Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse experiment was a noble failure, with the best buds and filmmaking duo severely overestimating how much casual audiences share their love for classic exploitation cinema and a double-feature broken up by an intermission.
The second Gina Carano was officially give her marching orders and ejected from Star Wars, the chances of The Mandalorian spinoff series Rangers of the New Republic making it through development and onto the small screen plummeted.
In exactly three weeks, the wait will finally be over when Spider-Man: No Way Home comes to theaters, where it's virtually guaranteed to become the biggest box office hit of the pandemic era, and quite possibly the first movie to reach a billion dollars since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
The introduction of the STAR expansion for international subscribers has seen content that would typically be reserved for Hulu make its way to the Disney Plus library, which has in turn dramatically altered the complexion of the platform's most-watched list.
It's a smart move to get this particular discussion out of the way before Spider-Man: No Way Home arrives, because based on how loud and rabid the web-slinging fanbase have been the closer we get to the release of Tom Holland's third solo outing, the rest of the competition will barely get a mention.
Given all that's unfolded on the small screen so far, with Hawkeye debuting on Wednesday to set Clint Barton and Kate Bishop off on a street-level New York City adventure, it's incredible to think that the Marvel Cinematic Universe's episodic expansion only kicked off in January when WandaVision landed with a bang.
Tom Cruise does not make small movies, and even when he does lower the scope and scale somewhat, he's still churning out broad, crowd-pleasing genre films. The actor hasn't starred in anything resembling a straightforward drama since 2007's Lion for Lambs, and that doesn't look as though it's going to change anytime soon.
The second episode of Hawkeye ended with the onscreen debut of Alaqua Cox's Echo, who looks set to pose some serious problems for Jeremy Renner's Clint Barton and Hailee Steinfeld's Kate Bishop across the next four weeks.
It's long since gone down in Hollywood folklore that Will Smith turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix in favor of Wild Wild West, a mistake that still haunts him to this day after he recently admitted the movie's failure remains a thorn in his side.
While the talent aren't obligated to be familiar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe before joining the franchise, once they put pen to paper and ink that contract, there's a very high probability that they'll get themselves acquainted in short order