15 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
Skip to main content

Entertainment

The Verge’s entertainment section collects the latest news from the worlds of pop culture, music, movies, television, and video games. Whether you want to know what to watch on Netflix or how to make the most of your streaming service budget, the entertainment section acts a reliable source. There’s simply too much to read, watch, hear, and play. Let us be your tour guide.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Author Steven Rosenbaum sounds like he’s trapped in a toxic relationship with AI.

The Future of Truth has at least six quotes that appear to be fabricated by AI. After initially taking “full responsibility,” he’s now pointing a finger at the chatbots, telling The Atlantic that they “fucked up the book.” In a separate interview with Ars Technica, he said he still plans to use AI in his writing, adding:

“AI is often a delightful writing companion… It’s strangely creative and crafty and unusual in all these ways… and then it betrays you in ways that are just really quite horrible.”

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Stephen Colbert takes over public access show Only in Monroe. Again.

24 hours after the Late Show’s finale and 11 years after his first guest-hosting appearance on Monroe, Michigan’s public access television station, Colbert took over the show for a second time. He brought along Jack White as his musical director and conducted a delightful interview with the show’s regular hosts, Michelle Baumann and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko Wilson.

The man behind the legendary MPC, Roger Linn, stays focused with a single browser tab

His advice: Deep breaths, keep it simple, and maybe play a little VR mini golf.

Terrence O'Brien
Jacob Kastrenakes
Jacob Kastrenakes
Christopher Nolan approves of people watching his films on tiny screens.

“I’m very much in favor and in awe of the easy access that we have now to films to be able to immerse ourselves in films and film history,” he told 60 Minutes.

Adi Robertson
Adi Robertson
It’s orbin’ time.

Jared Leto’s band Thirty Seconds to Mars is (for real, this time?) using Sam Altman’s World eye-scanning orb to stop bots, reports The San Francisco Standard:

So does Leto have a World ID?

“That’s a really good question. I actually don’t know,” Sada said.

Andrew Webster
Andrew Webster
A toad-ally great word game.

Puzzmo just added Ribbit — an adorable anagram game — to its permanent rotation. I’ve been playing the game for months and it’s become part of my morning routine; it straddles a nice line between being challenging and brief, a nice way to spend a few minutes with a cup of coffee.

Jacob Kastrenakes
Jacob Kastrenakes
Google has taken a side in the Spotify disco ball debate.

Pixel users can now AI-generate disco ball-style icons for their entire phone. Haters, shield your eyes.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
Live Nation-Ticketmaster asks judge to override jury verdict or let it have a new trial.

The company asked the judge to rule that, as a matter of law, it could not be found an illegal monopolist, despite the jury issuing a verdict against it. If that fails, it’s asked the court to grant it a new trial altogether.

Spotify says its AI remix tool is for superfans, but I’m not convinced

Why would you disrespect your favorite artist with an AI remix?

Terrence O'Brien
Boots Riley turns class struggle into comedy with I Love Boosters

“Power under capitalism comes from capital itself, and we need to figure out how to have collective control of that.”

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
No Cannes for Critterz.

Critterz — AGC Studios’ animated feature that was produced using OpenAI’s tech — was originally scheduled to make its debut at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. But that’s no longer the case following OpenAI’s decision to shut Sora down back in March.

Andrew Webster
Andrew Webster
Looking for something to do this weekend?

It’s been a surprisingly busy week for new releases. Here’s some stuff to check out across film, TV, and gaming:

The Boys limped through its last season, but made up for it with the finale

A satisfying conclusion to a bloody mess of a show.

Tauriq Moosa
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Stephen Colbert’s final Late Show airs tonight.

Catch it on CBS at 11:35PM. The episode has been shrouded in secrecy, but Deadline has some potential spoilers about who makes an appearance.

If you want something fun to watch before the finale airs, check out Colbert’s interview with Jon Stewart from earlier this week. I also strongly recommend this interview Colbert did with People — he seems like a great human being.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
IMAX might sell itself.

It’s “exploring” a sale and has “approached entertainment companies as potential buyers,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Wonder who might end up buying it.

IMAX Is Exploring a Sale

[The Wall Street Journal]

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Bungie might get hit with “a significant number” of layoffs now that Destiny 2 is wrapping up.

Employees also want to pitch and start work on new games, but Bungie hasn’t greenlit anything yet, Bloomberg reports.

Destiny 2 will get its last major update on June 9th, Bungie announced Thursday.

Andrew Webster
Andrew Webster
Every message is better as a GBA startup sequence.

You can make your own right here.

1/2
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Take-Two still isn’t sharing GTA VI’s price.

Marketing for the game will spin up this summer, and the company won’t share a price as part of its earnings announcements today, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told Variety. Zelnick told Bloomberg that preorders should begin alongside marketing.

To both, Zelnick indicated that the game is indeed coming out on November 19th, which was a delay from May 26th (which itself was a delay).

Luigi Mangione supporters are back in court — this time with press credentials

A handful of supporters showed up to a pretrial hearing with New York City-issued press passes.

Mia Sato
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
AI storytelling game Hidden Door now lets users make their own universes to share.

The new Atlas tool lets users “build a fully interactive world,” and to encourage people to use it, Hidden Door will pay the creators of worlds that meet its guidelines — 30 percent of the platform’s subscription revenue will go to creators.

I tried Hidden Door last year, if you want to read more about it.

This AI guitar pedal let me roll my own effects

6

Verge Score

I don’t hate Polyend’s Endless, but I’m not putting it on my pedalboard.

Terrence O'Brien
Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Spotify will offer authors a way to AI generate audio versions of their books soon.

Amazon launched AI-generated audiobooks last year, and now Spotify is launching its own AI audiobook narration feature, Audiobook Creation Tools. Starting in June, self-published authors will be able to use the beta feature to create audio versions of their books using AI voices from ElevenLabs.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Spotify’s AI will be able to make an audiobook playlist for you.

This summer, Spotify is launching its Prompted Playlist feature, which it is beta testing for music and podcasts, for audiobooks. The company says audiobooks listening hours on the platform are up 60 percent year over year.

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Apple will broadcast a soccer game this weekend shot entirely with iPhone 17 Pros.

The Major League Soccer match between the LA Galaxy and Houston Dynamo FC will stream live on Apple TV this Saturday and will be the first “major professional live sporting event broadcast” captured entirely using iPhones, according to Apple.

iPhones were first used to capture parts of a live MLB game between the Red Sox and Tigers last year. Here’s what their setup looked like then.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Games on Ubisoft’s store are getting new accessibility tags.

The tags, introduced as part of the cross-company Accessible Games Initiative effort, will initially show up on listings for four games, including Rayman Legends, Ubisoft says. The tags will be added to more games throughout 2026 “and beyond.”

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Stern’s new Transformers pinball machines have a ball-blasting Megatron.

The animatronic leader of the Decepticons is joined by Soundwave who captures and launches pinballs from his opening cassette deck. The machines also feature clips from the ‘80s animated series, custom recordings from Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime) and Frank Welker (Megatron and Soundwave), and Stan Bush’s “The Touch.”

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
I’m sorry, Avatar. You may be confused.

There is no war in Ba Sing Se in the new trailer for season two of Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series. But there are plenty of action shots showing off how much more intense the elemental bending will be when the season premieres on June 25th.

Mia Sato
Mia Sato
Check out this clip about clips.

I was on Vox’s Today, Explained podcast to talk about why our feeds are just clips now — what we’re calling “the clippening” of content online. You’ve probably seen these videos of podcasts, musicians, TV shows, livestreams and more. Underneath it all is an economy of clipping companies pumping out mountains of paid content.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Valve says games like Vampire Survivors fall under the “Bullet Heaven” genre.

As one of many updates to Steam store tags, Valve has added “Bullet Heaven,” which it defines as: “The opposite of Bullet Hell; Focus on upgrades while automatically attacking hordes of enemies”.

I’m fine with it, but Aftermath has a great argument about why it doesn’t work. What do you think?

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Kobo e-readers are adding support for Amazon-free Goodreads competitor, StoryGraph.

Starting in June, your progress in ebooks and audiobooks will automatically sync to your StoryGraph account, including updating reading streaks, challenges, and book clubs. Kobo is also highlighting StoryGraph’s stat-tracking and recommendation algorithm, saying:

Kobo users can leverage StoryGraph’s sophisticated analytics to understand their reading habits better. From personalized recommendations based on your unique tastes to detailed charts about your reading moods and pace.