In 2025, animation offered a wide range of movies, from highly anticipated sequels and revivals of popular franchises to exciting international films and adaptations of Japanese anime. The year’s biggest animated hit was a record-breaker, earning over $2 billion globally.
Stephen Sommers’ 1999 film, The Mummy, was a popular action movie that blended adventure, horror, fantasy, romance, and humor. It starred Brendan Fraser as the daring treasure hunter Rick O’Connell and Rachel Weisz as the intelligent but naive historian Evy Carnahan. The first sequel, The Mummy Returns released in 2001, was also a huge hit with audiences.
Instead of just throwing heroes and villains together, these upcoming fights are deeply connected to their pasts and feelings, and hint at the future direction of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here are five of the most anticipated hero-villain clashes, from Disney+ shows to big-screen movies, that fans are talking about as we look ahead to 2026.
A Warner Bros. Discovery shareholder, Ancora Holdings Group, which owns about $200 million in stock, plans to vote against a potential merger between DC Studios and Netflix, according to Variety.
Richard Linklater’s film Blue Moon, released in October 2025, features Ethan Hawke as composer Lorenz Hart. The movie depicts Hart looking back on his life on the premiere night of Oklahoma!, a musical by his longtime collaborator Richard Rodgers (played by Andrew Scott). Margaret Qualley and Bobby Cannavale also appear in the film, and many publications, including Collider and Elements of Madness, are calling Hawke’s performance the best of his career.
The Black Keys are releasing a new album called Peaches! on May 1st. This album is the inspiration for their upcoming world tour, aptly named the Peaches ‘n Kream World Tour, which kicks off in April and continues through October. The band, consisting of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, also released an album in 2024 and will release No Rain, No Flowers in 2025.
First Reaction – Cold Storage is big, chaotic, and never holds back.
As a big movie fan, I was excited to see Venom: Let There Be Carnage finally hit Disney+. It’s getting a lot of buzz, but critics seem pretty split – it’s currently sitting at around 58% on review aggregators, which isn’t quite ‘fresh’. Apparently, while audiences enjoyed it more, most critics found the sequel to be even more over-the-top and less developed than the first Venom movie, which already had its share of detractors.
While promoting her new movie, Crime 101 – alongside Mark Ruffalo and Chris Hemsworth – Halle Berry was playfully asked if it could lead to her character, Storm, appearing in a future Avengers film. Berry quickly and directly answered, “Storm is not in the Avengers movie.” She emphasized her point, stating, “I promise you, people think I’m being secretive or joking, but I’m being serious – I’m not in it, okay.”
Sony has revealed new posters for the character Spider-Noir and announced that the first trailer will be released tomorrow. They shared the news on X (formerly Twitter), teasing, “Let’s start from the beginning.” The trailer image features a shadowy figure, dressed in a coat and hat, walking down a brightly lit street, and confirms Nicolas Cage will star as Spider-Noir.