Popverse's top stories

• New Batman writer aims to show why anyone would want to live in the worst city in the DCU
• Avengers and Doctor Who star Karen Gillan is on her way to New York Comic Con 2025 - and Popverse Superfans will have an early chance to connect
• Daredevil, Punisher, Spider-Man, Marvel Zombies, and all-new Avengers: The future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe looks like this [Marvel Matters]

And everything happening this week for Future Fest!

What is it about writer/director Mike Flanagan that keeps people coming back? I don’t even mean that in the sense of audiences, although the success of projects including The Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep, and many more demonstrates the hold he has over fans — but he also has built out an ensemble of actors who return to work with him over and over again, to the point where they’ve started calling themselves the Flavengers.

But, really, what is it that brings his collaborators back? Carl Lumbly, who first worked with Flanagan on 2017’s Doctor Sleep, has a theory.

“I think he assumes that everyone is at least trying to operate at the top of their intelligence,” he told the Rose City Comic Con 2025 crowd during the Haunting World of Mike Flanagan’s Flanaverse panel. “Mike is one of the first people who kept what I call ‘the Hollywood Promise’ — the ‘you and I are going to work together again, I am telling you this. You can take this to the bank!’ And then the check bounced. But he kept it. He said it, and the way he said it, was not so much ‘I will hire you’ or ‘I will cast you,’ but ‘I really want to work with you again. We will work together again.”

The key is, Lumbly argues, respect.

“He loves actors, he loves literature, and he loves audiences, and he doesn't believe in talking down on audience,” he said. “He doesn't believe in setting a low bar that any audience should be able to clear. He believes in challenging us the way life challenges us, and allowing people to find and make their own movie Inside whatever needed.”

Well, when you put it like that, who doesn’t want to be around Mike Flanagan as much as possible?

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.