There’s a lot of kindness on the 2025 movie schedule, especially with James Gunn’s Superman flying high at the box office! As the debut film in DCU Chapter One: Gods and Monsters continues to bring smiles to those who need them, past figures in the Man of Steel’s legacy have come forward to share their own reactions. You can now add Superman Returns star Brandon Routh to that list, and his reaction might actually stir some emotions in your heart as well.
Promoting his new horror/comedy Ick with Variety, the twice-removed Clark Kent shared that he finally bought his ticket to see David Corenswet’s first flight on the big screen. Sparing no praise for the current DC movie champ, Routh offered this sweet anecdote about his experience:
It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. I think David [Corenswet] is fantastic. I cried no less than three times.
HBO Max subscription) under the category of “movies that ruined an actor’s career,” Brandon Routh’s enjoyment of Superman is especially delightful to hear. Then again, I don’t think anyone would have expected any less, as he’s been cheerleading the DC Films production, while also offering hypothetical advice to David Corenswet for his performance.
efforts for a Superman Returns sequel were unfruitful, Routh went on to become a member of the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World cast. Though we’d all eventually see him return to the character in the CW’s all-out crossover event “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” which led to Arrow/Legends of Tomorrow creator Marc Guggenheim’s hopes to revive Brandon Routh’s Supermanonce again.
Beyond all of that history with one of the most unfairly maligned comic book movies, Routh isn’t just a former Superman, he’s also a fan. Knowing that the next chapter in this storied character’s history entertained him, while also making him cry, is a joy to behold on its own.
Though as someone who also cried during Superman, I wonder which three scenes caused Brandon Routh’s eyes to leak? Perhaps I’ll have to see the movie again in an effort to guess.
As the one-year anniversary of House of the Dragon’s Season 2 finale looms, Season 3 isn’t expected to arrive on HBO until well past the end of the 2025 TV schedule. That said, there’s still news to get excited about as the weeks pass without any new footage, and readers of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood can take note of the latest casting.
None other than a fierce warrior from the riverlands has been added for Season 3 rather than another branch of the Targaryen family tree, and while I won’t get deep into spoilers for the sake of non-readers, I will say that it gets my hopes up a little higher that some very funny Fire & Blood Easter eggs make the cut in Season 3.
House Of The Dragon’s Newest Warrior
archer and warrior Black Aly, for Season 3 of House of the Dragon (per Deadline). Without getting too deep into spoilers from Fire & Blood, Black Aly is Team Black and fights for Rhaenyra in the Dance of the Dragons, and will forge an important tie with Lord Cregan Stark when the North becomes more heavily involved in the war.
House of the Dragon was a faithful adaptation of Fire & Blood, the show has increasingly diverged from the source material, with George R.R. Martin himself listing his grievances with certain choices. This particular book character has made the cut (unlike a certain prince during Blood and Cheese), and Annie Shapero will reportedly appear in five of Season 3’s eight episodes, although she’s not billed as a series regular.
Depending on how faithfully HOTD adapts Alysanne’s story, I’d expect that she’ll have a role to play in the fourth and final season as well. Only time will tell, but I’m choosing to take her casting as a sign that we could get to see more of the riverlands in House of the Dragon Season 3. And more of that region could bode well for a wish of mine.
Historically in both Game of Thrones and HOTD, the riverlands are just not a place anybody would want to be during a time of war, but I’m hoping that the addition of Black Aly – a Blackwood of the riverlands – could be a sign that something funny is on the way with that particular area. (Funny for fans, at least!)
George R.R. Martin’s Riverlands Easter Eggs
In House of the Dragon just as in the earliest seasons of Game of Thrones, House Tully were the Lords Paramount of the riverlands region. The second season introduced Oscar Tully, the young lord of Riverrun after the death of his father and grandfather. In Fire & Blood, there are more Tullys recorded by George R.R. Martin, and their names are funny enough that I can forgive the author for naming so many characters “Aegon.”
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Key members of House Tully in the Dance of the Dragons chapters of Fire & Blood include:
Grover Tully
Elmo Tully
Kermit Tully
Oscar Tully
War comes to the riverlands by way of Sesame Street in this era of the history of Westeros, apparently! In all seriousness, I don’t know that George R.R. Martin was deliberately trying to make readers associate Tully men with Muppets, or even wanted any readers to pick up the trend.
My theory has always been that the author was tired of coming up with Westerosi name after name after name for this section of Fire & Blood, and simply picked ones that came to mind just to cross these Tullys off of his list. I can’t confirm, but why else name a bunch of characters after Sesame Street icons?
Of course, Grover and Co. don’t really have much to do with Black Aly in Fire & Blood other than hailing from the riverlands, but if I can celebrate that she’s been cast for Season 3, why not hold onto some hope for the Seven Kingdom’s Muppets to make the cut too? With a little tweaking to the Blackwood family tree, they could all be included in the show with a different line of succession than in Fire & Blood.
Besides, without details about when to expect the third season other than expectations of 2026, it’s fun to latch on to something from Fire & Blood that could make it to HBO. For now, you can always revisit the first two seasons of House of the Dragon as well as the full run of Game of Thrones streaming with an HBO Max subscription.
With Dune 3 already on the 2026 movie release calendar for a December premiere, filmmaker Denis Villeneuve and the cast are getting started on filming the exciting sequel. Jason Momoa is among the returning cast, and he just filmed himself shaving his iconic beard to get ready to play Duncan Idaho again. Spoiler alert: he prefers facial hair.
Jason Momoa Shaves His Beard For The First Time In Years For Dune 3
The Aquaman actor is well known for rocking a beard, but as you might recall, he was actually clean-shaven for a few scenes in the first Dune movie as Duncan Idaho. Now that Jason Momoa is set to return to the storyline, it seems as though Denis Villeneuve has asked him to ditch the facial hair again, and he’s obliging. Check out the below video from Momoa’s Instagram:
he was empowered by the reception of Dune: Part Two, and went right into writing the next movie.
Dune 3 is a big deal for Jason Momoa specifically because his son Nakoa-Wolf Momoa was cast to play the son of Paul Atriedes and Chani. Momoa has said that he didn’t actually want him to act, but he got the part “all on his own.” The Momoas join Zendaya, Florence Pugh and reportedly Robert Pattinson in the role of the movie’s villain.
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Jason Momoa might not like his new look, but it gets us stoked for the return of Duncan Idaho. We’ll be able to see the clean-shaven actor in the sci-fi role when the next Dune movie hits theaters on December 18, 2026, yes, on the same day as Avengers: Doomsday’s release.
New episodes of King of the Hill are set to premiere as part of the 2025 TV schedule years after the series originally ended in 2009. Needless to say, a lot has changed since then. Hank and Peggy will have to adapt to new elements in Arlen, Texas after spending a good deal of time overseas. Some things, however, have not changed, including the now-adult Bobby’s voice. CinemaBlend actually spoke to his voice actress and the series’ showrunner, who shed light on that creative decision.
I had the honor of speaking to the creators and cast of King of the Hill during San Diego Comic-Con 2025. During, the chat, I specifically asked Pamela Adlon if she’d given any thought to changing Bobby’s voice for the revival. The actress said the decision was more up to Mike Judge, Greg Daniels and showrunner Saladin Patterson but that there had been a lot of discussions by the time she was officially tapped to reprise her role:
I was like, ‘OK, what are we doing?’ I did all my research. Adults whose voices never changed? I googled it. I’m grateful to be doing it, but you don’t want Bobby to fall in between somebody who sounds very young and a middle-aged lady.
Hulu subscription is that he decided that is what the fans would want:
Greg and I had a conversation about what the fans are gonna really wanna see when they revisit this. We personally like hearing Pam just do Bobby, you know, not trying to change it, not trying to pitch it up, whatever, you know, we, we feel that that’s going to be most comfortable for people to hear that voice they recognize and it’s Pam. I mean it’s magical, right? So you know why, why tweak the magic?
The fact that Bobby Hill’s voice is the exact same may be a comfort to some, especially since King of the Hill was forced to make some. Said creative moves were partially due to the death of Dale voice actor Johnny Hardwick. Toby Huss has taken over playing the character, and his former role as voice of Kahn Souphanousinphone will be played by Ronny Chieng. It’s an adjustment that won’t go unnoticed but, ultimately, the spirits of both characters are still alive.
I think it would be much harder to cope with a voice as iconic as Bobby Hill suddenly being changed to a more gruff tone. For me, it would’ve been disturbing to hear him sounding any other way, and I think the familiarity helps with some of the other changes with the character we see in the revival.
With all that said, change is a big theme of King Of The Hill‘s latest season, as Hank and Peggy get reacquainted with American life after living on an idyllic American base in Saudi Arabia. As someone who zoomed through the eight episodes pretty quickly, I’m already hungry for more seasons, and happy that Hank and Peggy are back in Arlen — that they reunite with a son who still sounds like he always has.
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Watch all new episodes of King of the Hill when they drop on Hulu on August 4th. I’m hoping the series gets enough attention to score a quick renewal.
SPOILER WARNING: The following article gives away a detail from The Fantastic Four: First Steps that honestly will not ruin the new 2025 movie for you at all. However, if you still wish to go into every cinematic release with the absolute freshest of eyes, proceed with caution.
Marvel Studios seems to have an unspoken goal of inducting as many names from Hollywood’s A-List into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as possible, even if that means casting them in a small part of little to no significance. This has actually happened on more than one occasion, including in the latest Marvel movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps. I’ll start there as I recall some of the big stars who took on decidedly minuscule roles in the MCU.
(Image credit: Peacock/Marvel Studios)
Natasha Lyonne In The Fantastic Four: First Steps
CinemaBlend’s Adam Holmes suspected that Natasha Lyonne was voicing H.E.R.B.I.E., a robotic assistant, in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, but she ended up playing a love interest to The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) named Rachel. The teacher only shows up for a couple of brief scenes and is never brought up again, which makes me wonder if Marvel is keeping an opportunity open for Ben Grimm to meet Alicia Masters in a later film. However, that also makes me wonder why the Poker Face star’s role was introduced in the first place.
new superhero movie for what amounted to a few, relatively inconsequential minutes, the most recent being in the new DC movie, Superman, as The Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White. A couple of months earlier, he showed up in Thunderbolts* as Gary, a Congressman who, in a subplot that I have almost completely forgotten about, has it out for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and wants to see her impeached.
(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Giancarlo Esposito In Captain America: Brave New World
One issue I had with 2025’s Captain America: Brave New World is how it makes Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder a throwaway side character. How does one cast an actor who has perfected the art of villainy (i.e. Breaking Bad, The Mandalorian, The Boys) and make him the secondary antagonist to Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel “The Leader” Sterns? I just hope the claims that we will see more of the terrorist leader are true.
(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
John C. Reilly In Guardians Of The Galaxy
At the time Guardians of the Galaxy was released in 2014, John C. Reilly was one of the biggest names in the cast. Yet, the Academy Award nominee’s Corpsman Dey is one of the hilarious space adventure’s most forgettable characters, which might not have been the case if he had been brought back in at least one of the sequels.
(Image credit: Marvel Studios)
Idris Elba In Thor
I would not say that Heimdall is really a random or unimportant role in the Thor movies, considering he does guard the Bifrost and shows up in six MCU installments, not counting a What If…? episode. However, it is a pretty small role for an actor as popular and acclaimed as Idris Elba, especially when compared to his other, more prominent comic book movie roles in The Losers, The Suicide Squad, and more.
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(Image credit: Marvel)
Benicio Del Toro In Guardians Of The Galaxy
Speaking as a huge fan of Guardians of the Galaxy, I think we can all agree that The Collector’s sole purpose in that film, and ultimately the MCU as a whole, is to provide exposition. Quite frankly, I believe Academy Award winner Benicio del Toro deserves more chances to make this bizarre character really stand out.
(Image credit: Marvel Studios / Sony)
Hannibal Buress In Spider-Man: Homecoming
his previous connections to the webslinger and his reprisal cameo in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as Aaron “The Prowler” Davis. The one who really gets the short end of the stick in the 2017 hit is acclaimed comedian Hannibal Buress, who appears just twice and for mere seconds at a time as Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) gym teacher, Coach Wilson. He would show up again in No Way Home, but for even less time.
Just to reiterate how little of an impact Buress’ character makes on Homecoming, the comedian couldn’t make it to the premiere and hired a lookalike to pose as him, and barely anyone noticed. I don’t think it should be that easy for an actor to pull off an otherwise brilliant stunt like this at a red carpet event for a huge blockbuster they are appearing in. In other words, Marvel, if you can get the best, give them the best.
