Spider-Man: Brand New Day has found a smashing star to join Tom Holland in the Sony/Marvel movie sequel.
Mark Ruffalo is returning to reprise the role of Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk, in the feature, which comes 14 years after the actor joined the MCU in The Avengers. The move had been rumored for a while but only firmed up as the script came together and as production gears up for beginning this month in England.
At the same time, Michael Mando, known for his work on Better Call Saul, is returning to reprise the role of the Scorpion, the villain character whom he first played in Spider-Man: Homecoming, the 2017 feature that kicked off the Holland-centric Spider-Man movies.
Holland’s Spider-Man films have always paired him with a more seasoned actor, such as Robert Downey Jr. (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Samuel L. Jackson (Spider-Man: Far From Home) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Spider-Man: No Way Home), playing key characters Iron Man, Nick Fury and Doctor Strange, respectively. (The movies invoke the tone of classic Marvel comic Marvel Team-Up, a series from the 1970s and 1980s that featured Spider-Man partnering with another hero for an escapade.)
Brand New Day, however, is stacking the deck. Jon Bernthal is also on the call sheet to reprise his role of the vigilante known as the Punisher. It’s the character’s first big-screen appearance in the MCU and first movie appearance in general since 2008 action movie Punisher: War Zone, in which the late Ray Stevenson played the role.
The plot details are being kept under the vest, but you can bet that, in the mighty Marvel manner, Spider-Man, Punisher and Hulk will all fight one another before figuring out who the real bad guys are.
Sony and Marvel had no comment.
Michael Mando
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
Destin Daniel Cretton is directing the feature that has regular Spider-Man scribes Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers writing the script. Brand New Day has a release date of July 31, 2026.
Ruffalo has appeared in numerous Marvel projects, including Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. He most recently appeared in the Disney+ TV series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and had a cameo in Cretton’s Shang-Chiand the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Mando was a key character in all six seasons of Saul, playing the complicated drug dealer Nacho Varga. Mando also appeared in sci-fi series Orphan Black.
Ruffalo is repped by UTA and Lighthouse Management and Media, while Mando is repped by UTA and Underground.
When you think of modern-day stars, there are plenty who have tattoos. I’m sure we could probably even name a few that will appear in films on the 2025 movie schedule. Despite it being less taboo to ink oneself these days, Taron Egerton has never gotten one before. However, he nearly did after filming his latest film, She Rides Shotgun – until his mom found out.
The film features Egerton as Nate, a former convict who is trying to make a life for himself and his daughter (played by Ana Sophia Heger), but they are both chased down by enemies. In the film, Nata sports several different tattoos, all of which were drawn onto Egerton’s body, and he openly admitted he loved the process of obtaining and designing them:
I really enjoyed it. Yeah. It felt like a real process. It took probably an hour or something and it really felt like the moment to… really reflect on what we were going to shoot and where he was at psychologically, emotionally. And there’s something really glorious about those tattoos, and that they’re all very expressive. They’ve all got little stories behind them, and they’re all from certain times in his life… I really enjoyed the process of designing them. I miss them, actually. I miss them now that they’re gone.
Avengers cast getting matching ones always comes to mind when the subject comes up. Major stars like Jason Momoa have taken great care with tattooos and even shared the meaning behind many of them, so it’s not like getting a She Rides Shotgun tattoo would have been that outside-the-box of a choice. It just didn’t work for Egerton’s mom.
I still think if he were to have gotten a tattoo from a film, She Rides Shotgun would have been the one. The movie is thrilling from beginning to end and tells an exciting story about what a father would do for their daughter, and how trauma changes people. The tattoos were just an extra piece of the puzzle.
Egerton’s had a big year with Smoke and now She Rides Shotgun in limited theatrical release. People keep asking him about James Bond and Wolverine lately, too. But now I’m mostly curious about whether or not he’ll ever bit the bullet and ink himself. Only time will tell.
Quay Brothers’ ‘Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass’ Trailer
by Alex Billington August 1, 2025 Source: YouTube
Film Forum has revealed an official trailer for the film Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, the first feature in 20 years by animation masters The Quay Brothers. This originally premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival last year, and also played at the London Film Festival. Presented by Christopher Nolan, who is a huge fan of these two eccentric filmmakers, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is a 75 minute feature mixing both live-action & stop-motion animation. It will be playing in cinemas starting at the iconic Film Forum theater in NYC starting at the end of August. A ghostly train journey on a forgotten branch line transports a man visiting his dying father in a sanatorium to the edge of a mythic forest. Based on the book of the same name by Polish writer Bruno Schultz. Told in seven chapters corresponding with seven prophetic, mystical viewing lenses, the film bends objects, time, and dimensions as Josef navigates the realm between dreams and reality. With Allison Bell, Andrzej Klak, Wioletta Kopanska, Zenaida Yanowsky. It’s described in reviews as: “Wonderfully strange and beguiling. An enchanting fantasia.” This definitely looks like it is very experimental and strange – for anyone who is into peculiar & alluring cinema.
Official trailer (+ poster) for Quay Bros’ Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, via YouTube:
The first feature in 20 years by animation masters The Quay Brothers is inspired by the writings of Polish author Bruno Schulz. In a mixture of live action & breathtakingly intricate stop-motion puppetry, the Quays follow the journey of Josef, who arrives at a labyrinthine sanatorium in search of his dying father. Told in 7 chapters corresponding with 7 prophetic, mystical viewing lenses, the film bends objects, time, and dimensions as Josef navigates the realm between dreams and reality.Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is directed by the iconic American twin filmmakers Stephen Quay & Timothy Quay (aka the Quay Brothers), directors of films Punch & Judy: Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy and Institute Benjamenta or This Dream That One Calls Human Life previously, along with tons and tons of short films. Produced by Lucie Conrad and Izabela Kiszka-Hofilk. This first premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival last year. Film Forum will debut the Quay Brothers’ Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass in select US theaters (at Film Forum first) starting August 29th, 2025 coming soon. In conjunction with this opening: The Quay Brothers — on 35mm, featuring 3 classic shorts in 35mm, curated by Christopher Nolan, as well as Nolan’s short documentary, Quay, will play on Wednesday, August 27th at Film Forum in NYC.
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All right, so I wanna get specific. I talked to Dan Gregor and Doug Mand about the Snowman’s Cottage sequence, which is just like a showstopper of a sequence. I was laughing so hard at that. I know that you said that the idea just kind of popped into your head early one morning, but I was curious if there were any other drastically different versions of that scene before you had that idea and what they were like?
That’s a great question. We definitely wrote some other montages, but I do not recall what they were. They were fine, but none of them felt different enough. Not different enough from the old “Naked Gun” one but just different enough from all of the making fun of montages that have happened in the last 30 years. It is well-worn territory. The first “Naked Gun” one is classic, and then there’s so many others. The one that always comes to mind is like “Team America,” “You need a montage.” Like, once they have the song talking about it, they’ve really broken it. I wish I do remember, but I don’t remember the other ones. There was no debate. Once I wrote that one, we were all like, “Good.”
The one final bit that I wanna talk about is the TiVo bit, which feels so personal and specific, and it just comes out of nowhere. What was the inception of that?
It’s so funny ’cause in some of these interviews, I talk a lot about momentum and how the movie just had to move, and how if a joke didn’t work, I would always cut it. Even things that went further, like sometimes we’d cut the last beat off if it climaxed at one part. Then when it gets to the “Buffy” joke, it’s indefensible. That’s just me.
It’s the only joke that’s still makes me laugh. I’ve seen the movie a thousand times, scrutinized every frame. It’s all just like ones and zeros to me now of color and sound and mix. None of it makes me laugh anymore. That joke still makes me laugh every time. It was always polarizing. Half the audience would be like, “Do not touch it. It’s the best joke in the movie.” And half the audience would be like, “Get that out of here. I don’t even have a clue what that was.”
It’s so good. Especially the silence there, when he’s like, “Hold on,” and he’s hooking it up and waiting for it to boot up.
Yeah, “Just stand there. Just stand there.” I think even for people who don’t love it, if they watched the movie another time or two more times now knowing it, I think it will become their favorite joke. That’s how much I believe in it.
I had to tell Liam, “No, I know that one doesn’t — It only plays for half the audience.” It’s just my favorite and I like that we don’t explain it. I think there’s a lot of people also that by the time he’s in the […], when he’s in the cab, after the cab ride, and he’s got the TiVo, there’s people that laugh there and I go like, “I think there’s some people that are just watching it trying to figure out where it’s going and what it is as a joke, because I don’t recognize its format from anything.” It’s Liam’s performance that kills it.
Absolutely.
He’s just so dedicated. So, I think those people then will be laughing from the beginning the next time. You know what I mean? But I have to admit, it was self-indulgent. I know.
American Idol may not be returning before the end of the 2025 TV schedule as the new season will be premiering in 2026, but fans are already speculating who could be part of the judges’ panel. The latest season of the long-running singing competition series saw returning judges Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie, with Idol winner Carrie Underwood joining the fun. There have been rumors that Underwood might be leaving the show already, and Bryan is also part of those rumors, but the latter is weighing in on his future on American Idol.
Bryan has been a judge on Idol since the show was revived in 2018, along with Richie. Katy Perry, who also had been on since the revival, exited in 2024 to focus more on her music and was replaced by Underwood. While it’s unknown who will be returning and if anyone will be leaving, Bryan told Taste of Country that Underwood’s first season on the other side of the table was a success:
[She] really enjoyed it. I know she had a great time in the role.
Underwood nearly quit American Idolduring her season as a competitor before she won the whole thing and then came back as a judge 20 years later, she is a walking ad for how your life can change because of the show. She’s one of the most famous Idol contestants, and it was so great seeing her as a judge this past season, knowing what those contestants are going through. Despite the rumors, Bryan shared his prediction on Underwood returning, and they’re pretty good:
reported feud with Richie:
Last year was really, really incredible with Carrie and Lionel and Ryan [Seacrest]. And the main thing is just, have fun with American Idol and have fun with the kids [contestants].
At this point, it’s really anyone’s guess as to who will return. Even though Luke Bryan has a great time on the show, it’s hard to tell if he will be up to returning, as well as Carrie Underwood. There’s no word on Lionel Richie thinking about leaving, so he is probably safe. But as for Bryan, all fans really have to do is wait and see:
We’ll see what happens.
Of course, American Idol has switched up the judges’ panel over the course of its entire run, so it wouldn’t be surprising if that were to happen again. But the wait will just have to continue until an official announcement is made.
