With blockbuster budgets continuing to soar, it is becoming more important that tentpole films star actors and actresses who consistently draw fans to the theater. Flops at the box office are becoming all too common and studios can no longer throw $100 million or more behind a film that does not include at least one major bankable star. Take 2016’s Gods of Egypt. The Gerard Butler-starring film grossed $150 million worldwide on an estimated budget of $140 million, ouch....

Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is right around the corner, with Captain America: Civil War kicking off the next wave of films this May. In addition to featuring several well-known Avengers, the latest offering from directors Joe and Anthony Russo is generating much excitement for the new faces it’ll introduce; namely Tom Holland’s Spider-Man and Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther. While the famous wall crawler has not been featured in any Civil War marketing materials, fans have gotten their fair share of looks at the Prince of Wakanda ready for battle in his costume....

Warning: SPOILERS for Ruins of Ravencroft: Dracula #1 Captain America’s creators actually tried to make super-vampires too. In Marvel Comics, the Second World War was marked by a secret “arms race” between the Axis and the Allies. Both sides sought to create super-soldiers who could operate on the front lines, champions who would lead the charge against their enemies - even if that meant getting creative. In Germany, Project: Nietzsche experimented with a super-soldier serum....

On Twitter, investor Carl Icahn has disclosed that he issued a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook. The letter will be shared publicly via Icahn’s new website that is launching tomorrow. Earlier this month, Icahn, Cook, and Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer met over dinner in New York City. One of the major topics of discussion: $AAPL share buybacks. While unconfirmed, it seems likely that Icahn’s new letter to Cook is in regards to that....

LEGO Marvel’s Avengers ventured into slightly new territory when it released earlier this year. Not replicating comic book heroes into colorful bricks - it’s been doing that for a while now with LEGO Marvel Superheroes and three LEGO Batman titles, but this was the first time that a LEGO game would follow the lore of the Marvel cinematic universe. The game includes levels based on both Avengers movies, as well as ones that follow the action of Iron Man 3, Thor: A Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier....

When it premieres later this year, Marvel Studios’ upcoming film Captain America: Civil War will launch Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At the heart of the film is the conflict between Steve Rogers a.k.a. Captain America (Chris Evans) and Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) over the accountability of superheroes following the events of past films in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, including last summer’s Avengers: Age of Ultron....

The Marvel Cinematic Universe loves referencing classic movies, particularly when it comes to the 80s and 90s (especially when Peter Quill or Peter Parker is involved), so with Captain Marvel taking place in the 1990s, which films from that decade should it homage? Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Captain Marvel will be the 21st film set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but will only be the MCU’s second period film....

[WARNING: Contains SPOILERS for Ultimates2 #1.] The Ultimates came together to battle cosmic-level threats as only superheroes of their caliber could: Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) and King T’Challa (Black Panther) joined forces with America Chavez, Blue Marvel, and Spectrum in order to handling the Mad Titans and rogue Phalanxes of the galaxy. Despite a few rough patches, they managed to keep the galaxy a safer place – even curing ancient deity, Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds, of his perpetual hunger for, well, worlds....

Marvel fans won’t have to wait long to watch Captain Marvel on Disney+, as it’ll be available from day one of the new streaming platform. The way we watch films and TV shows has been in constant evolution for years now, and streaming services came to change not only the way we access these products, but also the way they’re produced. With platforms like Netflix and Hulu producing and distributing a wide variety of content, Disney was not going to sit back and watch, and in November of last year announced their own streaming service, Disney+, will launch this year....

[This post contains SPOILERS for the Castle series finale.] - As far as series finales go, the final episode of Castle is something of a special case. It’s not entirely unheard of for programs to go into their last hour without knowing whether or not it will be the actual end of things; so naturally, there being some loose ends to be tied up in either case, two endings to the series were shot....

After Disney fired writer/director James Gunn from Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 due to a string of controversial tweets he had written a few years ago, some celebrities have stepped forward in his defense. While some agree with Disney’s decision to part ways with Gunn, others have vocalized their objections. After some controversial tweets that Gunn had written between 2009 and 2012 recently surfaced, Disney ultimately stepped forward and fired the writer/director from working on the upcoming third volume in the Guardians of the Galaxy series....

Captain Marvel is losing her powers in the comics, but Carol Danvers’s life is going to get even more interesting once she takes a stunning turn towards the dark side. Marvel has revealed Carol’s new look, and with a new costume comes a new mission: Kill The Avengers. It turns out that recent storyline that made Captain Marvel the most hated hero on Earth may have pushed her farther from humanity than even her critics expected....

Netflix is moving forward with its Carmen Sandiego animated TV series, having now added Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things fame to its voice cast (which already includes Gina Rodriguez as Carmen Sandiego) . Based on the classic series of educational computer games first released in the 1980s, Carmen Sandiego is a well known property that famously found its way to TV as a children’s game show in the 1990s by way of PBS....

The movie adaptation of Broadway’s Cats is even more horrifying when in this video mashup with Pet Sematary. The Cats film was initially announced in 2018. At the time, it sounded promising, especially with a star-studded cast list that includes Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, James Corden and Taylor Swift. However, after the first Cats movie trailer premiered, fans found themselves terrified at the prospect of singing and dancing anthropomorphic cats....

Warning: Minor SPOILERS for Captain Marvel #8 Captain Marvel has been running a rough gauntlet in the world of Marvel Comics, discovering the truth of her origin story and her her mother’s secret Kree lineage. But now things are going to get a whole lot worse… as Carol is about to become Marvel’s most hated hero. For fans who may have missed it, Carol Danvers learned about her true heritage, and her mother’s own history as a Kree warrior back in the Life of Captain Marvel series, but now the whole world knows the truth, thanks to an article published by a reporter by the name of Ripley Ryan....

Channing Tatum reportedly might direct Gambit himself after all of the film’s prior troubles. Tatum joined Fox’s growing X-Men franchise back in 2014 to play Remy LeBeau in a solo Gambit movie. At the time, Fox was leading up to the release of X-Men: Days of Future Past and had plans to expand the X-Men franchise through solo movies and more team ups, with Gambit set to hit theaters in 2016 originally....

Live TV app “Channels” is out with an update today for Apple TV and iOS that brings the highly requested Picture in Picture support. After a good amount of work, the Channels team was able to figure out how to offer PiP without the need for transcoding or a DVR server. The Channels app – not to be confused with Apple TV Channels – is a great way to bring live TV to your Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, Android devices, and more without the need for a traditional cable provider (but also can be used with traditional cable subscriptions)....

The best-selling video game The Last of Us is finally coming to screens as a HBO series, so who should play the lead character, Joel? Joel presents actors with the exciting opportunity to play a gruff, traumatized smuggler who is trying to survive in a post-Apocalyptic America. Dodging human enemies as well as infected fungal mutants - themselves based on real-life fungal parasites - Joel is tasked with protecting a young girl named Ellie, who appears to be immune to the virus....

Netflix has already seen two seasons of Marvel’s Daredevil come and go since launching the grittier, street-level side of the MCU in 2015. In that time the corner of the live-action comic book universe has grown by leaps and bounds, adding a nearly complete Defenders roster to the streaming service’s content catalogue that includes Jessica Jones and, more recently, Luke Cage. But while the titles have increased and their locations ventured from Hell’s Kitchen to Harlem, the Man Without Fear has played host to some of the most interesting characters from the funny book pages, like Elektra and the Punisher – both of whom struck a morally ambiguous chord with viewers and with the title character’s own violent crusade against the evil and the corrupt....

Now that 2015 is coming to a close, it’s good to look forward at the next year’s slate of new movies. One of the most anticipated movies of 2016 is certainly Captain America: Civil War. The third movie in the Captain America film series will pit superhero against superhero over a newly-established registration act, as the governments of the world look to oversee and better regulate the actions of superheroes and super-powered individuals alike....