Avengers: Doomsday will be here before you know it. After the Russo brothers’ latest moviemaking effort, Netflix’s The Electric State, has been met with merciless reviews, we needed something to restore our faith that arguably Marvel’s most popular directors know what they are doing. Sure enough, some new official news from the studio about the long-awaited Avengers 5 promises it will tie up the Multiverse Saga in a neat bow.

Alternatively, to go for a more action-oriented metaphor befitting a superhero blockbuster, what Marvel has just confirmed about Doomsday all but states outright how the film will connect the various colored wires of recent MCU lore together to ensure this current phase of Marvel storytelling goes out with a crowd-pleasing, thrilling, explosive bang. Although hopefully the Russos will hand in a billion-dollar hit and not another bomb.

Avengers: Doomsday detail confirms how it will tie together the Multiverse Saga

As per financial listings from Marvel Studios acquired by Forbes, Avengers: Doomsday — which is now shooting in the U.K. — is being produced through a Disney subsidiary newly created for the film called For All Time Productions UK. “For All Time” is a phrase that will immediately jump out to MCU die-hards as it alludes to the motto of the Time Variance Authority (TVA).

As introduced in 2021’s Loki season 1, the TVA is the extradimensional organization that monitors and maintains the integrity of the Sacred Timeline. As often said by their (surprisingly creepy) cartoon mascot Miss Minutes, the TVA’s slogan is “For All Time, Always.” So, with Doomsday‘s production holding company sporting that same phrase, we can no doubt safely assume the TVA will play a key role in its storyline.

This only makes sense from what little we know of its plot. The TVA already made the leap to the big screen in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, in which they recruited Wade Wilson to help protect the multiverse. It’s easy to imagine that the TVA could do the same thing with the Avengers once Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom raises his metal head and causes a ruckus across reality.

It was likely always the plan for the TVA to play a big part in Avengers 5, as Loki season 1 established that it was secretly run by He Who Remains, a variant of Jonathan Majors’ Kang, the Multiverse Saga’s original big bad. Following Majors’ firing, however, Kang’s importance to the narrative is expected to be all but eradicated. Still, with the TVA breaking free of Kang’s control in Loki season 2, its involvement shouldn’t cause too much of a headache for the Russos and writer Stephen McFeely.

What is no doubt causing Team Doomsday to have sleepless nights is the enormous challenge of integrating the frankly bloated cast of superheroes that now occupy Earth-199999. The Russos have itted that Marvel had to give them a specially made set of baseball cards in order for them to keep track of every major character that’s currently active in the MCU. On a side note, when and where can we get ourselves a set of those cards, please and thank you?

Avengers: Doomsday will change the MCU for all time, always, when it eventually hits theaters on May 1, 2026.

Justin Baldoni‘s attempt to prove Ryan Reynolds was bullying him with the Nicepool character in Deadpool & Wolverine might be an accidental ission of guilt.

The actor and director’s legal team demanded that Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige and Disney CEO Bob Iger hold on to any documents that might prove Ryan Reynolds used him as inspiration for the satirical Deadpool & Wolverine character. Variety reported Tuesday that both men received a litigation hold letter from attorney Bryan Freedman on Jan. 7 asking “the studio to preserve all relevant documents and data with regards to Baldoni.”

Related: Justin Baldoni refuses to let go of comparing himself to Nicepool on The Mary Sue

If Justin Baldoni identifies with Nicepool, well… That’s on him?

Baldoni is apparently convinced Ryan Reynolds created the Deadpool variant known as Nicepool to mock him, even though there’s nothing in the film that directly references the It Ends With Us star.

Those who flocked to theaters in July of last year to see Deadpool and Wolverine’s grand introductions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the Shawn Levy-directed action blockbuster will recall that Nicepool was one of the stand-out Deadpool variants introduced. A proud man-bun-wearer, this Deadpool is purposefully over the top and obnoxiously positive, though his mask does slip from time to time.

In Nicepool’s first scene, he comments on Ladypool’s post-pregnancy body, saying you couldn’t even tell she had had a baby. When Deadpool tells him he’s not “supposed to say that” he replies with “That’s okay, I identify as a feminist.” Of course, in the lawsuit that Reynolds’ wife Blake Lively filed against Baldoni in December, among the allegations that the latter maintains are completely false is one about him pressuring his co-star to lose weight after having her fourth baby. Lively and Reynolds’s son Olin was born months before shooting for It Ends With Us began in May 2023.

The lawsuit has also threatened to shatter, or has in fact shattered, Baldoni’s image as an ally for women’s issues. Shortly after the news of Lively’s claims came out, the Vital Voices Global Partnership stripped the 40-year-old of his Voices of Solidarity Award, which celebrated his “courage and comion in advocating on behalf of women and girls.”

Besides a similar hairstyle, however, there’s no direct reference to Baldoni in the character of Nicepool, so it might actually be detrimental for the actor to strive to convince anyone that Reynolds based the character on him. As one netizen put it, “Nicepool was a stereotypical creepy faux feminist sex pest so if Justin Baldoni wants to think that’s inspired by him then that says a lot more about him than it does anyone else.”

“Out of everything he’s done and said, ironically this might be the most damning thing because what do you mean you saw a fake ass performative feminist and thought ‘wait that is so me,’” another pointed out.

Some have theorized that having Ladypool, played by Blake Lively, violently shoot Nicepool’s head off in front of a flower shop was a nod to It Ends With Us as in that film, Lively’s character Lily Bloom starts a flower business.

Baldoni and Freedman are preparing a countersuit against Lively. In a Jan. 7 appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show, the lawyer said Lively was “no victim,” that she was in control and “took over” the film’s final cut. The two insist that it was Lively who orchestrated a PR takedown of Baldoni and not the other way around.

Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds has earned the ire of a handful of fans after a few have noticed that Nicepool from Deadpool & Wolverine said and did things in the movie that, in the context of the Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively drama, seemed to suggest the character is based on Baldoni.

It Ends with Us saw a lot of on-set drama between its two stars, and that drama will potentially be spilling out into a courtroom, with both actors now suing each other. Blake has accused her co-star of sexual harassment, claiming that he behaved inappropriately on set and that he tried to run a smear campaign against her. Meanwhile, Justin has fired back, refuting Lively’s claims and instead claiming she was the one engaging in a smear campaign against him.

Right now the waters are muddy; it’s difficult to know who’s telling the truth and who’s not. Many are ive of Blake, but others believe Justin’s of what happened. Regardless, all we know for sure is that things quickly became hostile while on set and they remained that way throughout the movie’s premiere and into today. We also know Lively even brought her husband, Reynolds, on set at one point — apparently the meeting between Baldoni and Reynolds didn’t go well, with the Green Lantern star apparently berating Baldoni and leaving him traumatized.

Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are accused of bullying

In his lawsuit, Baldoni claims the pair were “bullying” him during the production of the movie. He refuted many of Lively’s other claims and provided text messages that back up his side of the story. His side of the story has won some audiences over, with fans defending him online. Many have even started digging and think they’ve found some solid evidence that Reynolds and Lively were indeed bullying Baldoni. That evidence, of course, is the character Nicepool.

Fans noticed that everything about Nicepool — from the way he looked, to the things he said —allude to Baldoni. One fan on X pointed out that the character looked almost identical to Baldoni from 2023, with his long curly hair and man bun. It’s hard to deny there are some similarities there. 

But that’s not all — Nicepool also comments on Ladypool’s post-pregnancy body, (Baldoni allegedly fat-shamed Lively) and, as we all know, Ladypool was played by Lively.

Over on TikTok, people began questioning the scale of the bullying — if Nicepool really was based on Baldoni then this would suggest the bullying goes way beyond social media.

Another TikToker, @theredcoquette, mentioned deleted scenes, which she claims were blatant jabs at Justin.

Of course it gets worse when you factor in that Nicepool is brutally killed off by Ladypool, and he’s the only version of Deadpool without regenerative powers.

Deadpool & Wolverine’s filming schedule makes this theory unlikely

Now, can we say conclusively that Ryan Reynolds meant this character to be a jab at Justin Baldoni? No we can’t. While the striking similarity might seem like proof enough, it would have been unlikely that Reynolds would have been able to add an entirely new character into the film as all this was happening. 

Both movies were filmed around the same time, with both starting mid-2023 before pausing production during the strikes. Deadpool & Wolverine resumed filming in November 2023 and finished in January 2024. Meanwhile, It Ends with Us resumed filming in January 2024. According to CBR.com, Lively’s lawsuit mentions a meeting prior to the resume of filming, which would have been close to the time Deadpool & Wolverine was wrapping up. It’s not impossible that Ryan added Nicepool to troll Baldoni, and then ad-libbed the character’s lines and likeness to Baldoni, but it’s very unlikely.

After the interdimensional doldrums of 2023, a year that delivered two of the least successful MCU movies ever in Ant-Man 3 and The Marvels, Marvel really needed a 12-month stretch as strong as the Hulk to bounce back in 2024. On paper, it did just that, with two critically acclaimed TV shows beloved by fans and a barnstorming $1 billion plus hit in the form of Deadpool & Wolverine.

And yet that doesn’t fully capture the strange and sprawling picture that was Marvel’s past year. Especially once you expand the canvas to encom whatever the hell Sony was doing in the superhero sandbox over the same period. There was much for audiences to love about what the MCU had to offer in 2024, but some of its weirder moments prove that just because Marvel is the House of Ideas that doesn’t mean every idea is a good one.

10) An MCU series drops all at once and everyone promptly forgets it exists

Be honest, you totally forgot Echo was a thing until right now, didn’t you? It’s OK, so did the rest of us. Despite how meaningful it is to have a Marvel superhero who’s a deaf Indigenous amputee get her own vehicle, Echo came and went like a, well, like its namesake when Marvel unceremoniously dropped all five episodes on Disney Plus in one go back in January 2024. when WandaVision was the most talked-about show on social media for weeks? Fast forward three years and Echo faded from the conversation quicker than it took to watch it.

9) Agatha All Along‘s two biggest twists are spoiled after a single episode

Thankfully, the MCU’s second live-action TV offering of last year managed to make a much bigger impact, as Agatha All Along turned out to be wonderfully witchy Fall viewing (and a perfect prelude to the Wicked-Mania that directly followed it). Tragically, however, although Marvel did its darndest to keep the show’s spoilers under (Joe) lock and key, some errant toy listings went and gave away its two biggest character reveals… after only one episode had aired. OK, so we all knew Teen was Wiccan, but Aubrey Plaza being Death really should’ve been an epic rug-pull moment.

8) Channing Tatum’s Gambit is Deadpool 3‘s best cameo

If we had been told the plot of Deadpool & Wolverine before it came out, we’d never have predicted which of its many multiversal cameos would actually hit the hardest. Wesley Snipes returning as Blade after 20 years? Henry Cavill becoming the only actor not called Hugh Jackman to play Logan? What about Chris Evans cur a storm as Human Torch? Nope, it was actually Channing Tatum as Gambit, finally getting to embody the marble-mouthed mutant after years of failed attempts. Congrats, Channing, you did indeed make a name for yourself here.

7) Kraven the Hunter CGIs Ariana DeBose’s mouth

Speaking of Henry Cavill, we once thought Superman’s erased mustache was the worst crime that could be committed to an actor’s mouth in a superhero movie. Somehow, we were wrong. Out of the endless fountain of failure that was Kraven the Hunter, its most mind-boggling moment must surely be when, in one exposition-heavy scene, Ariana DeBose’s Calypso suddenly develops a condition which causes her mouth to turn into a cartoon. Dialogue getting dubbed in post-production is nothing new, but the brain-breakingly bad way they covered this one up is.

6) The audacity of Venom: The Last Dance‘s post-credits scene

As the filling in the unholy sandwich of Sony’s three Spider-Man spinoff movies released in 2024, Venom: The Last Dance was certainly the best (or, perhaps more accurately, least worst) but that really isn’t saying much. Just take its shockingly shameless post-credits scene, which saw Andy Serkis’ uber-bad Knull promise that he will return, then — in a Deadpool-like fourth-wall break —declare, “And you will watch.” That sums up Sony’s misguided approach to comic book filmmaking in a nutshell — “feed the masses superhero slop and they’ll eat it up if we tell them!” As it turns out, though, we didn’t.

5) A Young Avenger became older than an actual Avenger

This didn’t actually happen on screen in the MCU, but one notable real-life birthday nonetheless speaks to the aimlessness of the current Multiverse Saga so perfectly that it blows your mind. In December, Hawkeye star Hailee Steinfeld turned 28 years old. This means that the actress, who has been due to the Young Avengers since 2021, is now officially older than Scarlett Johansson was when she starred in the actual Avengers movie in 2012. Why is it so hard to make the Young Avengers happen, Marvel?!

4) Howard the Duck has a human baby

In 1986, Marvel looked to have nixed its chances at cinematic success with its very first movie in the form of the abysmal Howard the Duck, which disturbed ’80s audiences everywhere by depicting a love story between a talking duck and a human woman. In 2024, Marvel decided it was now too big to fail and elected to take this concept one step further. In the wildest episode of What If…? season 3, Howard the Duck and Kat Denning’s Darcy get hitched and have a kid — who, just to add to the weirdness, grows up to be Natasha Lyonne. Howard the Duck 2 when?

3) X-Men ’97 turns out to be the best Marvel show ever

A follow-up to X-Men: The Animated Series 30 years after it premiered might’ve been a dream come true to ’90s kids, but it definitely felt like the nichest project Marvel Studios had ever commissioned when it was first announced. And then we saw it. X-Men ’97 season 1 turned out to be such a note-perfect rendition of the best superhero team in the Marvel universe (sorry, Avengers, but I am one of those aforementioned ’90s kids) that we hardly need the movie reboot. It’s a crying shame the show has since become mired in controversy due to behind-the-scenes upset.

3) Taylor Swift didn’t show up in Deadpool & Wolverine

The other thing about Deadpool & Wolverine that we couldn’t have predicted, besides Channing Tatum stealing the show? That Taylor Swift wouldn’t have the chance to! Even though insiders told us the era-defining songstress wouldn’t be popping up in the threequel beforehand, the intense speculation had reached such “Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home” levels that we were convinced Swift would show as either Lady Deadpool or Dazzler. Clearly, there’s an insatiable hunger to see Taylor in the MCU, and if Marvel isn’t already in talks with her I’d be very much surprised.

2) Just, like, all of Madame Web

Kraven was bad, to an insulting degree, but somehow it pales in comparison to its sister film from Sony’s Spider-Man Without Spider-Man Universe. What else can be said about Madame Web that hasn’t already been said before, from its logic-defying denouement to its unexpected allusions to A Goofy Movie. Suffice it to say, Madame Web is the first truly multiversal Marvel movie in that it feels like it has traveled from a universe where filmmakers deliberately make their art as bad as possible, from its screenplay, to Dakota Johnson not knowing what to do with a Pepsi can.

1) Robert Downey Jr. is Doctor Doom

The absolute strangest moment in Marvel’s past year, however, surely has to be its most exciting for many a fan — although equally its most controversial. Marvel undoubtedly stole the show at July’s Comic-Con by unveiling its rebooted plans for Avengers 5, with Doctor Doom now at the center of the web… as played by none other than Iron Man himself. Whether this turns out to be a stroke of genius or confirmation that the MCU is now just a giant snake eating its own tail, we’ll have to wait until 2026 to discover. In the meantime, here’s to a saner year for Marvel in 2025!

Before you roll your eyes too hard… yes, bad movies come out every year and yes, they are the reason one appreciates the good ones. But if you are one of those unlucky souls who spent 2024 wondering “Someone is definitely pin-punching a voodoo doll of me” then you know how you couldn’t rely on films this year to find your escape…

… because everywhere you turned, there was a bad film.

Harebrained plots cocooning brainless dialogues spoken by mouths with a forever buffering brain, painfully disastrous jokes, tone-deaf depictions, and horrendously awful CGI — all this came from some of the most brilliant minds in Hollywood and was lived on the silver screen by faces who no longer deserve our unwavering trust in their art. But the pen is mightier than the cinematic diarrhea that clogs the innocent crevices of our scarred minds, and we are here to call out the culprits.

Madame Web

It takes a real miracle to make something as majestically inept as Madame Web. Delivering a film that’s so poorly executed at every stage — from its very concept to its meme-spewing marketing — requires so much work that the only logical conclusion you can draw is that its sheer demented awfulness was deliberate. Was Sony trying to pull a Producers with this one? At the very least, Dakota Johnson appears to be trying to destroy the movie from the inside with a performance so dead-eyed and lifeless she deserves to win the Oscar for Best Leading Actress Impersonating AI. With Madame Web, we finally have a superhero film so bad that it feels like an ingenious subversion of the form. ⏤ Christian Bone

Unfrosted

Jerry Seinfeld’s directorial debut about the creator of the Pop-Tarts, Unfrosted, might sound like a completely made-up movie but, unfortunately, it is very much real. It came out on Netflix in May, and I was tasked with reviewing it for the site. Starring Seinfeld himself as a Kellogg’s creative based on cereal magnate William Post, Melissa McCarthy as his NASA food scientist sidekick, and Amy Schumer as his rival (among many others), Unfrosted is a hot mess of bad jokes and silly plots. Like the pastry at its center, it’s jam-packed with celebrity cameos and outrageous acting, but does little in the way of sustenance. ⏤ Francisca Tinoco

Mean Girls

Having grown up in the generation that still regularly uses phrases like “she doesn’t even go here!” and “scum-sucking road whore,” I was beyond excited to see the big-screen Mean Girls: The Musical, emphatically renamed Mean Girls when Paramount Pictures decided to mask the remake’s musical nature from the general public. Having enjoyed the Broadway rendition, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into with the 2024 adaptation. Alas, Paramount’s update was a swing, miss, and death by proverbial school bus. 

Despite Renée Rapp and Auliʻi Cravalho’s best attempts to steer the vocal ship, Mean Girls felt like an extended music video that failed to cleverly mix the flavor of the original with the musical’s more updated ambitions. The result was a Kälteen Bar that promised to shave off three pounds but actually stole two hours from our collective lives instead. Not only will I probably never watch it again, but like the limit, I may have to pretend it does not exist so I can enjoy the original and its musical counterpart in peace. ⏤ Josh Conrad

Deadpool & Wolverine

Put down the pitchforks, please. Yes, Deadpool & Wolverine got the MCU out of its slump, yes it was funny, yes it was great to hear Chris Evans cuss in a Marvel film, and yes Wolverine is back, but… no one can convince me that the highly awaited third film in the Deadpool series was anything more than a filler. And that too which just blatantly cooked up its own logic and defied the laws of the MCU.

Wade’s knowledge of the Marvel superheroes felt forced, the ending made no sense, and everything that made Deadpool exceptional was pushed aside — except his foul-mouthed humor — to make space for countless cameos, fight scenes, and an empty plot that leads nowhere and holds zero importance in the Marvel universe. I am sorry, but while my brain short-circuited when Hugh Jackman’s suit melted away, I need more storywise to call a film good. — Apeksha Bagchi

Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola apparently spent hours in his trailer, smoking marijuana, while filming Megalopolis. If you go into the film knowing this, it kind of makes a bit more sense – like yeah, this is definitely something a guy would make while out of his head on illicit substances. It’s been called “pretentious nonsense” by some, and while I do agree, I think it still holds some entertainment value. The trippy visuals and downright insane dialogue certainly had me laughing out loud, whether that was intentional we’ll never know, as Megalopolis is simply a small glimpse into the riches of Coppola’s Emersonian mind. — Jordan Collins

The Apprentice

If you dared to watch The Apprentice in theaters, congrats on the extra legroom! Who thought watching Donald Trump on screen would be a good idea? Clearly, someone missed the memo that we’re all Trumped out.

With probably only three souls in the audience, it’s the perfect spot for an introvert’s paradise or a sad popcorn party. This film ties itself so desperately to the 2024 election it almost screams for relevance but ends up feeling like a two-hour-long political ad that nobody asked for. Ali Abbasi tries to serve us a deep dive into Trump’s rise with Sebastian Stan’s portrayal, along with Jeremy Strong’s Roy Cohn teaching him the sinister “Rules of Winning.” Despite its attempt to critique, the film can’t help but seem almost sympathetic to these infamous figures. Either way, it’s a cinematic facepalm, and Trump hating it might just be the only thing he and we agree on. Oh, and thanks to this film, we can never look at Sebastian Stan the same way again. — Omar Faruque

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, like its empty predecessor and dreary director’s cut, is not one of those cases of so-bad-it’s-good, nor is it one of those cases where it’s simply bad. No, The Scargiver’s badness is that elusive type of bad that you will inadvertently wind up being thankful for a decade from now, and you may not even realize it. Why? Because The Scargiver is the rawest, loudest, most undiluted proof in this perverted pudding that the entertainment industry is not a meritocracy; a revelation that may just be the spark of confidence that an otherwise imposter syndrome-ridden luminary needs to send out that screenplay they’ve been perfecting for years. 

So — on behalf of every gifted storyteller who just needed a tiny voice to tell them that they were good enough — thank you, Zack Snyder, for reminding us that you can get paid for this job even if you have the artistic sensibilities of a terminally-online rhinoceros. ⏤ Charlotte Simmons

Uglies

Netflix’s Uglies imagines a world where everyone undergoes mandatory plastic surgery to achieve perfection — but no amount of medical intervention can fix the ugliness of this dystopian disaster. Despite Joey King’s valiant efforts to inject some life into her lead role, this misfire speeds through its 90-minute runtime like a runaway hoverboard, leaving character development and coherent worldbuilding in the dust. With three writers inefficiently cramming exposition down our throats, Laverne Cox trapped in cartoon villain mode, and set pieces desperately needing some makeup, there’s nothing worth saving in Netflix’s shallow, bland, and tasteless take on young adult dystopia. — Marco Vito Oddo

Argylle

For Matthew Vaughn, more is always more, and his latest attempt to launch a franchise, Argylle, is yet another convoluted spy thriller, this time about a novelist who writes spy thrillers. The plot betrays Vaughn’s attempt to over-correct criticisms of his recent films, which often feature unrefined plots seemingly designed to primarily kickstart a franchise. Rather than creating a movie with a defined beginning, middle, and end — avoiding his usual puzzling cliffhanger endings — Vaughn overloads this typical amnesiac-spy thriller with plot twists to create the illusion of depth. 

But instead of heightening intrigue, these twists become increasingly predictable, culminating in a tepid ending that inspired nothing but indifference from me. Vaughn continues to overcomplicate things when he should be simplifying. This is why he keeps releasing misfires, and Argylle stands as one of the year’s most wasted opportunities. It only left me with a lingering sense of what could have been. I just hope Matthew Vaughn can return to one-offs like he did with Layer Cake. — Fred Onyango

Joker: Folie à Deux

After the success of its brilliant 2019 predecessor, I expected more from Joker: Folie à Deux. Making it part jukebox musical and part courtroom drama always felt risky, and, sure enough, it didn’t work. As expected, Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga bring bags of talent and energy as the eponymous Arthur Fleck and Harleen Quinzel — and their chemistry isn’t terrible — but the story’s as dank as the fictional city it’s set in. I’ve run marathons, and this was more of an endurance test than any of them. It’s a tiresome slog that sometimes feels like it’s intentionally trying to irk its audience. — Kevin Stewart

Kraven The Hunter

Kraven the Hunter had no business prowling into theaters as a full-fledged feature, because, let’s face it, no one was clamoring for this origin story. But Sony, ever the bold predator of Marvel’s rogues’ gallery, took the bait—and now Marvel can never undo the damage, even if the rights are reclaimed.

Despite having all the necessary ingredients—a strong tone, gripping source material, and a gifted cast—the movie feels like a hunter’s feast that is served cold and bland right off the factory line. At its core, Kraven himself is treated more like a glorified plot gadget than the protagonist of his own tale, slicing his way through a script that prevents him from developing into the complex antihero he could be. — Kopal Kumari

Hugh Jackman left us all well-fed over the weekend, and we’re not talking about his film credits. Fans have been going crazy over the latest pictures of the actor, who was spotted taking a dip at Bondi Beach in Australia.

The actor spent a day at the beach and some great shots quickly made their way to social media, bringing back the good ole days when Jackman and the beach were once inseparable. There wasn’t any doubt, but it’s good to know he’s still got it. 

Showing off at the beach

The 56-year-old was spotted at the beach on Sunday where he spent a day with the sun and waves of his home country. Australians were already happy enough to have Jackman back home, but he gave them an extra treat with his early morning beach visit.  He was decked in a pair of patterned board blue and white shorts and nothing else, giving all of us an eyeful of his rippling muscles.

Shots of him strolling on the beach, taking a swim, and having a great time with other beach-goers have circulated. His god-like physique was put on display in the final act of  Deadpool & Wolverine, where he and Ryan Reynolds as the Merc with a Mouth had to team up to destroy the Time Ripper.

In the comedic style of the film, Wolverine’s outfit was dramatically burned off his body to show off his glistening chest and abs, and Deadpool (and the rest of us) hilariously snuck a peek. At the sight, the notoriously inappropriate and loud-mouthed character simply gave an appreciative nod that audiences across the world related with. 

Jackman was recorded leaving the beach by a fan, who also got a few words out of him. The fan greeted Jackman saying, “Welcome back man, we miss you.” He then asked the actor how it feels to be back in Bondi to which he simply replied, “Heaven.” 

Hugh Jackman is happier (and hotter) than ever

A body like Hugh Jackman’s doesn’t just happen overnight. The actor reportedly trained like a hero to get the hero physique he spotted in the movie. He worked with trainer Beth Lewis to get back into the character of Wolverine after putting down the claws after 2017’s Logan.

Jackman’s latest beach shots also showed fans exactly what his reported new beau, Sutton Foster, is enjoying. The actor has been rumored to be in a relationship with his The Music Man co-star for a while now. The pair starred in the Broadway production in 2022 and allegedly fell for each other during that time. Jackman was previously married to actress Deborra-Lee Furness until last year, when they announced an amicable divorce. Rumors of Jackman and Foster’s romance grew when she filed for divorce from her husband Ted Griffin. 

Neither Jackman nor Foster have commented on the rumors, but the actor seems at peace back home. After leaving the beach on Sunday, he was spotted later that day getting some coffee with his children Oscar and Ava, aged 24 and 19 respectively. Jackman might be known for his hot bod and stoic action roles, but his true ion is musical theatre. He will be starring alongside Kate Hudson in the adaptation of the musical Song Sung Blue.

We’ve heard it all before, and will probably continue to hear it until society collapses; if you so much as think about telling stories based on a pre-existing IP or building upon popular stories of the past, you have basically itted to the world that you despise the concept of creativity, and that you specifically are eager to see the world of cinema polluted beyond redemption.

Except, you haven’t, and you especially haven’t if your name is Fede Álvarez, director and co-writer of beefy summer blockbuster Alien: Romulus. Álvarez, you see, harbors a well-kept secret about filmmaking — it’s okay to make franchise films, legacy sequels, and even franchise legacy sequels so long as they don’t suck. And now, the denizens of Disney Plus can take full advantage of that lack of suck.

Per FlixPatrol, Alien: Romulus has found itself swimming in ninth place on the Disney Plus worldwide film charts, squaring up against the likes of fellow summertime theatrical juggernaut Deadpool & Wolverine in third place, Top 10 favorite Moana in first place, and quintessential Disney classic The Lion King in eighth place, the latter two of which likely have Moana 2 and Mufasa: The Lion King to thank for their success.

Alien: Romulus stars Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson as Rain and Andy, a human and an android who share a sibling bond and live out their days on the Jackson Star mining colony in the year 2142. They’re recruited by a ragtag group of young adults to them on an expedition to an abandoned Weyland-Yutani station, where they hope to use the base’s resources to explore the galaxy and find a new home. The only problem? A pack of hyperviolent aliens have been living on this base for some time now, and they’re not especially keen on visitors.

Alien: Romulus‘ technical competence, just on its own, makes for one of the better watches in the Alien pantheon, and Jonsson’s mind-bogglingly elite performance as Andy is the asset of every director’s dreams. And while some may be quick to turn their noses down at the number of references to past Alien media, it’s easy to forgive Romulus precisely because it doesn’t try to play this nostalgic tic as a substitute for a good story.

The film’s narrative is thematic in nature, using its band of luckless youth to unfurl such ideas as freedom, responsibility, and the ever-crucial task of balancing these things with comion. Character deaths are largely correlated with traits and decisions that indicate an inability to be truly free, which is the literal goal of the group, while the film’s protagonists are defined by their ability to take control and enable their allies. The aforementioned Andy plays host to an especially remarkable arc in this vein, and it’s his capacity for love that ends up being the driving force of Romulus‘ emotional and cerebral core.

Indeed, it’s not quite up there with Ridley Scott’s legendary tension masterclass and James Cameron’s mythological actioner, but Romulus is nevertheless a decidedly mighty pillar of the Alien franchise, and one can only hope that Alien: Earth, Noah Hawley’s FX series due sometime in 2025, can follow it up the way it deserves.

Naturally — since Deadpool made his Disney debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Deadpool & Wolverine — there was bound to be plenty of jabs thrown in the direction of the big mouse, and oh there was. However, one joke didn’t make the cut and we can now see why.

After two successful outings produced by Fox, Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool was folded into the MCU this year with another R-rated action comedy, but this time he was also ed by a Marvel veteran, Wolverine, played once again by Hugh Jackman. Even though it was connected to the other more kid-friendly MCU movies, Deadpool & Wolverine really had few restraints when it came to comedy.

Now we have had a chance to see a portion of the original script courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, it is clear that some of the punches were pulled, especially when it came time to deal with Mickey Mouse himself. Here’s the joke that Disney felt was too much for the MCU.

During the scene where Channing Tatum’s Gambit makes his first appearance, Deadpool is informed that Magneto is dead to which he replies, “F**k! What we can’t even afford one more X-Man? Disney is so cheap. I can barely breathe with all this Mickey Mouse c*** in my throat.”

If you’ve seen the movie, then you’ll be aware that this line was changed, and while it wasn’t altered entirely, the Disney joke we did get was slightly less crude, but still just as gleefully graphic (as is par for the Deadpool course). “F**k, now Disney gets cheap? It’s like Pinocchio jammed his face in my a** and started lying like crazy.”

Seeing this script shows that the filmmakers behind this sequel were still happy to take all of the shots they needed too despite being under the Disney umbrella, which was something that many longtime Deadpool fans feared would become an issue. Let’s get real, nobody wants a PG-13 Deadpool movie, and fortunately, the executives at Marvel Studios feel the same way, at least to a certain extent.

Shawn Levy, the sequel’s director, mentioned in an interview after the release of the movie that there was just one line that Disney asked them to change, and if we had to put any money on it then we’d guess that it was this one.

“We have made a pact, Ryan and I,” Levy told Entertainment Weekly. “To go to our grave with that line, but I will say that it was replaced with an equally dirty line of dialogue about Pinocchio shoving his face up Deadpool’s a** and starting to lie like crazy. I was like, ‘Ryan, that’s your replacement line in response to, ‘Can we clean it up?’ That’s Ryan Reynolds for you, audacious to the very edge.”

Now that Deadpool & Wolverine is here and has proven that MCU movies can shatter records despite being for adult audiences, it would seem the gates are open to more R-rated projects for the studio in the future, and we couldn’t be more happy about that.

However, we don’t expect any of these other films to be taking shots as wild as Deadpool anytime soon, especially when they’re aimed at Disney itself. He may be small, but the forces behind Mickey can pack a powerful punch.

You have to hand it to Marvel. Despite the intense scrutiny surrounding Deadpool & Wolverine, most of the blockbuster threequel’s big surprise cameos remained intact by the time it entered theaters. Sure, Jennifer Garner’s return as Elektra had been reported in the press and the studio itself spoiled Dafne Keen’s comeback as X-23 in the trailers, but… Wesley Snipes as Blade? Channing Tatum’s Gambit? Chris Evans as Human Torch? Those guys were total surprises.

It turns out that director Shawn Levy, star/producer Ryan Reynolds, and the rest of the team took some sneaky precautions in order to keep these secrets under wraps. The official script for Deadpool & Wolverine has now hit the internet, and it reveals some intriguing details about how the cameos remained under lock and key. Bizarrely, it seems the movie owes a debt of gratitude to *checks notes* Netflix’s Stranger Things?!

Deadpool & Wolverine script reveals surprising “Stranger Things” cameos

It’s true — Deadpool & Wolverine‘s script reveals cameos from all your favorite Stranger Things characters! Well, kind of. With the release of the film’s screenplay, as part of its For Your Consideration awards push, we now know that all of Deadpool 3‘s big surprise cameos were kept hidden by switching out the Marvel characters’ names with those of residents from Hawkins, Indiana.

In the script, (which you can read for yourself here), there is no mention of Elektra, with Garner’s heroine instead referred to as “Eleven.” Meanwhile, Snipes’ Blade is rendered as “Billy.” Cleverly, Chris Evans’ role gets not one but two Stranger Things pseudonyms. When he’s initially mistaken for Captain America, he’s called “Mr. Clarke” but then when he’s revealed as Johnny Storm he’s dubbed “Jonathan.” The funniest one, though, has to be Henry Cavill’s Wolverine, who is instead christened “the Hopper-rene.”

This might seem like an unlikely crossover of universes, until you that Levy is also a producer and director on the smash-hit Netflix series. As the filmmaker said when responding to this revelation on X, “For a brief while, my worlds collided.”

Not every cameo was given a Stranger Things alias, however. Laura Kinney aka X-23 is curiously referred to as “Lemon” while Tatum’s Gambit is hilariously called “Gatsby.” This extends to his iconic introductory line, which is somehow made even funnier. “Dey name’s F. Scott Fitzgerald,” the character says in the script, “but you canna call me da Gatsby.”

These codenames don’t exactly hold up to close inspection — “Gatsby” is still described as possessing a “barely understandable Cajun accent” and Kinney’s character is even called “Lemon from Logan” at one point — but they were clearly effective enough to confuse most people who got their eyes on the script. If any hardcore X-Men fans had managed to get a hold of a copy, there would’ve been trouble, however.

Despite the immense popularity of the series and its cast, it’s peculiar that David Harbour is the only Stranger Things star to crossover into the MCU to date (we’re waiting on you, Millie!), so fans of both can appreciate Levy attempting to manifest a proper incursion of the two universes. Make it happen, Avengers: Secret Wars.

Deadpool & Wolverine is the biggest Marvel release in years and after conquering the box office it’s now expanding its winning streak to streaming. In its debut week, the movie has already crushed records for Disney Plus.

During its box office run, Deadpool & Wolverine earned more than $1.33 billion and became the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time beating out 2019’s Joker. This success has translated to streaming too, and the movie is officially one of the biggest releases in the history of Disney Plus.

Deadpool & Wolverine was viewed 19.4 million times in the six days it was released on Disney Plus becoming the biggest movie debut since Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in 2023. It should be obvious, but it was also the biggest R-rated movie debut for the platform ever. To add to the accolades, this new release also broke Hulu’s debut movie records given the connections between the two platforms.

This is just another impressive accolade to add to the list for the Deadpool threequel. When it was first released to rent or buy on digital platforms in October the movie became the highest-selling R-rated title in its first week beating out John Wick: Chapter 4.

It shouldn’t be all that surprising to see the success that Deadpool & Wolverine is having on digital. Marvel movies typically have huge streaming openings, especially in the era of Disney Plus where fans know exactly when and where to go if they want to check out these new films. What helps massively is the unanimous positive reception that the movie has received since it arrived. On Rotten Tomatoes it’s sitting pretty with a 78 percent critic score dwarfed by a huge 94 percent audience rating . Yeah, a lot of people really like this movie.

For what it’s worth, Deadpool 2 reviewed slightly lower than the first movie, but still with commendable numbers. Right now that sequel has an 84 percent critic score and 86 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s been three wins for the series.

Deadpool & Wolverine was a hit that Marvel Studios desperately needed to help breathe new life into its MCU, maintain interest in the franchise, and allow them to look forward after several big swings and misses in the last few years.

Now that Deadpool is a part of the MCU it’s anyone’s guess when and where the character will show up next – though some kind of holiday appearance appears likely. If it wasn’t already obvious, you can stream Deadpool & Wolverine on Disney Plus now.

Whatever you might think of Deadpool & Wolverine and its status as a piece of cinema, the fact it was a labor of love for a bunch of close friends and trusted collaborators shines out of the screen in every frame. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, best buds in real life, both worked with director Shawn Levy multiple times before, and we all know by now that Ryan sneaked the entire Reynolds fam into the film.

While Inez Reynolds portrayed Kidpool and Olin Reynolds was Babypool, Blake Lively showed up as the voice of Lady Deadpool. It turns out that wasn’t her only role in the movie, though, as she also suggested a key change to the blockbuster threequel’s conclusion that ended up being the only reason that Deadpool 3 had any reshoots at all. Say what you like about Ryan Reynolds, but if his wife wants something, he makes sure she gets it.

On the film’s audio commentary track, Levy stresses how “very proud” he is that Deadpool & Wolverine only required “a day and a half” of reshoots — it’s typical for Marvel movies to go back before cameras for weeks or even months after test screening necessitate changes. The director reveals that the speech Agent Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) makes after Wade and Logan supposedly perish was a last-minute addition. And it was all Lively’s idea.

“And credit where credit is due,” Levy explained. “It used to be that there was no suspense, that the power room blew up, and our heroes had survived. And it was Blake Lively who said to us, ‘You know, I’ve been with you this whole movie. I want to sit in the fear that they’re lost. Let me be in that place of suspense so the triumph of their survival is more emotional and visceral.'”

It sounds like Levy is forever grateful for Lively making that suggestion, as he its it totally changed his perspective on the scene and improved the emotional oomph of the movie’s ending:

“That was a Blake note and it really opened up a new way of thinking about this part of the movie and it’s why we did this reshoot… and, here, the payoff is so much more satisfying,” Levy concluded.

This isn’t the first time we’ve found out how involved Reynolds and Lively are in each other’s movies. The Gossip Girl icon previously revealed that a key sequence from her recent — and controversial — romantic drama It Ends With Us was written by Reynolds himself. That’s despite him having nothing to do with that film, whereas at least Lively played Ladypool in DP3.

Given how much impact Blake had on Deadpool & Wolverine, let’s hope she gets to return in an expanded role as Lady Deadpool — aka Wanda Wilson — in Deadpool 4. Don’t expect that to happen just yet, however, as Reynolds had the perfect response when asked about doing another Marvel production: “I have four kids that I wouldn’t mind introducing myself to at some point.” We know he’s kidding because clearly Ryan has mastered the art of turning work time into family time.

Deadpool & Wolverine is finally available to stream at your leisure on Disney Plus, and that’s not the only good news. Various deleted scenes have already materialized thanks to the earlier digital release of this summer’s superhero blockbuster, but now even more are coming out of the woodwork. The latest even goes so far as to raise a question we’ve been wondering about for a full decade.

For this one, we have Ryan Reynolds himself to thank, as the man behind the Merc with the Mouth shared this instant fan-favorite of a sequence to Instagram in the wake of the film’s streaming debut. A montage scene, the clip adds more context to Wade and Logan’s trek across the endless expanse of the Void, naturally featuring a ton more quips and jokes. These include not only a reference to Chris Hemsworth’s Thor (he actually wears hair extensions! Cheap ones!), but a hint at the doomed romance between Wolverine and Jean Grey.

“Siri, find deleted, half baked montage featuring one of the greatest bands on earth and Hugh totally nailing his four words of dialogue,” Reynolds wrote in the post description. “And do it quickly because it’ll probably be taken down for so many reasons.”

Apart from snubbing fellow Canadian icons and big Deadpool fans Nickelback — whose song, “Never Gonna Be Alone,” plays over the montage — this deleted scene actually has a secret significance to the wider X-Men lore. “I don’t wanna pry, but whatever happened between you and Jean?” Wade asks of a silent Logan. “You guys seemed so good together.”

Through this, Deadpool is finally addressing a big mystery fans have pondered ever since 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past: What exactly did happen between Logan and Jean? For those without a degree in X-Menology, here’s a quick history lesson. Wolverine himself was forced to kill Jean in X-Men: The Last Stand when she went all Dark Phoenix and he was still haunted by ghostly visions of her in The Wolverine. By the end of Future Past, however, the timeline was reset and Jean was alive again. So was Cyclops, though, so Logan was once more crushing on a married woman.

Come Logan, and we were told that all the X-Men had died again — tragically, killed by an ailing Professor X. Deadpool 3‘s Wolverine isn’t quite the same variant as the main X-Men timeline’s, but he seems to have lived a very similar life, just with all the X-Men in his world being killed by mutant-hating humans. No doubt Jean died again in both universes, but we still don’t know if she and Logan ever made it work for a while at least, or if she remained loyal to Scott in all timelines.

Either way, fans are all reacting the same way to this scene: they can’t fathom why it was deleted. “Again… Whyyyyyyyyyy?!?!?!” wrote one Instagram commenter. “We NEED a cut with all deleted scenes included!! Please & Thank you Amen.” I mean, in a world where Deadpool & Wolverine made well over $1 billion and Spider-Man: No Way Home got an extended cut released in theaters, that doesn’t sound like the craziest idea. Deadpool 3.5 for 2025 — make it happen, Kevin Feige!