Entertainment
Bone Temple's Flop Should End Hollywood's Most Annoying Trend
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
The moment Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury turned up after the credits of Iron Man was the moment that entertainment changed forever. Every film had to be part of a larger universe, with each one teasing that the next would be bigger and better. The natural end result of this trend has been studios filming multiple movies back-to-back and planning from the beginning that, no matter the audience reaction, this will be another epic universe of interconnected films.
The long-awaited 28 Years Later ran headfirst into both trends, ending with a tease for the second film in a trilogy, and then 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple fell flat months later when confused audiences rejected it as too much, too soon, and too confusing.
The Bone Temple Doesn’t Sound Like A Sequel
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple picks up right where 28 Years Later leaves off and devotes its entire runtime to Spike (Alfie Williams) and the Jimmys, a strange gang based on the British personality Jimmy Saville (in the film’s timeline, Saville’s sex crimes were never exposed). The film itself is a great entry in the growing franchise by keeping the story’s focus tight on the group, which starts off as larger than you’d expect for a horror film, but quickly gets whittled down. It culminates in an insane sequence set to Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast that proves Ralph Fiennes can do anything. The problem isn’t with the film, The Bone Temple is well worth watching, but the problem comes from Hollywood’s fascination with milking every aspect of every successful film before anyone knows it’s a hit or not.
Thankfully for everyone involved, 28 Years Later was a hit during the summer of 2025. It would have been awkward for the already filmed and edited sequel if the first film had crashed and burned. Unfortunately, the summer of 2025 was only a few months ago, and the general audience didn’t think 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple was a sequel only six months later. Hollywood’s “everything is a franchise” hubris finally caught up with it, and the result was a truly unique horror film that earned less domestically than Tron: Ares.
2 Fast 2 Furious is a stupid name for a movie, but it makes it clear that it’s a sequel. M3GAN 2.0 was another disaster, but the 2 is right there. The Bone Temple doesn’t denote it’s a sequel, especially since the Bone Temple itself was a major part of the first film. It sounds like a director’s cut version of the first film.
Fans Rejected The Jimmy Gang Months Ago
Working against 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is the first appearance of the Jimmys at the end of the first film. Watching a group of color-coordinated tracksuit-clad survivors ripping apart infected like post-apocalyptic Power Rangers was such a tonal shift from the rest of the film’s meditation on grief and death that it immediately turned off a part of the film’s fanbase. Which is unfortunate, because the cast and crew had a three-week break between wrapping one film and starting another back in 2024, long before the public reaction to the wild twist.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple earned $13 million domestically during its opening weekend and a total of $46 million, which isn’t bad, but it’s lagging significantly behind 28 Years Later. An estimated budget of $68 million means that director Nia DaCosta’s follow-up to The Marvels is again going to bring in a respectable sum for most films, but the budget kills it. Once again, the talented DaCosta was saddled with bringing the studio’s vision to life, no matter what the fans said they wanted.
The Bone Temple underperforming won’t stop studios from purposely stretching out stories into multiple movies, and it won’t stop the trend of filming movies back-to-back before anyone knows what the fanbase is going to latch onto. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple ends with another tease for the third, and hopefully, final film. Years of Marvel post-credit teases that have gone nowhere haven’t left audiences waiting for every film to promise a bigger, better sequel; it’s done the opposite, and now audiences roll their eyes out of annoyance. Studios need to cut their losses and go back to focusing on telling one great story before any other fan-favorite franchises fall victim.
Entertainment
Wordle today: Answer, hints for April 19, 2026
Today’s Wordle answer should be easy to solve if you can never sit down.
If you just want to be told today’s word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for today’s Wordle solution revealed. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.
Where did Wordle come from?
Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once.
Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.
What’s the best Wordle starting word?
The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.
What happened to the Wordle archive?
The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles was originally available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it, but it was later taken down, with the website’s creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times. However, the New York Times then rolled out its own Wordle Archive, available only to NYT Games subscribers.
Is Wordle getting harder?
It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn’t any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle‘s Hard Mode if you’re after more of a challenge, though.
Here’s a subtle hint for today’s Wordle answer:
To rise.
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Does today’s Wordle answer have a double letter?
There are no recurring letters.
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Today’s Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with…
Today’s Wordle starts with the letter T.
The Wordle answer today is…
Get your last guesses in now, because it’s your final chance to solve today’s Wordle before we reveal the solution.
Drumroll please!
The solution to today’s Wordle is…
STAND
Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints. Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.
Reporting by Chance Townsend, Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Wordle.
Entertainment
Hurdle hints and answers for April 19, 2026
If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.
There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it’ll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.
An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.
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If you find yourself stuck at any step of today’s Hurdle, don’t worry! We have you covered.
Hurdle Word 1 hint
The edge.
Hurdle Word 1 answer
BRINK
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Hurdle Word 2 hint
Moody.
Hurdle Word 2 Answer
POUTY
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Hurdle Word 3 hint
America’s bird.
Hurdle Word 3 answer
EAGLE
Hurdle Word 4 hint
A platform.
Hurdle Word 4 answer
FORUM
Final Hurdle hint
Cheapskate.
Hurdle Word 5 answer
MISER
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Entertainment
Star Trek’s Most Ambitious Villain Helped Create The Franchise’s Most Complex Hero
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When Star Trek: Voyager first came out, the most fascinating character was the Doctor. While Robert Picardo’s performance was superb, it’s fair to say this character was mostly fascinating on a conceptual level. We had seen things like hypercompetent Starfleet captains and exotic aliens before, but what we hadn’t seen was a fully holographic chief medical officer. Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram seemed like the perfect embodiment of the Star Trek ethos. He’s a technological strange new world and new life, all rolled into one.
However, what casual audiences didn’t realize is that the Doctor wasn’t completely unique. Long before Picardo’s character ever sawed bones in the Delta Quadrant, Captain Picard dealt with another extraordinary hologram: Moriarty, the brilliant foe of the famous investigator Sherlock Holmes. Over on The Next Generation, Geordi LaForge accidentally created this villain as a sentient hologram when he asked the holodeck to create a challenge worthy of the android Data. Later, Star Trek: Voyager executive producer Jeri Taylor revealed that, in-universe, the holographic Doctor was created because Starfleet took advantage of the same accidental breakthrough that created Moriarty!
It all started in “Elementary, My Dear Data,” the Next Generation episode in which the titular android and Geordi LaForge recreated Sherlock Holmes’ adventures on the holodeck. Thanks to his positronic brain and his encyclopedic knowledge of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes novels, Data is able to easily solve every mystery that is thrown at him. That’s when Geordi makes a seemingly simple request. He asks the Enterprise computer to develop a holodeck foe that could actually defeat Data, one of the smartest beings in the entire galaxy.
The computer obliges and creates a sentient version of Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ greatest foe. Following Geordi’s instructions, the Enterprise computer included much of Data’s vast programming, which resulted in the holographic character becoming self-aware. Moriarty ended up threatening the Enterprise on two different occasions, and Picard eventually got rid of him by trapping the unknowing villain in a simulation where he thought he had left the holodeck and could explore the stars. This was meant to be a happy ending for Moriarty, but in the show’s typically bleak fashion, Star Trek: Picard later showed us a different, more hostile version of this character created by a malevolent Section 31 AI.
How A Villain Created A Hero
What does all of this have to do with Robert Picardo’s holographic Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager? Elementary, my dear reader! Very early in Voyager’s development (the show didn’t even have a name yet), executive producer Jeri Taylor was inspired by Moriarty to create a new character. As reported in A Vision of the Future-Star Trek: Voyager, Taylor wrote down notes for a holographic doctor “who, like Moriarty, has ‘awareness’ of himself as a holodeck fiction. He longs for the time when he can walk free of the Holodeck.”
A few days later, she wrote down additional notes that contain a startling bit of Star Trek lore. “The Holo-Doctor represents a new, state-of-the-art technology which has capitalized on the serendipitous incident which created Moriarty, and has programmed a holographic character which has self-awareness of his situation and limitations.” While Moriarty is name-dropped on Voyager a couple of times, the show never mentioned what Taylor’s notes seem to confirm: that Lewis Zimmerman could never have created the Emergency Medical Hologram program if not for Geordi LaForge accidentally creating Moriarty on the holodeck.
From Villain To Leading Man?
If that’s not strange enough, there was a period of time when Voyager’s producers were considering making Moriarty a mainstay character on the show. As reported in Star Trek–Where No One Has Gone Before, Taylor’s notes mentioned that “everyone agreed that was a little too broad, and we couldn’t figure out why anyone would take him along.” After dismissing the idea, they decided “that having a holographic doctor with the full consciousness of being a hologram might be fun, and we’d never done anything like that before, except for Moriarty.”
There you have it, gentle reader. Without the character of Moriarty on Star Trek: The Next Generation, we’d never have the Doctor on Voyager. In this way, Trek’s most ambitious villain helped create the franchise’s most complex hero. Thanks to Jeri Taylor’s notes, we also know that, in-universe, Lewis Zimmerman would never have been able to create the Doctor if not for Geordi accidentally creating a sentient Moriarty so Data could have fun. In retrospect, this does make Zimmerman’s arrogance that much weirder. After all, he has a lot of attitude for someone who owes his entire career to the two biggest book nerds in the galaxy!
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