Unfortunately this X-Men ‘97-themed Xbox is only available through a sweepstakes, which is disappointing since reading the comic book panels would be great for killing time while your controller updates.
Today’s episode of Decoder is all about Disney, the massive activist investor revolt it just fought off, and what happens next in the world of streaming. Earlier this month, Disney survived an attempted board takeover from businessman Nelson Peltz. While investors overwhelmingly sided with Disney and CEO Bob Iger, the boardroom showdown made something very clear: Disney needs to figure out streaming and get its creative direction back on track.
To help me better understand what’s happening here, I brought on my friend Julia Alexander, who is VP of strategy at Parrot Analytics, a Puck News news contributor, and, most importantly, a former Verge reporter. She’s a leading expert on all things Disney, and I always learn something important about the state of the entertainment business when I talk to her.
And so I’m warning you. If you haven’t watched X-Men ‘97’s fifth episode, take extra care with TikTok’s search function, as today, one of the trending topics’ names might spoil a big development for you (as it just did me).
Instead of tapping TikTok’s search icon, I’d suggest reading Charles’ interview with the show’s sound designers.
Yggsgard, a fusion of Asgard and Yggdrasill, is just one of the destructible battlefields where Marvel Rivals’ characters will be duking it out when the game launches later this year. The map looks gorgeous in this new reveal video, but it also seems like the sort of place that’s going to be fun to blast apart.
To create the X-Men ‘97 score, Andy Grush and Taylor Stewart had to work through their nostalgia and create new sounds from the future.
Unfortunately it’s not real. But the fictional arcade game The Rise of Jubilee from yesterday’s episode of X-Men ‘97 hit all the right nostalgic notes. If only it wasn’t so hard to find a Motendo to play it on.
Marvel confirmed the main actors for its Fantastic Four reboot at the beginning of the year, and now Deadline is reporting that another pivotal character has been cast, with Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer. Which means we can probably expect Galactus to make an appearance as well.
Disney Plus’ new X-Men animated series is a throwback to the days when comics adaptations could focus on their own stories instead of cinematic franchises.
You can easily watch most of Sony’s live-action Spider-Man movies on Disney Plus if the mood strikes you. But if you’ve been yearning to see Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland’s Peters Parker back on the big screen, you’ll have a shot at catching all eight of the past Spidey films in select theaters beginning April 15th.
It’s kind of telling how X-Men ‘97’s creator / showrunner Beau DeMayo isn’t featured in this new sizzle reel hyping up the show before its March 20th premiere, but the cast seems pretty excited to be back voicing their iconic roles.
The Spider-Man 2 update adding features like New Game Plus, time of day options, mission replay, and more, arrived today. But players quickly discovered something wasn’t right with version 1.002.000, which included a “development game menu” that wasn’t meant to be there. Players who poked around told Polygon they found cheats and more.
Insomniac Games later warned players not to tinker with the menu or risk corrupted saves. A hotfix is on the way.
At the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco, Disney CEO Bob Iger summarized his gameplan for Marvel and Disney movies to get more butts into theater seats, as reported by Deadline:
“A lot of people think it’s audience [superhero] fatigue. It’s not audience fatigue. They want great films. And if you build it great, they will come,” he said. He noted that has made nearly $30 billion from 33 films. “We got to return to something akin to that. And I actually am confident that we will.”
A string of bad superhero movies certainly isn’t helping, though, even if they aren’t all from Disney.
Sony’s Madame Web isn’t especially great or terrible, but it’s surprisingly committed to transporting you back to 2003 — a golden age for comic book movies that were aggressively mid or worse.
Is apparently a question Marvel’s What If...? is going to ask when its third season hits Disney Plus at some point in the future.
Echo star and Daredevil alum Vincent D’Onofrio says Netflix’s Marvel series are part of the MCU’s canon, which was obvious if you watched shows or listened to Kevin Feige.
Disney Plus’ Echo limited miniseries feels like the studio’s first successful attempt at matching the energy that made Netflix’s Marvel shows great.
The first season of Disney and Marvel’s animation Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur ended with a cliffhanger that made it seem like Lunella Lafayette might be lost somewhere in the multiverse.
But in a new trailer for the animated show’s upcoming second season (out February 2nd), the young hero appears to be back in her home reality, rocking some new threads, and very ready to keep New York’s villains on their toes.
After a debut in the Hawkeye Disney Plus series a couple of years ago, the Echo show starring Alaqua Cox starts January 9th. Other than serving as another link to the Netflix shows with appearances from Vincent D’Onofrio (Kingpin) and Charlie Cox (Daredevil), it’s appearing on both Hulu and Disney Plus, even as those experiences overlap.
And it’s the first Spotlight-branded Marvel show, which means:
...in the case of Echo, focusing on street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity...our audience doesn’t need to have seen other Marvel series to understand what’s happening in Maya’s story.
Disney just released season 2 a few days ago. Now Marvel has posted a “look into the future” of the alternative timeline Avengers series, featuring a younger Red Guardian, the Winter Soldier, and a car chase.
The video leaked early when fans found it unlisted on Marvel’s YouTube channel, according to BGR.
What If’s second season is at its best when it’s exploring the edges of Marvel’s established cinematic canon.
We’re just weeks away from a new year (no, really, I checked), but before the calendar flips over, the MCU will deliver a new season of its animated What If...? series on Disney Plus.
They reworked the 12 Days of Christmas carol as a reminder it’s on the way, just in case anyone forgot.
You might have thought Bob Iger returning to Disney would have smoothed things over with the board and investors, but activist investor Nelson Peltz is back baby.
Peltz and his firm, Trian Fund Management are looking for two seats on the board. When Iger was asked about it yesterday at New York Time’s Dealbook conference he demurred.
But today the company responded to the proxy fight accusing Peltz of collaborating with Ike Perlmutter (who owns most of the shares Peltz is relying on). Perlmutter was fired from the board this year after losing more and more of his once iron grip on the Marvel franchise. He once called women-led superhero films a “disaster” and attempted to scuttle both the hugely successful Black Panther and Captain Marvel films for exactly the reasons you think.
Speaking during the NYT DealBook Summit 2023, he did not blame the actors’ strike and lack of publicity for the film’s performance. Nor did he blame the weird hatred of the film driven by sexism coming from a small and vocal cadre of Marvel fans upset over a film helmed by three women.
He did blame the sheer volume of content being created for making it more difficult to maintain quality and said, “The Marvels was shot during Covid, and there wasn’t enough supervision on set” from executives.
But given that overreliance on executive creative control is one of the things that have driven the Marvel brand to its current nadir... that’s certainly an interesting assessment.
How Agatha Harkness: Darkhold Diaries will address the events of WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is anyone’s guess.
But in a new WandaVision behind-the-scenes feature reel which also includes some new Darkhold Diaries production footage), Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness appears to be back to her old seld, and messing with the kind of magic that tends to get people roped into big crossover events.
The Marvels’ intriguing mid-credits sequence was yet another reminder that the X-Men are making their way to the MCU sooner rather than later.
It would have made a lot more sense, thematically, if Anna Paquin’s Rogue had popped up with a warning about the danger on the horizon. But looking at the artist Andy Park’s concept designs for an updated Beast closer to the comics, you can see why bringing Kelsey Grammer back was a solid move.
Maybe enough to play Reed Richards. Deadline says that Pascal, who’s had turns as two of nerdy TV’s best dads — Din Djarin (The Mandalorian) and Joel Miller (The Last of Us) — is being looked at for the role in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie. However, it also says the deal isn’t a sure thing yet.
Meanwhile, Slash Film says “the deal is done.”
Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton has stepped down. According to The Hollywood Reporter, one of the reasons was the movie’s full-year delay to May 2025.
Cretton remains attached to Marvel’s Wonder Man series, so there may not be any bad blood. But losing Kang Dynasty’s director is probably a painful setback, given how much water Marvel has taken on lately.
[The Hollywood Reporter]
