon Bernthal did the fall, his stuntman took the impact, and VFX swapped in Bernthal’s face
• The special is also dealing with a separate audio mixing issue, with Disney+ acknowledging the problem and promising a fix
• Despite both controversies, the special holds an 85% critics score and 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes
• The backlash is reigniting broader conversations about Marvel’s ongoing VFX struggles

Jon Bernthal co-wrote, starred in, and poured himself into The Punisher: One Last Kill — a gritty, ultra-violent passion project that’s been genuinely well-received. And yet, the thing everyone’s talking about is a four-second clip where Frank Castle falls off a roof and briefly looks like he belongs in a PlayStation 3 loading screen.

The shot in question lands around the 32-minute mark of the Disney+ special, right in the middle of its biggest action sequence. Frank is fighting off a seemingly endless parade of assassins who’ve descended on his apartment complex after Ma Gnucci (Judith Light) puts a bounty on his head. He gets thrown off a rooftop and crashes onto a metal structure below — and the result is, to put it charitably, uncanny. His body flails on impact with what fans have described as “ragdoll physics,” and the face swap is stiff enough to stop you cold.

One video of the clip on X racked up more than six million views. The comparisons came fast: a GTA cutscene, a lost Joel Miller moment from The Last of Us, a PS3 animatic that accidentally shipped in the final cut. “Marvel ‘accidentally’ dropping unfinished VFX in 2026 is crazy,” one user wrote. “Jon Bernthal is out here doing God-tier Punisher rage but they hit him with PS3 ragdoll physics.”

“I know this is probably a lot harder to spot when it’s not slowed down, but if you told me this was a game cut-scene, I would believe it,” read another widely shared tweet.

What Actually Happened With That Shot

Here’s the thing: according to The Hollywood Reporter, the shot isn’t unfinished. A source close to the production told THR — and Gizmodo independently confirmed with its own source — that it’s a real, practical in-camera stunt. Bernthal performed the beginning of the fall himself. His stunt double took over for the actual impact. VFX was then used to swap the stuntman’s face for Bernthal’s, and apparently to replace whatever the stuntman landed on with the metal structure we see on screen.

So it’s not an animatic. It’s not a placeholder. It’s a completed shot that just… didn’t land. The face replacement reads as too static, the body physics feel weightless, and the fact that it plays out in bright daylight with the camera lingering on it doesn’t help. The uncanny valley is real, and this shot fell straight into it.

Face swaps and stunt doubles are nothing new — Hollywood has been doing both long before modern VFX existed. But knowing the technical explanation doesn’t make the result look any better on screen. As one outlet put it: rather than shooting the practical fall in a way that preserved the feeling of real physics, the CGI involvement made the moment feel strange and weightless instead.

There’s Also an Audio Problem

The viral VFX moment isn’t the special’s only technical headache. A significant number of viewers have reported serious audio mixing issues — dialogue barely audible, music and sound effects overwhelming the center channel, and surround sound systems pushing voices to the wrong speakers entirely. The problem appears to be a channel assignment error rather than just poor mixing, with center-channel audio reportedly routing through rear speakers on some setups.

The Disney+ Help account on X addressed it directly: “Thank you for reaching out and letting us know you’re experiencing no audio while watching The Punisher: One Last Kill. The good news is that our team knows about this particular issue and is working on a solution as we speak.”

There’s a layer of irony there that’s hard to ignore — this is a special built around a character famous for his raw, physical, screaming-into-the-void intensity, and viewers couldn’t properly hear him doing it.

Marvel’s VFX Problem Isn’t Going Away

The reaction to this particular shot is louder than it might have been a few years ago, and that’s not an accident. Marvel’s VFX department has been under scrutiny for a while now. Around the time of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘s release, VFX artists spoke anonymously to Vulture about the studio taking “shortcuts” to hit deadlines, with some scenes reportedly trimmed specifically to hide work that couldn’t be finished in time. Thor: Love and Thunder had its own viral moment with a digitally floated child’s head. And last year’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps saw dozens of trailer shots that never made it into the final film — director Matt Shakman told Elite Daily a director’s cut wasn’t possible because those scenes remain unfinished visually.

The frustration fans feel is rooted in genuine affection. The MCU has made talking trees feel photorealistic. It’s made a family of Hulks feel grounded. The bar it has set for itself is extraordinarily high — which is exactly why a single wonky face swap in broad daylight hits so differently than it might in any other franchise.

And for what it’s worth: outside of that one shot (and the audio chaos), The Punisher: One Last Kill is sitting at an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and a 90% audience score — higher than Netflix’s Punisher series and every Punisher film before it. The fight choreography is brutal and largely practical. Bernthal’s performance is everything his fans showed up for. The special is a genuine proof of concept for why Frank Castle deserves a bigger spotlight in the MCU, with Bernthal set to appear next in Spider-Man: Brand New Day this summer.

But the internet has its four seconds, and it’s not letting go anytime soon.

The post That Punisher VFX Shot Has the Internet Losing It appeared first on Cream.

• The Punisher: One Last Kill is now streaming on Disney+ — Jon Bernthal’s 48-minute solo special is Marvel’s most violent project yet
• Frank Castle hits rock bottom after wiping out the Gnucci crime family, only for Ma Gnucci (Judith Light) to put a bounty on his head
• The special is co-written and executive-produced by Bernthal alongside director Reinaldo Marcus Green
• Critics are split — Bernthal’s performance is universally praised, but some feel the story retreads familiar ground
• The special bridges Frank’s story between Daredevil: Born Again and this July’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Ten years in, Jon Bernthal is still the best thing to ever happen to Frank Castle. The Punisher: One Last Kill — Marvel Television’s latest Special Presentation, now streaming on Disney+ — is a brutal, blood-soaked 48-minute character study that finds the skull-wearing vigilante at his absolute lowest. It is, depending on who you ask, either his finest hour or a well-executed retread. Probably both.

The special opens with Frank in a state most Marvel heroes never get close to. His PTSD has consumed him. He’s haunted by hallucinations of his murdered family, of fallen Marine comrades, of Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), of his old friend Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore, returning from the Netflix series). He’s been living in Brooklyn, locked inside his apartment while Little Sicily descends into chaos around him — a power vacuum created by his own hand after he methodically wiped out the Gnucci crime family, the last mob connected to his family’s murders. Mission accomplished. Purpose: gone. And for a man who has been defined entirely by vengeance, peace turns out to be its own kind of nightmare.

“We’re really honing in on him kind of at his end, when he doesn’t know what to do and he’s completely sort of enveloped in hopelessness,” Bernthal told Entertainment Weekly. “That’s kind of the place where this piece picks up.”

It is, as Bernthal describes it in a conversation with Esquire, a story about what happens to special forces veterans when their purpose slips away — a battle, he says, that too often ends in suicide. “You cut ties with every pillar of belief, whether it’s religion, whether it’s the Marine Corps, whether it’s your family,” he said. “Basically anything that was important to you, you start to see as a corruption. You look at yourself as the reasons for the problems in the world around you, and 99 percent of the time it results in suicide.” Dark material for a Disney+ platform that also hosts Bluey and Grogu. Marvel doesn’t care. Neither does Bernthal.

Ma Gnucci Arrives — and Everything Goes to Hell

Just as Frank is staring into the void, Ma Gnucci shows up to push him in. Played by Judith Light — yes, that Judith Light, of Who’s the Boss? and Ugly Betty and Poker Face — the wheelchair-bound matriarch of the surviving Gnucci family confronts Frank with a venomous clarity that briefly turns the special into something almost campy. “A small bounty on your head is all it took,” she tells him. “Every madman, crook, and killer in this neighborhood all worked for us, Frank. And now they’re desperate. I’m the one doing the punishing now.”

Her youngest son Carlo was killed at 6:47 p.m. — a time burned into her memory like a wound. So she publishes Frank’s address to go live at exactly 6:47, inviting every desperate criminal in Little Sicily to collect. Sharp-eyed comics fans will note the number: 647 was the final issue of the Brand New Day comic run in 2010, which then marked the beginning of a new era for Spider-Man. Given that Frank’s next MCU appearance is in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, that’s a very deliberate wink.

What follows is the most sustained, unapologetically brutal action sequence Marvel has ever put on screen. Stripped of his armor and weapons, Frank improvises — fighting floor by floor through his apartment building as professional assassins, street thugs, and ski-mask-wearing nobodies flood the halls armed with axes, machetes, modified machine guns, and sheer desperation. Multiple reviews have compared it to The Raid. There’s also more than a little John Wick in the DNA, plus a gaming-influenced quality to the way Frank cycles through weapons looted off the fallen. He survives a gasoline immolation, a rooftop plummet, and at least one memorably horrifying encounter involving a ballpoint pen. The kill count is, conservatively, somewhere between 30 and 40.

The special’s entire second act — roughly 20 of its 45 story minutes — is this siege. And it works, largely because Bernthal makes you feel the cost of every single one of those kills. He’s not triumphant. He’s desperate. He’s grieving at full sprint.

What the Ending Actually Means

When the dust settles, Frank faces a choice: pursue Ma Gnucci as she drives away, or save deli worker Dre (Andre Royo, The Wire) and his family, who are caught in the crossfire. He chooses the family. Dre’s young daughter Charli (Mila Jaymes) hands him a flower in the aftermath — a small, almost unbearably earnest gesture. Frank later leaves that flower on his daughter’s grave.

It’s heavy-handed, yes. But it lands, because Bernthal earns it. The moment reframes Frank’s entire war: it was never purely about revenge. It was always, at its core, about protecting people who can’t protect themselves. He just forgot that for a while.

Back in his skull vest, Frank then tracks down a hood who killed a fellow veteran’s dog in the special’s opening minutes and deals with him accordingly. He has renewed purpose. He’s ready for whatever comes next.

What comes next is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, in theaters July 31. Trailers show Frank apparently acting as a protector for Sadie Sink’s still-mysterious character — and the version of Frank we leave at the end of One Last Kill is exactly the kind of man who could take on that role. Not a serial killer running out his cooling-off period. A street-level guardian with a brutal code: good guys live, bad guys die. That’s a Frank Castle who can, theoretically, share a scene with Peter Parker.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green confirmed to MovieWeb that the special takes place after Frank’s escape from Wilson Fisk’s Red Hook prison at the end of Daredevil: Born Again Season 1, and before the events of Brand New Day — with some events running concurrently alongside Born Again Season 2. Notably, the special doesn’t explain why Frank sat out the fight against Mayor Fisk and the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, which is a genuine plot hole several critics have flagged. That thread appears to have been quietly dropped.

The Title Is a Misdirect — On Purpose

Green addressed the head-scratcher of a title directly. “I think it’s one of those situations where you hear it, you’re like, ‘Wait, is this the end of The Punisher?'” he told The Direct. “And when you realize that maybe it’s not, I think that makes it even more cool. It’s a misdirect in the best way.” There is no post-credits scene — the story ends, a title card appears, and that’s it. But the door is conspicuously wide open.

Green and Bernthal have already made clear they want more. “Jon and I would love to make a movie, something that could go worldwide and be on screens everywhere,” Green told The Direct. “But, obviously, that’ll be Marvel’s decision.” Bernthal was equally direct in Esquire: “I’m really down to keep doing more. But I think I have to be the one that’s making it.”

Bernthal Is Magnificent. The Special? Depends Who You Ask.

The critical consensus on One Last Kill is fascinatingly split — not on Bernthal, who everyone agrees is doing career-best work here, but on whether the special needed to exist at all.

Fans who love the character are going to be in heaven. The violence is real, the emotion is real, and Bernthal’s performance in the opening act — as Frank succumbs to his PTSD in an apartment that feels like the inside of his skull — is the kind of acting that doesn’t usually show up in superhero properties. Variety called it a performance that “cements his Punisher as one of Marvel’s most singular.” Multiple reviewers compared the opening’s atmosphere to the beginning of Apocalypse Now.

The more pointed criticism is that this is essentially the same arc Frank already completed in The Punisher Season 2 on Netflix — a man rediscovering his humanity and his higher purpose after losing his way. One Last Kill hits the same emotional beats, arrives at the same conclusion, and leaves Frank in roughly the same place. For anyone who’s followed his story closely, that repetition is hard to ignore. The Wrap called it “more of a Punisher rehash than a refreshing new angle.” SlashFilm went further, calling it “inessential, forgettable, and, at worst, a cautionary tale of superhero stories that are never allowed to end.”

The supporting cast takes some hits too. Judith Light gets two real scenes and is compelling in both, but she’s badly underserved by the runtime. Ma Gnucci is set up as a hateful, fascinating mirror to Frank — two people destroyed by the same cycle of violence, coming at it from opposite sides — and then the special essentially forgets about her before the end. Her survival sets up a sequel beautifully, but it also leaves the special feeling like it’s missing a final act.

What nobody disputes is the craft. Green, who previously directed King Richard and We Own This City (his third collaboration with Bernthal), brings genuine cinematic weight to a Disney+ production. The action sequences are grimy and desperate in a way that feels deliberately distinct from the choreographed hallway fights of the Netflix era. There’s a needle drop of Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie En Rose” over Frank fighting while literally on fire that is, as one reviewer put it, not exactly high art — but absolutely joyful.

The special was built with real input from veterans. Bernthal consulted closely with Marine Raiders Nick Koumalatsos and Cody Alford, and Green Beret Colton Hill — all three of whom were cast in the special as well. “Think about what they go through when they come home from war,” Green told D23. “That was helpful for us in terms of understanding the character and where he’s coming from.”

Marvel TV boss Brad Winderbaum, who revealed the idea for the special came together during production on Born Again, put it simply: “Bernthal is a generational actor. He knows the character inside and out. The idea that he’s in the MCU and can bring that to the greater universe, especially the more grounded street-level stuff, is a huge opportunity and, as a fan, the greatest thing ever.”

That much is inarguable. Whatever you think of the story, there is no version of Frank Castle — not Thomas Jane, not Dolph Lundgren, not Ray Stevenson — who hits like Jon Bernthal hits. When he’s standing over his family’s graves at the end of One Last Kill, flower in hand, the skull vest back on, the war back on — you believe every single second of it.

The Punisher: One Last Kill is streaming now on Disney+. Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens July 31.

The post Jon Bernthal’s Punisher Special Is Brutal, Beautiful, and Sets Up Spider-Man appeared first on Cream.

• Disney confirmed at its upfront presentation that Ahsoka Season 2 has been delayed to early 2027.
• The show was previously expected to premiere before the end of 2026.
• The delay comes as Star Wars is already having a massive year with The Mandalorian and Grogu hitting theaters May 22, 2026.
• Dave Filoni serves as showrunner and creator on Ahsoka, and is also involved in the theatrical film.
• The news lands amid a broader Star Wars moment — prequel trilogy films are surging on Disney+ streaming charts for the first time.

Ahsoka fans are going to have to wait a little longer. Disney officially confirmed at its upfront presentation that Ahsoka Season 2 has been pushed to early 2027 — a significant shift from earlier expectations that the show would return before the end of this year.

The delay is a disappointment for the show’s passionate fanbase, but it’s not exactly a shock given how much Star Wars has on its plate right now. The franchise is in the middle of one of its biggest theatrical moments in years, with Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu opening in theaters on May 22, 2026. That film brings Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin and everyone’s favorite tiny green Force-sensitive companion to the big screen after three seasons of The Mandalorian — and it’s a genuine event, not just another streaming drop. The cast alone signals how seriously Disney is taking it: Sigourney Weaver joins as Colonel Ward, a New Republic officer, and Jeremy Allen White voices Rotta the Hutt, son of Jabba himself. Even Martin Scorsese shows up as the voice of an Ardennian shopkeeper, which is exactly the kind of sentence you never expected to write in 2026.

Dave Filoni — who created and serves as showrunner on Ahsoka — is deeply embedded in that film too, returning as New Republic pilot Trapper Wolf. It’s a lot of Star Wars to manage at once, and pushing Season 2 to give it the proper runway makes sense creatively, even if the wait stings.

What the Delay Means for the Bigger Star Wars Picture

Ahsoka Season 1 debuted in August 2023 and immediately became one of Disney+’s signature Star Wars titles, weaving together threads from Star Wars Rebels and The Clone Wars in ways that rewarded longtime fans while still pulling in newcomers. Season 2 moving to 2027 means there will be roughly a three-and-a-half-year gap between seasons — long by any standard, though not unheard of in the prestige streaming era.

The upside is that the Star Wars universe isn’t going quiet in the meantime. Beyond The Mandalorian and Grogu, the franchise is experiencing a genuine cultural reset right now. On Disney+, the prequel trilogy has been climbing the streaming charts in a way that would have seemed unthinkable when The Phantom Menace first hit theaters in 1999. The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones are sitting in the platform’s top 10 alongside A New Hope — a sign that the generation that grew up with Anakin and Obi-Wan has fully claimed those films as their own comfort watches. The Clone Wars deserves a lot of credit for that rehabilitation, slowly deepening the prequel era’s lore until it clicked for audiences who’d been skeptical.

Disney is also making moves at the parks. Disneyland’s Galaxy’s Edge — which launched during the height of sequel trilogy discourse and never quite connected the way the park hoped — is getting an expansion that brings Original Trilogy characters and John Williams’ iconic score back into the land. Meet-and-greets with Luke, Leia, Han Solo, and Darth Vader are coming to a space that was built around a planet most casual fans had never heard of. It’s a clear-eyed acknowledgment that fans want the Star Wars they grew up loving, and that canon doesn’t have to be a cage.

Taken together, it paints a picture of a franchise that’s actively recalibrating — leaning into what works, giving its prestige streaming shows more time to get it right, and letting the theatrical event of The Mandalorian and Grogu carry the flag for now.

For Ahsoka fans specifically, early 2027 is the target. That’s a long time to sit with the Season 1 ending — but if Filoni and his team use the extra runway well, it could be worth every month of the wait.

The post Ahsoka Season 2 Delayed to Early 2027, Disney Confirms appeared first on Cream.

• Avatar: Fire and Ash will begin streaming on Disney+ on June 24, 2026
• Sigourney Weaver personally announced the date at Disney’s Upfronts presentation in New York
• The film grossed nearly $1.5 billion globally, making the Avatar trilogy the highest-grossing of all time
• Fire and Ash earned the franchise its first Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design, plus a third straight win for Best Visual Effects
• Two more Avatar films are planned — tentatively scheduled for 2029 and 2031

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The wait to return to Pandora from your couch is almost over. Avatar: Fire and Ash is officially coming to Disney+ on June 24 — and it was none other than Sigourney Weaver who delivered the news, stepping onstage at Disney’s Upfronts presentation in New York on Tuesday to make the announcement herself.

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The third installment in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise hit theaters on December 19, 2025, and has been on a steady march toward streaming ever since — landing on digital purchase platforms at the end of March and hitting physical media (4K, Blu-ray) on May 19. The Disney+ debut on June 24 completes that rollout, landing roughly 196 days after its theatrical release.

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What Fire and Ash Is All About

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Picking up shortly after the events of Avatar: The Way of Water, the film follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) as their family grapples with grief while being hunted by the relentless Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and his RDA forces. This time, Quaritch has a new ally: Varang, played by Oona Chaplin, the ruthless leader of the Mangkwan clan — a fire-based Na’vi tribe known as the Ash People — who trades her loyalty for human weaponry in exchange for helping Quaritch track down the Sullys.

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David Thewlis also joins the franchise as Peylak, leader of the Wind Traders, while the returning ensemble includes Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Bailey Bass, Britain Dalton, Trinity Bliss, Jack Champion, and Edie Falco. Cameron directed from a screenplay he co-wrote with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.

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Critics were more divided on this one than on the previous films — it’s the lowest-rated of the three on Rotten Tomatoes from a critical standpoint — but audiences showed up and showed out, giving it a 90% Popcornmeter score. Clearly, the fans aren’t done with Pandora.

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A Billion Dollars and Then Some

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Box office-wise, Fire and Ash has been a monster. The film crossed $1 billion in early January and has since climbed to nearly $1.5 billion globally, including over $300 million domestically. That makes it Cameron’s fourth film to reach the billion-dollar mark, joining Titanic and both previous Avatar entries.

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It also cemented the Avatar series as the highest-grossing film trilogy of all time — a staggering achievement when you consider that the original 2009 Avatar remains the highest-grossing film ever made at $2.9 billion, and The Way of Water sits at $2.3 billion, ranking third all-time behind only Avengers: Endgame. Fire and Ash was also the third 2025 Disney theatrical release to hit $1 billion, following the live-action Lilo & Stitch remake and Zootopia 2.

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As film critic Katie Walsh put it in her review: “At 71, James Cameron still makes movies like he’s got something to prove — despite his many accolades, awards and box-office successes. But that fighting spirit is what makes Cameron’s films feel so alive and so urgent.”

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Oscars, Sequels, and What’s Next

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Fire and Ash also made a little franchise history at the 98th Academy Awards, earning Avatar its first-ever Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design (Deborah L. Scott) alongside a third consecutive franchise win for Best Visual Effects, taken home by Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, and Daniel Barrett.

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As for what comes next — Cameron has already spoken about plans for Avatar 4 and Avatar 5, tentatively scheduled for December 2029 and December 2031 respectively. He’s said future films will jump ahead in time to age up the Sully children and dig deeper into the Wind Traders introduced in Fire and Ash. That said, TheWrap has reported that insiders say there have been conversations about how to make the films cheaper and shorter to manage the financial risk of their enormous budgets — so nothing is fully locked in yet.

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For now, though, fans have something much more immediate to look forward to. Avatar: Fire and Ash hits Disney+ on June 24. The first two films are already streaming on the platform if you need to catch up.

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The post Avatar: Fire and Ash Lands on Disney+ June 24 appeared first on Cream.

• VisionQuest, the conclusion of the WandaVision trilogy, premieres October 14 on Disney+
• Paul Bettany returns as Vision alongside James Spader, who reprises his role as Ultron from Age of Ultron
• First footage shown at Disney’s 2026 Upfronts teases Vision wrestling with his humanity — and Ultron taunting him from inside his own mind
• Terry Matalas, showrunner of Star Trek: Picard, is leading the series
• A grown-up Tommy Maximoff, Vision and Wanda’s son, will also appear

James Spader is coming back to the MCU — and he’s not going to be nice about it.

During Disney’s 2026 Upfronts presentation in New York City on Tuesday, Paul Bettany took the stage alongside Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Hiddleston to announce that VisionQuest will premiere on Disney+ on October 14. The series is the long-awaited final chapter of the WandaVision trilogy, and it’s bringing back one of the MCU’s most underused villains: Ultron, voiced once again by James Spader — who also appears in human form this time around.

“VisionQuest is the conclusion of the WandaVision trilogy,” Bettany said on stage. “It’s a deeply personal story about identity, purpose, and what it means to be a human, but with robots and lasers.”

What the First Footage Reveals

A brief teaser was screened for advertisers in the room, and based on The Wrap’s description of the footage, it sets up a fascinating internal journey. For most of the clip, Bettany appears in human form, essentially watching Vision’s memories play out like a movie. This is White Vision — the one who flew off at the end of WandaVision after Scarlet Witch’s Hex gave him his memories back, but not the emotional life behind them.

A line from the preview says it all: “I have his memories, but not his feelings. I have his face, but not his virtue.”

And lurking inside that crowded mind? Ultron. Spader’s voice taunts Vision throughout, and when a young Tommy Maximoff briefly appears in the footage, Ultron sneers: “It’s a boy!”

The implication is wild and very Marvel: Vision has been quietly storing the consciousnesses of various MCU AIs inside his own head — keeping them alive, essentially — but one of them requires serious containment. Bettany teased this dynamic last year, saying, “One of the things that’s fun about that is that we finally get to see what it’s like inside Vision’s mind, and it’s more cluttered than you would think. He’s clearly been saving and copying and pasting [the AIs] to keep them alive inside his head.” He added: “One of them, of course, has to be kept behind a pretty impressive firewall because he’s a psychopath. But [Ultron is] a clever one.”

A Stacked Cast Built Around AI Characters

The full cast list makes the scope of VisionQuest clear. Alongside Bettany and Spader, the series features Ruaridh Mollica as a grown-up Tommy Maximoff (a.k.a. Speed), T’Nia Miller as Jocasta, James D’Arcy returning as J.A.R.V.I.S., Orla Brady as F.R.I.D.A.Y., Emily Hampshire as E.D.I.T.H., Henry Lewis as Dum-E, Jonathan Sayer as U, Todd Stashwick as Paladin, and Faran Tahir as Raza.

Tommy’s appearance is particularly loaded. In WandaVision, he and his twin brother Billy vanished when Wanda brought down the Westview hex. But Agatha All Along revealed that Billy’s soul had slipped into the body of a recently deceased teenager named William Kaplan — and that Billy had managed to find a body for Tommy too. That’s presumably the Tommy we meet in VisionQuest, now grown and, based on the footage, about to come face to face with the android who is, technically, his father.

Running the whole thing is Terry Matalas, the showrunner who revitalized Star Trek: Picard with its acclaimed third season — a strong signal that Marvel is treating this one as a prestige closer, not just a placeholder series.

The End of an Era

WandaVision debuted in January 2021 as the very first Marvel series on Disney+, and it set the bar high — a formally inventive, emotionally rich love story wrapped in TV-era parody. Agatha All Along followed in 2024, spinning off Kathryn Hahn’s scene-stealing villain. VisionQuest now closes the loop on that whole corner of the MCU.

Elizabeth Olsen, who played Wanda Maximoff through WandaVision, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and beyond, has not been announced for the new series. Whether Scarlet Witch makes an appearance — or whether Vision’s journey is meant to stand on its own — remains one of the bigger questions heading into fall.

For now, fans will likely get a proper trailer at San Diego Comic-Con or D23 this summer. But the promise of Spader back in Ultron mode, Vision reckoning with what it means to feel human, and a grown Tommy Maximoff walking into the picture? That’s more than enough to get excited about.

The post VisionQuest Gets October Premiere Date — and James Spader Is Back appeared first on Cream.

• Jon Bernthal calls The Punisher: One Last Kill the “most psychologically complex, darkest version” of Frank Castle ever
• The TV-MA rated Disney+ special drops May 12, 2026, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green
• Bernthal co-wrote the script with real military veterans involved as producers and on-set consultants
• The special bridges the gap between Daredevil: Born Again and Spider-Man: Brand New Day
• Bernthal also appears as a toned-down Punisher in the PG-13 Spider-Man: Brand New Day on July 31

Jon Bernthal isn’t easing back into the skull. When The Punisher: One Last Kill hits Disney+ on May 12, Bernthal says fans are getting the darkest, most psychologically brutal version of Frank Castle that’s ever been put on screen — and he means it.

“It’s the most psychologically complex, darkest version of the Punisher that you’re going to see,” Bernthal told The Kelly Clarkson Show. “I believe it’s what the fans want.”

The TV-MA rated MCU Special Presentation is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and picks up the thread left dangling at the end of Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 — specifically that post-credits scene where Frank Castle slipped out of Kingpin’s makeshift prison without freeing anyone, without helping Matt Murdock, and without explanation. One Last Kill is where those answers live.

Veterans at the Core of Frank’s Story

What makes this one feel different isn’t just the rating or the darkness — it’s where Bernthal went to find the soul of it. He co-wrote the script with Green, but the real emotional foundation came from working alongside Nick Koumalatsos, a Marine Raider who wrote a book about his own battle with pain and hopelessness, and who serves as a producer on the project.

“It was such an honour,” Bernthal said. “Cody Alford, a Marine Raider, and Colton Hill, a Green Beret, were on set. They’re badass. They’re more than badass. They’re just beautiful human beings, and they really wanted to do something for the veterans community — especially for these guys, the tip of the spear guys who are really suffering when entering back into the world. And I think that’s very much at the core of a Frank story.”

It’s a grounding that the character has always deserved. Frank Castle’s tragedy has never just been about violence — it’s about a man who was built for war and doesn’t know how to exist outside of it. Wrapping that story around real voices from that world gives One Last Kill a weight that goes beyond comic book spectacle.

The official synopsis keeps it simple: “As Frank Castle searches for meaning beyond revenge, an unexpected force pulls him back into the fight.” But Born Again showrunner Dario Scardapane has offered a fuller picture of what this special actually is in the MCU timeline. “I think this tells the story of what happened next after Punisher [Season 2] and before and during the events of [Born Again] Season 2,” he said — suggesting the special is doing a lot of narrative heavy lifting, tying up loose ends from Frank’s Netflix run while bridging him into his big-screen future.

Two Very Different Punishers, Same Year

Here’s the wild thing about 2026: audiences are going to see two completely different versions of Frank Castle within about two and a half months of each other. The savage, unfiltered one arrives May 12 on Disney+. Then, on July 31, Bernthal shows up in the PG-13 world of Spider-Man: Brand New Day alongside Tom Holland’s Peter Parker — and the tonal gap between those two projects is enormous.

Bernthal addressed that shift head-on. “With Spider-Man, I think what was most important — because, obviously, tonally it’s different, and such an honour to be a part of it, especially with my dear friend Tom Holland — it was important to us that one Punisher could walk off one set and walk onto the other. Tonally, they couldn’t be more different, but I hope we were able to achieve that. It’s very important.”

There’s already a glimpse of what that dynamic looks like — reportedly, Spider-Man webs the Punisher’s mouth shut at some point to stop him from swearing, which tells you everything about the energy of that pairing. It’s a long way from TV-MA brutality, but Bernthal seems genuinely invested in making both versions of Castle feel like the same man.

The path here is worth appreciating. Bernthal first played Frank Castle in Daredevil on Netflix back in 2016, got his own two-season solo series, and was widely considered one of the best castings in the Marvel Netflix era. When he came back for Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 last year, the fan response was electric. Now he’s got a solo special, a co-writing credit, and a summer blockbuster on the way — all in the same calendar year.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=M3ARHSIydqY%3Fsi%3DJGiRlbb4EP2pITzP

Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Sana Amanat, Bernthal, and Green all serve as executive producers on One Last Kill, with Trevor Waterson as co-executive producer. The social embargo lifts May 11 at 5pm PT, with reviews going live the following evening.

The Punisher: One Last Kill arrives on Disney+ on May 12.

The post Jon Bernthal Promises Darkest Punisher Yet in One Last Kill appeared first on Cream.

• Darth Vader appears in the Maul: Shadow Lord season finale and defeats Maul in a long-awaited duel
• Lucasfilm co-president Dave Filoni explains Vader as a “destroyer” with no character — only rage and destruction
• Filoni contrasts Vader’s perfected evil with Maul’s “broken, scrambling version” of the dark side
• Vader doesn’t speak a single word in the finale, a deliberate creative choice tied to Filoni’s philosophy
• The ending sets up Shadow Lord season 2, with Maul sacrificing Master Daki to secure Devon as his apprentice

Nearly 30 years after they were both introduced to Star Wars fans, Darth Vader and Maul finally came face to face in the season finale of Maul: Shadow Lord — and Lucasfilm co-president Dave Filoni has a lot to say about what that clash actually means.

Vader arrives at the end of episode 9 and spends the entirety of episode 10 dismantling every attempt at resistance from Maul, Jedi Master Eeko-Dio Daki, and young Devon Izara. He doesn’t taunt. He doesn’t negotiate. He doesn’t speak a single word. And according to Filoni, that was entirely the point.

“The key to Vader for me is that he’s not Anakin,” Filoni explained at a screening event for the two-part finale. “He doesn’t recognize that. He can’t. Anything that reminds him of Anakin, he’s going to destroy. So when he sees a Jedi, he’s going to destroy the Jedi, because the Jedi would remind him — unconsciously or consciously — that he betrayed all of his friends and everything he knew and the life he grew up with. For what? For nothing. He lost everything. He made a bad trade. He was lied to. He was deceived. He can’t accept that truth.”

It’s a bleak read on one of cinema’s most iconic villains, but it tracks perfectly with how Vader moves through the finale — locked in, vicious, mechanical in his destruction. The comparison Filoni kept returning to was the hallway sequence in Rogue One. “He doesn’t talk to those guys,” Filoni said. “He’s going to destroy them. He has one mission, and all of his remorse and all of his anger and all of his hate is in every swing that he does. That’s how it’s resolved.”

A More Perfected Version of Evil

What makes the Vader-Maul confrontation so loaded isn’t just the spectacle of it — it’s what Vader represents to Maul specifically. Filoni was direct about the thematic intention: “The challenge with using Darth Vader here is to show Maul the horror of what you can become when you have power and evil come together in a more perfected version than what Maul is, which is a broken, scrambling version of evil.”

That framing recontextualizes the whole season. Maul has been the protagonist of Shadow Lord — we’ve been rooting for him, invested in his goals — but Filoni and supervising director Brad Rau were careful not to let fans forget who they’re actually cheering for. The finale drives that home in the most brutal way possible: as Vader overwhelms them both, Maul quietly uses the Force to push Daki closer to the Dark Lord, then slips into the shadows to watch Devon witness her master’s death.

“We love Maul so much, but even though we are now cheering for him with our good guys, we needed to showcase that he is a very bad guy,” Rau said. “That was really important to me. And he does a move that leads to the tragic demise of Daki while he waits in the shadows, watching Devon. She unleashes her rage like never before. It is not the final lesson, but it is a very big, terrible lesson that he’s teaching her.”

It’s a gut-punch of a moment — and a reminder that Maul’s version of evil, however charismatic and survivalist, is still evil.

“Vader Is Better” — And That’s a Problem

Some fans online took issue with how lopsided the duel felt, arguing that Maul — battered and broken by the time Vader emerged from the jungles of Janix — never stood a real chance. Filoni’s response to that debate was pretty simple: correct. “Vader is better,” he said. “More powerful, more destructive, more of a weapon for the Emperor, which is a problem.”

And Filoni drew a clear line between what makes each of them who they are. “Maul is struggling to let go of hate,” he said, “but Anakin got consumed by it. If he were to face what he did, it would destroy him more. I find a lot of pity for him because of what he did and the depth of his treachery. And that’s Darth Vader. Anakin’s trapped in there somewhere, and Darth Vader won’t let him surface.”

That last part — Anakin trapped inside Vader — is where things get philosophically interesting, and a little contested. Filoni’s position is that the key to portraying Vader is to strip away character entirely: “He doesn’t care. Darth Vader does not care. He does not have compassion. He does not see you. He sees the thing he wants to destroy, and he will do that.” Some Star Wars fans and critics have pushed back on that reading, pointing to moments across comics, novels, and the Obi-Wan Kenobi series where Anakin’s love and grief still surface — however briefly — through the mask. The debate over whether Anakin and Vader are truly separate entities or inextricably the same is one that’s followed the character for decades.

Filoni acknowledged the complexity without fully resolving it. He pointed to Vader’s encounters with Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars Rebels as another example of the same destructive impulse: “She, of all people, would remind him of who he was. He’s like, ‘I gotta destroy that. I can’t face that.’ Obi-Wan, he wants to destroy him.” The only person who ever broke through, Filoni said, was Luke — and even then, it wasn’t immediate. “Only his son, only his offspring, could make him spark, could make him see something. But at first, selfishly, ‘You and I can rule the galaxy.’ That’s where he goes. He doesn’t come all the way back. It’s a long process.”

What Comes Next for Devon — and Season 2

Maul’s sacrifice of Daki isn’t just a character beat — it’s a setup. With her master gone and her grief weaponized by Maul’s manipulation, Devon is now fully on the path her reluctant teacher has been steering her toward all season. Speculation has already started swirling that Devon could eventually become Darth Talon, a character from George Lucas’s original sequel trilogy plans.

Rau was careful not to confirm or deny anything. “We can’t give away too much,” he said. “We have heard a lot of the fan theories and speculations, and we are fascinated by them. We’ll just put it at that, leave it at that.”

All ten episodes of Maul: Shadow Lord are streaming now on Disney+. Season 2 has not yet been officially announced — but given the way that finale landed, it’s hard to imagine the story stops here.

The post Filoni Breaks Down What Makes Vader and Maul Different Evils appeared first on Cream.