Last Thursday, Tim Heidecker killed himself on a YouTube livestream so that he could continue his war against Alex Jones in hell.
This is the new era of InfoWars, the far-right conspiracy-riddled media empire of Jones, now under the leadership of The Onion, which is fighting to buy the outlet and has already replaced Jones in a parody version with boundary-pushing comedian Heidecker.
“People keep asking, ‘What’s the strategy?’ I’m like, ‘We’re building a f–king cult, obviously.’ And it’s working,” Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion, told TheWrap.
That’s not just blind optimism on Collins’ part. Since last month when The Onion launched Real InfoWars, the brand has over 218,000 followers on Instagram, 140,000 subscribers on YouTube and 73,000 followers on TikTok with posts routinely racking up hundreds of thousands of views. Six different posts have scored over a million views on Instagram alone.
The Onion’s attempted acquisition of InfoWars may have started as a joke designed to humiliate Jones, but it’s on its way to becoming one of the most interesting media and entertainment stories of the year. Under the leadership of Collins and comedian and creative director Heidecker, the new era of InfoWars is morphing into a refreshing punk rock hub of bizarro alternative comedy, a sort of Adult Swim for the digital age. It’s an approach that goes against every expectation of modern media, one that embraces physical print, a word-of-mouth following and wild, vulgar swings like ending every phone call with “f–k you” while denouncing major media empires and AI.
In doing so, The Onion has turned what could have been a one-note joke into a real business opportunity. Ad sales for the parody news outlet are up, especially from advertisers who want to support the satire hub but are skittish about directly supporting anything connected to the fraught InfoWars. And, shockingly, newspaper subscriptions are higher than they’ve been in years. At over 83,000 subscribers, The Onion is now among the top five biggest newspapers in the United States when it comes to physical subscriptions. Collins has even seen someone with a tattoo of the logo for the rebranded InfoWars.
And — most importantly to Collins and the entire Onion team — the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary victims are getting paid by a version of the organization that has terrorized them for over a decade. Jones and InfoWars owe the families $1.4 billion in damages after a court ruled they were liable for defamation. The InfoWars parody launched last month by sending the families $100,000 in merchandise sales with plans to send them more in the future.
“We’ve been raising a lot of money for the families, which is really good. This truly f–king hideous InfoWars elf shirt that we have made a lot of money for us, and I don’t know what to do with that,” Collins said. “The most important thing is we have the full support of the families here and, at the end of the day, we may be the only way they get money, which is f–king brutal. So we have a true duty at this point to keep going.”
InfoWars hasn’t just boosted ad and merchandise sales for The Onion. In its success, the new InfoWars is starting to overshadow Jones’ legacy.
“Our goal of erasing the memory of this guy is working. It’s driving him insane, and now he’s fighting with the president,” Collins said, referring to a recent video where Jones called for Donald Trump’s impeachment. “In terms of performance, we’re happy. The question is how do you keep this up forever?”
Founded in 1999, Jones built the original InfoWars by peddling conspiracy theories. Hoaxes around chemtrails and 9/11 were among Jones’ favorites, but nothing rivaled his obsession with the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, when a gunman murdered 20 students and six staff members. For years, Jones claimed the shooting was a hoax, cultivating an audience who harassed and sent death threats to the families of these victims.
In 2022, a jury awarded the relatives of 10 of the families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting over $1.4 billion in damages after they sued Jones for defamation. The InfoWars founder has refused to pay these families, stonewalling the courts and refusing to provide financial documents until a Texas court ordered that all InfoWars assets be liquidated.
Enter The Onion. Since 2024, the satirical news organization has been trying to take control of InfoWars with the express purpose of using it to ruthlessly mock Jones and his empire. Jones has repeatedly tried to block the sale of his former website to The Onion, and ownership of the website has been in limbo since April as the case has moved to the Texas Supreme Court. But Jones’ legal fight didn’t stop The Onion.
“If anything, it sped us up,” Collins said. “It made it so we are even more compelled to do the right thing.”
On July 2, the new InfoWars livestream debuted its first two shows: “The Jim Haggerty Show” and “Emergency With Tim Heidecker.” Both shows parody Jones’ aggressive style as Haggerty (played by actor Brad Holbrook) and Heidecker angrily rant to camera while spewing nonsense about CIA secrets and hawking questionable substances.
“He’s done nothing but hide his assets and be as big a piece of s–t as possible to these families,” Collins said. “Alex Jones has spent the last month in a $3,000 per night hotel in Hawaii called the One Hotel. I don’t know where he’s getting this money. His version of being $1.4 billion in debt is richer than I will ever be, and it’s f–king frustrating that we don’t have laws. I think a lot of the people involved in this process view all of this as a pocket veto by some scared person in the courts here. If he’s just going to get away with this, we’re going to continue to make fun of him. Like, if there are no laws anymore and these people don’t get paid, the very least we can do is say that this guy is the biggest piece of s–t on Earth every week for a while.”
Before The Onion even launched Real InfoWars, Jones fought against the idea of his site’s new potential owners. “They’re gonna misrepresent that they’re us to confuse people and quote, ‘Rip people off like Alex Jones did.’ They’re gonna make money. The whole thing’s about defaming me. You can’t take something over and then act like you’re somebody, even if you say it’s a parody,” a shirtless Jones said on a livestream in April. “They’re body snatchers. They may try to take our clothes, we’re still the Infowars.”
Originally, the plan was to ruthlessly mock Jones using his own website for 10 weeks as a middle finger to the conspiracy theorist. But a little more than a month in, Real InfoWars already has a bigger audience than the original InfoWars ever had. Now Collins and creative director and Heidecker have a new goal for the brand: move beyond mocking this “one-note guy” and completely erase the memory of what InfoWars used to be.
In a little more than a month, InfoWars’ current shows have already gone a long way in changing the public’s perception. Jim Haggerty has developed a cult following, and fans of “Emergency” have latched onto several parts of Heidecker’s show, such as his pet Horace the horse, an off-putting elf mascot that appears in the introduction of many episodes and Edi Patterson’s Chesapeake, Heidecker’s vulgar and hate-filled ex-wife.
“This is an open call to Edi. If she would like to take over the studio as Tim’s ex-wife, please give us a ring. We are available,” Collins said.
But The Onion’s longterm plans go beyond its current roster of alternative comedians. The company has been working closely with Mia DiPasquale, who worked in the casting department for Nathan Fielder’s wonderfully offbeat “Nathan for You,” to hire several creators to build out the InfoWars roster, including the quirky lo-fi musician Dev Lemons and the king of AI videos Husk.
InfoWars also has another show that will likely premiere in the coming weeks and is eyeing a midterm special.
“What we’re trying to realize is how does it actually work now? The beauty of being truly independent is we can do whatever we want, basically, and we want to build a mass audience. A good way of doing that is building our channels as much as possible right now,” Collins said. “We’ve been allowed by this audience to take massive risks. We have plans for some of those risks, but the currency of the internet right now is novelty, surprise and having fun. That’s what we plan on doing until the end of the year, at least.”
Collins likened the current creative landscape under Trump to the end of George W. Bush’s presidency.
“We were like, ‘I’m kind of tired of being upset all the time,’ and people just started making s–t again. That’s how you end up with Adult Swim. Actually, that’s how you end up with all this stuff that was so weird because that’s the actual counter to all the fascist propaganda. It’s not being mad at the fascists. It’s making your own thing,” Collins said. “Right now with so much media capture, the lane’s wide open. So we’re just taking it.”
Heidecker’s vision for the new InfoWars is to pair creators, comedians and artists who have talent but not an audience with people who have both talent and an audience. But even as InfoWars is expanding into something beyond Jones mockery, it’s still not dismissing its morals. As the brand expands, The Onion hopes to send more money to the families of the Sandy Hook shootings and set up a specialized payment model for creators who partner with InfoWars.
“We are also doing it on hard mode. If you use AI, you’re not working with us. It’s just not happening. If you have at one point worked with f–king Palantir, you’re not working with us,” Collins said. “But I think it also hopefully gets us some credibility with creators that we are doing what’s best for them and not necessarily just to make as much money as possible.”
Part of that approach is so that Collins and his team can sleep at night. But jokes aside, whether the new InfoWars becomes a decades-long household name or if it’s a blip that will be forgotten by next year, Collins is focused on the broader ramifications of what they’re doing.
“Your children and your grandchildren and the people you’re not related to will judge you based on your character at this point, so that’s what we’re doing,” Collins said. “We are playing the long game over here at The Onion, as we’ve always done.”
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The morning after an intoxicating D23 Friday night which included a dancing spirit squad, Adam Driver and Inde Navarette X-Men surprises, Josh Gad crooning, Ryan Gosling, Anne Hathaway and confetti raining, it became really clear — Disney is going to have a killer 2028 at the box office.
And they haven’t even filled out the entire year’s slate yet. With the 2026 domestic box office racking toward an estimated $10 billion stateside, will people still be going to the cinemas two years from now?
Hell, yes, if Disney has anything to do with it.
Disney has 14 dates currently in the Rentrak system for 2028 — and that’s not counting 20th Century Studios or Searchlight theatrical releases. Again, dates can always shed, but with the few tentpole dates that were announced last night at D23’s The Ultimate Disney Fan Event at the Anaheim Honda Center, coupled with what we already know, it would not be shocking if 2028 has a shot at rivaling Disney’s record global year at the B.O., which was 2019 with $13.15B (that’s when they were fully merged with 20th Century Fox).
Right now for 2028, if the studio can keep these productions on track, Disney has dated:
Pixar original Ghost Market – March 10
Currently, no other wide release is dated against it.
Live-action Tangled – March 31
Amazon MGM Studios has a Chosen movie already on the schedule which is counterprogramming to this highly anticipated feature adaptation of the 2010 animated pic. Tangled arrives in theaters a week ahead of Sony’s The Beatles – Four Films The Beginning on April 7, 2028.
Marvel’s untiled X-Men – May 5
The MCU returns to its formerly prized summer launchpad, three years after 2025’s Thunderbolts*. Who dare date against this revival? In the hands of Feige, it’s not like Bryan Singer’s old stuff. From the looks lof last night, per Hugh Jackman’s beam-in, he ain’t coming back as Wolverine.
Live-action Lilo & Stitch 2 – Memorial Day weekend, May 28
Currently, Lionsgate has Resurrection of the Christ: Part Two on this date. Again, counterprogramming skewing to an older adult religious demo. The two can co-exist, but depending on how successful Part One is (May 6, 2027), it would’t be shocking if Lionsgate changes their mind in the face of a five-quad sequel to a billion dollar movie.
Pixar’s Incredibles 3 – June 16
Before D23, Disney already announced the Fathers Day weekend date for the threequel to one of the highest grossing animated movies of all-time (Incredibles 2 at $1.2B). The kids –Violet, Dash, and Jack Jack– are the same height, but grow up in their superhero abilities as the conceit here is that they sneak out of the house more. No other major studio pics are versing Incredibles 3 yet.
Marvel’s Ghost Rider — announced for 2028 without a specific date on the Gosling starring, Shawn Levy directed feature, but a good guess is that it’s going to July 28 that year as Disney has that weekend on hold in Rentrak. If it is July 28, well, that’s the penultimate end of summer date where Deadpool & Wolverine, Brand New Day and Fantastic Four: First Steps have soared. You’d be crazy to date against this movie.
Marvel’s Black Panther 3 – Dec. 15, 2028
Clearly, the Christmas event movie of the year. Universal has an untitled tentpole dated five days later on Dec. 20.
That’s quite a killer lineup on paper alone, and more powerful from what’s already on deck in 2027 for Disney, which we’ll sift through below. Here’s some takeaways from last night’s fireworks:
(L-R) Maya Boyd, Inde Navarrette, Samara Weaving, Christopher Abbott, Kit Connor, Jake Schreier, and Sadie Sink speak onstage at the Disney Entertainment Showcase at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event on August 14, 2026 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)
Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Are No Longer in Superhero Fatigue
With three MCU titles dated for 2028, that’s absolutely clear and with MCU Boss Kevin Feige involved in the success of Sony’s highest grossing movie of all-time, the Marvel Studios’ co-production Spider-Man: Brand New Day at $1.8B+, “It’s not about IP,” says one Disney executive talking about the success of that rival film. “It’s about making great movies. Spider-Man: Brand New Day isn’t successful because it’s a Spider-Man movie, it’s successful because it’s an excellent, fun movie.” That’s the plan for MCU going forward: Reliable and fun-filled filmmakers and talent like Ryan Gosling and Shawn Levy involved in Ghost Rider, and a murderers’ row of thespians in X-Men such as Driver, Obsession breakout Navarette, Christopher Abbott, and Samara Weaving to name a few.
There was some cynicism from fans over the Avengers: Doomsday trailer that was released around San Diego Comic-Con, which is to be expected. You can’t spoil everything in a trailer for a highly anticipated sequel. Also, who isn’t going to watch this upside universe MCU movie where Iron Man‘s Robert Downey Jr. is Victor Werner von Doom? The clip released last night shows this is a more complex, sinister strategist than Josh Brolin’s crash-bang-boom baddie Thanos from the previous Avengers pics. Screams Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards, “Answer me, Victor! Why did you do this?” Masses will want to know well into early 2027 in what’s an optimistic start to Disney’s 2027 box office year. Joker: Folie a Deux, this is not. And after the better-than-Barbenheimer success of The Odyssey and Brand New Day in the marketplace, it’s clear we won’t have a problem of two fan male-charged properties like Doomsday and Dune: Part 3 getting in each other’s way. Both battalion boats will rise at the B.O.
Kathryn Hahn and Mother Gothel from ‘Tangled’
Kathryn Wirsing/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Live Action Takes Of Disney Classics Aren’t Going Away
While Honda Center denizens last night could only get excited by less than a minute’s tease of Tangled which showed Rapunzel’s long blonde hair and Kathryn Hahn briefly as notorious Mother Gothel, Disney isn’t bailing on bringing legacy animated classics into the flesh even with Moana recently falling off her surfboard with less than $300M at the global box office. Disney’s plan per sources going forward remains, of course, spacing out animated sequels from their live-action counterparts, as well as finding a unique way into beloved vault titles (i.e. a Bridesmaids like spinoff of Cinderella from Akiva Schaefer with Stepsisters, not shown yesterday), the still-in-development punk rock Cruella 2 from Craig Gillespie starring Emma Stone, and the upcoming Beauty and the Beast-verse title, Gaston. Maleficent years ago was a great success for the studio. If that Sleeping Beauty spinoff taught Disney anything, it’s to approach live-action adaptations of the classics from the side in an edgy way rather than a full-on adaptation (i.e. Dumbo, Pinocchio, Snow White) with great filmmakers and sublime stars. Quite often the old pics are dated in their morals and arrive with inherent themes which are more baggage than their worth for the studio when trying to pull in a pluralistic audience. Another lesson from Moana: Don’t make a carbon copy of the original animated pic. Better to vary it up with different musical numbers and deeper plots for fun’s sake. Also when it comes to non-Disney IP movies, the current motion picture administration is on the hunt for the next YA hit, which can easily fit into the Magic Kingdom’s sensibilities both spiritually and merchandising wise, read winning a big auction for Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures, a publishing phenomenon on the order of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Twilight Saga (no updates yesterday).
Animation Is Intact
With Frozen 3, a November 2029 date for Coco 2, and Incredibles 3, clearly Disney knows when it comes to making $1 billion hits, never fail to make a sequel to a landmark hit. And, ya gotta space ’em out. Frozen 3 arrives eight years after its previous chapter, Incredibles 3 is ten years later than its predecessor while Coco 2 will hit theaters 12 years after Coco. Disney kept their powder dry on what to expect on Coco 2 and Incredibles 3, showing very little footage. Essentially what we learned were plot reveals.
Original Walt Disney Animation title, Hexed, due out at Thanksgiving, about a young woman coming into her bewitching powers while facing off against a coven looks like it can work, elevating the leading independent female sensibility that the studio’s princess toons are known for, while also being the flip side of a Disney princess. Walton Goggins as a wisenheimer three-eyed Southern cat, Beef Roger Crummchuk, to Hailee Steinfeld’s protag, Billie Doe, is very funny and very Goggins. Disney vet Jodie Foster in her first Disney animation voice over role as the villain, Queen Celeste, is intriguing. Well played casting.
Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel
Jesse Grant/Getty Images
But get ready for Frozen 3. At last D23 two years, they merely teased concept art, but this year, Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel (Anna and Elsa) rocked a new song, “Frozen Heart” while Josh Gad brought down the house with a new 1970s love song-sounding ditty about Olaf’s new g.f., “Samantha”. Add in a new black icy witch villain with powers that could topple Elsa and more about the ice sister’s past, and we got a great Star Wars-like film on our hands. The Jennifer Lee directed threequel hits theaters on Nov. 24, 2027.
If you want to build franchises, you have to make originals, and as we know in the current post Covid space, sometimes that means opening at a significantly lower gross and playing out. Pixar has always won in the original space when they do their own twist on a genre (i.e. space with Wall-E, French movies with Ratatouille) and anchor it on an emotionally affecting lead character. Not an easy needle to thread (Elio), but it appears they have something as they venture into horror with Ghost Market about a fast talking kid who has a supernatural interaction at a lunch shop hidden away in a remote location on Oʻahu’s North Shore that serves lost spirits, stuck between life and death.
Mum’s the word on Avatar
The was no mention of the future of the Na’vi last night. Two movies remain on the release calendar, Avatar 4 for Dec. 21, 2029 and Avatar 5 for Dec. 19, 2031. As far as the fate of those pics, all we know is what franchise director James Cameron has said following the threequel’s $1.48 billion (the lowest in the franchise, but, hello, still an excellent gross for any movie). They’re “still floating out there.”
A New Hope for Star Wars?
Nothing new was announced, and this is the one label which requires the most resuscitation after Mandalorian and Grogu died this summer with $345M WW. Rather than getting lost in their heads on what to do with the Skywalkers or legacy characters after failing to take fans into hyperspace with 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, Lucasfilm opted to go anew with elements that create alchemy, read the comedic and story awe of director Levy, scribe Jonathan Tropper and the cool and hysterically funny Gosling in Star Wars: Starfigther. It looks amazing, like Gosling’s Driver from Drive in space amid some new cool sea-filled planets. There’s an older mentor-to-kid story, and a nod to the drag race aura that George Lucas wove from his teen days into American Graffiti and Star Wars: Phantom Menace. For any die-hard Star Wars fans, there’s a lot of call-back in the imagery, but the question is whether they’ll buy into something completely fresh. The box office comp here isn’t Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine ($211.4M domestic opening) which was working off a successful superhero comedy property, it’s more the spinoff of bigger IP, think 2016’s Fantastic Beasts coming off of Harry Potter ($74.4M domestic debut). There’s a lot of pressure on Levy and Gosling to truly take us to another galaxy far, far away next Memorial Day weekend.
Meanwhile, per newly appointed co-President, Dave Filoni, when it comes to an Adam Driver starring The Hunt for Ben Solo movies; fans, it’s not the movie you’re looking for, to quote Obi-wan Kenobi. Filoni told Deadline that when it comes to the next movie after Rise of Skywalker, “The force is not with us in that regard.”
This was the second time in the Disney fan confab’s history that they’ve wowed their future film and TV lineup at the Honda Centre (called D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event), taking what was once a filled theater-like presentation at the Anaheim Convention Center to what’s now an Ariana Grande-like concert spectacle with floating balloons, Broadway numbers and the entire arena doing “the wave” before the start of the show.
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The second season of ABC and 20th Century Television’s “Scrubs” revival is bolstering its ensemble with former “Saturday Night Live” player and writer John Higgins, TheWrap has learned.
The recurring role is said to be the hospital’s new chief resident, a learning position once held by series lead Zach Braff’s J.D. in early seasons of the original show. Series star Donald Faison directly confirmed Higgins’ involvement on Saturday during a “Scrubs” panel at Disney’s annual expo D23.
“John Higgins joins the cast. It’s been a lot of fun to watch him work, actually him and Ava Bunn, who plays Tosh. They’ve been great additions,” Faison said.
Bunn played intern Tosh in the first season of the revival series. She’s been upped to a main cast member for this coming follow-up edition.
Representatives for ABC declined to comment on Higgins’ casting.
Higgins became a regular fixture on “Saturday Night Live” over recent seasons through the show’s digital shorts, where his sketch group Please Don’t Destroy often featured. The comedy trio, which also includes Ben Marshall and Martin Herlihy, recurred on “Saturday Night Live” through Seasons 47 through 50, and were often responsible for some of the sketch show’s most viral segments. The trio also led a 2023 comedy feature from Universal, “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain.” Along with starring in the film, Higgins co-wrote and executive produced.
Please Don’t Destroy’s run on “SNL” came to a close last summer, with Marshall becoming a cast member, Herlihy staying on as a writer and Higgins departing the show. Other credits for him since include a recurring role on Apple TV+’s “Stick” and a role in Netflix’s upcoming Cameron Diaz feature “Bad Day.”
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Condragulations are in order for RuPaul’s Drag Race and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars as MTV and Paramount+ have renewed the shows for additional seasons.
MTV has picked up RuPaul’s Drag Race for Season 19 alongside its companion series RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked, while Paramount+ has ordered RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars for Season 12 alongside its companion series RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked.
The pickups for the RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise come as they celebrate 11 Emmy nominations with host RuPaul Charles record-extending 11th consecutive nomination for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality Competition Program.
“Nearly twenty years later, what began as a dream has become an extraordinary global movement. We owe endless thanks to our partners at MTV and Paramount+, along with every queen, judge, crew member, and fan who has built RuPaul’s Drag Race,” World of Wonder said in a statement. “Drag brings people together in powerful ways – and we are honored to keep celebrating new voices and sharing iconic moments with the world.”
RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 18 saw strong viewership with double-digit growth from its previous season. The season saw Myki Meeks take the crown and becoming the newest drag superstar.
Spinoff RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 11 played with the format with the Tournament of All Stars, which brought together returning queens to compete for a coveted spot in the “Drag Race Hall of Fame.” Crystal Methyd earned the title during the latest season.
RuPaul’s Drag Race, RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked, RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked are produced by World of Wonder Productions.
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