Genre:

Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Martial Arts

Release Date:

May8, 2026

Director: 

Simon McQuoid

Cast:

Karl Urban, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tati Gabrielle, Jessica McNamee, Mehcad Brooks, Lewis Tan, Joe Taslim, Ludi Lin

Plot Summary:

The fan favorite champions — now joined by Johnny Cage himself — are pitted against one another in the ultimate battle to defeat the dark rule of Shao Kahn that threatens the very existence of the Earthrealm and its defenders.

President Trump
I’m Sticking My Scabby Neck Out … For America!!!

Published
March 2, 2026
11:21 AM PST

Bridgerton has gone through some onscreen recasts and book changes, which has caused some fans to worry that more main characters will look different in future seasons of the hit Netflix series.

Based on Julia Quinn‘s book series, the Regency show follows different members of a wealthy family as they each search for love in 19th century London. After the show premiered in 2020, Bridgerton went through cast changes when Regé-Jean Page left the show after season 1 and his onscreen love interest Phoebe Dynevor‘s screen time was cut as a result.

Other former leads had significantly less scenes from season to season while one member of the Bridgerton family — Francesca — was recast with Hannah Dodd taking over for Ruby Stokes. With there being eight seasons planned in total and multiple years before seasons, some have questioned whether more cast changes are coming up.

Keep scrolling for a breakdown of the recasting concerns:

Related: ‘Bridgerton’ Cast: See the Hit Netflix Show’s Stars Then and Now

Bridgerton fans have watched the cast change on and off screen since the series first debuted. The historical drama, which is based on the book series written by Julia Quinn, follows the members of the wealthy Bridgerton family as they search for love in 19th century London. When Bridgerton premiered in 2020, the show centered […]

The Key Players

Season 1 of Netflix’s Bridgerton centered around Daphne Bridgerton (Dynevor) and Simon Basset (Page), who were the leads of the first book, The Duke and I.

Season 2 took inspiration from The Viscount Who Loved Me, which followed Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) as he found love with Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley). Despite Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) being the subject of the third novel — An Offer From a Gentleman — his love story with newcomer Sophie (Yerin Ha) wasn’t explored until season 4.

The third season instead focused on Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) as seen in Quinn’s book Romancing Mister Bridgerton.

The Gist

Showrunner Jess Brownell confirmed in January 2026 that Eloise (Claudia Jessie) and Phillip Crane (Chris Fulton) or Francesca (Dodd) and Michaela (Masali Baduza) are next in line.

With the long filming schedules causing years between seasons, some fans have expressed concern that Fulton could be replaced as Phillip after being gone since season 2. There were also questions about whether younger Bridgerton siblings Hyacinth (Florence Hunt) and Gregory (Will Tilston) will be played by other actors despite being cast in the show as kids.

Related: Which ‘Bridgerton‘ Couples Ended Up Together in the Books?

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As soon as Netflix debuted Bridgerton, fans became invested in the stories still yet to be told. Based on Julia Quinn‘s novels of the same name, the series began with the love story of Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page). Season 2 of Bridgerton told the story of Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) […]

What Has Been Said

Quinn broke her silence in February 2026 on possible changes in future seasons.

“I don’t necessarily know how they’re gonna spin it or write it or what they’re going to keep and change,” Quinn exclusively told Us Weekly while teasing Eloise’s upcoming season.

Quinn also weighed in on Hyacinth and Gregory’s respective seasons.

“It’s funny because they were, like, 12 and 13 when they started. If you asked me that back then [about the same actors playing them as adults], I’d be like, ‘I don’t know.’ But when I saw them again at the premiere, they were both drinking wine,” she told Us. “They’re both 18 now and Will was there with his girlfriend.”

The author pointed out that there were still a few years before It’s In His Kiss and On the Way to the Wedding will be featured with their own seasons.

“[Showrunner] Jess [Brownell] has said the next two seasons will be either Eloise and then Francesca or Francesca and then Eloise, which makes sense. It takes a few years to film, so by the time we get to Hyacinth and Gregory, the actors are going to be well into their 20s,” Quinn explained. “So I think it’ll probably be OK. Will it be weird that we knew them when they were 12? We see child stars grow up all the time.”

She continued: “As a writer, it was hard to write those two books at first. I really had to let them grow up in my mind a bit and that was hard for both of them. I was really glad it took several years — but even so — I can’t remember how much time passed in the writing. I really had to let them grow up. It was tough.”

Brownell, meanwhile, confirmed that Eloise’s romantic future won’t change. “I think we are interested in honoring the love interest from Eloise’s book. I can dispel, she’s not ending up with Theo. She’s ending up with the love interest from her book,” she told Swooon.

The showrunner also shut down other possible recasting — such as Daphne and Simon. “We are not interested in recasting the characters,” Brownell told Variety in February 2026. “I think it would feel like a disservice to everything Regé and Phoebe set up in season 1, and all the beautiful work they put into those characters.”

What’s Next

In addition to Eloise’s To Sir Phillip, With Love and Francesca’s When He Was Wicked, Hyacinth’s It’s In His Kiss and Gregory’s On the Way to the Wedding are the only remaining books left to bring to life.

Kit Harington Turns To Dad Duty After Filming Intense Scenes

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By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 minute ago

The X-Files is a show with many fine qualities, including inventive scripts and top-notch actors. Arguably, though, the show’s biggest strength was its ability to gross its audience out with some of the creepiest creatures to ever grace the small screen. The best example of this is the Flukeman, a horrific monster that haunts the sewers and can emerge from the toilet to kill its victims.

The episode does a wonderful job of capitalizing on its audience’s fears, and more than a few fans started taking a second glance at the toilet after watching “The Host.” After all, this episode (written by X-Files creator Chris Carter) had enough freaky details to make you sick, and many of us are still processing what we first saw all those decades ago. However, what most fans never realized is that this episode made the crew quite literally sick for a simple reason: it was partially filmed at a real sewage treatment plant!

The Smell Is Out There

The plot of “The Host” is that FBI Agent Fox Mulder (who is stuck on dead-end cases because the X-Files has been shut down) is assigned to investigate the death of a Russian whose body washed up in Newark, New Jersey. After pounding the pavement and visiting a sewage treatment plant, Mulder discovers the horrifying truth: the Russian was killed by a human-sized flukeworm. He captures this Flukeman, but after it escapes custody, Mulder ends up cutting the creature in half with a sewer overflow pipe, preventing it from escaping into the ocean and creating more of its kind.

“The Host” is considered the gold standard for “monster of the week” episodes, and The X-Files crew did a great job bringing this terrifying tale to life. They really went the extra mile, including creating a sprawling sewer set that even included real tanks and running water. However, other shots required even more verisimilitude, and that meant getting down and dirty by filming in an actual sewage plant.

Nobody Was Ready For The Smell

As you might imagine, this location stunk to high heaven. Making matters worse, this X-Files episode was being filmed on a hot summer’s day, so the producers offered crew members an option: they could either take the day off or wear special rebreathers (which cost the show a small fortune to acquire) to help ward off the smell. In a stunning show of solidarity, nobody took the day off, and the breathing equipment helped ward off the awful smell long enough for them to finish shooting the episode.

However, there was just one problem with this plan to manage the stench: the location of the catering truck. The truck for the crew was located outside, upwind, and as far away from the sewage treatment plant as the producers could manage. On paper, this would allow the crew to grab some much-needed lunch without having to worry about the horrific smell of the plant.

Unfortunately, the catering truck wasn’t as far upwind as it needed to be, and the results were instantaneous: several production staff members who had ditched their breathing equipment to grab a bite got violently ill. They all gathered at a fence on the outside perimeter of the sewage treatment plant, and they all shared the same purpose. Namely, to empty out their stomachs, vomiting until there was absolutely nothing left!

Trust No One (Especially Your Nose)

Still, the crew got back to work and finished shooting one of the best episodes of The X-Files to ever grace the small screen. It wasn’t easy, though, and production staffer Al Campbell (as reported in X Marks the Spot (On Location with The X-Files)) later reported his trick for whenever he felt queasy: “I’d visit the primary sedimentation tank – the place where the raw, untreated sewage came in.” He reported that after “a couple of minutes of that, and I’d go back to whatever I was doing, feeling relieved and grateful that nothing else was as bad as where I’d just been.”

The X-Files remains one of the most captivating shows in television history, and this story proves that the cast was never afraid to get down and dirty to provide us with one killer episode after another. “The Host” literally made the crew working on it sick, but this didn’t keep them from creating the ultimate monster of the week episode. Forget blood, sweat, and tears: it turns out that puke is the real secret ingredient of the creepiest TV show ever made!

Kelly Osbourne has spoken out after sparking public concern with her appearance at the 2026 BRIT Awards.

RELATED: Prayers Up! Legendary Heavy Metal Musician Ozzy Osbourne Passes Away At 76

Kelly Osbourne Sparks Public Concern With Appearance At 2026 BRIT Awards

According to Fox News, the 2026 BRIT Awards went down at the Co-op Live arena in Manchester, England, on Saturday, February 28. Per the outlet, Kelly appeared on stage alongside her mother, Sharon Osbourne, to accept the Lifetime Achievement on behalf of her father, the late Ozzy Osbourne.

Watch the clip of their acceptance appearance below.

@brits

“ozzy’s heart never left England” 🥹 we couldn’t be happier that we got to honour the incredible Ozzy Osbourne on home soil with his Lifetime Achievement Award

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♬ original sound – BRITs – BRITs

Furthermore, in the comment section of the clip, viewers expressed their concern for Kelly Osbourne.

TikTok user @The Yellow Door Gallery Cork wrote, “Poor Kelly!!!”

TikTok user @chas wrote “lets not be be unkind grief takes people in difftent ways be well ladies”

Kelly Osbourne Speaks Out As Social Media Weighs In

According to Fox News, Kelly Osbourne apparently noticed the public concern and took to her Instagram Story on Sunday, March 1, to address it.

“There is a special kind of cruelty in harming someone who is clearly going through something, kicking me while I’m down, doubting my pain, spreading my struggles as gossip, and turning your back when I need support and love most,” she wrote. “None of it proves strength; it only reveals a profound absence of compassion and character. I’m currently going through the hardest time of my life. I should not even have to defend myself. But I won’t sit here and allow myself to be dehumanized in such a way!”

See her response and photos shared of her from the BRITs red carpet by swiping below.

To note, amid Kelly’s message, social media users continued to share their concerns in TSR’s comment section.

More On The Recent Passing Of Her Dad, Ozzy Osbourne

As The Shade Room previously reported, Kelly Osbourne’s father, heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne, passed away in July 2025. Furthermore, his passing reportedly arrived almost six years after he revealed his Parkinson’s diagnosis to the world.

Later that month, Kelly opened up about losing her father via a message she shared on her Instagram Story, per The Shade Room.

By the end of the month, Kelly’s family came together to honor her dad at his funeral procession, per The Shade Room.

According to Fox News, after Ozzy’s passing, Sharon defended her daughter against critics of her appearance while on ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored.’ At the time, Sharon noted that Kelly was “not happy,” and said she “can’t eat right now.”

RELATED: Prayers Up! Ozzy Osbourne’s Wife, Kids & Birmingham Fans Come Together For His Funeral Procession (PHOTOS)

By Jennifer Asencio
| Published 27 seconds ago

Scream 7 is now out in theaters, marking the 30^th anniversary of the original film, which came out December 20, 1996. We’ve seen many Ghostfaces since the originals because the movie spawned so many sequels. Whoever dons the Ghostface mask should really review the success rate when they start their murder sprees because their odds of survival are very low, and Sidney (Neve Campbell) typically makes them scream before ending this round’s killers. The franchise was aware of all this as early as 1997, in Scream 2.

This first sequel sees the survivors of the first movie now in college, with wise-cracking movie buff Randy (Jamie Kennedy) in a film class discussing sequels with his classmates, Cici (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Mickey (Timothy Olyphant) among them. During this self-aware metacommentary, Randy states that “Sequels, by definition, suck.”

This starts a class discussion in which various sequels are nominated as violating this rule. The problem with this discussion is the fact that the movies they bring up are fundamentally different kinds of movies, not sequels in the truest sense.

Aliens Is Bigger, Badder, And Not A Slasher

“Get away from her, you bitch” is an iconic line from Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Aliens. This is the first movie that is brought up in that classroom discussion. Aliens is a very different kind of movie compared to Alien, which is at its core a slasher movie: a very claustrophobic film where the survivors have no escape from the killer, and a vastly more innocent Ripley.

Aliens may share an IP with the Alien characters and the universe in which they live, but the content and tone is fundamentally different. Aliens is action and horror with a greater focus on the badassness of the Marines and Ripley. The scope of the film is pulled back: Alien was shot in close angles, sharing that claustrophobic atmosphere of the Nostromo interior, while Aliens gives us a sprawling colony before taking us into its inner workings.

It would also be unfair to call Aliens a better movie than Alien because the motivations of the characters are distinct. The Marines go looking for a fight, not running from it like the Nostromo crew, trying to survive a singular killer. They’re heavily armed soldiers being overwhelmed by hundreds of biological weapons, not unprepared space truckers who don’t know what they’re getting into.

Terminator’s Transition From Sci-Fi Horror To Action Blockbuster

In the Scream 2 classroom, Cici accuses Mickey of having “a hard on for Cameron,” so naturally that means the next films discussed were Terminator and its continuation. Once again, though, the scope of the two movies are so diametrically opposed that to compare the movies side-by-side does both a great disservice.

The first movie is about a young woman named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) who is being pursued by an enemy that does not need to eat, to sleep, to stop, or to rest. The Terminator could follow her no matter where she ran. At this point in her life, she is an aggressively average young woman with no special skills or talents, a victim who has had her life ruined by something she may or may not even do in the future.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day, with its dramatic opening score and intense imagery, instantly alters the scope of Sarah’s universe. It’s more than just a young woman staying one step ahead of an unstoppable killing machine. We see the broken lives that the first Terminator left behind in its destruction. A company that will ensure SkyNet lives again. A son torn from his mother, fueling his delinquency as he moved from foster family to foster family.

The machines that haunt Sarah’s memories return, proving that she was not insane. It’s not just the survival of one woman based on a future act of creation: it concerns the entirety of the human race facing a monster of its own making. It falls into the same category as Aliens in that it expanded the franchise through action rather than relying on scares and that feeling of being stalked.

Its themes may have resonated strongly with audiences, but it was so divorced from the haunting terror of the T-800 in large part because the second movie turned the Terminator into an action hero and a way to defend the humans from the unstoppable force he seemed to be in the first movie, dampening the stalking element by making it too easy to fight.

House 2 Is An Unhinged Escalation

Mickey sardonically tells his Scream 2 classmates that House 2: The Second Story is his next suggestion. House and House 2 are two films that have absolutely nothing in common other than inheriting a creepy house that also just so happens to be a gate to another dimension. House tries to come off as a comedic horror movie, with casting that included sitcom stars William Katt, George Wendt, and Richard Moll. However, it is inconsistent in its application of theme and tone.

The intensity of the Vietnam flashbacks that influence the main character’s experiences with the other dimension hit on societal issues in the 1980s as America dealt with the aftermath of the war. The disappearance of his son in the pool at his aunt’s house, leading to his divorce, was also a glaringly serious theme in an otherwise comedic film. The conflict between the weight of memory and the promise of a better future underpins the theme of this movie, which contributed to how inconsistent it felt.

House 2 took out the trauma of the war. Instead, they decided to throw everything else at the script just to see what sticks. Horror is merely a consideration in this film, an excuse to have over-the-top effects.

What happens when you add a caveman from the epoch of the dinosaurs, some Aztecs, two zombie gunslingers, an actual dinosaur, and a dog-a-pede that is now some sort of pet? Don’t know? Neither does the movie. The madcap escapades of this movie were closer to the tone the first film seemed to be chasing, so maybe in this case, Mickey had a point, even if he was both being sarcastic and secretly a serial killer.

Randy Fumbles On The Godfather

Seminal and iconic movies The Godfather Part 1 & 2 are not two movies in the distinct way the others were, but they are the final movie in the classroom discussion. These two movies are a much longer single work, segmented out of sequence, almost like a Tarantino film. The Godfather 2 doesn’t so much continue the original as much as frames it. While it would be incredibly difficult to understand the plot elements of Part 2 without seeing Part 1, this is because they are the parts of the book that were cut out to make the first movie.

Of all the examples that are brought up in the film class scene, The Godfather and The Godfather 2 are the ones least like what they are discussing. These two movies go together in a way the others cannot. They do exhibit great storytelling told over the span of decades. Both movies contain a scope that mirrors the epic poems of our collective past. This “hero’s journey” is told from the vantage of the criminal boss about themes of family, duty, loyalty, and, in their twisted world, a form of honor. But one is not the sequel of the other.

For someone who was supposed to be as knowledgeable about films as Randy from the Scream franchise, he let this one slide when it was so clearly incorrect. This is especially remarkable since he later denies the sequelhood of The Empire Strikes Back on the same grounds.

An Apples And Oranges Debate

“Name one sequel that surpasses the original” was Randy’s challenge to his class to start the discussion in Scream 2. The ones mentioned in that scene are widely considered to “be better” than the original. But other than sharing a name and setting, the movies are largely only better because they’re different from the originals and deserve to be recognized on their own merits. There are plenty of sequels that better fit the parameters of the discussion, but odds are pretty good that none rises to the challenge, except maybe some of the Scream sequels themselves.

Scream 7 is in theaters now. Does it surpass the original?