Hello, everyone, and welcome to Slash Film Weekly. It's Wednesday, December 24th, 2025. On today's

episode of the show, we're going to talk a little about the latest film and TV news. We'll talk about Avatar, Fire, and Ash, and present interviews with James Cameron, Sigourney Weaver, and some of the other cast members. We'll get into Kumail Nanjiani's new stand-up special and speak with Kumail himself. We'll talk about the housemaid and present an interview with director Paul Fieg.

And finally, we'll pull back the curtain on an editor-conversation about Slashfilm's best movies of the year list. My name is Ben Pearson. I'm an editor at slashfilm.com. Merry Christmas Eve to all of you who are listening to this on the day that it's released. I hope everyone has a great holiday season. We're not really going to do a big news segment. I'm just going to link to some things as usual in the show notes. I just want to kind of call your attention to them more than actually dissect them on the podcast. There's a trailer for The Odyssey that's out. We wrote about it at Slash Film. I haven't watched it. I don't think I'm going to. I think I'm good just with the teaser. And I'm going to try to avoid all other marketing materials for The Odyssey for the next seven months or whatever it is. So good luck to me on that one. James Gunn has found someone to play Brainiac in the Superman sequel movie Man of Tomorrow.

You can read more about that casting decision at the link in the show notes. Paul King,

the guy who directed the first two Paddington films, is directing a Laboooo Boo Boo movie for Sony.

Yes, that's real somehow. I don't know why. Star Trek Strange New Worlds has cast Thomas Jane to play Dr. Leonard

Bones McCoy in the final season of Strange New Worlds. So that's an interesting casting choice.

You can read a little bit more about that at the link in the show notes. And then finally,

The Legend of Ang,

the last airbender, a new show from the folks at, I think it's called Avatar Studios,

was originally going to be getting a theatrical release, but now it's going to be headed to Paramount Plus next fall. And I think there's another show as well. What is it called? It is called Avatar

Seven Havens. That is also a new 2D series. And that is going to be coming to Paramount Plus as well.

So yes, you can read more about all of that in the links in the show notes. But let's get into

it because we have a lot to get to today. With me to talk about Avatar, Fire, and Ash, we have Slash Film, Staff Writers, Jeremy Mathi.

Hey, folks. Thanks for having me. And Bill Brea.

Got your burger.

I have no idea what that's a reference to, Bill. Is that something that happens in Avatar, Fire, and Ash?

Yeah, he gives Spider a Pocket Burger. Yep, Pocket Burger. Yes, for the win.

Of course, yes, a pocketburger. Yeah, key avatar reference. The fact that both of you instantly knew what that was, and I had no idea, I think is very representative of the way this conversation is going to go because I think

both of you are fairly avatar-pilled at this point.

And I consider myself like an avatar agnostic.

And I watched this movie, I guess last night as we're recording this.

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