The point of a movie trailer is to get people excited about a movie. PLUS: The first trailer for Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day,’ the Oscars ditch ABC for YouTube, and Seth Meyers goes ‘Day Drinking’ with Sabrina Carpenter.
Taco Bell brought a bunch of favorites back this week, including Steak Garlic Nacho Fries.
I’m always looking for a new soda to stock up on this time of year.
The point of a movie trailer is to get people excited about a movie. PLUS: The first trailer for Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day,’ the Oscars ditch ABC for YouTube, and Seth Meyers goes ‘Day Drinking’ with Sabrina Carpenter.
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.
The scariest pop-culture sentence you will read this year: the guy who produced A Minecraft Movie wants to make a Calvin and Hobbes movie.
— Josh Spiegel (@mousterpiece.bsky.social) 2025-12-18T21:41:07.542Z
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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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.
The Friday newsletter will be off next week and will return on Jan. 2, 2026.
Here’s what I’ve been reading this week …
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.
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.
‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 2’ saw a big drop, allowing the animated Disney sequel to reclaim the top spot.
The first trailer for the film premiered this week, and it definitely feels like a James Gunn movie. PLUS: Netflix and Paramount battle over WB, trailers for ‘The Boys’ and ‘The Drama,’ and Kimmel renews his ABC deal.
The sequel delivered a $63M opening weekend to prove that its predecessor’s debut wasn’t a fluke.
The box office titan boards the ‘Batman’ and ‘Exorcist’ franchises. PLUS: Netflix wins the Warner Bros. bidding war, trailers for ‘How to Make a Killing’ and ‘Ready or Not 2,’ and what’s going on with Spider League?
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