CBS cancels Colbert, ‘The Late Show’ to end next year
‘I’m not being replaced, this is all just going away.’ PLUS: New trailers for ’Stranger Things,’ ‘Tron: Ares,’ ‘Alien: Earth’ and ‘Hoppers,’ Emmy noms, and why won’t James Gunn just make a ‘Superman’ sequel?
Hey, Popculturology friends. How is this already the third Friday edition of July? Summer is flying by.
As we prepare for The Fantastic Four: First Steps to hit theater next Friday, Universal is already selling tickets to Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey ... which opens next summer. Like, a full year from now.
A Nolan film in a top-tier IMAX theater is apparently a major enough event now where the chain can sell out showings twelve months in advance. (Sadly none of the theaters with tickets on sale are around me.) People are buying tickets to a film that doesn’t even have a trailer online yet. Sure, the Odyssey trailer is playing in front of movies like Jurassic World Rebirth and Superman, but what if you’re like me and duck out to use the bathroom and pop back into theater right as the trailer is ending? At least I got to see the ad for GMC trucks that played right after it ...
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Book nook
Here’s what I’ve been reading this week …
- Caught Stealing (Charlie Huston)
As I read Caught Stealing, I kept wondering when certain characters I saw in the trailer for the movie adaptation were going to show up. As I got to the end of the book, I realized that director Darren Aronofsky was making some pretty serious changes from Charlie Huston’s book for the film. Hopefully this isn’t a Mickey7/Mickey 17 situation.
NEWS, NOTES & TRAILERS
The sun sets on The Late Show
Welp, this one was a shocker. On Thursday afternoon, news broke that CBS was cancelling The Late Show. Yes, the same Late Show that has run since 1993. The same Late Show that has been hosted by David Letterman and Stephen Colbert, two late-night television icons.
“Before we start the show, I want to let you know something I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May,” Colbert told the audience at his show’s taping on Thursday.
CBS justified the end of one of the two major late-night franchises as “purely a financial decision.”
“This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,” George Cheeks, the president of CBS and co-chief executive of Paramount, CBS’s parent company, said in a statement. “It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount. Our admiration, affection and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult.”
I think what makes losing Colbert especially hard is he seems like one of the most (and possibly few) genuinely decent people on television
— Sam Adams (@samadams.bsky.social) 2025-07-18T02:45:19.726Z
This is the third time that CBS has retired one of its late-night shows, previously ending The Late Late Show after James Corden stepped down and then choosing to not continue with After Midnight after Taylor Tomlinson chose to end her time as its host. (The New York Times)
- Jon Stewart next? Status recently reported that Paramount could possibly let both Colbert and The Daily Show host Jon Stewart go after their contracts were up (Colbert in 2026 and Stewart in 2025) to help complete Skydance’s purchase of the studio, noting that “the new Paramount leadership could present these moves as cost-cutting measures for struggling linear television, while achieving the political benefit of silencing two of [Donald Trump]’s loudest critics on the airwaves.” (Status)
🍿 “I need you to fight one last time”
I’ll be honest with you — I queued up the trailer for the final season of Stranger Things fully ready to make fun of it. The kids are too old. Netflix has milked it for too long. Etc etc etc.
But, dammit, Stranger Things is always good. (Except maybe that episode where they tried to give Eleven a bunch of new friends.) And this trailer did a fantastic job of reminding me how much fun this show has been over the past — gulp — decade.
But Netflix really should’ve found some way to explain why all these children looked like adults now. It wouldn’t be hard!
Heh. (I will never understand why they didn't just write in a time jump to the '90s to follow the now college-aged survivors of Hawkins reuniting for one final stand a la Stephen King's IT. Go full grunge, hard PG-13/soft R rated stuff.)
— Meghan O'Keefe (@megsokay.bsky.social) 2025-07-16T14:49:29.171Z
Netflix is airing the final season of Stranger Things in the weirdest way possible, so make sure you’ve got it marked on your calendar. The first four episodes of Season 5 premiere on Nov. 26. The next three episodes follow on Dec. 25. The series finale then goes live on Dec. 31. Yes, those dates are the day before Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve. All days when people are definitely home and aren’t prone to having the show spoiled for them while they travel ...
