Across its full 2024-2025 lineup, which still has yet to conclude amidst the 2025 TV schedule, CBS boasted a wide variety of the most-watched series of any network, and it may also have suffered the largest number of high-profile cancellations during that same period. From axing FBI’s two ongoing spinoffs in place of Tom Ellis’ CIA to bidding Blue Bloods farewell (also in place of a new spinoff). But don’t go linking those shocking decisions to any BTS drama involving CBS or parent company Paramount.
Why Paramount And CBS Have Both Been Headline-Makers Recently
Those keeping up with CBS and Paramount’s goings-on are likely aware of recent headlines aimed at both. For one, Paramount is in the process of being acquired by Skydance, and the merging that was first put in motion back in July 2024 is expected to go into effect relatively soon after the FCC’s review is complete.
60 Minutes has faced various layers of turmoil in recent months, bolstered by the Trump administration’s lawsuit tied to the editing of a Kamala Harris interview that aired back in October 2024. Longtime executive producer Bill Owens inevitably resigned from his position in April, citing his growing belief that he’d lost journalistic independence due to Paramount execs’ increased level of supervision.
CBS CEO Addresses Recent Challenges And How He’s Handling Things
Speaking to press outlets and more at CBS’ 2025-2026 Fall TV schedule reveal event (via Deadline), network President and CEO George Cheeks addressed what his professional purview has been throughout the merger process, and why his key goals haven’t necessarily been directly affected by what’s happening within the entertainment corporation’s higher levels. As he put it:
[It’s been an] unprecedented, challenging time for the industry and for our company in particular. . . . What’s most important as a leader is how you show up in a difficult time. I think my biggest goal is to make sure that the team feels supported, and that we recognize that we have to focus on what we can control, which is building an amazing schedule like Amy and her team are doing, and just really sort of locking arms and saying, ‘We are a team. We’re family. We’re gonna get through this together.’
Considering CBS long ago cemented itself as a network where procedural dramas and multicamera sitcoms could thrive for for ages, the laundry list of cancellations made in the past year has been. somewhat troubling, from NCIS: Hawai’i to S.W.A.T.’s canceled-then-renewed-then-canceled fate. To be fair, the entire industry was completely upended by the 2023 strikes, which served as a notable factor in such make-or-break decisions for shows’ fates.
But it sounds like George Cheeks is aware that he may not have much influence on issues happening throughout Paramount and CBS on the whole, and is dedicated to focusing on one of his biggest annual tasks, helping spearhead the Fall TV schedule, and he’s quick to credit CBS Entertainment boss Amy Reisenbach for keeping the ship afloat.
Speaking directly to that, Cheeks said:
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What’s great for us is that in spite of all the disruption, we continue year over year again to have a really strong schedule, and it allows us to make, as Amy said, some really difficult decisions, but to create an optimal schedule. That’s what we do, and that was our focus the whole time, the whole process.
As it was touched upon elsewhere during the schedule reveal event, the decision to cancel the two FBI spinoffs, The Equalizer and other projects was made with financial detail in mind. The longer a series stays on the air, and the more success it enjoys during that time, the better the chances are for the series’ creatives to negotiate for more lucrative deals, which is often the point where studios and networks balk, regardless of other details.
Of course, sometimes it’s a case where confidence concerning in-development projects is so bullish that a freshman drama’s potential can outrank the draw of an established drama. At least I’d assume that’s the case involving Luke Grimes’ upcoming Yellowstone spinoff Y: Marshals, which will be the franchise’s first broadcast offering.
But audiences will just have to wait and see whether this year’s Fall TV lineup will stack up successfully against CBS’ past primetime plans. And if FBI‘s CIA offshoot doesn’t immediately scratch the itch left by its canceled brethren, expect a sternly worded email or two.
Spoilers for the Season 4 finale of Ghosts are ahead! You can stream the show in full with a Paramount+ subscription while we wait for Season 5.
Ghosts’ finale may have made us “a little mad,” as Asher Grodman guessed, because Jay made a deal with the devil (I mean, Elias). However, it also ended on an equally high note, as Pete and Alberta kissed! Yes, after seasons of Richie Moriarty’s character pining and Danielle Pinnock’s character starting to maybe fall for him, the two officially acted on their feelings.
power to go beyond the boundary. Meanwhile, in the season that just aired on the 2025 TV schedule, Alberta finally realized she had been repressing her feelings for Pete. Clearly, all that timing was less than ideal.
However, when Pete heard Alberta’s confession, he immediately broke things off with Donna before coming back to confess his feelings (and not face-palm Alberta). That moment closed out the season, and showrunner Joe Wiseman explained why to TV Line:
Well, it’s a big moment for the series. Since Season 1, Pete has expressed his affection for her, and we’ve sort of been doing this slow burn and slowly chipping away at Alberta’s reluctance, and so, it felt like time. It just felt like, ‘Let’s get them together.’
This has been a long time coming, and we’ve gone through waves of pining over the last four years. Then, this season, the tide turned, and Alberta realized she had feelings for Pete.
To that point, showrunner Joe Port explained that after years of these two missing their moments, it was the right time for them to act. So, finally, they’re on the same page, and it made for a great way to end the season:
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I think they both had moments of being into it and not being into it, and we finally found a window where they were both open to love and seeing the possibilities, and we’re excited to explore that dynamic between them.
Ultimately, this moment was a happy cliffhanger to leave the season on, especially since it juxtaposes the deadlier one involving Jay and Elias. We’re left with questions about how Pete and Alberta will be together and how their romance will develop in the house. And obviously, since they’re both stuck in the same place, a lot is riding on what they do next.
Why There’s ‘A Lot Riding’ On Pete And Alberta’s Relationship Going Into Season 5
There really is “a lot riding” on this relationship, as Port went on to explain. When asked about what makes Pete and Alberta’s relationship different from the other in-house romances (like Flower and Thor or Isaac and Nigel), he noted that both these ghosts have turbulent romantic histories, so the stakes are high here. Puls, they’re both stuck in the same house for eternity, as he said:
These are two people for whom the stakes are very high, because they both have been hurt a lot in the past and had tough romantic situations. So for them to take this leap together requires a lot of faith on both their parts, and there’s a lot riding on it if it doesn’t go well. They’re trapped in this house together — Well, I guess Pete can leave. [Laughs] But for all intents and purposes, they’re stuck together. So there’s a lot riding on it.
Unless one of them gets sucked off, they really are both stuck there. While Pete can leave, he disappears if he’s gone for too long, so he always has to come back. They’re also both pretty young ghosts, so the likelihood of them passing on feels low since they still have connections to the living. Therefore, they can’t escape each other if this romance goes south.
On top of that, they’ve each had their own troubles with love, and they deserve a healthy and exciting romance. Hopefully, this can be that for both Pete and Alberta, but only time will tell. Thankfully, Ghosts will return next fall for Season 5, so we won’t have to wait too long to see how this relationship develops from friends to something so much more.
Must See Badass Sizzle Reel Promo for ‘Kung Fury 2’ Lost Since 2020
by Alex Billington May 11, 2025 Source: YouTube
“I eat lions every goddamn day. If you’re not prepared to do the same, then you hang up that hat, walk out that door, and you never come back…” Hell yes – I want to watch this! Some of you will remember a badass short (at 30 mins!) film from 2015 called Kung Fury, made by Swedish filmmaker David Sandberg (no relation to Shazam! director David F. Sandberg). This was his own big project and it was a huge hit when it launched online – watch here. In 2018 he started development on a full-length feature version called Kung Fury: The Movie or Kung Fury 2. He was somehow able to wrangle up Michael Fassbender, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and David Hasselhoff for the cast, and shot the film in 2019. But after legal troubles and other setbacks, the pandemic kicked in and the film has been stuck in release limbo. Word is that it’s finished but who knows if it’ll ever be released. After all this time, a 10-minute “sizzle reel” promo trailer for Kung Fury 2 has popped up online and it’s awesome. A must watch. Sandberg himself stars again as Miami martial arts cop Kung Fury, and Jorma Taccone apparently stars as his nemesis A. Hitler. This 10 minutes of footage is proper badass! Here’s hoping they get the legal issues sorted and debut this in theaters in 2025.
In this sequel, the story will focus on Kung Fury’s universe with no real connection to the short movie other than the lead character. The original short film’s synopsis: In 1985, Kung Fury, the toughest martial artist cop in Miami, goes back in time to kill the worst criminal of all time – Kung Führer, a.k.a. Adolf Hitler.Kung Fury 2 is an original project still stuck in release limbo – it’s directed by Swedish filmmaker David Sandberg, who has directed numerous other short films and commercials before this including the short it’s based on. It’s also written by Tyler Burton Smith. Here’s the full backstory: “Development of Kung Fury 2 began shortly after the release of the featurette. Fassbender, Schwarzenegger, and Hasselhoff were cast by February 2018, and principal photography took place from July to September 2019. Post-production work stopped in September 2020 due to a lawsuit with investors and its release was indefinitely delayed. The film was complete by April 2024, but the legal issues were still ongoing.” The sizzle reel “leak” has also been covered by Variety – hopefully they’ll figure things out and get this released sometime soon. Who’s in?
Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS Season 22 finale are ahead!
NCIS Season 22 wrapped up on the 2025 TV schedule on Monday, and the finale ended with Gary Cole’s Alden Parker returning to his apartment and discovering his father had been killed by Carla Marino, head of the Kansas City mob. As someone who’s been watching this popular procedural for over 15 years, it ranks as one of the most devastating endings to a season for me. Now we have to wait until CBS’ 2025-2026 fall TV lineup begins to see how NCIS Season 23 follows up on this shocking turn of events, and I’m intrigued by what Cole told me about how things might be different for his character going forward.
Mark Harmon exited early into Season 19, I asked him if he thinks Parker will go rogue to exact revenge on Carla, or if he’ll continue to work within the confines of the law to bring her down. While he doesn’t know the answer to that just yet, he did say the following:
… I think the ground has been laid that he certainly would go outside the bounds of the law. I think it would be out of character for him to do that. I think he’s certainly more than capable of that, and I can’t think of a circumstance more extreme than this one that would cause him to do that.
Carla Marino was introduced in the episode “Knight and Day,” where it was established that Alden Parker had gone after her when he was working at the FBI. Carla came back into the picture in “Nexus,” when it seemed like she held the key to bringing down the drug cartel Nexus. Unfortunately, it was eventually revealed that Carla had become Nexus’ new leader, and along with carrying out this ruse to obtain nuclear material to build a dirty bomb to wipe out the heads of the other crime families (that plot was foiled), she also took Parker captive.
She’d learned that he was the one who told her son Jason about her criminal activities, which led to him running away from home and dying in a motorcycle accident. Carla wanted Parker to suffer for what she saw as driving Jason away, only rather than just kill him, she let him go so he could go back home and find Roman Parker’s poisoned body. Later on in our interview, Gary Cole noted how it’s for him to imagine that this won’t lead to a shift in characterization, saying:
… I’m guessing that after this season, we’re gonna have to see some kind of a change because these circumstances are too extreme for them to be ignored. I don’t think it can be business as usual. You can’t play darkness all the time and be heavy all the time. Human beings, they’re not built for that. But here’s the possibility of him going off the rails a little bit and maybe not being as pastry, bird watching cheerful as he has been in the past.
In addition to Alden Parker’s unresolved conflict with Carla Marino, he’s also still dealing with the mystery of Lily, the little girl from his past he started seeing in the NCIS Season 21 finale. Parker learned in Season 22 that Lily is somehow connected to his late mother, who died when she crashed her car while drunk. However, after Jimmy Palmer got a copy of her original death certificate, he told Jessica Knight that something didn’t add up with it, but we didn’t learn what he discovered.
It’s hard to say if NCIS Season 23 will wrap up both these plot threads right out the gate or if one will be handled sooner than the other. Either way, now I’d like to see Parker go down this dark path that Gary Cole theorized he will… but not too far down it. I don’t want his position as team leader jeopardized.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is constantly introducing new characters into the mix, thanks to exciting projects releasing in theaters in and streaming with a Disney+ subscription. With Thunderbolts* making money in theaters, the next upcoming Marvel movie coming down the pipeline is Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. That director recently hyped up the role of the team’s robotic sidekick H.E.R.B.I.E., and I’m so in.
What we know about Fantastic Four: First Steps has been fairly limited, but the limited footage teased a cosmic conflict in a retro setting. There’s also been a few adorable moments from H.E.R.B.I.E., a character fans of the comics will know well. In an interview with Empire about the movie, he made clear that the beloved robot is a major presence in the blockbuster. As Shakman shared:
He’s absolutely as important and as alive as any other member of the cast. He’s sometimes a slightly put-upon robot, but he is definitely a member of the family. He’s just so charming and adorable. He is really Reed’s right hand in the lab, capable of assisting him on any sort of experiment, always by his side whether in New York City or out in space.
The cast list of The Fantastic Four: First Steps is stacked, and the actor voicing H.E.R.B.I.E.. The character will be brought to life thanks to Matthew Wood, an accomplished voice actor who has worked throughout the Star Wars movies, including voicing General Grievous in Revenge of the Sith.
During that same interview, director Matt Shakman spoke about the ways that H.E.R.B.I.E. is going to tug at our heart strings in First Steps. In his words:
He’s charming, he’s funny — but he also will break your heart. Which I hope is emblematic of the movie.
Uh oh. Suddenly I’m feeling nervous about H.E.R.B.I.E.’s fate in the MCU movie. The trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Stepsshowed that the titular team’s version of Earth was marked for destruction by Galactus. Could the adorable sidekick end up being destroyed as well? Since the four members of the team were announced during Avengers: Doomsday’s cast live stream, H.E.R.B.I.E. might be the only logical character for us to lose.
I’m just theorizing here, so don’t take me too seriously. I’m just one of many fans hyped to finally see the Fantastic Four in the MCU. The Thunderbolts* credits scene teased their arrival, so they’re going to go right into crossover mode in Doomsday.
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps will arrive in theaters July 25th as part of the 2025 movie release list, complete with H.E.R.B.I.E.. And Avengers: Doomsday will follow the next year.
