Welcome to the Gold Ticket, your VIP guide to the best of pop culture for the weekend ahead, curated by the Gold Derby team of experts.
The Main Stream
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a Superman movie that people really liked! James Gunn successfully relaunched DC Comics’ flagship superhero by embracing the character’s legacy while also staying true to the director’s own punk rock sensibilities. Now, David Corenswet‘s Man of Steel is flying onto VOD as it closes in on a $600 million worldwide gross. Viewers at home can blast John Murphy and David Fleming‘s super-score through their speakers, freeze-frame that terrific one-take Mr. Terrific fight scene, and ponder how different comic book movies might have been had Tim Burton actually gotten to make Superman Lives. Oh yeah… and they can pretend that Krypto is their very own house pup.
Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical
Speaking of super dogs, the irrepressible Snoopy is back in action along with the rest of the Peanuts crew in a new Apple TV+ end of summer special. It’s the first animated musical starring Charles Schulz‘s comic strip characters since 1988’s Snoopy! The Musical and unfolds at Charlie Brown’s beloved summer camp where the hills are alive with the sounds of Ben Folds-written music. Life at this particular camp is much more sedate than the one Chuck, Linus, and Snoopy attended in the 1977 cartoon classic Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown, as in no bullies or forced river raft races in sight.
Fixed
For a very different kind of dog show, check out the potty-mouthed, sex-obsessed canines that populate Genndy Tartakovsky‘s animated feature for Netflix. The mastermind behind Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack embraces Fixed‘s hard R-rating, throwing a bone to cartoon lovers pining for a return to adult animated fare like Heavy Metal and Heavy Traffic. Adam DeVine, Idris Elba, and Kathryn Hahn are among the actors lending their voices to Tartakovsky’s cracked vision.
Alien: Earth
Nearly 30 years after Alien: Resurrection failed to fulfill the promise of bringing those acid-dripping Xenomorphs home to Earth, Fargo creator Noah Hawley makes that trip a reality. Sydney Chandler and Timothy Olyphant star in the first TV series based on the beloved 1979 movie, which premiered this week on FX and is currently streaming on Hulu. “It’s ambitious, both on its scale and as a character drama,” Hawley recently told Gold Derby.
Reads and Feeds
New Heights
The most romantic movie of 2025 isn’t Materialists or The Wedding Banquet remake. It’s the Taylor Swift episode of her boyfriend Travis Kelce‘s New Heights podcast. More viral than a locomotive, the two-hour livestream literally broke the internet when 1.3 million people tried to watch it in real time, and the YouTube video has already racked up 13 million views and counting in a mere 24 hours. Pictures and clips of Taylor and Travis being adorable — while the other Kelce brother, Jason, looks on with a big smile on his face — have taken over every social media platform, from Instagram to X. Here’s how big the Swift-Kelce alliance is: If they released the episode in theaters, it would probably bank a $100 million opening weekend.
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Sweet Revenge
You can’t keep a good summer camp psycho down. After years in franchise purgatory, Friday the 13th is leaping back into the deep end of the pop culture pool with the launch of Jason Universe — a transmedia brand that will encompass feature films, TV shows, and merch. But first, they’re testing the waters with this 15-minute short from director Mike P. Nelson. Exclusive to the Jason Universe YouTube page, Sweet Revenge features our first look at the new Jason in action… and seeing that hockey mask again is oh so sweet.
Nacelle Company Star Trek collectibles
Those lucky fans who boldly went to San Diego Comic-Con in July were treated to sneak peeks at the Nacelle Company’s upcoming waves of Star Trek collectibles, including new figures of characters like Worf, Geordi La Forge, and Valeris — the Vulcan that Kim Cattrall played in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. While those collectibles are still being assembled, you can pre-order a bundle pack of their Wave 1 figures, including Sulu and a Mirror Universe version of Jonathan Archer. Make it so.
