Rumor mill source quality guide

The Hollywood Reporter

The gold standard in confirmed “unconfirmed” reporting. If you’re reading something revealed by Borys Kit, then you can take it to the bank. THR also tends to have the most exclusives out of the industry trade group.

Deadline

Not quite as many exclusives as THR, but enough that you should definitely take notice. Justin Kroll and Nellie Andreeva are right there with Borys Kit as reporters who you can always count on.

Variety

Nowhere near the number of exclusives as their trade counterparts, but Variety can still be counted on as an ironclad source.

Entertainment Weekly

Considering that most of their exclusive reports are accompanied by official promotional photos and interviews, you don’t have to worry about whether or not their information is legit.

The Wrap

Over the last several years, The Wrap has basically turned into an industry trade that normally aggregates and/or confirms other scoops. That said, their access has still allowed them to score some major exclusives–like Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman in 2022 for The Flash movie.

Collider

Collider doesn’t publish very many scoops, but you can normally bet on them when they do. This is evidenced by the fact that they are cited by the major trades for unconfirmed reports and have access to major studios.

One of their biggest recent scoops was revealing all the way back in December of 2020 that Andrew Garfield would be in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Unfortunately, that same report also stated that Kirsten Dunst was a lock to return, as well.

The Direct

They may be less than two years old, but The Direct has already made a name for themselves as a reliable source for scoops. What they lack in quantity they make up for in quality information. Unfortunately, you may have to sift through a lot of redundant articles/headlines to get to it.

Another point in TheDirect’s favor is how they meticulously document their scooping track record. Clicking on their exclusives page allows you to see their many hits (like Florence Pugh joining the cast of Hawkeye) along with their occasional misses (like Madame Masque being one of the villains in Hawkeye‘s first season). The Direct also maintains an extensive database that tracks and analyzes other sites’ reliability along with their own.

Murphy’s Multiverse

If you take a look through the exclusive reports from Charles Murphy, it’s clear that he has some very good sources. One of his biggest recent scoops was that Charlie Cox would return as Matt Murdock in Spider-Man: No Way Home. The rumor was posted in December 2020 and proven correct a little over a year later.

Other major scoops he’s gotten include:

• Elizabeth Shue to appear in Cobra Kai (Over a year prior to reveal)
• Evan Peters appearing in WandaVision (eight months prior to reveal).
• VFX artist for previous Sony Spider-Man films working on No Way Home (seven months prior to reveal).
• Female and Kid Loki variants appearing in Loki (seven months prior to reveal)
• Peyton Reed tapped to direct an episode of The Mandalorian (two months prior to official announcement).
• First outlet to provide video/confirmation of Hailee Steinfeld filming as Kate Bishop in Hawkeye.

Charles Murphy occasionally provides some scoops on his personal Twitter account, albeit with a bit more flair/subtlety:

• Tobey Maguire in Spider–Man: No Way Home (10 months prior to reveal).
• Kang appearing in Loki (a month prior to reveal).

On the rare occasions that Murphy does get something wrong (like Spider Slayers being in No Way Home), he’s good about owning up and explaining it. Other times, it’s simply a case of him having correct information at the time that either changes or turns out to be slightly different.

• There was definitely a giant dragon in Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, just not Fing Fang Foom.
• Doctor Strange was supposed to appear in the series finale of WandaVision, but was cut at the last minute.

Just don’t ask him about when any trailers are dropping. It’s the one piece of information he never knows (and fully admits that he never knows), yet ends up being the question that most people throw his way.

MyTimeToShineHello

This prolific reddit user may have migrated almost exclusively to Twitter, but her brief track record of scoops continues to impress. Reddit user /u/Tsblloveyou has made a fairly comprehensive list of what she’s gotten right so far. Most of her leaks came only a few weeks before they were revealed, but were detailed enough to indicate some pretty high level information.

MTTSH’s record in 2022 should solidify whether or not she moves up into the ‘Virtually Guaranteed’ category.

Geeks Worldwide

GWW and their editor-in-chief, Casey Walsh, are definitely worth paying attention to. Examples of major scoops they’ve gotten include:

• First to report Alfred Molina returning in Spider-Man: No Way Home as Doc Ock.
• First to report Willem Dafoe’s presence on the set of No Way Home.
• Power Broker being in The Falcon in the Winter Soldier (five months before reveal).
• First to reveal X-Men: The Animated Series revival being in development.

Unfortunately, most of their rumor reporting leaves ample room for interpretation or is prefaced with qualifiers about potential inaccuracy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make it more difficult to cite them as a firm source.

It’s worth noting that GWW has begun to develop inroads and industry access, which should lead to more scoops in the future.

r/MarvelStudioSpoilers & r/StarWarsLeaks

While both subreddits generally act as news aggregators/discussion boards, the mod teams do a good job of filtering out low quality content. Threads are helpfully flaired to let readers know if what they’re about to click on is potentially solid information or a crazy rumor.

In addition to sourced reporting, these subreddits sometimes host original scoops of their own. The mods allow plenty of speculation and anonymous reports, but not without a substantive degree of vetting. When it comes to stuff that could be 100% true or completely made up (and everything in between), both the mod teams and their very active subreddit members have an uncanny knack for sniffing out what’s what.

Original news items are often provided by people who end up becoming well known scoopers in their own right. While some have proven to be unreliable (like the infamous SookieIsMine84), others like MyTimeToShineHello end up being extremely accurate.

r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers also has an excellent tiered source accuracy index of their own. While their list doesn’t line up 100% with ours, it’s very well vetted and definitely worth a spot on your bookmarks bar. The linked discussion posts they used to create their list were invaluable resources for our own accuracy index when it came to providing evidence of a source’s reliability.

The Illuminderdi

When The Illuminderi gets it right, they really get it right. Examples include:

• First to report Chris Hemsworth joining the cast of Mad Max: Furiosa.
• First to report Hailee Steinfeld being officially cast in Hawkeye.
• First to report/confirm that Chiwetel Ejiofor would reprise his role as Mordo in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

When The Illuminerdi gets it wrong, however, they can be way off base. Examples include:

• Hulkling appearing in WandaVision.
• George Lucas returning to Star Wars as an executive producer for Andor.
• James Gunn casting for the role of Adam Warlock in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 when he wasn’t yet.

That last one was so wrong that it got personally (and firmly) refuted by James Gunn himself. Yet despite such a high profile miss, the Illuminerdi’s correct predictions indicate that they have some legitimate sources. This is further bolstered by the fact that they’re often cited and referenced by Charles Murphy, who is an extremely reliable source himself.

DanielRPK

Most of DanielRPK’s stuff is behind a paywall on Patreon, which is totally fine. We’ve all got to make a living. But if you’re going to charge for inside information, then you should probably have a better batting average than he does. Even if Richtman labels his information as a “rumor,” the attached price tag puts it under a bit more scrutiny.

Some of the things DanielRPK totally whiffed on include:

• We will be seeing a super-sized/comic appearance version of Kingpin in Hawkeye.
• Wanda Maximoff and Tony Stark appearing in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Most of DanielRPK’s correct predictions (that we can find) appear to be trailer release dates and title reveals as opposed to plot/casting exclusives. Also, a good deal of his information gets leaked or is personally revealed by Daniel on his Twitter account.

It should be noted that DanielRPK occasionally deletes some of his inaccurate claims, which is both weak and embarrassing.

Grace Randolph

When it comes to scoops/exclusives, Grace Randolph is often very wrong. Examples include:

• Claimed that Oscorp would show up in Spider-Man: Far From Home.
• Claimed in 2019 that Kathleen Kennedy was about to be fired from Star Wars.
• Claimed Ryan Reynolds was confirmed to cameo as the Green Lantern in The Justice League: Snyder Cut.
• Claimed Kirsten Dunst was definitely returning for Spider-Man: No Way Home.
• Yelena Belova to show up in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

One of her biggest misses was claiming that Pedro Pascal had been fired from The Mandalorian and would not appear in most of Season 2. This was allegedly due to him wanting more screen time without his helmet along with another issue she refused to elaborate on. When this rumor turned to be hilariously false, Randolph refused to retract her story.

Randolph has also been called out by directors James Gunn (multiple times) and Cathy Yan for her “scoops” about their projects being totally off base and/or completely fabricated.

All that being said, she does get some things right, like:

• Disney/Marvel Studios developing a Secret Invasion project with Samuel L. Jackson.
• Yelena Belova appearing in Hawkeye.

You may have noticed that the last citation included her incorrect assertion about Yelena Belova appearing in The Falcon and the Winter Solider. It also includes Randolph’s belief that an MCU project based on the Thunderbolts is in development. Whether that ever turns out to be true or not, Randolph is likely to claim she was right.

Giant Freakin Robot

Sometimes they’re right:

• First to reveal that Jameela Jamil would play Titania on the She-Hulk series.

Most of the time they’re wrong:

• Paul Bettany getting a Vision solo series.
• Chloe Bennett getting a new Marvel series.
• Wedding Crashers 2 confirmed.
• Charlie Cox to return as Daredevil in Season 1 of Hawkeye.

They do have a “Top Confirmed Scoops” page, but a brief perusal reveals that they weren’t the first to break most it. For example: They “exclusively” claimed that a sequel to Easy A was in the works back in February of 2021, nearly five months before it was discussed in an interview with actress Aly Michalka.

That would be pretty impressive if not for the fact screenwriter Bert Royal discussed a sequel being in the works nearly a year before that in an interview with the LA Times.

Geekosity/Mikey Sutton

Mikey Sutton may get a few things right (like Kang showing up in Loki), but he can normally be counted on to completely miss the mark. Examples (via the Wayback Machine) include:

• Deadpool appearing in Black Widow.
• The Baxter Building to appear in a Spider-Man: No Way Home post credits scene.
• Proclaiming that Matt Murdock would not be Peter’s lawyer in No Way Home.

There was apparently a time when Sutton was a much more reliable source, but that era appears to have passed. This section/rating will be updated if his accuracy ever improves.

FandomWire

We’ve already covered FandomWire’s failings before, which earned yours truly a block from their official Twitter account. TL;DR: FandomWire saw a report from a parody Twitter account about the Obi-Wan Kenobi series getting canceled, thought the story/account was real, and ran with it.

They also have a nasty habit of deleting the scoops they completely whiff on (although no one is safe from the Way Back Machine) and citing fake official Instagram accounts as official sources. On the rare occasions that they do get something right (like Mockingbird appearing in Season 1 of Hawkeye), it sounds much more like a prediction/guess than information from an actual source.

I would link to even more wrong reports that FandomWire has made, but those have been deleted, as well.

We Got This Covered

If you’ve followed genre entertainment news for any length of time, then you already knew We Got This Covered would be holding down the reliability rating basement.

This brilliant Twitter thread by Pierre Chanliau gives a horrifying snapshot into WGTC’s “reporting” in 2019. While the site still gets a ton of things completely wrong, they utilize a combination of unverifiable reports and throwing out every possible scenario a potential story could take in order to cover all their bases. On the rare occasions that WGTC does get a “scoop” right, it’s the journalistic equivalent of throwing a million darts at a bullseye.