Disney rolls out the first ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ teasers in the worst way

Hello, Popculturology readers. How is it already less than a week to Christmas? And how has it been a decade since Star Wars: The Force Awakens hit theaters? And two decades since “Lazy Sunday” wrote the rules for a viral video? And how is this already the milestone 400th edition of Popculturology?

In addition to those questions, we also have a ton of news to go over this week ... but first, a reminder that Calvin and Hobbes is not yours to turn into a movie. Even if you made a ton of money producing A Minecraft Movie.

But it turns out that you can buy a majority stake in Peanuts if you’re Sony and you have $460 million to spare.

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“Is this even a good thing to do on TV?”

Sabrina Carpenter joined Seth Meyers this week for the latest edition of “Day Drinking.” These two are delightful together. I need both of them — wink wink — back on SNL.

Programming note

The Friday newsletter will be off next week and will return on Jan. 2, 2026.

BOOK NOOK

Here’s what I’ve been reading this week …

• The Last Murder at the End of the World (Stuart Turton)

Going into November, I thought I was going to hit 100 books for 2025. But then the reality of holidays got in the way. It’s also hard to knock off several books a week when you suddenly have three kids’ birthday parties in a single weekend.

NEWS, NOTES & TRAILERS

Did Marvel biff the Avengers: Doomsday trailer rollout?

I wrote about this a bit when noting the anniversary of the first trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but movie trailers should be released in the widest, most accessible way possible. At their most basic, movie trailers are commercials and designed to convince people to spend their money on these movies.

Lucasfilm (and Disney) thankfully realized with that first Force Awakens trailer that releasing it in a handful of movie theaters was a moronic idea, and instead let the entire world enjoy it by putting it online.

Disney seems to have fallen back into that trap when it comes to the first teasers for Avengers: Doomsday. Instead of rekindling a level of excitement that the MCU desperately needs with a teaser trailer available online, Disney and Marvel Studios has reportedly decided to doll out a teaser a week for the next Avengers film, attaching them to Avatar: Fire and Ash.

And it’s already not going well.