NOC Week in Review: July 11–17, 2026

Greek mythology is officially having a moment: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey hits theaters today, and Hadestown: The Musical follows next week. Up first, Keina wrote an impassioned defense of Orpheus against TikTok’s “he’s just neglectful and toxic” discourse. Later, Swara and Mike gave The Odyssey the Roundtable treatment, covering everything from the Trojan War to the culture war that surrounded its release.

Speaking of movies with Robert Pattinson as a mythic figure, Matt Reeves dropped camera-test footage of the actor back in the cowl for The Batman: Part II and a new release date (February 2028) that pushes the sequel back yet again. By the time it actually comes out, the guy they cast to play a young Batman will be the same age the last guy was when he was playing an old Batman.

In other fantasy franchise news: Andy Serkis will be directing himself as Gollum for The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, and Nikita got the Day One look at production kicking off in New Zealand. She also brought us first-look images from Children of Blood and Bone — Gina Prince-Bythewood’s adaptation, with a stacked cast led by Viola Davis, Idris Elba, Amandla Stenberg, Cynthia Erivo, and Regina King. The movie comes out in January 2027, and we will be seated, even if author Tomi Adeyemi might not be.

Tom Cruise and Alejandro Iñárritu finally made a movie together. Mike was in the room when the Digger trailer was unveiled at the Warner Bros. lot in Hollywood. Iñárritu spent a decade developing the film before Cruise signed on, and the actor’s transformation into the decrepit Digger Rockwell sounds like nothing he’s done in 40 years of being Tom Cruise. It’s in theaters October 2, and Mike’s got more coverage coming.

Out in Pasadena, Edward called the hip hop musical Mexodus a must-see, jaw-dropping piece of theater.

And on the interview front: Nikita also sat down with the cast of Descendants: Wicked Wonderland. Sophia spoke to Anya Taylor-Joy and Drew Starkey about Apple TV’s Lucky and caught up with Tom Hiddleston for the National Geographic doc, Pompeii: Out of Time. Man, between this and Odyssey/Hadestown, I guess this newsletter is officially Antiquities Roadshow now.

Finally, Swara brought Egyptian American comic creator Ibrahim Moustafa onto The Middle Geeks pod to talk his career and the industry’s continued exclusion of SWANA creatives. Ibrahim also happens to be one of my favorite ToyTubers, so stay tuned for the return of Shelf Conscious soon where he and I will talk about what’s really important: action figures!

That’s it for this week. See you next Friday.

— Keith

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