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Ever wondered what would happen if Darth Vader joined the Avengers? Or if the Millennium Falcon got a Tony Stark-approved upgrade? Lego is giving fans the chance to find out.

The toy company announced a first-of-its-kind Lego Ideas challenge at New York Comic Con on Saturday, inviting builders to combine the worlds of Marvel and “Star Wars” for a chance to have their creations turned into an official Lego set. The competition marks the first time the two Disney-owned franchises have been brought together in a Lego Ideas challenge, allowing fans to dream up their own cross-universe creations.

The announcement was made by filmmaker, actor and Marvel Comics writer Kevin Smith, who is also working on the upcoming “Star Wars/Marvel: Hope Assembles” comic series. Set to launch in January, the series will mark the first official crossover between the two comic book universes, arriving as “Star Wars” prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2027.

“Working on the upcoming Star Wars/Marvel: Hope Assembles comic series has been incredibly exciting, and this Lego Ideas challenge reflects the same spirit of creativity inspired by these two iconic universes,” Smith said in a statement. “This challenge gives fans a chance to be part of something never done before and I can’t wait to see all of the creative Marvel and Star Wars mash ups it inspires!”

The competition invites fans to submit original builds across three categories: vehicles, characters and scenes. That could mean reimagining familiar spacecraft with superhero technology, bringing characters from the two franchises face-to-face or creating entirely new settings that unite their respective worlds.

Submissions are now open through the Lego Ideas platform, with fan voting set to begin Dec. 8. Grand prize selections will be announced in 2027, with winning designs eligible to be developed into official Lego products.

The challenge builds on Lego’s longstanding relationships with both franchises, which have produced some of the company’s most elaborate and collectible sets. Lego’s “Star Wars” partnership dates back to 1999, while its Marvel lineup has brought characters including Spider-Man, Iron Man and the Avengers into brick form through everything from smaller character sets to large-scale collector’s builds.

“This challenge is a milestone for Lego Ideas and our fan community,” said Fede Begher, senior vice president and head of product group at the Lego Group. “For the first time ever, fans can build with both Marvel and Star Wars in a single LEGO Ideas challenge, unlocking entirely new possibilities for creativity and storytelling.”

Fans can enter the “Star Wars” and Marvel crossover challenge and review the official submission guidelines at ideas.lego.com/campaigns/hope-assembles

The Philippines has revamped its International Co-Production Fund (ICOF) around two tracks, with the amount of cash on offer tied to the size of the Filipino stake in a project.

The Film Philippines Office (FPO) unveiled the new framework at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Contents & Film Market.

The Majority Track covers projects led by Filipino producers working with foreign partners. Features and series on this track can receive up to PHP13 million ($210,000), and documentaries and shorts up to PHP5 million ($80,000).

To qualify, the Filipino side must own at least 20% of the project and hold the largest share among the co-producers. Two Filipinos must fill above-the-line roles – director, writer or actor – and five more must work in key creative or technical crew positions. Applicants need a release strategy for both the home market and abroad. Foreign partners must take a minority stake and make a matching creative or technical contribution.

The Minority Track is for international productions in which a Filipino producer is the junior partner. Features and series can draw up to PHP7 million ($113,000), with documentaries and shorts capped at PHP3 million ($48,000).

The bar is lower here. Filipino producers need a stake of 10% or more, and the production must hire either two Filipino above-the-line talents or three Filipino crew members in key creative or technical roles. Applicants must also show how the film will reach audiences outside the Philippines.

Both tracks offer the same top-ups. Qualifying ASEAN co-productions earn an extra PHP1 million ($16,000), and projects that clear a cultural test can collect up to PHP2 million ($32,000) more. The FPO noted that the dollar figures may vary with exchange rates.

The FPO sits within the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), the national film agency that reports to the Office of the President. It runs the country’s incentives for international co-productions and for line and post-production work. It also provides endorsements for government permits and makes location referrals.

Several ICOF-backed films have won festival prizes. Tommy Ng Ka Chung’s “Another World” was co-produced by Filipino company Overmind Corp with partners in Hong Kong and Singapore, and won best animated feature at the 62nd Golden Horse Awards in November 2025. Janus Victoria’s “Diamonds in the Sand,” which has Japanese and Malaysian co-producers, took the Mulberry Award for best debut film at Udine’s Far East Film Festival.

Marianne Métivier’s “Elsewhere at Night” won best screenplay at the Torino Film Festival. James J. Robinson picked up best Australian director at the Melbourne International Film Festival for “First Light.” Mouly Surya’s “This City Is a Battlefield” won best cinematography at the Bandung Film Festival.

The FPO’s separate Film Location Incentive Program has backed two prizewinners. Rafael Manuel’s “Filipiñana” won a special jury award for creative vision in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic competition, and Morgan Knibbe’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” won best film at Torino.

The most moving scene in “The First Taste of Loneliness” is not, in fact, its most tear-streaked. Gu You‘s heartfelt family portrait opens on an extended, anguished scene of three women — a mother, her daughter and her granddaughter — keeping vigil at the bedside of their beloved husband, father and grandfather as his longtime battle with pancreatic cancer comes to a close. Emotions run high and loud; the camera peers closely into their grief. But it’s a quieter, more composed moment a little later that really jabs at the heart. A short time after her father’s death, Yue (Zhou Xun) opens the final jar of his famous homemade pickles, tastes them, and with the bittersweet knowledge that she’ll never get to do so again, declares it a good batch.

“The First Taste of Loneliness” is best when focused on such small but important everyday details. Its portrayal of the immediate, intense pain of mourning can be overwrought, but the bulk of this admittedly overlong film is given over to a more patient, restrained and gracefully observed study of how life reshapes itself around an absence — as Yue, her mother Luna (Xi Meijuan) and her teenage daughter Moon (Wang Shengdi) deal with the sadness, the relief and the faint sense of betrayal that comes from carrying on, while keeping space for the dead man’s spirit in their respective lives.

Shot and structured with grand-scale elegance to counter the intimacy of the storytelling, this is a stirring final entry in Gu’s “Landscape” trilogy, which began with his Cannes-premiered 2019 debut “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains” and continued with 2023’s “Dwelling by the West Lake” — the three films connected not directly by characters or narratives but a shared style of melancholic family portraiture. Premiering in the main competition at the Busan Film Festival, “Loneliness” again demonstrates the filmmaker’s formal prowess, with its preponderance of ambitiously floating pans and heavily populated setpieces. It has a broader, more populist streak than its predecessors, which could net it greater global distribution, but has its artistic downsides: An overreliance on stickily emotive ballads to unnecessarily articulate the characters’ feelings is a particular debit.

Somewhat heavily expository dialogue informs us that Yue, formerly a fashion director in Beijing, has recently returned with Moon to the family apartment in the city of Hangzhou in southeast China. Home to Luna and her late husband for decades, it’s a roomy, rambling space with spectacular views of the Qiantang River and, in Zhou Xingyu’s excellent production design, a storied buildup of clutter. Mikiya Takimoto’s camera lingers affectionately on stacked bookshelves — not even old cassette tapes have been thrown away — and desktops heavy with ornaments, notes and photographs that reveal in shorthand a life rich in love. Even in death, the man maintains a palpable presence in the home.

But it may be time for at least some remnants of the past to make way for the present. Luna implores Yue, recently divorced, not to get stuck in a holding pattern, either in her career or her relationships — but Luna, too, needs to make some changes. She tentatively accepts the romantic advances of another man, Xu (Xu Chaoying), opening herself to a kind of happiness she’d largely forgotten how to feel. Moon, meanwhile, is struggling at school but on the precipice of adulthood; as the young woman begins to make her own decisions in life, Yue must relinquish a degree of maternal responsibility.

Written by Gu with Yang Yikun, the screenplay, delicately braids these three arcs in such a way that each woman’s new freedoms complement the others’, while Takimoto’s bravura camerawork — painting in watercolor shades of misty gray and mossy green — often physically connects their stories in languid, widely swooping movements. And while the three leads’ performances are sensitively synched, Xi Meijuan is especially poignant as a widow trying to maintain a level of grieving decorum while embracing fresh experiences and sources of joy: A lovely scene of her and Xu dancing with other couples in a public square hits just the right note of romantic sentimentality tempered with elegiac sorrow. If “The First Taste of Loneliness” hits overly maudlin notes elsewhere — literally so, in the case of Sylvian Wang’s plaintive, piano-heavy score — it never feels cynical or manufactured in its emotions. Its moments of overstatement are entirely human, en route to a lighter, softer state of serenity.