There are still several months before Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters, but that didn’t stop Chris Evans from giving fans a little teaser.

During a recent Q&A at Fan Expo Boston over the weekend, the actor, who reprises his role as Steve Rogers/Captain America in the upcoming Marvel blockbuster, said that his character’s storyline is “brutal.”

“The Russos love beating up Steve Rogers,” Evans said of the Russo Brothers, who are helming Doomsday. “Their favorite thing to do is to just beat the crap out of him. To them, that’s what makes a hero, and that’s someone who gets punched so many times but still gets up. So they keep finding new ways to kick his butt. And this one was brutal.”

In addition to Evans, the upcoming film’s stacked cast includes many Marvel superheroes from the legacy Avengers and X-Men to the Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four. They’re all expected to team up to face off against villain Doctor Doom, played by Robert Downey Jr.

While chatting with People at Comic-Con 2026 last month, directors Anthony and Joe Russo said they knew Downey Jr. was perfect for the villain role once they heard the voice the Oscar winner had crafted for the character.

“That was something that Robert surprised us with one day,” Anthony recalled. “You know, we were talking about all the details of the character — the voice, of course, is a key part of it, especially in the mask.”

“So one day I think it was in the trailer, we were just sort of talking about some ideas and he broke out into the voice. And we knew at that moment, that was it,” he added.

Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters Dec. 18.

Reggie Bannister, who became a horror icon for his role as the action hero fighting the evil Tall Man in the Phantasm franchise, died Sunday morning. He was 80.

Bannister died at his home in Crestline, his wife, Gigi Bannister, told TMZ. She said the actor was exposed to Agent Orange while serving in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War and later battled Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

Born on Sept. 9, 1945, in Long Beach, California, Bannister went on to pursue a career in entertainment that spanned more than 40 years.

While he appeared in dozens of films and movies, he was most known for playing a fictionalized version of himself named Reggie in the Phantasm cult classic horror franchise, created by filmmaker Don Coscarelli. He played easygoing ice cream vendor turned shotgun-wielding action hero that took on Tall Man, the film’s main villain.

After starring in the franchise’s five movies, including Phantasm (1979), Phantasm II (1988), Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994), Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998) and Phantasm: Ravager (2016), Bannister was eventually dubbed “the hardest working man in horror.”

Bannister’s other acting credits included Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990), Wishmaster (1997), Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), Journeyman (2005), Cemetery Gates (2006), Fallen Angels (2006), The Rage (2007), Sigma Die! (2007), The Quiet Ones (2010), Sawblade (2010), Primitive (2011), Bloody Bloody Bible Camp (2012), Disaster Wars: Earthquake vs. Tsunami (2013) and The Obsidian Curse (2016), among others. He also served as a producer on several projects.

In addition to acting, Bannister was also a prolific musician and singer-songwriter. Throughout his career, he released six albums spanning the rock, folk and country genres.

Enough time has passed for Greta Lee open up about her fight to get cast in “Past Lives” — and that includes a “humiliating” experience that involved megaproducer Scott Rudin and “Barbie” filmmaker Greta Gerwig.

In Monday’s episode of the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast, the host asked Lee about her touch-and-go experience with Celine Song’s “Past Lives” script early on and how she initially missed out on the role.

“I think enough time has passed now that I can tell the story,” Lee said, joking that she’s going to share more on “the murders I’ve committed” to land the lead role of Nora in the Oscar-nominated A24 indie.

“No, it really was such a messy ride. And it happens a lot with casting … You find out, like, oh, I was not only the second choice, I was the 15th choice or whatever it is,” Lee said. “But in this case, I really was told by the universe several times that this was not going to be my job, and at a certain point, it just became so absurd and insulting.”

Lee admitted she didn’t even want to audition for “Past Lives” at first and had to be convinced to do it because she was intimidated to speak the film’s Korean onscreen — “that wasn’t something I was looking for,” she said.

“But I was convinced, did the tape and then didn’t get it and was like to my agents, ‘Come on, see, like, what’d you make me do.’ And they’re like, ‘No, no, they thought that you are just too old.”

In the cast of this first round of casting, that was actually the hard truth, Lee said, because they had cast a male Korean actor as the co-lead who was “much younger” than her.

“But then it fell apart, and it came back almost exactly a year later. Same thing, and I think I had sort of started talking to them, and at the time — this is just wild,” Lee sets up.

Turns out, Rudin was a producer on the through its earlier stages before ultimately dropping out, and she got a call and voicemail from his office stating that he was ready to have a lunch meeting with her at Cafe Cluny in New York.

“I thought I got ‘Past Lives’ because I thought, Oh my god, this is amazing. He wants to meet me at Cafe Cluny to tell me that I got this job. I listened to the message again and again, and I played it — I sent it to my agents, and they played it, and we realized collectively that the message was actually for Greta Gerwig,” Lee said, describing the excitement and conversations she had with her team about meeting with Rudin as “such a publicly humiliating experience.”

From that point on, Lee said, “I really thought, like, please leave me alone with this job. I get it. I’m too old, and I’m too American, or whatever.”

“Yeah, and you’re not Greta Gerwig,” O’Brien quipped.

Of course, the tides turned yet again and Lee was ultimately cast in the project that would go on to launch her career a true lead actress in a two-time Oscar-nominated debut feature from Song.

As for Gerwig? She doesn’t remember what her lunch meeting with Rudin was for.

“[It was] for something completely — who knows what that was for? I don’t know,” Lee said. “I’ve told her now since, and she she was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have no idea.’”

Listen to Lee’s full “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” interview here. The actress next stars in Netflix’s “The Last House” and co-leads indie “Late Fame” opposite Willem Dafoe.