Paramount Pictures‘ upcoming “Call of Duty” movie from writer Taylor Sheridan will be based on the Xbox-owned first-person shooter franchise’s “Modern Warfare” games.

Plot details about the movie have been kept under wraps since it was first announced in September 2025. But during a “Call of Duty in Culture Panel” promoting the October release of “Modern Warfare 4,” which took place at Fanatics Fest in NYC Saturday, “Call of Duty” movie director and co-writer Peter Berg took the stage to reveal to fans that the film will be set in the “Modern Warfare” universe.

Since the original game’s release in 2003, the “Call of Duty” franchise has grown to include more than 30 mainline games. Among the dozens of titles, which have hailed from different developers over the years but are now all under Xbox via its purchase of publisher Activision, are the “Modern Warfare” games. Beginning with “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” in 2007, the “Modern Warfare” storyline marked the first “CoD” games to break from the franchise’s original World War II setting.

The “Modern Warfare” games have largely been set in the Middle East and followed Captain John Price and his Task Force 141 team’s mission to defeat terrorist Vladimir Makarov. This story will continue with the fall launch of “Modern Warfare 4,” which features a war that breaks out between North and South Korea.

Last month, Paramount Pictures set a June 30, 2028 release date for the currently untitled “CoD” film, which is being produced in collaboration with publisher Activision.

When the deal to make a “CoD” movie was first announced last year by new Paramount owner Skydance, sources told Variety that while the focus was to make the one “Call of Duty” movie from writer Taylor Sheridan, the multiyear pact includes the potential for Paramount to expand the “Call of Duty” universe across film and TV.

In June 2024, Red Velvet marked their tenth anniversary with Cosmic, an EP that topped iTunes album charts in 41 regions and earned recognition on Billboard, NME, and Dazed's year-end best-of lists. What followed was two years of silence as a group. On August 3, SM Entertainment confirmed that Red Velvet will return as a full five-member unit with Velvet Summer, a summer mini-album led by the single "Surfin' Boy." The circumstances surrounding this release are meaningfully different from anything the group has faced before.

Why This Comeback Is More Complicated Than the Last

Velvet Summer will be the first full-group release since Wendy and Yeri departed SM Entertainment and signed with new agencies. In K-pop, a member leaving the parent label typically signals the beginning of an uncertain period for group activities — scheduling becomes harder to coordinate, commercial incentives diverge, and the legal framework for a comeback grows considerably more complex. Red Velvet has taken a different approach: maintaining group identity in parallel with individual careers. Over the past two years, each member advanced her own projects. Joy released the solo mini-album From Joy, With Love. Wendy followed with Cerulean Verge. Irene issued her first full-length solo record, Biggest Fan. Seulgi put out Accidentally On Purpose. Yeri concentrated on film and television work. Five members spent two years building out their individual careers — and have now come back together under the same group name.

Looking Back: Career Peak and Most Recent Return

Red Velvet's commercial peak at the single level remains Psycho, released December 23, 2019. Psycho achieved a Certified All-Kill on December 25, simultaneously topping the daily and real-time charts of Melon, Genie, Naver, Bugs, Mnet, Soribada, FLO, and iChart — the first girl group song to achieve a CAK in 2019. It was also the fastest SM Entertainment track to reach ten million streams on Spotify, and accumulated global equivalent sales exceeding 11.3 million units, the group's all-time single record. On Melon's 2020 annual chart, it ranked second among all idol group tracks and first among girl groups — a cross-year performance that demonstrated genuine penetration among general listeners rather than concentrated activity from the fan base alone.

Cosmic (June 2024) told a different story. Cosmic peaked at number 32 on Melon's Top 100 and reached number 11 on the real-time chart, while topping iTunes in 41 regions. The gap in immediate chart impact compared to Psycho cannot be attributed to musical quality alone — it also reflects a significantly more competitive streaming environment. In the same promotional window, NewJeans, aespa, (G)I-DLE, and Kiss of Life all maintained active platform presence, with aespa's Supernova having completed a Perfect All-Kill just weeks earlier in May. The structural conditions that Cosmic entered were fundamentally different from those that greeted Psycho in December 2019, when Red Velvet was the only girl group to reach number one on the Melon daily chart for the entire year.

The Commercial Foundation

Whatever the streaming returns, Red Velvet's physical sales trajectory has been consistently upward. Queendom (2021), Birthday (2022), and Cosmic (2024) each kept the group within the million-unit sales tier — a level of sustained commercial stability that few third-generation acts have maintained into the mid-2020s. On August 1 and 2, Red Velvet will hold a Fan-Con at Korea University's Hwajeong Gymnasium, two days before the album's release — a deliberate move to consolidate fan engagement through live performance before the music reaches streaming platforms.

Red Velvet's Cosmic (2024) peaked at number 32 on the Melon Top 100, while Psycho (2019) achieved an all-kill across all major platforms.

1At the premiere of The Devil Wears Prada 2, Anne Hathaway described her 2026 in these terms: "Three years of work being sent out into the world in a six-month window." Between April and October, she appears in five theatrical releases of markedly different types and scales: the A24 psychological drama Mother Mary; the long-awaited sequel The Devil Wears Prada 2, twenty years in the making; Christopher Nolan's IMAX epic The Odyssey; the sci-fi thriller The End of Oak Street; and Verity, adapted from Colleen Hoover's novel of the same name. No year in her career has been this dense.

The five films differ substantially in both commercial outcome and creative context. Mother Mary, a psychological thriller directed by David Lowery on a $20 million budget, received broadly positive reviews but grossed just $2.9 million worldwide — a result below its production cost, though broadly in line with expectations for an A24 art-house release. The Devil Wears Prada 2 reunited director David Frankel, writer Aline Brosh McKenna, and the full original cast at a $100 million budget, and has since grossed $666.1 million globally; its commercial performance has been strong enough that the studio has publicly discussed a third installment. The Odyssey, Nolan's epic adaptation starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Robert Pattinson — with Hathaway as Penelope — opened today, with early reviews positioning it as a serious awards-season contender. The End of Oak Street, directed by David Robert Mitchell and co-starring Ewan McGregor, is a sci-fi thriller. Verity, directed by Michael Showalter and co-starring Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, carries a $40 million budget; Hoover's three prior adaptations have generated nearly $530 million combined at the global box office, but have received no awards nominations to date.

Hathaway's career box office exceeds $6 billion, with The Dark Knight Rises and Alice in Wonderland both surpassing $1 billion. Her 2026 slate spans five distinct market segments simultaneously — arthouse, franchise sequel, IMAX prestige, genre thriller, and BookTok adaptation — a range that reflects both the breadth of her commercial adaptability and the versatility of her screen persona, while also making it difficult to evaluate the five films' box office performance against any single benchmark.

Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled to be released on December 18, 2026. With only five months remaining until its release, the film will initiate presales on July 20, and it is highly likely that its first trailer will be released at SDCC on July 25.

Integrated Marketing Campaign

While launching presales five months in advance is an absolute rarity in the film industry, it has recently emerged as a new strategy for top-tier, high-profile IP films possessing "absolute confidence."

For instance, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey previously opened its advanced presales an entire year ahead of schedule and sold out rapidly, securing a commanding lead in sales volume, buzz, and screen allocation advantages well before the film's release. Avengers 5 is employing a similar strategy, with one of the core reasons being to counter the competition within the same release window—Warner Bros.' massive blockbuster Dune: Part III, which is also releasing in December, has already locked in the majority of IMAX screens in advance. Facing a competitor that is also a top-tier IP like Dune, Avengers 5 must preemptively strike to demonstrate stronger commercial value to theaters and capture earlier marketing traffic before theater schedules are finalized.

As a top-tier global promotional event for films, games, and pop culture, SDCC wields massive social media influence, generating online traffic that exceeds billions or even tens of billions of views globally. Releasing a first trailer at SDCC has always been a Marvel tradition. Two years ago, at the very same venue, Robert Downey Jr. unmasked himself to announce his role as Doctor Doom—the massive traffic and shocking impact on fans remain vivid in everyone's memory. Furthermore, competitor DC Studios is also rumored to potentially release updates on Superman or other new projects during the convention.

While the SDCC craze has yet to fade, another major Marvel IP, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, will be released on July 31, catching and extending the continuous buzz ignited by Avengers 5.

Quantitative Data Metrics

Over the next half-month, assessing the IP value of Avengers 5 only requires looking at a few key numbers.First is the 24-hour global view count of the first trailer. In cinema history to date, the champion for 24-hour trailer views is Deadpool & Wolverine with 365 million views, while within the Avengers franchise, Avengers: Endgamepeaked at 289 million views, ranking second in film history. Whether Avengers 5 can break its own record, or even the all-time cinematic record, is highly anticipated.

Second is the first-day and first-week presale box office after tickets go on sale, as well as the speed at which showtimes sell out. The first batch of tickets to open is typically for premium, higher-priced special format theaters, and the buyers committing to these countdown purchases are the core, die-hard fans with the highest loyalty and willingness to pay. Their ticket-purchasing speed is the most critical metric to test whether this IP still holds dominant, crowd-pulling power after a seven-year hiatus. However, because advanced presales only involve limited theater chains and regions, they cannot fully represent the ultimate intent of the general moviegoing public, and the sustainability of its long-tail effect five months from now remains to be seen.

As the fastest and most explicit quantitative metric we can observe—the 24-hour global view count—which range do you think the views for Avengers 5 will ultimately fall into?

Twice and Once will face a mutual challenge. Following Twice's first contract renewal in 2022, their contracts were expected to expire in October 2025. However, at that time, Twice was just launching their 10th-anniversary special album and their sixth world tour. Consequently, the industry speculated that the members most likely signed a "temporary contract" with JYP Entertainment, extending until the end of the 10th-anniversary promotions. With the conclusion of the final encore concert in Seoul, the time has come to face this harsh reality.

As of now, four out of the nine members have been reported to not be renewing their contracts and will be leaving their management agency, JYP. These include leader Jihyo, and members CHAEYOUNG, TZUYU, and JEONGYEON. What exactly does the future hold for Twice? The following is an in-depth analysis of the potential individual and group developments for each member.

K-pop Contract Regulations

First and foremost, almost all K-pop groups operate on a cycle where they decide whether to renew their contracts every 3 or 5 years after the initial 7-year debut contract expires. A member's contract is divided into two parts: a group contract and an individual contract. Highly popular groups almost always choose to renew their group contracts but forgo renewing their individual contracts. This occurs when both the individual and the group have reached a certain height, and the artists desire—and believe—that their individual development should take priority over group activities, leading them to transfer their individual contracts elsewhere to seek greater freedom for personal growth. Consequently, after making such a choice, what is observed is an increase in individual activities and a decrease, or even complete absence, of group activities.

For instance, after Blackpink's 7-year contract expired in 2023, negotiations extended from July until the end of the year, ultimately resulting in an official announcement that none of the members would sign individual activity contracts. Following this upheaval, Blackpink has made only one group comeback over a span of three years. An example of choosing not to renew both the group contract and the individual contract is former NCT member Mark, who established his own independent studio after leaving the agency to fully commit to his individual development. On the other hand, there are also groups that continuously choose to renew all contracts, such as Seventeen and NCT 127, both of which completed their renewals a while ago.

The Future of Twice

Leader Jihyo has recently been reported by South Korean media to have definitely decided against renewing her individual exclusive contract with JYP. Upon leaving JYP, she plans to establish her own independent company to launch solo and other individual activities. As the leader, the members once mentioned on a show that during the first contract renewal, the leader was the person who worked the hardest, mediating between the agency and the members. Furthermore, the leader is required to prioritize the team over individual interests most of the time. Consequently, throughout her 21 years at JYP, Jihyo's individual resources have been few and far between.

In May of this year, Yoo Jeongyeon was reported to have been in contact with Varo Entertainment, the agency housing her older sister, Gong Seung-yeon, as well as the highly popular actor Byeon Woo-seok. This year, her sister Gong Seung-yeon and Byeon Woo-seok co-starred in the new drama 21st Century Prince's Wife alongside IU. The massive hit of the drama closely coincided with the timing of Jeongyeon's report. Following the news, a magazine cover collaboration for the two sisters with Tiffany & Co. jewelry was swiftly finalized. Therefore, in terms of resources and the agency's current status, Varo Entertainment stands out as an excellent choice.

Tzuyu, the Taiwanese member, was photographed as early as June last year returning to Taiwan to meet with her parents and Alvin Chang, a prominent high-level executive in the Mandopop industry. Since the beginning of this year, she has not only secured the brand ambassadorship for 7-Eleven Taiwan, but her parents also established "Yuhai Entertainment" in May. During the Kaohsiung Music Festival in Taiwan in early July, Alvin Chang accompanied her throughout the entire event. This series of intensive local commercial activities and events indicates a high probability that Tzuyu will sign with her parents' new company and shift her career focus back to the Chinese-speaking market.

Chaeyoung has been rumored to be in contact with entertainment agencies within the industry, though no further details have been revealed at this time. Chaeyoung's attempted solo comeback in 2025 earned a score of 8.2 from Pitchfork, and achieved excellent results in digital streaming and album sales. Having always possessed a highly distinctive personal style, Chaeyoung may choose to continue her development as a solo artist.

Currently, there are sporadic reports suggesting that Dahyun is in contact with acting agencies to prepare for an official transition into acting, while Mina is discreetly looking into domestic agencies in Japan. However, these movements have not yet been formally reported by mainstream media and remain in a state of observation.

Among the remaining members, the Misamo unit—composed of the three Japanese members—has consistently developed well as singers in Japan. Whether in terms of sub-unit musical resources or commercial endorsements, they occupy a significant market share in Japan. For them, continuing to rely on the mature platforms of JYP and Warner Music Japan remains the optimal choice for maintaining their dominance in the Japanese market.

Meanwhile, since Nayeon fired the first shot for Twice's solos in 2022, she has continuously broken the highest ranking and sales records for K-pop female solo artists. Her individual commercial value has been thoroughly validated by the market, making it highly probable that she will continue to remain with JYP and firmly hold her position as the core solo female vocalist.

Taking the current situation into account, Twice's individual contracts will most likely be separated, with the majority no longer being signed under JYP, whereas the group contract will continue indefinitely.

As a legendary girl group that has walked hand-in-hand for a decade, the fact that all nine members have managed to stay together cleanly up to this point is already no easy feat in K-pop history. For Once, even though group comebacks may no longer be as frequent as before, seeing the members choose the direction of development that they desire most and fits them best might just be the finest graduation gift for the 10th anniversary.

On July 14, Song Minho arrived at Seoul Western District Court in a black suit. Reporters asked whether he acknowledged that his supervisor had made things easier for him, and whether he still intended to re-enlist. His answer to everything was the same two words: "I'm sorry." Then he walked inside.

He was not there as a defendant. Song Minho's own case concluded at its first hearing on April 21, when he admitted to every charge in the indictment and prosecutors formally requested a sentence of one year and six months in prison. Today's hearing belonged to his former service supervisor, referred to only as Mr. Lee, who faces charges of conspiring with Song Minho to conceal 102 days of unauthorized absence — approximately one quarter of his total required service period. Lee's legal team had requested Song Minho as a witness, and the court's central question was straightforward: did Lee simply look the other way, or did the two plan this together?

Song Minho's testimony did not fully resolve that question. He confirmed that on days when he was in poor condition, he had sent pre-scheduled text messages indicating he was taking approved leave — a practice he said followed Lee's guidance. He also stated that he never needed to give a reason when requesting to come in late or skip the day entirely. But he rejected the conspiracy framing. "Not showing up was my responsibility," he said — then added, almost immediately, that he felt "deeply sorry" toward Lee. It was the most carefully weighted line of the session: an assertion of personal accountability that shielded Lee from the conspiracy charge without fully clearing him either.

No verdict has been issued in either case. The court plans to close Lee's hearings on August 20, after which a sentencing date for Song Minho will be set. Korean courts typically sentence at 50 to 70 percent of the prosecution's request, placing the likely range between ten months and just over a year. Song Minho's full admission of guilt, his stated willingness to re-serve, and his documented history of bipolar disorder and panic disorder all qualify as mitigating factors. The scale of the violation — 102 absent days from roughly 430 required — does not.

A $28 million production budget. $126 million at the global box office. The fifth A24 film ever to cross the $100 million mark. Those numbers describe an original black comedy with no franchise backing, no established fan base — just two actors, a dinner party game, and a secret that changes everything. The Drama opened in North American theaters on April 3, crossed $100 million worldwide in 19 days, and earned a Certified Fresh 76% on Rotten Tomatoes. On July 31, it arrives on HBO Max. That same day, Zendaya will also appear in theaters in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The same actress, simultaneously headlining the biggest streaming platform and the biggest theatrical release of the week — it is one of the stranger cultural confluences the entertainment calendar has produced in years.

What the Film Actually Is

Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli built his reputation on films that use darkly comic premises to expose the least comfortable parts of human behavior. His A24 debut Dream Scenario, starring Nicolas Cage, placed an ordinary man inside an absurdist nightmare about public perception. Sick of Myself turned social anxiety into a wince-inducing character study. The Drama follows the same logic. Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are engaged, happy, and days away from their wedding. At the rehearsal dinner, the group plays a game: say the worst thing you've ever done. Emma answers. The secret she reveals is the engine of everything that follows — it forces Charlie, and the audience, to decide what they actually think about the person they thought they knew.

The setup is grounded enough to feel real, which is exactly the point. Borgli is not interested in plot mechanics. He is interested in how people react when something they believed in turns out to be more complicated than they thought.

Why It Divided Audiences in Theaters

Complex named The Drama the sixth-best film of 2026 so far, but noted that Emma's confession at the dinner table is the kind of moment where "your reaction to the reveal will color how you see the rest of the film." That is a precise description of what Borgli built. The film does not tell its audience how to feel about what Emma did. It presents the information and then watches what each viewer does with it — and because people bring different moral frameworks to that moment, they leave with genuinely different experiences of the same movie.

The numbers reflect this dynamic without resolving it. A 78% audience score sits almost exactly alongside the 76% critics' score, which tells you something useful: the film is divisive, but not in the way that produces bad reviews.

July 31: The Strangest Day on the Calendar

When The Drama lands on HBO Max on July 31, it will share the date with the wide release of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, in which Zendaya plays MJ. The result is a day where the same actress anchors both the most anticipated theatrical release of the summer and the streaming debut of one of the year's most discussed films. That kind of simultaneous platform presence is genuinely rare in Hollywood, and it is unlikely to be accidental — the timing compresses Zendaya's cultural footprint into a single 24-hour window in a way that benefits both releases.

There is also a coincidence worth noting. Zendaya and Tom Holland confirmed their marriage earlier this year, and the character she plays in The Drama is a woman who nearly destroys her own wedding by telling the truth at the worst possible moment. The overlap between her real life and the film's premise will not escape the attention of anyone who has followed both stories.

In the first quarter of 2026, Ulta Beauty reported net sales of $3.2 billion, with fragrance outpacing cosmetics and skincare to become the retailer's fastest-growing category. The brands driving that number were not legacy perfume houses with century-old heritage. They were Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, and Ariana Grande. The more striking figure sits behind those names: since launching her first fragrance in 2015, Ariana Grande has sold more than $1 billion worth of perfume — a number that exceeds the global sales of any single album she has released. The question worth asking is how celebrity fragrance has become one of the most commercially durable formats in the beauty industry.

Why the Old Model Failed — and What Replaced It

The previous version of celebrity fragrance operated on a simple chain: licensing deal, single product launch, fan purchase, shelf clearance. Coty ran this playbook successfully for years, producing lines for Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry before retreating from the category entirely when the returns stopped justifying the investment. The product existed to convert existing fame into short-term revenue. Once the novelty expired, so did the sales.

The new model works differently, and the difference comes down to three structural changes. The first is serialization. Ariana Grande has released more than fifteen fragrances; Sabrina Carpenter has four; Billie Eilish has five. Each launch corresponds to a different emotional register or season, building a collection logic rather than a single-purchase moment — a repeat consumer rather than a one-time fan transaction. The second is narrative integration. Cloud Aurora was released in direct alignment with Grande's Eternal Sunshine Tour; Me Espresso takes its name from Carpenter's breakthrough single; Sweet Tooth maps precisely onto the "sweet girl" persona Carpenter has built across her music and public image. The fragrance is not adjacent to the artist's story — it is part of it. The third is financial independence. Industry estimates place Carpenter's royalty income from her fragrance line at over $2 million annually, a revenue stream that continues generating income regardless of whether she releases new music. That is the difference between a merchandise item and an IP asset.

Why Gen Z Makes This Work

A fragrance is not a concert ticket or a vinyl record. It is a product people use every day, which means it creates a different kind of brand contact. For a generation of consumers who think about identity and self-expression through the objects they carry and wear, a fragrance is a more sustained form of cultural affiliation than almost anything else a fan can purchase.

The retail signals confirm the shift. Sephora, which had spent years positioning its fragrance aisle around emerging independent and niche labels, added Billie Eilish's line to its shelves in 2026 — a decision that signals a change in how the category is being evaluated. Scent Chronicles, a specialist fragrance publication, assessed Carpenter's Sweet Tooth as performing at "designer-brand level" in terms of composition, noting it punches well above the typical celebrity-fragrance reputation. The consumer is no longer buying a name. They are buying a fragrance that happens to come with a name they already trust.

The Signal the Industry Cannot Ignore

When Coty — the company that built and then abandoned the earlier wave of celebrity fragrance — signed Megan Thee Stallion and re-entered the market, it sent a specific message. Industry analysts responded immediately: "I wonder if Megan is the first of many, and this is a new direction for them." A major fragrance conglomerate does not reverse course without evidence that the economics have changed. The global celebrity fragrance market is currently valued at approximately $1.4 billion and is projected to reach $2 billion by 2027, growing at roughly 8% annually — a compound growth rate that is difficult to find anywhere else in a beauty industry that is otherwise approaching saturation.

Who Comes Next

Taylor Swift is the most conspicuous absence in this space. She is Spotify's all-time leader in cumulative streams. Her fan base has demonstrated its purchasing power across tour merchandise, vinyl variants, and limited physical releases at a scale no other artist currently matches. And she has no fragrance. The challenge is not demand — it is aesthetic coherence. Her identity has moved across country, pop, and rock across multiple eras, which means any fragrance would need to identify a sensory signature capable of representing all of them at once.

Olivia Rodrigo presents a more straightforward case. Her visual identity — dark purples, nineties punk-adjacent imagery, the collision of vulnerability and anger — maps naturally onto the emotional fragrance category that is currently growing fastest in the market. Billie Eilish built her fragrance line on exactly that territory: moody, non-sweet, packaging that looks like art. Your Turn II, her most recent release, retailed at $90 and sold into Sephora — a trajectory that holds direct relevance for Rodrigo's aesthetic. Her new album has just arrived, and she is at the steepest point of her career's upward curve.The audience she shares with Carpenter has already demonstrated its willingness to buy.

Over the course of his first three feature films (“The Chaser,” “The Yellow Sea,” and “The Wailing”), Na Hong-jin has established himself as one of South Korea’s most exciting film directors. That momentum afforded him the opportunity to make the biggest film of his career — and reportedly the most expensive movie ever filmed in South Korea — for his first English-language feature, “Hope.”

The film, which is said to have cost ₩50 billion (about $33 million USD), was one of the most highly anticipated premieres of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered in competition. And while reviews were mixed, it’s the kind of polarizing auteur project that every cinephile will want to have a strong opinion on.

“The first third of Na’s latest feature delivers on every scrap of scattered promise that he offered with ‘The Wailing,’ ‘The Yellow Sea,’ and ‘The Chaser’ before it. Imagine if the run for your lives! havoc unleashed in ‘The Host’ or ‘The War of the Worlds’ was stretched out for the better part of an hour and shot with the cartoonishly operatic spectacle of the Paris sequence from ‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout,'” IndieWire’s David Ehrlich wrote in his Cannes review. “Now imagine how bad the rest of ‘Hope’ must be for a movie that starts like that to become such a massive disappointment by the end.”“Hope” stars Hwang Jung-Min, Zo In-Sung, Hoyeon, Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fassbender.

An official synopsis for the film reads: “In the remote South Korean village of Hope Harbor, police outpost chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) and officer Sung-ae (Hoyeon) are called to find a mysterious creature that has wreaked havoc on the village. In the nearby forest, a coterie of local hunters, including Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) set out to track the beast and find themselves hunted instead. But all is not as it seems, and perceptions can be misleading. What begins as ignorance plants the seed of disaster, escalating through human conflict into a tragedy of cosmic proportions.”

Neon is set to release “Hope” in American theaters on Wednesday, September 9. You can watch the film’s first trailer below.

In February 2024, Ariana Grande released Eternal Sunshine with almost no advance warning — no drawn-out promotional campaign, no strategic leaks to build anticipation. The album arrived, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and proceeded to generate two Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers in Yes, And? and We Can't Be Friends (Wait for Your Love). It was a near-perfect commercial execution, and it set a standard that will now be used to measure everything that comes next.

Two years later, she is back. petal, Grande's eighth studio album, will be released on July 31 through her own imprint, Babydoll Music, in partnership with Republic Records. This time, she has given her audience something she rarely offers in advance: a clear statement of intent. The album, she says, comes from "a place I've been maybe too shy or polite to tap into before." That sentence alone signals that whatever petal is, it is not a repeat of what came before.

Where the Album Comes From

The two years between Eternal Sunshine and petal were not quiet ones. After wrapping the promotional cycle for Eternal Sunshine, Grande devoted most of her time to the global rollout of Wicked and Wicked: For Good, the two-part film adaptation in which she starred as Glinda. She also filmed Focker In-Law and provided voice work for Oh, The Places You'll Go! At one point, she told interviewers that producing another album under those conditions would require considerably more of herself than she currently had to give. Then she made one anyway.

The creative logic behind petal is less about a single event and more about a cumulative clearing. Grande has described the writing process as "breaking up with all different kinds of negative attachments — whether it's my own monsters in my own head, external voices, things that no longer serve me." This is not a breakup album in the conventional sense. It is something closer to an internal audit — a record about removing what obstructs growth rather than grieving what was lost. The title itself traces back to a Vogue interview from early 2025, in which she described herself as "a flower that continues to grow with new petals, leaves, buds." petal is the album that grew from that image. The format reinforces the statement: twelve tracks, no featured artists, no collaborators sharing the billing. Every stream, every credit, every creative choice belongs entirely to her.

How She Announced It

The promotional strategy for petal has been deliberately unconventional. Rather than releasing a tracklist through a press release or a single social media post, Grande built the album's pre-release momentum through her live shows. Throughout successive dates on the Eternal Sunshine Tour, individual song titles appeared one by one on the arena video screens before each concert began. Fans at different venues caught different pieces of the puzzle, shared what they had seen, and collectively assembled the full picture over the course of several weeks. By the time the complete twelve-song sequence was confirmed at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on June 19, the exercise had generated weeks of sustained social media engagement — not because Grande's team had pushed content outward, but because the audience had been given reason to go looking.

The tour itself compounds the effect. The Eternal Sunshine Tour opened on June 6 in Oakland — Grande's first major headline tour since 2019 — and runs through September 1 at London's O2 Arena. The North American leg has sold out in full. petal arrives on July 31, midway through that run, which means fans attending later tour dates will have the unusual experience of hearing new album material performed live within weeks of its release. In a streaming era when the gap between a record's release and its live interpretation can stretch for years, that compression is a genuine advantage.

The Numbers Question

Eternal Sunshine earned three Grammy nominations, including Best Pop Vocal Album, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and produced two Hot 100 number ones. Lead single "Hate That I Made You Love Me," released May 29, debuted directly at number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart — Grande's tenth career chart-topper, and her eighth to debut at the summit in its first week.

The argument for petal exceeding Eternal Sunshine's opening numbers rests on several overlapping factors. Justin Bieber's Coachella headline set earlier this year demonstrated that a major live event can drive catalog streaming gains of 171% in a single week; Grande's ongoing tour functions as a months-long version of the same mechanism. The absence of any featured artists means that every stream of every track on petal counts in full toward the album's equivalent unit total, with no contribution diluted across multiple acts' catalogs.

The counterarguments are real, though. Eternal Sunshine was a dance-pop record built for immediate, wide-scale accessibility. petal is being positioned as something more interior — "a little feral," in Grande's own description — and creative pivots of that kind frequently come with some degree of audience fragmentation. The same day petal releases, Charli XCX's Music, Fashion, Film will also arrive, dividing attention and streaming volume across two major pop releases simultaneously. And the very quality that makes petal interesting — Grande going somewhere she previously considered off-limits — is the same quality that makes its commercial ceiling harder to predict.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup Final will feature something that has never existed before: a halftime show. Confirmed for July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the eleven-minute performance will be co-headlined by Madonna, Shakira, BTS, and Justin Bieber, with additional appearances from Burna Boy, Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, and New York's PS22 Chorus performing alongside Coldplay.

The entire production has been curated by Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, in partnership with Global Citizen, and is expected to reach a television audience in the hundreds of millions worldwide. FIFA has confirmed the full lineup—but has released nothing about the order of performance. That single piece of missing information has become one of the most debated questions in pop culture this week. Who closes the show?

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BTS

BTS has history with this tournament that none of the other three headliners can match. In 2022, member Jungkook performed at the Qatar World Cup opening ceremony—making him the first Asian artist ever to perform the official World Cup anthem, and the first to do so at a World Cup opening. His performance of Dreamers, a duet with Qatari singer Fahad Al Kubaisi, made #JungkookAtFIFAWorldCup one of the highest-trending topics on X globally that evening. Shakira aside, no artist in this lineup has stood on a World Cup stage before. From FIFA's perspective, BTS is an already-verified partner for the sport's biggest moments. Beyond the institutional relationship, the mobilization capacity of their fanbase—ARMY—is arguably the strongest of any of the four acts. BTS performing as a full group at the World Cup Final would be their largest appearance on a global sporting stage yet.

Madonna

Madonna has proven, with hard numbers, that she can carry the closing moment of a major sporting event. At Super Bowl XLVI in 2012, her halftime performance peaked at 117.8 million viewers—the highest audience figure in Super Bowl halftime history at that point, surpassing the game itself by approximately three million viewers. Billboard reported a 17-fold increase in catalog sales in the days that followed. She is the most decorated artist in this lineup by career length, and she is currently at a commercial peak of her own: Confessions II topped the UK Albums Chart upon release, and the World Cup halftime show sits at the center of her most high-profile year in over a decade. Apparently, the artist with the longest track record of commanding the world's largest stages is the most logical choice to close one.

Shakira

Shakira's relationship with the World Cup is unlike anyone else's on this stage—or in pop music history. Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) became the official anthem of the 2010 South Africa tournament and remains the most downloaded World Cup song ever recorded, with YouTube views exceeding three billion. She returned with the official anthem for Brazil 2014. In 2026, Dai Dai, her collaboration with Burna Boy, is the official tournament song. Three World Cups, three official songs—no other artist has come close to that record. More importantly for the question of performance order: she has already headlined this tournament's most significant musical moment. At the Los Angeles opening ceremony on June 11, she closed the show as the final performer. That precedent cuts both ways. FIFA has already demonstrated its confidence in her as the capstone act—but staging the same artist in the closing position of both the opening and the final ceremony risks a repetition that a show of this scale would likely want to avoid. The more probable outcome is that Shakira performs Dai Dai at the show's emotional peak, rather than its final moment.

Justin Bieber

Bieber was the last of the four headliners to be confirmed. His Coachella headline set in April 2026—his first major festival headline in years—drew 24.6 million US streams in the single day that followed, a 211% increase over the same day the previous week. In the week after the performance, his global catalog accumulated 663.9 million official on-demand streams, a 171% increase. He is, by the data, the act in this lineup with the most current commercial momentum among young audiences. That positioning suggests he belongs in the middle of the show, not at the end—the role of a performer who energizes the audience at its midpoint, rather than the one who brings it to a close.

Drake is following BTS Jungkook on Instagram (@champagnepapi/Instagram)

Canadian rapper Drake recently followed BTS' Jungkook on Instagram, fueling speculations about a possible collaboration between the two artists.

Fans noticed Drake had added Jungkook to his following list on Friday.

Jungkook is not following Drake as of Monday morning. He follows eight accounts, including BTS' official account, the group's members and an account for his dog, Bam.

The exchange began in May, when Drake referenced BTS on his newly released track, "Make Them Cry." Its lyrics, "I'm feeling like BTS, 'cause it took the whole career for me to be so discovered," draw a comparison between his own career and BTS' global success.

A day after the song's release, V shared an Instagram story with J-Hope, listening to the track before pausing and being surprised when Drake mentioned BTS.

BTS Jungkook's Instagram post with Drake's "Make Them Cry," May 24 (@mnijungkook/Instagram)

Days later, on May 24, Jungkook posted an Instagram reel of himself riding a motorbike and selected "Make Them Cry" as the background music. The video hit 10 million views within two hours.

Jungkook is currently the only K-pop artist Drake follows on Instagram, prompting further speculation among fans. Some fans point out that Drake has followed collaborators on social media ahead of past releases.

Jungkook has previously worked with several global artists, including Charlie Puth, Latto, Jack Harlow and DJ Snake.