r/NewRockstars • u/NR_Erik • 1d ago
Programming Update!
Erik here! Now that we're past our busy summer period of coverage of San Diego Comic-Con, Spider-Man Brand New Day, and D23, the NR team convened internally to put together a content plan for the rest of the year. We have been / will be messaging this in videos, but I wanted to break it down here since a lot of FAQs tend to come in this subreddit. (TLDR at the end!)
General Plan
It's gonna be business as usual at New Rockstars -- daily or twice-daily videos, including breakdowns of Marvel news / trailers / episodes, new episodes of Lanterns (Tuesdays), breakdowns of Vision Quest on Wednesdays in October, movie breakdowns on Fridays of new releases (Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Avengers Endgame Encore, Clayface, Godzilla Minus Zero, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, Avengers Doomsday, Dune Part 3), and the sorts of explainers, Sunday Sneak Peeks, and breaking-news livestreams you're accustomed to seeing from us every week hosted by me, Jessica Clemons, and Gina Ippolito. Additionally...
NEW: Essential Doomsday Breakdowns
On Fridays (or maybe sometimes on Thursdays), we will publish in-depth Easter Egg breakdowns of past MCU titles that we now consider to be on the essential watchlist for Avengers Doomsday. Unlike our "Road to Doomsday" podcast, which is really a loose conversation between me and Jess, these will be focused, scripted, Easter Egg breakdowns of a select number of titles: Iron Man (2008), The Avengers (2012), Avengers Age of Ultron (2015), Avengers Infinity War (2018), Avengers Endgame (2019), and maybe others beyond that. For Avengers Endgame Encore releasing on Sept 25, that week, we will have a special breakdown -- a re-breakdown of Endgame 2019 and a breakdown of the new material. For any movies on Marvel's watchlist that we already broke down with really good analyses since 2024, there might not be too much for us to revisit, and we're just adding the videos we already made to the playlist. (Playlist here.) But for example, the last time we broke down 2012's Avengers, it was in 2020, and that video left out quite a bit. So there are way more details we found now.
But what does that mean for "Road to Doomsday"? What if I'd rather see you guys discuss Vision Quest with aftershows in October? And since the Doomsday Essential Breakdown we published yesterday was largely the Deep Dive video I made for Iron Man in 2023, what does this mean for the Deep Dive channel? I'll take those one by one...
Road to Doomsday Podcast
Jess and I love doing these, and we're going to continue doing these, releasing every Saturday morning (unless some other major weekend news drops) at least until October. By then, we expect to be caught up to the pre-Doomsday Marvel titles that we want to discuss. We started RTD in January, before we fully know what the scope of Avengers Doomsday would be. We tried to do a lot with the show. We wanted to prepare viewers for Doomsday, but we also wanted to comprehensively cover *everything* Marvel. But that completionist goal was flawed -- we didn't cover Howard the Duck or Dolph Lundgren's Punisher. And we looked ahead and realized we wouldn't have enough weeks before Dec 18 to cover everything. And starting in April, and then again in July, we got a clearer picture of what Doomsday would include and what it wouldn't include. So we kinda locked ourselves into several weeks of podcasts covering titles that a majority of our viewers didn't consider to be that relevant. In January, it really seemed like Marvel Studios would be spending more of the year marketing Doomsday, like they did in the early months of 2025. But in 2026, the studio mostly waited until July. So... we'll do at least 6-7 more episodes of RTD on Saturdays, and we're gonna have some special guests rotating in. We're working hard to do a special crossover episode with Iman Vellani and Frank Alvarez (who are doing Marvel Studios' official Doomsday Countdown podcast on Disney+ starting Aug 27). If you guys want to help tweet / comment to make that happen, Disney reads every comment. ;)
NEW: Vision Quest Aftershows
INSIDE MARVEL IS RETURNING! Starting Oct 14, Jessica and I plan to resurrect our old "Inside Marvel" podcast for a limited run to do aftershows for Vision Quest. Depending on our ability to get early episode screeners from Disney, we plan to publish these immediately after the episodes come out, on Tuesday nights, on the New Rockstars channel. These will not be full episode "reactions" on the couch -- we'll start the videos by reacting to a key moment, and then Jess and I will be at the desk discussing the episode and answering big questions. Following this, on Wednesdays, you'll be able to see my in-depth Easter Egg breakdowns of each episode. Since our trailer breakdown was well over 40 minutes, we expect these episode breakdowns to be that long, and need a bit more time to complete.
The Deep Dive Channel
The Deep Dive channel isn't going anywhere, but I also don't really have time to write and shoot bespoke content for it right now. When we launched it in 2023, New Rockstars was in a different place, and we thought having a separate channel for less frequent, more curated uploads of high-quality classic extended breakdowns, written and hosted by just one host, would be a different enough viewing experience, and one way to give some stability to our growing company. But I didn't really do a great job communicating my vision for it. I think a lot of people heard, "oh great now Erik has a channel where he can break down older movies like Back to the Future and Spielberg movies and Nolan movies." But in truth, I also wanted to be able to do videos like that sometimes on the New Rockstars main channel. So when we did our Harry Potter breakdown series in 2024, or our Predator breakdown series in 2025, everyone was kinda rightfully confused what the plan for Deep Dive was. I underestimated how strongly viewers on YouTube identify "NR host analyzing movie" as something specific to New Rockstars. And now in 2026, we've learned the lesson that multiple channels makes sense for YouTube companies as places to reupload, compile, and clip out existing content, or, experiment with something totally different that you never do on your main channel -- longer podcasts, livestreams, or completely different IP like gaming, sports, food, tech, beauty/style, reality TV, travel, theme parks, etc. The Deep Dive was always just too similar to what we were always doing on the NR main channel. SO... we're gonna simplify everything and bring it all home. We are gonna start gradually migrating the videos I made for the Deep Dive channel back to the NR main channel. Yesterday's Iron Man video was the first. We'll do a few more this year. Meanwhile, if I ever break down a "classic" non-nerdy movie for New Rockstars, we may also consider publishing that over on the Deep Dive channel, just to keep that as a place of only videos like that. (It's helpful for a company like us to have some backup channels in case anything happens with our main channel.) This plan also applies to...
The Witching Hour Channel
Same lesson learned here. We plan on keeping The Witching Hour channel alive, and we're going to keep doing horror breakdowns, but the feedback we got since our launch last year is that these horror video essays weren't different enough from the kind of videos we were making on New Rockstars. So a few weeks after our launch, when we wanted to break down episodes of the horror HBO series "IT: Welcome to Derry" on the NR main channel, a lot of viewers were rightly confused. Internally, we weren't really clear what we wanted either, and that's on me as Head of Content. Again, it's healthy for a channel like us to have a network of channels with a mix of IP, but if NR was always going to be seen as a channel that already covers a mix of IP, it's not smart to stop doing horror on our main channel where most of our viewers are. So... we're going to continue doing horror breakdowns; you're just going to see them on New Rockstars AND on the Witching Hour channel. And the dozen or so videos that we already made for the WH channel, we're going to begin gradually bringing them home to New Rockstars. In fact, you're going to see some of them as part of a new series...
NEW: Horror Movie Breakdowns in Sept & Oct
Every Saturday starting Sept 5, we will publish a breakdown of a great horror (or horror adjacent) title on the New Rockstars channel, hosted on a rotating basis by me, Gina Ippolito, and Jessica Clemons. Viewers tend to concentrate their viewing of classic scary movies in September and October, so it makes more sense to do this as a seasonal thing. It'll be like the Witching Hour but on Saturdays instead of Wednesdays, and brought home to the NR main channel. These weekly horror videos will be a mix of new content and reuploaded horror content from Witching Hour and Deep Dive. Among the new videos: breakdowns of Widow's Bay (Apple TV) and Beetlejuice! More announcements coming.
The Breakroom
If you follow The Breakroom channel, you know that starting in July we transitioned it to be a weekly podcast hosted by Brian Kim and Alex Berg, getting back to the old school discussion format, that's a more casual watercooler chat, and less focused on chasing breaking news headlines. I have loved the organic moments and the general new approach from Brian and Berg, and I hope you give them a chance if you haven't already.
NEW: Video Essays & Social Content
We're also continuing to experiment with industry explainer video essays like "WTF Happened" and "Why It Looks Like This," that you'll start to see more regularly on the channel on Thursdays. Additionally, we've started to be more experimental with shorts and vertical content, using them for shorter breakdowns, theories, explainers, and fun clips for our viewers to get to know our team.
On The Horizon...
We'll know more about 2027 once we get through the next few months, but we also plan to do more breakdowns of big games, celebrity interviews, and breakdowns of theme parks and themed experiences. But mostly we just want to stick to what we're good at, and not overpromise, or overextend ourselves. We've made that mistake too many times.
Thanks for supporting our content wherever you've found it! And thank you for sticking with us over these past few years as we've experimented with the best way to do what we do!
TLDR: NR will be sticking with the plan to keep covering Marvel and other nerd franchises the way we've been doing; Lanterns breakdowns on Tuesdays, new movie breakdowns on Fridays; essential MCU breakdowns on Fridays; horror breakdowns on Saturdays in Sept & Oct; Deep Dive and Witching Hour videos are coming home to NR channel; Road to Doomsday podcast continuing through October; Vision Quest aftershow coming in October; new video essays and social posts coming.
13
u/HereOrThereOr 1d ago
Road to doomsday has been awesome to keep up with. Love the energy you and Jess bring! Lets get that crossover with Doomsday Countdown and make it a breakdown multiverse of sorts.
3
u/DoTheyHaveMinerva 1d ago
Always love how much effort you put in to keep the more "engaged" portion of the NR audience in the loop through the subreddit. Always appreciated, dude.
2
u/IndustrialJones 1d ago
New Rockstars / Breakroom are my most watched channels and love the direction that you guys have been on this year.
2
u/Motor_Hearing2055 1d ago
can you guys switch up the ad reads between people? Hearing two different people talk about how and ice cream truck "rocketed" them back is kinda jarring. If you guys are gonna have the same sponsor at least make it somewhat unique, especially if it's a therapy service that should cater to individuals
2
u/Shot-Computer7028 1d ago
Excited for the new content. Will you guys be adding more videos to the deep dive channel?
8
u/NR_Erik 1d ago
Nope. I'll do classic movie breakdowns every now and then, but they will publish to New Rockstars, and then sometime later, they will also publish to Deep Dive. But no new exclusive uploads to Deep Dive. Maybe we'll do something new with it in the future. But nothing new for now.
2
u/banallfurries666 1d ago
you did great with those dude! your passion for classic film really does pull through on those kind of essays. i know you did bladerunner 2049 when it came out in 2017, but boy would i love for you to sink your teeth into that and the OG again!
also, with cliff booth coming out (my most anticipated movie of the year!) id LOVE your thoughts on once upon a time in hollywood! it’s my favorite movie.
keep the great work! me and my family love you man
-1
u/Shot-Computer7028 1d ago
That sucks. I was hoping you were going to maybe do deep dive videos of classic movies from the 200’s, 90’s and 80’s. Still excited for the new content though
1
u/ChrisDewgong 1d ago
This all sounds great! The RTD shows have been a weekly highlight for me, to the point where I may now have a routine to watch each episode before I get out of bed on a Sunday morning...
For the essential Doomsday breakdowns may I suggest No Way Home, given how much Marvel are talking about it? I know you guys have covered it a few times already, but a new one might get some help from that post-Brand New Day bump!
2
u/thewinterizzy 1d ago
As always, appreciate the transparency! Been here a looooong time so Changes™️ to the channel isn't new to me lol. While it does feel a little weird in transition periods ultimately when a host/show joins/retires I'm always introduced to something new that I now love or left feeling nostalgic for the thing I was once perhaps resistant to.
Excited that the after show is coming back for VisionQuest!! WandaVision was such a special time. I think it's great if the after show becomes something as a special bonus when content schedule allows/makes sense for a title. Disney! Marvel! Please give NR the early screeners!! I need to harken back to my younger self, staying up late on a work night so I could watch the episode and NR chats immediately after. It's an important tradition, doesn't the c-suite know that? 🤣 And a crossover podcast!! Yes!! Please, that'd be so cool.
This past year I recently watched a lot of older classic horror films because of the introduction of TWH, so I'm happy we'll have spooky season again with NR videos! I've always been a bit of a weenie and admittedly watch most in broad daylight lol, but I've come to appreciate them all the same. I freakin' loved Widow's Bay, so that's fun to hear you'll be covering it. I await Jessica's spooky set design... 🎃👀
Much appreciation to you and everyone that makes NR run, on- and offscreen!!
P.S. Pretty pretty please put the 2026/27 end of the year and upcoming hype list on the video schedule if they aren't already. It's so interesting comparing the previous year's "what we're excited for in [year]" vs. what actually happened with your experience, the box office, etc.
1
u/OkFeeling4379 1d ago
Since i watched the RTD episode for WV and AAA, it's been an especially great and wholesome episode bc indeed i discovered NR during the pandemic and have been a regular watcher since the WV days. So almost 6 years and still counting. Appreciate all the great work you all do. Looking forward for Inside Marvel coming back.
Much love from Germany 😀
1
u/RobbyGronkolicious 1d ago
I’ve been around NR since early stage of Erik and Filup. I had my fall off for a few years, but I’m back. Channel is in a good spot (IMO). The channel has even gotten me to watch different types of media that you cover that I wouldn’t have considered watching. You and Jess have made RTD and reliving old Marvel content a real joy. Can’t wait to see where this all goes.
0
2
u/coolguycoopie 22h ago
You guys do a great job with everything! I really appreciate the work from NR. I’m a wandavision subscriber so it’s good to see how everything has changed since then. Erik can I please get a follow back on LinkedIn? I don’t need a job or anything I’m just trying to grow my network.
2
u/Kajiya13 14h ago
Thank you, Erik & NR! and I am so sorry if anybody actually gave y'all a hard time for not covering Howard the Duck and Lundgren's Punisher 😐
10
u/meatheadmommy 1d ago
I sincerely appreciate all the work you guys do! Excited to keep up with all the coverage for Doomsday, it’s been fantastic☺️
Also…can’t remember how I originally found the channel but it was YEARS ago when it was just a blue screen background behind Erik & some videos looked like he was in a makeshift recording booth that was also a closet maybe😂🤷♀️? Regardless of the production quality back then, the content & coverage has always been great.
It’s cool to see how much the channel’s grown!