• Ella Bright, 19, addressed the nearly 10-year age gap between her and Off Campus co-star Belmont Cameli, 28, on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast
• She was 18 when she filmed the Prime Video series and has been fielding questions about the dynamic ever since
• Bright said she came into the role “with more than enough information and knowledge” and that she never felt uncomfortable
• She also addressed scenes involving partial nudity, dismissing any suggestion she was blindsided
• Off Campus — based on Elle Kennedy’s hockey romance book series — has already been renewed for a second season

Ella Bright has heard the concern. She’s addressed it now. And she’d really like to move on.

The 19-year-old British-American actress, who plays music major Hannah Wells opposite Belmont Cameli’s hockey player Garrett Graham in Prime Video’s Off Campus, sat down with Amanda Hirsch on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast Tuesday and tackled the question that’s been following the show since it premiered: what does she make of the nearly decade-wide age gap between her and her on-screen love interest?

“Listen, I came into this job — and during the chemistry reads — with more than enough information and knowledge and understanding of what this role required,” she told Deadline. “I just fell in love with Hannah and these scripts immediately. Like, there was never a question that I wouldn’t want to do this.”

Then, directly: “I get people’s concern. But not once did I feel uncomfortable.”

She Was 18 When She Filmed It

That context matters. Bright was 18 years old when cameras rolled on Season 1 — old enough to make her own choices, but young enough that the discourse around the production was always going to happen. The Wrap noted she came into the project with “more than enough” awareness of what it involved, and she’s been consistent on that point every time it’s come up. There was no surprise. There was no pressure she didn’t knowingly walk into.

Cameli is 28. The gap is real. Bright’s position is essentially: she’s a professional who understood the assignment, and holding her to a lower standard of agency than she’s actually demonstrated isn’t doing her any favors.

US Magazine reported she also addressed the show’s scenes involving partial nudity — another point viewers had flagged — and was equally unbothered. “I couldn’t be more comfortable,” she said, The Wrap noted.

What the Show Actually Is

For those who haven’t watched yet: Off Campus is based on Elle Kennedy’s wildly popular hockey romance book series, and the Prime Video adaptation has leaned into the steamy, emotionally charged tone of the source material. Hannah Wells is an introspective songwriter; Garrett Graham is the Briar University star athlete who falls for her. It’s earnest, it’s romantic, and it’s already been renewed for a second season — which means the discourse will continue whether Bright wants it to or not.

The cast skews young — Hollywood Life rounded up the ages and found the main players ranging from their early to late twenties — which is accurate to the college-set story. Bright is the youngest lead, and that’s where the scrutiny lands.

Her Answer Is Done

What comes through in everything Bright has said on this is that she’s not defensive about it — she’s just clear. She knew what she was doing. She chose to do it. She’s glad she did. “There was never a question,” she said.

Season 2 is coming. She’ll probably be asked again.

The post Ella Bright on the Off Campus Age Gap Debate: ‘I Couldn’t Be More Comfortable’ appeared first on Cream.

• Prime Video has released the first trailer for Vought Rising, The Boys prequel series set in 1950s New York City.
• Jensen Ackles and Aya Cash return as Soldier Boy and Stormfront, both also serving as producers on the show.
• The series is described as a noir-style murder mystery exploring the twisted origins of Vought International.
• Paul Grellong serves as showrunner, with Eric Kripke, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg among the executive producers.
• Vought Rising is set to premiere on Prime Video in 2027, with The Boys: Mexico also in development.

The Boys may be over, but the Vought Cinematic Universe is just getting started. Two days after the series finale of Prime Video’s superhero satire wrapped up its five-season run, Amazon dropped the first official trailer for Vought Rising — and it turns the clock back 76 years to show us exactly how this whole supe nightmare began.

Set in 1950s New York City, Vought Rising brings back Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy and Aya Cash as Clara Vought — the woman fans know better as Stormfront — in what creator Eric Kripke has described as “a twisted murder mystery about the origins of Vought in the 1950s, the early exploits of Soldier Boy, and the diabolical maneuvers of a Supe known to fans as Stormfront, who was then going by the name Clara Vought.”

The roughly minute-and-a-half teaser opens with a younger, wide-eyed Soldier Boy making his intentions clear. “I want to fight for the flag,” he says. “I want to be a hero.” It’s a far cry from the foul-mouthed, morally bankrupt version of the character we’ve come to know — and that gap between who he wanted to be and who he became is clearly the whole point.

The footage is atmospheric and retro, leaning into the period with a visual palette that’s brighter and more colorful than the grimy modern-day world of The Boys. But don’t let the vintage aesthetic fool you — it’s still very much in the franchise’s wheelhouse. Blood spatters, someone explodes, and Private Angel gets absolutely drenched in gore. The trailer also teases the early V-One experiments being conducted on would-be heroes, with results that look predictably chaotic. According to reports, some of those trials are taking place at Sage Grove Manor — likely the same facility as Sage Grove Center, which first appeared in The Boys Season 2.

A New Squad of First-Gen Supes

Alongside Ackles and Cash, the trailer introduces the first generation of superpowered heroes. Mason Dye returns as Bombsight, who got a brief introduction in The Boys Season 5. Joining him are Will Hochman as Torpedo and Elizabeth Posey as Private Angel — both characters who were namedropped in the main series but never fully explored. The trailer ends on Soldier Boy and Clara in conversation, with just enough heat between them to remind viewers that their relationship was never strictly professional. Soldier Boy revealed his feelings for her in Season 5, and Vought Rising will apparently dig into how that twisted romance developed.

The full cast is stacked. KiKi Layne, Cecily Strong, Mark Pellegrino, Brian J. Smith, Ethan Slater, James Wolk, David Hewlett, and Aaron Douglas are all on board, among others. Ackles and Cash also serve as producers. Paul Grellong, an EP on The Boys who wrote the Season 5 premiere among other episodes, takes over as showrunner. Eric Kripke, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and the rest of the original producing team are all executive producing.

Noir, Grit, and Satirical Teeth

Kripke has been candid about what makes Vought Rising feel distinct from its parent show. “It’s definitely got some Boys’ DNA in that it’s irreverent and graphic,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “But it has this sort of lovely, almost noir-like murder mystery — not Black Noir but actual noir. There are detectives and twists, and there’s a murder that then opens up into a bigger conspiracy.”

He’s also been deliberate about the period setting. “We’re trying to do a very gritty version of the ’50s,” Kripke explained. “Most people’s sense memory of the ’50s is from movies, which are very sanitized. We wanted dirty and grimy. There would be heroin dens and gay bars and this underbelly of popular culture at the time.” And yes, the satirical edge is still there — just pointed at different targets. “History is a circle,” he said, “and a lot of what was happening then are the same things that are happening now — from weaponized religion to the way media is self-absorbed and self-centered.”

Jensen Ackles, for his part, is excited to show a side of Soldier Boy fans haven’t seen. “In The Boys, in modern times, he’s a fish out of water — an analog guy trapped in a digital world,” Ackles told Entertainment Tonight. “So now we see him in his element. We see what made him who he was.”

One question the trailer pointedly doesn’t answer: whether the show will stick entirely to the 1950s or also pick up with Soldier Boy in the present day, given that he survived The Boys and was last seen being shoved back into his cryo chamber by Homelander. When Deadline pressed Kripke on the dual-timeline speculation, he offered only a two-word response: “No comment.” He did, however, tease that “we have a few surprises and tricks up our sleeve in V Rising” — which isn’t nothing.

The trailer had its first screening earlier this week at the theatrical premiere of The Boys series finale, before going wide online Friday morning. Vought Rising doesn’t have a specific premiere date yet beyond a 2027 window on Prime Video. And it won’t be the only new corner of this universe — The Boys: Mexico is also currently in development.

Soldier Boy wanted to be a hero. We’re about to find out, in full bloody detail, exactly how that worked out for him.

The post Vought Rising Trailer: Soldier Boy’s 1950s Origin Revealed appeared first on Cream.

• Elon Musk called The Boys series finale “pathetic” on X after a scene of Homelander begging for his life went viral
• Showrunner Eric Kripke celebrated the review on Instagram, calling it the best he’ll ever get
• The finale also featured a thinly veiled Musk parody character called “The Disruptor” — whom Homelander murders in space
• Musk’s complaint echoed a vocal subset of fans who missed that Homelander was always meant to be the villain
• Kripke confirmed The Disruptor was a deliberate satirical target, joking “what made you think it was Elon Musk?”

Elon Musk did The Boys the biggest favor of its final season — he complained about it on the internet.

After the Prime Video series wrapped its five-season run this week with the episode Blood and Bone, Musk took to X to deliver a one-word verdict on the finale: “Pathetic.” His response came after a screenshot circulated showing Homelander — bloodied, powerless, on his knees — begging Billy Butcher for his life with some of the most undignified dialogue the show has ever produced. “I’ll f—king suck your d—k,” Homelander pleads. “You want me to eat s—t? I’ll eat your f—king s—t.”

Showrunner Eric Kripke saw the post late Wednesday night and immediately reposted it to his Instagram. “OMG this is his review of what @TheBoysTV did to Homelander, I’ll never get a better review ever,” he wrote. Cast members — including Antony Starr, who plays Homelander — showed up in the comments to laugh along.

The Disruptor in the Room

What Musk conspicuously didn’t mention was the other reason his name was already all over the finale’s discourse before he ever weighed in.

The episode introduces a character billed as “The Disruptor” — a wealthy tech mogul with a passion for space travel, white fertility rates, and a black-on-black embroidered baseball cap. He attempts to strong-arm Homelander in the Oval Office. Homelander’s response is to fly him into orbit and drop him. “He’s an astronaut,” Homelander says breezily upon returning to Earth. “I took him to space.”

When Deadline asked Kripke about the rather obvious inspiration for the character, he played coy with maximum enjoyment. “What made you think it was Elon Musk?” he said. “Yeah, I mean, the idea of the Disruptor was a character that has been continually pitched throughout the season, as just something that is really existing in the world that was just such a perfect target, and it never really fit before. But then we needed this one scene to prove where Homelander’s head was at for this final episode.” Co-writer David Reed, along with Judalina Neira, brought the character in, Kripke explained — describing it as “just one last little satirical target before we end the show.”

The irony of Musk publicly objecting to Homelander’s ending — while saying nothing about being symbolically murdered in space in the same episode — was not lost on anyone.

The Homelander Problem

Musk’s reaction wasn’t happening in a vacuum. He was responding to an X post from a user who had already summed up a certain corner of the fandom’s frustration: “The show writers turned Homelander into a Trump analogue, and this is how they choose to end The Boys. This entire show was just a deranged sexual humiliation fantasy projected onto Trump.”

This is the part that would be funny if it weren’t so exhausting. The Boys has never been subtle. Homelander lets a plane full of passengers die in the very first episode. The show has spent five seasons carefully, painstakingly, repeatedly illustrating that beneath the cape and the laser eyes and the “God” complex is a man-child drowning in unprocessed trauma — someone who crumbles the moment he doesn’t get exactly what he wants. The finale’s final act made it literal: with his powers stripped, Homelander fought Butcher one-on-one and folded almost immediately. His own son had already called him out in the same episode for being exactly what he always was — a tantrum-throwing baby who needed the world’s approval to function.

A shockingly large number of viewers apparently needed that spelled out for them. Some didn’t clock Homelander as the villain until Season 3. Others, apparently, still haven’t.

As for the finale itself — it sticks the landing without exactly soaring. It’s a satisfying, if predictable, close to a show that got increasingly wobbly in its later seasons. Karl Urban’s Butcher gets the kill, caving in Homelander’s skull with a crowbar after the supe spends his final moments on his knees. It’s not poetic. It’s not supposed to be. That’s entirely the point.

Kripke has been threading this needle for years — the show has repeatedly and accidentally predicted real-world Trump moments throughout its final season, a fact that has become its own running gag in press coverage. The Disruptor is just the last joke before the curtain comes down.

All five seasons of The Boys are now streaming on Prime Video. And somewhere, Eric Kripke has that screenshot framed.

The post Elon Musk Hates The Boys Finale, Kripke Is Thrilled appeared first on Cream.

• Prime Video dropped the final Spider-Noir trailer in two formats: “Authentic Black & White” and “True-Hue Full Color”
• Nicolas Cage plays Ben Reilly, a retired 1930s vigilante-turned-PI dragged back into the fight against mob boss Silvermane
• The trailer ends with Cage flipping Spider-Man’s most iconic line: “With no power comes no responsibility”
• The eight-episode series premieres on MGM+ on May 25, then globally on Prime Video on May 27
• The show was developed with the Oscar-winning Into the Spider-Verse team: Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Amy Pascal

Nicolas Cage is back in black — and he’s got a lot to say about responsibility. Prime Video dropped the final trailer for Spider-Noir this week, and if the footage is anything to go by, this is shaping up to be one of the most distinctive superhero projects in years. Set to Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” and dripping with 1930s atmosphere, the trailer leans hard into deadpan humor and pulp noir tropes while teasing a web of villains that’s bigger than anyone probably expected.

As has been the case since the first teaser, the trailer comes in two flavors: “Authentic Black & White” and “True-Hue Full Color” — a dual-format gimmick that’s actually not a gimmick at all. The showrunners are calling the color version “True Hue,” and fans will be able to toggle between both when the series lands on Prime Video. (Cage himself reportedly suggested releasing the show in both formats.)

The final trailer opens on a Ben Reilly who is very much done being a hero. He’s retired his costume, hung out his PI shingle, and has a philosophy to match: “With no power comes no responsibility.” Yes, that’s a direct inversion of the most famous line in Spider-Man history, and it lands perfectly. It’s the clearest signal yet that this show knows exactly what it’s doing.

A Spider-Man Story Like No Other

Cage plays Ben Reilly — not Peter Parker — a seasoned, down-on-his-luck private investigator operating in 1930s New York City who once fought crime as a wall-crawling vigilante called The Spider. The name is deliberate. Showrunner Oren Uziel has explained that the team went with “The Spider” over “Spider-Man” to honor the tradition of pulp hero names like The Shadow and The Phantom. And choosing Ben Reilly over Peter Parker wasn’t an accident either.

“Peter Parker is so synonymous to me with a young character and a coming-of-age story,” Uziel said. “The Ben Reilly character allows it to immediately distinguish itself from a Peter Parker story.”

What we get instead is closer to a Humphrey Bogart movie with webs. Cage has described his performance as a mix between Bogart and Bugs Bunny, and somehow that tracks perfectly with what the trailer is selling. Uziel put it even more directly: “The thing that I said a lot from start to finish was, ‘We’re really trying to make an old Bogart movie.’ It’s just that Bogart happens to be Spider-Man.”

The Casablanca parallel runs deep, too. “One of the touchstones of this was Rick from Casablanca,” Uziel explained. “He starts off the movie saying, ‘I don’t stick my neck out for anybody,’ but you know that deep down he’s probably going to stick his neck out for somebody. Ben Reilly is in a similar position. He’s insisting on a thing that we know he doesn’t really believe in his heart.”

The Villains Are Here — and They’re Wild

The trailer also gives us our best look yet at the rogues’ gallery Reilly will be up against. Brendan Gleeson plays Silvermane, an Irish crime boss who has essentially taken over New York City and is assembling a crew of superpowered muscle to cement his grip on the city. Among them: Jack Huston as Flint Marko, who transforms into this universe’s version of Sandman. The trailer also teases appearances from alternate-universe takes on Electro (here called Megawatt) and a character named Jimmy Addison, among others.

The prospect of watching Cage and Gleeson — two of the most magnetic actors working today — go head-to-head in a Marvel-infused noir setting is, frankly, a lot to process. These are 1930s versions of these villains, so their looks and abilities are grounded in the era’s aesthetic rather than the comic book bombast fans might expect. It works.

Lamorne Morris plays Robbie Robertson, Reilly’s optimistic journalist friend who keeps nudging his buddy toward his better self. Li Jun Li is Cat Hardy, the nightclub singer femme fatale who walks into Reilly’s office and sets the whole plot in motion — Li has said she based her portrayal on Anna May Wong, Rita Hayworth, and Lauren Bacall. Karen Rodriguez rounds out the core as Janet, Reilly’s sharp and loyal secretary.

Same Voice, Different Universe

Cage, of course, voiced a version of Spider-Man Noir in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and its 2023 sequel Across the Spider-Verse — and he’s set to reprise that animated role in the still-upcoming Beyond the Spider-Verse. But this live-action Ben Reilly is not the same character.

“Same character, different universe,” Uziel has said. “It’s a different flavor of that character, even though it’s still Nic’s voice. It’s not a continuation of Into the Spider-Verse. Once Phil and Chris introduced the idea of the multiverse, I think you’re allowed to take things and make them your own.”

The goal, Uziel said, was always “to make a version of Spider-Man that no one had ever seen before.” And when Cage watched the finished season back, the reaction was apparently something special. “He spoke his own lines back, with pleasure and glee,” Uziel recalled. “It was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever experienced.”

The creative pedigree behind the show is serious. Emmy-winning director Harry Bradbeer — the mind behind Fleabag and Killing Eve — directed and executive produced the first two episodes. Uziel and co-showrunner Steve Lightfoot (Marvel’s The Punisher) developed the series alongside the Into the Spider-Verse team: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Amy Pascal, all of whom serve as executive producers.

The show is also reportedly being submitted for Emmy consideration — which, given what the trailer is promising, doesn’t feel like a reach.

Spider-Noir premieres on MGM+ on May 25, 2026, with all eight episodes dropping globally on Prime Video on May 27. You can watch in black and white, in color, or — if you’re the dedicated type — both.

The post Nicolas Cage’s Spider-Noir Final Trailer Is Here appeared first on Cream.

• Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War begins streaming on Prime Video on May 20, 2026
• John Krasinski co-wrote the film and returns as Jack Ryan alongside Wendell Pierce and Michael Kelly
• Sienna Miller joins the franchise as MI6 officer Emma Marlowe — a role Krasinski wrote with her in mind
• Director Andrew Bernstein says the goal was to make it feel like a real movie, not a TV episode — with early Jack Ryan films as the touchstone
• Critics are divided: some call it the best cinematic Jack Ryan since Patriot Games, others say it plays it too safe

Jack Ryan is back — and this time, he’s not just doing another season. Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War arrives on Prime Video on May 20, 2026, and it marks the first feature-length chapter of John Krasinski’s run as the iconic CIA operative. Three years after the series wrapped, the team behind it is making a case that there’s still plenty of life left in this world.

Ahead of the release, director Andrew Bernstein and star Michael Kelly sat down to break down what’s coming — and the conversation makes clear that this wasn’t meant to feel like a bonus episode. “We wanted it to feel like a movie,” Bernstein said. “We wanted it to feel different than the series. People can come see it who had never seen the series. So as we thought about how we were going to film it, we wanted it to look different than the series, we wanted it to sort of feel different than the series.”

His touchstones? Not the show itself, but the early theatrical Jack Ryan films. “Our touchstones for this movie were the early Jack Ryan movies — Patriot Games, you know, those early movies. It necessarily wasn’t the series. It was those movies that we sort of look back on for reference.”

A Family Reunion — With a New Member

The core trio of Krasinski, Wendell Pierce (James Greer), and Kelly (Mike November) is back, and if you’re wondering whether four seasons of working together has made things feel stale — Kelly would like a word. “They’re really, really good friends of mine,” he said. “Our worlds are always — we live in the same town, we hang out, like we are really good friends, and I think that’s what’s kind of been special about these characters and how it really translates to on-screen presence.”

He remembers the moment it clicked: “One of the first scenes that we shot was me driving the two of them in a car, and we just hit it off pretty instantly and we became very fast friends.” The new addition to that inner circle is Sienna Miller, who plays MI6 officer Emma Marlowe — and by Kelly’s account, she slid right in. “She slid right in too and became part of the family. It’s just, like Andrew said before, there is this family that we have there, this Jack Ryan family.”

That family dynamic wasn’t an accident. Krasinski wrote the role specifically for Miller, and she knew it. “He wrote it with me in mind, which was hugely flattering,” Miller said. “And we’ve been great friends for a long time, so there was a lot of ribbing, a lot of laughter.” Krasinski, for his part, was apparently caught off guard by just how funny she is. “I did not know that she would be the funniest person I’ve ever met,” he said.

But beyond the laughs, Krasinski was deliberate about what Emma Marlowe represents in this universe. “I think it’s a part that we’ve been needing in the Jack Ryan universe,” he explained. “Some new person to go toe to toe, and certainly that person being female was very, very important to me. She not only keeps us on our toes — I think she’s running the whole show for most of it.”

What the Movie Is Actually About

The film picks up with Jack Ryan firmly retired, working in financial risk management in New York City and — as the film makes clear early — not exactly eager to come back. When a covert operation in Dubai goes badly wrong and gets Greer pulled back into danger, Jack is the one person Greer trusts enough to call. That’s the thread that unravels into something much bigger: a resurrected black-ops unit called Project Starling, tied to Greer’s past and a mission in Karachi that refuses to stay buried. The trail runs through Dubai, London, and Washington, with a cold and remorseless antagonist named Liam Crown (Max Beesley) on the other side of it.

Bernstein said honoring the way the series ended was essential. “Jack really didn’t want to come back, and that he was really conflicted… one of the big themes of this movie is sort of the idea between black and white and good and bad, and sort of the gray areas that this espionage world works in, and how Jack relates to that.”

One of the film’s most resonant lines belongs to Kelly’s Mike November — a piece of dialogue he clearly loves. When asked whether “the three of us, we’re the only family we’re gonna have” is the definitive Mike November philosophy, Kelly didn’t hesitate. “I think, yeah. I mean, it’s very hard to have a life outside that world. You know, having to not necessarily lie, but hide yourself — so your work people are your family. And I think it’s something that Mike knows. Jack calls, he goes — you know, that’s my brother, that’s my family. I love that scene so much.”

On the stunt front, nobody in this cast is backing down. Kelly was particularly enthusiastic. “I live for it. I love that [expletive]. I love it. I’m driving boats. I’m walking across a crane 40 stories in the air. Man, I feel alive.” Bernstein had a very different approach: “That’s why it’s better being the director — cause you can go, ‘Michael, go out there and cross that crane, and I’ll be over here.'”

What the Critics Think

Reviews are a mixed bag — though they agree on one thing: the cast is excellent.

The most enthusiastic take comes from JoBlo, which calls it “the best film version of Tom Clancy’s character since Patriot Games” — high praise given Harrison Ford’s legacy in the role. That review credits the film’s personal stakes and globe-trotting action, and holds out hope for a future team-up with Michael B. Jordan’s John Clark.

The Wrap lands somewhere in the middle, praising Krasinski’s instincts as a performer — noting a brief moment where Jack pauses mid-operation to process a discrepancy as “one of the movie’s most satisfying moments” — while conceding the film “mistakes escalation for depth.” Their sharpest observation: “this feels like a story that wanted to be a season.”

Collider is warmer on the cast and cooler on the script, calling Kelly “a highlight as Mike November” and noting that Pierce “continues to bring the gravitas and grit as Greer” even when the writing around him isn’t sharp enough. Their frustration is with what the film does with its own material: “Ghost War clearly knows what it has with this cast, but doesn’t know how to use them.”

The harshest read comes from MovieWeb, which argues the script is both “conventional in its broad strokes and flabby in the moment,” and that the film’s attempts at political commentary about post-9/11 intelligence work never quite land. The most pointed line: “Those with an unhealthy investment in Krasinski’s interpretation of Jack Ryan will be entertained, but the film only proves that there’s not much more to squeeze out of this franchise as it currently exists.”

And then there’s the fan perspective, offered by The Manual’s writer after attending the Times Square premiere: “By the time this film is over, you will start to recognize the men you have always known and loved from the books.” He also flagged the line that’s been living rent-free in his head since the screening — delivered by Pierce’s Greer: “Walking out of the darkness and walking into the light aren’t the same thing.”

Whether Ghost War is a triumphant return or a safe one probably depends on what you came for. If it’s Krasinski, Kelly, and Pierce back in the same room, working with the shorthand of men who’ve been through the fire together — that part, by all accounts, delivers. The 105-minute runtime means some things get left on the table. But Greer’s line about darkness and light suggests the film knows exactly what it’s trying to say. Whether it fully earns it is something you’ll have to decide for yourself when it hits Prime Video on May 20.

The post Jack Ryan: Ghost War Is Here — Cast Breaks It Down appeared first on Cream.

• The final trailer for Prime Video’s Spider-Noir is out, dropping days before the May 27 premiere
• Nicolas Cage’s Ben Reilly signs off with a twist on the classic line: “With no power comes no responsibility”
• The 8-episode series streams in both black-and-white and full color, with Cage saying he designed his performance for B&W
• Brendan Gleeson plays crime boss Silvermane, with alternate-universe versions of Sandman and Electro also appearing
• Cage also revealed he turned down the Green Goblin role in Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man to do Adaptation instead

The final trailer for Spider-Noir is here, and Nicolas Cage’s version of the wall-crawler has a very different philosophy than the one Peter Parker lives by. As the clip closes out, Cage’s Ben Reilly — a retired vigilante turned down-on-his-luck private eye in 1930s New York — delivers his personal creed with a smirk: “With no power comes no responsibility.” It’s a deliberate, knowing inversion of the most famous line in Spider-Man history, and it tells you everything you need to know about what kind of show this is going to be.

Prime Video dropped the trailer in two versions — “Authentic Black & White” and “True-Hue Full Color” — ahead of the series’ premiere on MGM+ on May 25 and globally on Prime Video on May 27.

The trailer wastes no time establishing the stakes. Reilly has walked away from his life as “The Spider,” but crime boss Silvermane — played with obvious relish by Brendan Gleeson — is assembling a crew of superpowered muscle, including what appear to be 1930s-era versions of Sandman and Electro. Eventually, reluctantly, Ben suits up again.

“With no power comes no responsibility” isn’t just a punchline. It’s a character statement. Showrunner Oren Uziel has been open about the Casablanca DNA running through the show’s DNA. “One of the touchstones of this was Rick from Casablanca,” he explained. “He starts off the movie saying, ‘I don’t stick my neck out for anybody,’ but you know that deep down he’s probably going to stick his neck out for somebody. He’s just trying to convince himself he won’t. I think Ben Reilly is in a similar position. He’s insisting on a thing that we know he doesn’t really believe in his heart.”

Why Ben Reilly — and Not Peter Parker

This is not your standard Spider-Man origin story, and that was entirely intentional. “Peter Parker is so synonymous to me with a young character and a coming-of-age story,” Uziel said. “The Ben Reilly character allows it to immediately distinguish itself from a Peter Parker story.” The name of the hero also got a period-appropriate makeover — he goes by “The Spider,” not Spider-Man, nodding to pulp-era heroes like The Shadow and The Phantom.

In a candid interview with Digital Trends, Uziel described his core creative pitch as deceptively simple: “What if you made a Bogart movie where Bogart just happened to be Spider-Man?” That framing shaped everything — the setting, the tone, the kind of villain Ben faces, and the kind of damage he carries. “He’s way older than we’ve ever seen him,” Uziel noted, “and he’s dealing with very different issues and problems than a high school kid.”

Cage, who is 62, leaned hard into that. According to Uziel, the actor showed up to set every day with a new reference — a movement from Bogart’s The Big Sleep, a line reading from James Cagney, a physicality borrowed from Peter Lorre or Edward G. Robinson. “It was always haunted by the heroes of noir’s past,” Uziel said. “He read the material, responded to the material, and then got off-book immediately. By the table read, he knew every script by heart.”

For Cage himself, this project arrived at a very specific moment. Speaking to Extra, he admitted that after Dream Scenario, he genuinely wondered if he had anything left to say on screen. “I got to a point where I was just like, ‘I think I’ve said everything I’ve had to say with cinema. I don’t know what else to do,'” he said. Spider-Noir — his first television series after four decades in film — gave him a new frontier. “I have great respect for any actor that carries a season of television. It’s harder than movies because it’s a different dynamic, a different process.”

What specifically excited him was the chance to dig into the arachnid side of the character in a way the animated films never could. “What would that do to someone’s physiology and their psychology?” he said. “Let’s see if it would change the way he moves or the way he thinks.”

The Black-and-White Question — And Why Cage Suggested Color

The dual-format presentation of Spider-Noir has been a talking point since the show was first announced, and Cage has a clear answer on which version he prefers. “I’m all about the black and white. I designed my performance for black and white, and I’m glad I saw it that way,” he said.

But here’s the twist: the color version was actually his idea. “It was actually one of my ideas to shoot it in color, because I am aware of teenagers, and I’m aware they don’t have that much experience with black and white,” Cage explained. His hope is that younger viewers start with the color version, then migrate to black-and-white and get curious about the classic films the show is referencing. “They just open a treasure trove of wealth of great American cinema. That’s the dream.”

It’s a thoughtful, almost pedagogical approach — and very on-brand for an actor who has always treated cinema as something to be studied and honored, not just consumed.

The Green Goblin He Never Played

With all the Spider-Man press swirling, Cage also addressed a piece of alternate history that’s been floating around for years. He confirmed to People that he was in serious conversations with Sam Raimi about playing Norman Osborn — the Green Goblin — in the 2002 Spider-Man film. He passed, choosing instead to star in Spike Jonze’s Adaptation, a decision that earned him his second Oscar nomination.

“For me, that was the right choice at the time,” Cage said simply. The role went to Willem Dafoe, whose Green Goblin has since become one of the most memed performances in superhero movie history. “I’ve played plenty of villains. I like both. I think they’re both important parts of cinema. I would not want to get trapped into doing one thing.”

It’s hard to argue with the outcome — for either actor. But it does make you wonder what a Cage Goblin would have looked like.

What’s Coming When Spider-Noir Premieres

The full cast around Cage includes Lamorne Morris, Li Jun Li, Karen Rodriguez, Abraham Popoola, Jack Huston, and Brendan Gleeson, with a deep guest roster featuring Lukas Haas, Cameron Britton, Amanda Schull, and others. Harry Bradbeer, the director behind Fleabag and Killing Eve, directed and executive-produced the first two episodes. Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Amy Pascal — the Oscar-winning team behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — developed the series alongside Uziel and co-showrunner Steve Lightfoot.

Notably, while Into the Spider-Verse is what put Cage’s voice in the Spider-Noir suit, this isn’t a continuation of that story. “Same character, different universe,” as Uziel put it. “It’s a different flavor of that character, even though it’s still Nic’s voice.”

The show is already being submitted for Emmy consideration, according to reports — a bold move for a first season, but not a surprising one given the pedigree involved.

Spider-Noir premieres on MGM+ on May 25 and globally on Prime Video on May 27. Both formats — black-and-white and color — will be available from day one. The choice, as Cage would say, is yours. But he already knows which one he’s watching.

The post Nicolas Cage Flips Spider-Man’s Most Famous Line in Spider-Noir Final Trailer appeared first on Cream.

• Jack Ryan: Ghost War premieres May 20 on Prime Video, bridging the TV series into a potential movie franchise
• John Krasinski co-wrote the screenplay and returns alongside Wendell Pierce, Michael Kelly, and new addition Sienna Miller
• Critics call it the best cinematic Jack Ryan since Harrison Ford’s 1992 Patriot Games — with some caveats
• Krasinski brought wife Emily Blunt to the New York premiere on May 15
• The 105-minute film sets up future sequels and a deeper exploration of the Ryan-Greer relationship

John Krasinski has now played Jack Ryan longer than anyone else — four seasons on Prime Video, and now a feature film — and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War makes a strong case that he’s also the best version of the character since Harrison Ford suited up back in 1992. Whether the movie surrounding him is worthy of that performance is a slightly more complicated question.

The film picks up after the events of the series’ final season, with Ryan having retired from the CIA and stepped into the private sector. When CIA Deputy Director James Greer (Wendell Pierce) is pulled back into action by the re-emergence of a rogue black-ops network known as Starling, he calls on the one man he trusts: Jack Ryan. Contractor Mike November (Michael Kelly) joins the mission, and the three soon find themselves partnered with razor-sharp MI6 officer Emma Marlowe (Sienna Miller) as the operation takes them from Dubai to London and beyond. Along the way, Ryan learns more about his mentor Greer than he ever bargained for.

At 105 minutes, Ghost War is a brisk, globetrotting action ride — a boat chase through Dubai’s waters, a kinetic car chase through London’s streets, and a high-stakes operation inside a Dubai skyscraper. It’s ambitious, stunt-heavy, and moves fast. Maybe too fast, depending on who you ask.

The Case For Ghost War

For fans who’ve followed the series, there’s a lot to reward here. Krasinski co-wrote the screenplay with Aaron Rabin, and the two didn’t adapt any specific Tom Clancy novel — which gave them room to build something original while staying true to the character’s DNA. The film draws on subplots seeded across all four seasons of the Prime Video series, particularly Greer’s past and his connection to the film’s villain, Liam Crown (Max Beesley). You can watch Ghost War cold without having seen a single episode, but those who did will feel the weight of what’s at stake in a way that newcomers simply won’t.

The personal stakes are closer in spirit to Patriot Games than to the nuclear-submarine-level world-ending threats of some earlier entries. That’s a deliberate choice, and it mostly works. Krasinski’s Ryan has always been defined by his moral clarity — the analyst who stumbles into danger and refuses to compromise — and Ghost War tests that in interesting ways. In a recent interview with MovieWeb, Krasinski was asked whether Jack still agrees with something Greer told him in Season 1: “There’s no version of the job that doesn’t require compromise if you want to make a real difference.” Ryan famously pushed back on that idea then. Does he still?

“That might be the best question I’ve ever been asked about this franchise,” Krasinski said. “I think, to me, it is ‘no,’ I don’t think he feels that anymore. He doesn’t push back because he’s lived through it. The real gift for Jack is learning what he thought was terrorizing was that the world lives in a gray area. But really, what you learn is that greatness comes from the people who are able to maintain their moral compass in a grey area, which is how you really make a difference.”

That evolution is visible on screen. Krasinski’s Jack Ryan thinks before he acts — even when the film is pushing him to move faster. One standout moment has him pausing mid-operation to process a discrepancy, and it’s quietly one of the movie’s best scenes. It’s a reminder that Ryan’s real weapon has always been his mind, not his fists.

The supporting cast brings plenty. Wendell Pierce gives the franchise its emotional core, and a line he delivers to Ryan — “Walking away from the darkness isn’t the same as walking into the light” — lands with the weight of everything these two characters have been through together. Michael Kelly’s Mike November is looser and funnier than ever, serving as welcome comic relief without losing his edge. And Sienna Miller smartly underplays Marlowe, giving the character enough intelligence and skepticism that she never feels like a placeholder. There’s real chemistry between her and Krasinski, even if it stays strictly professional.

Where It Falls Short

The more critical read is that Ghost War mistakes escalation for depth. What made the Prime Video series genuinely compelling wasn’t just the action — it was the politics, the procedure, the moral friction of watching a fundamentally decent man navigate systems built on secrecy and compromise. That takes time. Eight hours of television time, to be specific.

Squeezed into 105 minutes, a lot of that texture disappears. The first half of the film is exposition-heavy, and while it picks up the pace before the midpoint, conversations and character beats get hurried along in service of the next plot development. Ryan’s love interest Dr. Cathy Mueller (Abby Cornish) doesn’t appear, though she gets a name-check. Betty Gabriel’s CIA Director Elizabeth Wright is in briefly. Pierce, central to the plot, doesn’t get nearly the screen time his role in the series earned him.

Director Andrew Bernstein — a series veteran who’s also worked on The Americans and The Outsider — handles the action sequences competently, but for a franchise that once had filmmakers like John McTiernan and Phil Noyce behind the camera, there’s a noticeable absence of visual personality. Nothing here approaches the slow-burn dread of the convoy ambush in Clear and Present Danger. The action is serviceable, but rarely surprising.

Krasinski himself acknowledged the challenge of the format. “I love that the series was able to get to spend so much time with the characters,” he said, “because you care, and you get to have moments that I would never have been able to have in the show. If I was adversarial with Greer in Episode 2, how would we get back in 8? But you’re allowed to do that in a movie, because that’s what a real family does. Sometimes, you have a fight at Thanksgiving, and you keep moving on.”

It’s a generous way to frame the tradeoff — and he’s not wrong. The movie genuinely earns its emotional moments between Ryan and Greer precisely because of the history built across four seasons. But it also leans on that history more than it builds on it.

A Franchise That’s Just Getting Started

The premiere on May 15 at Regal Times Square felt like a victory lap. Krasinski arrived with wife Emily Blunt by his side, with Sienna Miller and partner Oli Green, Betty Gabriel, Max Beesley, and JJ Feild also in attendance. For a franchise that spent years as a streaming series, there was something fitting about the whole cast showing up for a proper theatrical-style premiere.

The ending of Ghost War is clearly designed to open doors — setting up sequels that could eventually bring Jack Ryan closer to the political heights he reaches in Clancy’s novels. Fans of the Ryanverse will catch echoes of Rainbow Six in some of the military action beats, and the film’s final moments leave plenty of room to grow.

Whether Ghost War is a great Jack Ryan movie or just a good one probably depends on what you came for. As a showcase for Krasinski’s command of the role, it’s the most complete and entertaining film version of the character in over thirty years. As a story, it’s one that wanted more room than it got.

“Walking away from the darkness isn’t the same as walking into the light,” Greer warns him. With any luck, the next one gives them the time to actually find it.

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War premieres May 20 on Prime Video.

The post Jack Ryan: Ghost War Review — Krasinski’s Best Yet? appeared first on Cream.

• The Boys series finale, titled “Blood and Bone,” drops Wednesday on Prime Video
• Butcher declares “superheroes are done” in the new trailer, threatening to unleash the supe virus
• Eric Kripke confirmed Soldier Boy’s story ended in Episode 7 — Jensen Ackles won’t appear in the finale
• Frenchie’s death in the penultimate episode sets up Kimiko’s revenge arc heading into the final showdown
• Kripke says the finale will deliver both massive fights and genuine emotional payoff

Billy Butcher has made up his mind — and it’s not just Homelander he’s coming for. In the trailer for The Boys series finale, Butcher looks straight into the abyss and says what no one on his team wants to hear: “We need to end the whole bloody notion of Supes.” And then, with the kind of quiet menace that’s defined Karl Urban’s entire run on this show, he delivers the line that’s been ricocheting across the internet all week: “Superheroes are done.”

Prime Video dropped the teaser with a message as blunt as the show itself — “Can’t show ya much without spoilin’ the whole kit and caboodle. But Wednesday, we’re going all the way. Til the job’s f-kin’ done.” The finale is titled “Blood and Bone,” and if the trailer is any indication, that title is not metaphorical.

The footage is a lot to process. Starlight attacks the Deep inside the White House. Homelander approaches Ryan in what looks like another emotionally loaded confrontation between the show’s most fractured father-son relationship. Butcher stalks through the chaos wielding a crowbar. And somewhere in all of it, the supe virus — the nuclear option that’s been looming over Season 5 like a storm cloud — appears ready to be unleashed.

Whether Butcher actually goes through with it, and whether anyone can stop him if he does, is the central tension the finale has to resolve. The show has spent the better part of this season building Butcher not just as a hero on a mission but as someone who might be just as dangerous as the thing he’s trying to destroy.

Soldier Boy’s Story Is Already Over

One character fans were hoping to see in the finale won’t be making it. Showrunner Eric Kripke confirmed to Collider that Jensen Ackles filmed his last scene as Soldier Boy in Episode 7, and that’s where the character’s journey ends — permanently, in the most Homelander way imaginable.

Kripke described Homelander’s decision to put Soldier Boy into a permanent sleep as rooted entirely in abandonment trauma. “He just couldn’t let his dad leave again or be without his father again,” Kripke said. “His son abandoned him, and I just don’t think he could handle being abandoned by his father.” The result, in Homelander’s broken logic, is a kind of victory. “Now, Soldier Boy is there forever. His father will always be there, sleeping and won’t talk back,” Kripke explained. “It’s a big win for Homelander” — which tells you everything you need to know about how warped this character’s inner world really is.

The production team did sneak in one last gift for Supernatural fans. Ackles originally delivered a line referencing “the old Ford” in the script, but Kripke and director Phil Sgriccia quietly changed it in post. “Phil was like, ‘Should it be Impala?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, it probably should be Impala,'” Kripke recalled. Ackles looped the new word in — one final nod to Dean Winchester, tucked into Soldier Boy’s last moment on screen.

Everything the Finale Has to Answer

The episode is expected to run just over 60 minutes, which sounds like a lot until you start counting what it needs to resolve. Frenchie is dead — murdered by Homelander in the penultimate episode — and Kimiko is carrying both grief and what may be a devastating new weapon. In Episode 7, she underwent the same radiation experiment that gave Soldier Boy his power-stripping blasts, with the goal of being able to depower Homelander even with V1 in his blood. We don’t actually see the result. The finale will have to show us whether it worked, and whether Kimiko becomes the most important person in the room when the final fight goes down.

Then there’s Ryan, who’s spent most of Season 5 getting beaten bloody by Homelander and emotionally neglected by Butcher. The trailer shows him standing alongside Homelander, which could mean almost anything — loyalty, manipulation, or a son who’s simply run out of better options. His choice in the finale might matter more than anyone else’s.

Marie Moreau from the now-cancelled Gen V has also been positioned as a potential threat to Homelander, her blood manipulation powers theoretically another avenue to strip him of V1. But her appearances in Season 5 have been brief, and Kripke has acknowledged that the finale wasn’t adjusted after Gen V‘s cancellation — the producers had expected those characters to have a future beyond this episode. Whether her arc lands as satisfying or incomplete is one of the finale’s genuine wild cards.

Sister Sage remains a puzzle. Set up as the smartest person alive and a master manipulator, her Season 5 arc has frustrated some fans with seemingly out-of-character decisions. The finale will finally reveal whether she’s been playing a longer game — or whether the writing just didn’t serve her well enough.

And then there’s the question that sits underneath all of it, the one Stan Edgar raised in one of the season’s most chilling scenes: even if Homelander falls, Vought will survive. Corporate power doesn’t die when its figureheads do. Something else always takes their place. The finale has to decide whether The Boys ends with genuine hope or with the more uncomfortable truth that the machine just keeps running.

Kripke Says the Heart of the Show Comes Home

For all the carnage the trailer promises, Kripke has been insistent that the finale isn’t just about the spectacle. “People don’t always seem to feel this way, but to me, the show has always had a lot of heart and hope,” he said. He’s promised big fights and confrontations alongside what he calls genuine, honest emotion.

The finale will also screen in theaters in the US — a rare move for a streaming show, and a signal that Prime Video understands what this ending means to the people who’ve been watching since Season 1.

“Holy fuck. A literal ride,” Kripke told fans after an early screening. “Those who scored tickets are in for a treat. Thanks for a moment I’ll never forget.”

The Boys series finale, “Blood and Bone,” premieres Wednesday on Prime Video.

The post The Boys Series Finale: Butcher Says ‘Superheroes Are Done’ appeared first on Cream.

• Spider-Noir premieres on Prime Video on May 27, with Nicolas Cage starring as Ben Reilly — not Peter Parker
• The show will be available in both black-and-white and color versions, a decision Cage himself helped champion
• Cage referenced Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, and even Bugs Bunny daily on set to shape his performance
• Co-showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot drew from noir classics like Casablanca, Chinatown, and L.A. Confidential
• Producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller say they’re open to more seasons — the door is wide open

Nicolas Cage has been circling superhero mythology for decades — there was that legendary unmade Superman project, then his voice work in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. But nothing he’s done in the genre looks quite like Spider-Noir, the Prime Video series that drops May 27 and asks a question no one in the Spider-Verse has dared to ask before: What if we just made a Bogart movie?

“We’re really trying to make an old Bogart movie,” co-showrunner Oren Uziel said. “It’s just that Bogart happens to be Spider-Man.”

That single idea — deceptively simple, wildly ambitious — drove every creative decision the team made, from the casting to the color palette to the choice to set the whole thing in 1930s Depression-era New York. Uziel, who came in already a fan of both noir and Spider-Man, said he and Cage were aligned from the very beginning on what this show needed to be. “We didn’t want to make a version of Spider-Man that anyone had seen before,” he said. “Nic was never going to do that.”

Why Ben Reilly — and Not Peter Parker

The most immediate signal that this isn’t your standard Spider-Man story? The name on the door. Cage plays Ben Reilly, a seasoned, down-on-his-luck private investigator who is forced back into his life as the city’s one and only superhero following a deeply personal tragedy. Peter Parker doesn’t exist in this universe — at least not yet, with Uziel leaving the door deliberately open for future seasons.

The reasoning was straightforward. “Peter Parker is so synonymous to me with a young character and a coming-of-age story,” Uziel explained. That’s not the story they were telling. This Spider-Man is older, wearier, and has already been through the worst of it. “He is older, he is wiser, he is maybe a little less excited to do it all,” added co-showrunner Steve Lightfoot, who previously served as showrunner on Marvel’s The Punisher.

Lamorne Morris, who plays journalist and Reilly confidant Robbie Robertson, put it in terms that cut right to the heart of what Cage was building. “His whole thing is he is a spider trying to learn how to be a human. Whereas I think other characters are the reverse — they are humans playing the spider — and I think it’s a completely unique take on it.”

Cage pulled from an eclectic set of references to get there. Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Edward G. Robinson — and, yes, Bugs Bunny. “Nic is unlike any other actor you’ve ever seen,” Morris said. “He pulled from Bugs Bunny to play this character.”

Every Day on Set, a New Bogart Scene

Uziel’s own noir touchstones going into the show were considerable — The Third Man, Double Indemnity, The Thin Man, His Girl Friday, Miller’s Crossing, Casablanca, L.A. Confidential. But Cage arrived on set each day with his own specific homework done. “Every single day he’d come to set with a different reference: ‘This is Bogart from The Big Sleep, this is going to be Peter Lorre. This is going to be Edward G. Robinson,'” Uziel recalled.

That level of commitment had a gravitational pull on the rest of the cast. Brendan Gleeson, who plays lead antagonist and crime boss Silvermane, described working opposite Cage as an experience in creative generosity. “It was just a joy to be working with Nic because you toss it across and it comes back with twice a spin on it.”

Jack Huston, who plays Flint Marko — better known as Sandman — said the show’s characters take on a larger symbolic weight in the process. The heroes and villains “become a bit of their own metaphor and that’s a beautiful thing.” Lucas Shaw described the result as a new kind of “badass adult” version of Spider-Man, something the franchise simply hasn’t produced before.

For producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — the creative architects of the Spider-Verse film universe — the tonal blend was always the point. “It should be funny. Nic is a funny person. Spider-Man was always quippy. And some of our favorite noirs are really funny, but also emotional,” Miller said. “As the show gets weirder, you’re letting Nic be Nic.”

The Black-and-White Decision — and the Fight to Keep It

Shooting in black and white in 2026 is not a small ask. Cage knew that, and he knew the studio was nervous about it. So he came up with a solution himself.

“I could tell that some of the folks in the studio were nervous,” Cage said at Wednesday’s New York premiere, where he walked the carpet alongside Morris, Huston, Gleeson, Li Jun Li, Karen Rodriguez, Lukas Haas, and Abraham Popoola. “So I said, ‘You don’t only have to shoot it in black and white; you can also get teenagers, who might be watching, by shooting in color with almost a colorized feel. And maybe that’ll make them interested in watching it in black and white.'”

The creative team was fully on board. Miller said from the beginning they were committed to shooting “with intention for black and white” — not converting it as an afterthought. That single decision shaped everything: performances, music, cinematography. Executive producer Dan Shear clarified that when Amazon came to the production asking for a color version to accompany the black-and-white release, the team accepted it as a creative challenge rather than a compromise. “We accepted the challenge, worked out our plan for it and it was really seen as an efficient, effective production,” Shear said.

For Cage, the color version isn’t a sellout — it’s a gateway. “My dream is that [young viewers] will see the black and white after they do the color, and they’re going to want to look at the old movies, all that great wealth of American cinema that we have,” he said. “I also say, it doesn’t matter if a 13-year-old doesn’t know who Humphrey Bogart is. It works.”

The show was also retitled from simply Noir to Spider-Noir ahead of release. Shear explained the thinking: “It’s really a merging of two genres. We’re telling a noir, but we’re also telling a Spider-Verse show and the title represents the intersection of those genres, which kind of creates a third new thing that we hadn’t seen before.”

Built to Run for Seasons

The eight-episode first season expands on the Spider-Man Noir character who first appeared in animated form in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018 — though the creative team is clear this is its own, broader story. “They’re connected for sure. There’s inspiration being taken there,” Uziel said. “But when you’re making an eight-episode television series, you’re going to really expand it and broaden it. In live action, you get to see so much more of Nic’s performance and you can really fully realize New York in the ’30s.”

Lightfoot was equally firm that despite the period setting, the show needed to feel alive right now. “We wanted to be truthful to the period, but we never wanted it to feel like a pastiche. We wanted it to be its own thing, and if you’re writing a show now, it’s hopefully going to speak to now.”

As for what comes next, Lord and Miller aren’t playing coy. “We are television producers. We’re not gonna say no,” Lord said. Miller added that he “would be happy to do more.”

And Uziel made the case for why this world could sustain as many stories as anyone wants to tell. “One of the magical things about any private detective story is, if you want another story, all it takes is another client to knock on that door, and then comes a new set of cases, a new set of problems and a new adventure to go on.”

Spider-Noir hits Prime Video on May 27 in both black-and-white and color.

The post Nicolas Cage’s Spider-Noir: ‘We Made a Bogart Movie Where Bogart Is Spider-Man’ appeared first on Cream.

• Off Campus premieres May 13 on Prime Video, adapted from Elle Kennedy’s 2015 BookTok-beloved novel The Deal
• Stars Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli as a music student and hockey captain who strike a fake-dating deal
• The show draws inevitable comparisons to HBO’s Heated Rivalry but is lighter, sweeter, and less steamy
• Prime Video has already ordered a second season, expected to follow a different couple Bridgerton-style
• At 19, Ella Bright is a genuine find — even if the show around her doesn’t always keep up

The hockey romance era of television is officially a genre now, and Prime Video wants in. Off Campus, which premieres May 13, arrives in the long shadow of Heated Rivalry — HBO’s surprise phenomenon that turned ice rinks into the hottest real estate on streaming. Amazon knows the comparison is coming. The show basically can’t avoid it. And honestly? It doesn’t entirely survive it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time.

Based on Elle Kennedy’s 2015 novel The Deal — which has over 140,000 reviews on Amazon, twice as many as the book that inspired Heated Rivalry — the series was actually ahead of the curve before the curve existed. Lead actress Ella Bright auditioned in March 2025, they shot last summer in Vancouver, and the hockey romance wave hadn’t even crested yet.

“I’m from London, so I had never watched a hockey game in my life,” Bright told WWD while on a press trip to Brazil. “I had no idea that it was this thing. And when we were filming, I’m thinking we’re the only people doing an ice hockey show. I was like, ‘I love this story, but it seems very new.’ Ice hockey’s very niche. It is such a serendipitous thing that we all kind of came out at the same time.”

The premise is exactly what you think it is — and that’s kind of the point. Hannah Wells (Bright) is a music major at fictional Briar University, quietly pining over Justin (Josh Heuston), a rock-band frontman who barely knows she exists. Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) is the school’s NHL-bound hockey captain, failing philosophy and desperate to keep his GPA high enough to stay on the ice. He notices Hannah acing the class he’s tanking. A deal is struck: she tutors him, he fake-dates her to make Justin jealous.

“This is why this arrangement is perfect — you’re not interested in me, and I’m not interested in a relationship,” Garrett tells Hannah. “This is purely transactional.”

Famous last words.

Showrunners Louisa Levy (who adapted the scripts) and Gina Fattore have constructed something that wears its influences openly — there are visual nods to Legally Blonde, plot DNA from 10 Things I Hate About You, and a campus social hierarchy straight out of Gossip Girl. It’s a Frankenstein of beloved rom-com parts, assembled with affection. Whether that reads as comfort food or lazy writing probably depends on your mood when you press play.

The Leads: One Shines Immediately, One Takes Time

Bright, who is 19 and may genuinely be the only cast member not playing several years younger than her actual age, is a genuine find. She talked about how she initially played Hannah too small — too shy, too closed-off — before a casting director course-corrected her.

“Hannah, she has this confidence in herself. Yes, she might not be the most popular person in school, but she has her two friends, Dexter and Allie, who she trusts and that’s all that matters to her. She knows who she is in this life and she is completely comfortable in that,” Bright recalled being told. That note unlocked something. The Hannah on screen is quick-witted, warm, a little quirky, and never a pushover — which makes her a more interesting rom-com heroine than the genre usually bothers to provide.

Cameli has a harder time of it early on. Garrett’s stoic-cool-guy energy can read as blankness in the first few episodes, which is a problem when you need the audience to understand why Hannah might eventually fall for him. But he’s genuinely good when the softer side comes out — the shy glance across a crowded room, the slow warmth of someone who’s been performing confidence his whole life and finally doesn’t have to. He gets there. It just takes a minute.

The season opens with Hannah accidentally walking in on Garrett in a locker room shower, and the camera makes absolutely no apologies about where it looks. His muscular back, the water, the abs — the show is not subtle about the attraction it’s selling. Once real feelings develop between them, the series handles intimacy as a form of emotional trust-building, which is more thoughtful than the premise suggests.

That’s because Off Campus gives both leads genuine trauma to carry. Hannah’s backstory involves a past assault, and the show handles it with more care than you might expect — revealing the details gradually, letting you know who these people are before unloading the weight of what they’ve been through. There’s a scene between Garrett and his playboy teammate Dean (Stephen Kalyn) about making the women they sleep with feel safe — locker room talk as actual emotional literacy. It’s the kind of thing that only exists in fiction written by women, which is exactly why Kennedy’s books have the fanbases they do.

“The show’s stand-out quality is its insistence that characters with trauma don’t need to be in depressing stories,” as one early review put it. “They can get trope-filled rom-coms, too.” That’s not nothing.

Where It Stumbles

The eight-episode season is uneven in ways that are hard to ignore. The tonal shifts are sometimes jarring — one early conversation starts as banter about Dirty Dancing and suddenly pivots to Hannah ranting about hockey’s glorification of violence, which is necessary context delivered with all the grace of a bodycheck. Another scene delivers locker room consent talk so earnest it might as well have been cut from a later season of Ted Lasso.

The show frontloads its best material. The first half is fizzy and fun and genuinely sweet; the back half gets bogged down in backstory revelations and heavier emotional terrain, and by the time Hannah and Garrett reach their happy ending, it feels slightly rushed — like the writers ran out of steam at the exact moment the payoff was supposed to land.

Steve Howey plays Garrett’s hockey-legend father, and the character is frustratingly one-note for someone that charismatic. The on-ice action is, somehow, less exciting than you’d hope. And some of the supporting performances are rough enough to pull you out of scenes that otherwise have real momentum.

The AV Club review wasn’t wrong to note that much of Off Campus “plays like those ‘spicy’ vertical dramas currently interrupting Instagram Reels” — there’s a slickness to it that can feel algorithmic. The graphic sex scenes sometimes feel dropped in rather than earned, which undercuts the emotional work the show does elsewhere.

The Supporting Cast and What Season 2 Might Look Like

Mika Abdalla as Allie, Hannah’s theater-kid best friend, is a consistent delight — every scene she’s in has more energy. And Abdalla and Kalyn, as Allie and playboy hockey teammate Dean, have more natural chemistry than the show’s actual leads for much of the season. By the final episodes, Off Campus has already started laying groundwork for their story to take center stage in Season 2, in the same way the Bridgerton universe rotates its central couple each installment.

Prime Video has already greenlit that second season, and Bright confirmed the cast heads back to Vancouver almost immediately after the premiere. “I think I get a day off to go back to London, repack my suitcase, and we start again,” she said. “I can’t wait.”

Whether Off Campus becomes a genuine phenomenon or a pleasant footnote probably depends on what that second season delivers. The trailer has already racked up nearly 9 million views, and the BookTok community that made Kennedy’s novels a cultural touchstone is primed and ready. The audience is there. The goodwill is there. The question is whether the show can sharpen itself into something with real teeth — or at least real heat.

For now, Off Campus is exactly what it looks like: a warm, occasionally clumsy, genuinely charming college romance with a breakout lead and a second season that might actually be the real thing. Sometimes that’s enough to get you to the next chapter.

The post Prime Video’s ‘Off Campus’ Review: Charming, Flawed, Worth It appeared first on Cream.