Jack Black has revealed his regret at turning down the role of Syndrome in The Incredibles, admitting he shouldn’t have been so difficult and just accepted the part.

Speaking on Capital Breakfast's Christmas day show to promote his new movie, Anaconda, Black said he thought Syndrome was a one dimensional character and asked for a rewrite, which writer and director Brad Bird declined.

“I was offered — and I do regret it, saying no — I was offered Syndrome in that fantastic movie, The Incredibles,” Black revealed. “One of my favorites of all time by the way. And I said no, because I was like, ‘Er, Brad Bird, never heard of him. This character that you’re offering me is a villain but he’s kind of one dimensional. I’m interested but I’d like to see a rewrite. Will you add some dimensions to this character?’ And he was like, ‘You’re done. Get out of here.’"

The Jumanji, School of Rock, and Kung Fu Panda star continued: “And I learnt a valuable lesson. Because then the movie came out and it was one of the best movies ever made. I was like, ‘Why was I being so difficult?’”

The role of Syndrome, Mr. Incredible's obsessed fan turned supervillain, went to Jason Lee (My Name Is Earl, Mallrats). Pixar’s The Incredibles came out in 2004 and enjoyed critical and commercial acclaim, making over $630 million at the global box office. The Incredibles did so well it spawned a sequel, with The Incredibles 3 confirmed to be in the works. Anaconda, meanwhile, is now up to $88.4 million at the global box office.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Netflix has announced One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, a behind-the-scenes documentary on the show’s fifth and final season.

Due out on Netflix on January 12, the film follows the cast, creators, and crew as they bring the final season to life — and say goodbye. One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 is directed by Martina Radwan, who commented:

“I’m endlessly grateful to the Duffer Brothers for trusting me with a front-row seat to this incredible journey. Spending a full year on set with them was a true privilege — and an absolute thrill. Being able to get close and watching them bring this beloved show to life in real time, was pure joy. I only wish I could travel back in time and document Seasons 1 through 4. From the cast to their long-time collaborators, everyone welcomed me with remarkable generosity, openly sharing their personal and collective experiences from a decade of creative filmmaking. The Duffers always push boundaries and inspire everyone to be better, including myself. Their process and the show represents everything I love about filmmaking.”

The trailer, below, teases the film, which touches on the Duffer Brothers' internal discussion around the fate of Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown. This is something the pair have discussed in detail in various post-release interviews.

One last time. Watch the never-before-seen behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Stranger Things 5. Premiering January 12. pic.twitter.com/5FNvTNlvuz

— Netflix (@netflix) January 5, 2026

The Duffer Brothers also issued a comment: “Growing up in Durham, North Carolina, we dreamed of becoming filmmakers — but Hollywood felt impossibly far away. Everything changed when we watched the behind-the-scenes documentaries for The Lord of the Rings — on-the-ground films that showed the real nuts and bolts of how a massive production actually gets made. We saw how stressed Peter Jackson was and thought: yep, that’s the dream. With the decline of physical media, that kind of behind-the-scenes storytelling has largely disappeared. We wanted to bring it back.

"One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things Season 5 — beautifully captured and directed by Martina Radwan — is our attempt to do just that. If you love Stranger Things, or if you’re simply curious how a major Hollywood production comes to life, this one’s for you.”

Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings also influenced the Season 5 finale. Last week, the Duffer Brothers said the lengthy Season 5 finale epilogue and its end credits were inspired by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

“We thought about [The Lord of the Rings] Return of the King a lot, just in terms of the length of the epilogue,” Matt Duffer told Deadline. “I always defend the Return of the King epilogue, but I’m one of those hardcore Lord of the Rings fans, to the point where I’ve watched all extended editions in a row on a single day. If you do that, the epilogue feels absolutely perfect and not long at all. In fact, if it felt shorter, it would feel absolutely distressing.

“I think, Stranger Things, if you watch Season 5 all the way through, it’s going to feel great. You just want to spend extra time with these characters. Anyway, that was sort of the reference for the epilogue. Then we love the credits at the end of Return of the King. So that was the initial idea, and they were these very simple illustrations.”

Stranger Things may have come to an end, but we’ve got plenty more on the show, including the Duffer Brothers explaining why the demogorgons didn’t help Vecna out in the final battle, and first details on the live-action spinoff.

Image credit: Netflix.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The X-Files is back in the conversation after all 11 seasons were made available to stream for free — sparking an influx of newcomers and veterans rewatching and reappraising their favorite episodes and moments from the series.

Mulder and Scully’s spooky sci-fi adventures were made available on free streamer Pluto TV last week, with 218 episodes including the 2016 revival on demand and on a 24/7 linear channel dedicated to the series. This has fueled renewed interest in one of the most popular TV shows of the 90s from fans, who are — as they did 30 years ago — venturing online to discuss its various plot twists.

As a veteran X-Files fan myself, I’ve enjoyed seeing newcomers express their delight in watching the show for the first time, getting to grips with its overarching alien abductions and government cover-ups storyline, as well as its classic ‘Monster of the Week’ episodes.

“We just finished episode one of season one and...wow! We loved it,” said one fan. “It even looks and sounds better than modern TV shows, I suppose because it was shot on location and not on sets. But it just feels better acted, as well as looking better. If going back in time to enjoy TV is going to be even HALF as good as this experience, then that is what we will be doing from now on! I want to believe.”

Veteran fans are expressing their jealousy at those experiencing the X-Files for the first time, knowing what is to come — and issuing warnings for the occasional spoof episode in which David Duchovny’s Mulder and Gillian Anderson’s Scully let their hair down. “Mulder and Scully are quite the comic duo when they want to be,” one fan told a newcomer.

i love when im watching the x-files and they causally drop some of the most cinematic shots in history pic.twitter.com/Y3UgO10zuq

— nika⸆⸉ 🦔🍁 (@guiltyasScout) January 4, 2026

Of course, fans are re-ranking their favorite episodes as well as monsters (no spoilers here!). They’re also wondering whether the series would have been better off ending before its divisive ninth season. And there is of course plenty of healthy… debate about the rights and wrongs of poor old Krycek.

It’s worth remembering that X-Files was one of the first shows with an online “fandom,” with its reaction culture perhaps foreshadowing the future of the internet. X-Files promoted theorycrafting, in-jokes, and memes. There were plenty of hoaxes, the odd backlash, and… shipping. The fandom became as big a part of the experience as watching the show itself, laying the groundwork for 30 years of discourse.

And perhaps the X-Files will get to do it all over again. Ryan Coogler, the director of Creed, Black Panther, and Sinners, is currently working on an X-Files revival for television, and Gillian Anderson has expressed her interest in reprising her role.

“We intend on having both Monsters of the Week and the overarching conspiracy,” Coogler recently said of X-Files. “I’m grappling with that. But that's what I'm doing now. Panther comes after that. I’m blessed to be working on things this cool.”

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Michael B. Jordan has revealed he went to therapy after playing Killmonger in Marvel movie Black Panther.

Jordan’s Erik Killmonger is considered one of the best MCU villains, with his performance opposite the late Chadwick Boseman’s T'Challa / Black Panther winning plaudits from critics and fans alike. Killmonger is a Wakandan prince raised in Oakland, California, after his father, N'Jobu, was killed by King T'Chaka. A brilliant black-ops operative and former U.S. Navy SEAL, Killmonger seeks revenge on Wakanda for abandoning his father and aims to use its vibranium to arm oppressed people worldwide, eventually challenging T'Challa for the throne.

But it was a role that clearly took its toll on Jordan, who told CBS Sunday Morning that he needed therapy to help shake off the character after the movie came out in 2018.

"Each character kind of lives with you. They don’t go anywhere. They’re there," Jordan said. "Some piece of that character… it’s a blurred line between yourself and the character, for me, anyway. With Killmonger, Erik, it was a complex, layered antagonist. I don’t look at him as a villain. I look at him as an antagonist, because you understood him a bit. He was the other side of a conversation. Him and T'Challa were a lot alike, they both cared about their people, deeply, and would do anything to protect them. They just had two different approaches and strategies and mentalities around it all, shaped by their childhood trauma.

"And Erik didn’t really know a lot of love. Erik didn’t experience that. He had a lot of betrayal. He had a lot of failed systems around him that shaped him, and his anger and his frustration, and looking at history and how it seemed to always repeat itself, and how was he going to break that cycle?

“So for a while in preparation for that role, I didn’t really speak to my family that much. I was kind of isolated a bit. I went to my hole and tried to live like he would have lived for a bit, whatever that process was. After the movie, it kind of stuck with me for a bit. Went to therapy, talked about it, found a way to kind of just decompress. I think at that point, I was still learning that I needed to decompress from a character.

“Again, there’s no blueprint to this. There wasn’t a lot of people that… acting is a solo journey a lot of times. There’s a lot of auditioning by yourself, practicing by yourself. There’s a lot of preparation and the experience, the journey. So learning as I went, I [realized] that, ‘Oh man, I still got a little something on me that I need to get off.’ You know, talking is really important.”

Jordan went on to say that seeking therapy is “necessary for people, especially men.” “I think it’s good for them to go and talk and get that off,” he added. “That’s something I’m not ashamed of at all and very proud of. It definitely helped me throughout the years and to this day, of trying to be a good communicator and well-rounded person inside and out.”

Jordan went on to reprise his role as Donnie Creed in Creed III, which he also directed, and play twin brothers Elijah "Smoke" Moore and Elias "Stack" Moore in 2025’s hit horror movie, Sinners.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Mickey Rourke, star of Sin City and Iron Man 2, has launched a fundraiser to pay $60,000 in rent after a threat of eviction.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed that 73-year-old Rourke is using GoFundMe to raise money to pay $59,100 in owed rent after receiving an eviction notice from his Los Angeles rental home.

Rourke enjoyed superstardom in the '80s before leaving acting to pursue professional boxing. He made a comeback to mainstream Hollywood with the lead role in 2005 neo-noir action thriller Sin City, then starred in 2008's critically acclaimed The Wrestler, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe, and 2010 MCU sequel Iron Man 2 as main villain Whiplash.

The biggest talking point coming out of the Stranger Things finale relates to the fate of its central character, Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown. While Season 5, Episode 8, dubbed The Rightside Up, leaves her fate ambiguous, creators the Duffer Brothers know the truth — and the only cast member also in the know is Millie Bobby Brown herself. But don’t expect either the Duffer Brothers or Millie Bobby Brown to spill the beans — they’ve sworn her to secrecy.

Stranger Things ends with a definitive wave goodbye to all the central characters except Eleven, who appears to sacrifice herself to ensure she cannot be used to create super weapons, another Vecna / Henry, or another bridge between our world and The Abyss.

18 months after that traumatic event, we see the central characters meet up for graduation and say their goodbyes. It’s at this point that Mike Wheeler, played by Finn Wolfhard, has a thought: what if Kali Prasad, also known as Eight (Linnea Berthelsen), used her dying breath to create the illusion of Eleven’s death, leaving her free to escape unseen?

Mike teases this revelation to the Dungeons & Dragons group as their final campaign comes to an end, suggesting Eleven cooked up a plan with Kali to fake her own death, then traveled to a far away small village — bordered by three waterfalls — to live out her days in peace. But this ending is unconfirmed. Mike and the others choose to believe it, and it’s left up to the audience to decide what they choose to believe as Stranger Things finally comes to an end.

Matt and Ross Duffer have explained the Stranger Things ending already, but in an interview with Josh Horowitz, they confirmed they wrote the story knowing the truth of Eleven's fate, and they’ve told only one cast member: Millie Bobby Brown herself.

“You're writing from a point of view of understanding what the truth is, right? And the reality is?” explained Matt Duffer. “So yeah, Ross and I know. And we were just talking to Millie about it. But I think it takes away the power of the ending if you tell people what you were thinking as you were writing it.”

During the interview, Matt revealed the Duffers had just texted Millie Bobby Brown about this exact subject — and she promised not to spill the beans. “She's not going to tell you either!” Matt Duffer said. “Don’t waste your time! Millie swore herself to secrecy.”

It then occurred to the creators that Millie Bobby Brown is very close to Noah Schnapp, who plays Will Byers in Stranger Things, so she might end up telling him. That prompted a text during the interview from Matt to Millie, warning her against doing so. “I’m not even joking,” Matt Duffer said, “I’m literally going to text her right now!”

In the same interview, the Duffers revealed that they did explore the possibility of Eleven having a “full happy ending” where she ends up married to Mike, living a happy life with the government off their backs and the lab experiments ended for good, “and we just couldn't figure out a way for that to work.”

In a Netflix Q&A published as the finale aired, Ross Duffer went into more detail on the thinking behind the Stranger Things ending: “there was never a version of the story where Eleven was hanging out with the gang at the end. For us and our writers, we didn’t want to take her powers away. She represents magic in a lot of ways and the magic of childhood. For our characters to move on and for the story of Hawkins and the Upside Down to come to a close, Eleven had to go away. We thought it would be beautiful if our characters continued to believe in that happier ending even if we didn’t give them a clear answer to whether that’s true or not. The fact that they’re believing in it, we just thought it was such a better way to end the story and a better way to represent the closure of this journey and their journey from children to adults.”

“And the reality is, if Eleven is out there, the most that they could hope for is a belief that it’s true because they can’t be in contact with her,” Matt concluded. “Everything falls apart if that were the case. So if that’s the narrative, this is really the best way to keep her alive. And it’s about Mike and everyone finding a way to move past what’s happened.”

We've got plenty more on Stranger Things, including the Duffer Brothers explaining why the demogorgons didn’t help Vecna out in the final battle, and first details on the live-action spinoff.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.