Multiverse of Yura Borisov: no, he will not play these 15 roles in films and TV series

In 2025, on the wave of the success of the Russian actor, who played in the Oscar-winning “Anora,” news about his future projects went viral on social networks. Among them are the roles of Vito Scaletta, Hitman, Professor X, Voldemort, Wilson Fisk and even the Terminator. We have verified these messages.

In early March, shortly after the Oscar ceremony, the following posts circulated on VKontakte: “It’s official: Yura Borisov will play Vito Scaletta in the film adaptation of Mafia II. This will be a large-scale project that will combine elements of a crime drama and historical reconstruction. Filming is expected to begin soon and the premiere is scheduled for 2026." In total, such messages received about 1.7 million views. So, the publics talked about it “Marvel Universe | DC"(629,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Cinema online"(402,000), "Multiverse of Madness"(257,000), Marvel/DC (twice: 175,000 And 25,000), Empire (153,000), "Marvel/DC Universe" (twice: 24,000 And 12,000) And etc.. On the Zen platform, this news was shared, for example, by the blog AXXCID (6400 views).

After the release of the filmAnora» in 2024 Yura Borisov, who played a supporting role there, gained worldwide popularity. The actor consolidated his success a few months later, when he was nominated for many prestigious awards, including “Golden Globe" and even "Oscar" In the end, Borisov did not receive a statuette from the American Film Academy, but during the presentation of the nominees, Robert Downey Jr. statedthat the Russian actor has a bright future in the film industry.

Mafia II, which is mentioned in viral posts, is an action-adventure computer game released in 2010. Its action takes place in the mid-20th century in the fictional American city of Empire Bay. The main character is Italian Vittorio Antonio (Vito) Scaletta, on behalf of which players perform various tasks. According to the viral news, filming of the film adaptation of Mafia II is about to begin, but there is no reliable evidence on the Internet about even the start of work on the project. Accordingly, no reputable film publications reported that Borisov received the role of Scaletta.

The primary source of this news is the above-mentioned public page on VKontakte called “Multiverse of Madness”, which has just over 10,000 subscribers. There's a post about Borisov and the game Mafia II came out March 1 at 06:40 Moscow time. Description of this community reads: “All news [in this public] is taken from alternative realities.” That is, the authors directly indicated that their news is satirical in nature (for example, like the publication “Panorama"). However, such posts, if they go viral on VKontakte, can also be seen by those users who are not subscribed to this public and, accordingly, have not read its description, and therefore do not realize that, while scrolling through the feed, they have read a fable.

In a conversation with “Verified,” the administrator of this public confirmed that the post about Borisov’s role in the film based on the game Mafia II is a fiction and that such publications are created according to a certain principle: the authors look for real photographs or footage of the actor (in rare cases, minor photo manipulation is used), in which he resembles certain characters, and then publish a post about his new role. So, in the case of the news about Mafia II, it was used frame from the movie "Silver Skates". In the spring of 2024, the authors of the “Multiverse of Madness” came up with a similar launched a duck about another project allegedly being prepared for filming - an adaptation of the series “Supernatural” with Nikita Kologriv and Ivan Yankovsky. Then the owners of large public pages on VKontakte and Telegram channels, as well as some Russian federal media, fell for it.

According to an internal search on the community page, the first fictional post about Borisov's future role came out in the Multiverse of Madness back on November 23, 2024. Then it was reported that the Anora star and “future Oscar nominee” would play young Kevin Crumb in the HBO series 23, although the channel, of course, did not make such an announcement. "[It] will be a prequel to the film"Split“2017, and [M. Knight] Shyamalan himself will direct several episodes,” the authors of the public wrote. Obviously, the satirical news is based on the fact that Borisov is now bald, and in the original film Crumb was played by a shaved head James McAvoy. And although the post did not become popular (it received less than 2000 views), it is symbolic that a series of fictitious announcements began with news about a project about a person with multiple disorders personality.

January 23, 2025 it became known, that Borisov was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category, and soon after this, the series of false news about the actor in the Multiverse of Madness continued. Thus, from January 28 to March 12, the public released 18 similar posts (including a fake about Mafia II), many of which received coverage, sometimes several times (or even tens of times) greater than the number of its subscribers. At some point, posts about the actor began to appear so often that the public renamed in “Yura Borisov and his filmography”, and also changed the cover and avatar (but soon returned everything as it was).

These false news stories about Borisov of varying degrees of virality and realism were published in the following chronological order (with the exception of those mentioned above):

• January 28 (39,000 views): will play the monster Creeper in the prequel of the cult film franchise “Jeepers Creepers”;
• February 19 (313,000): According to an insider, he became one of the contenders for the role of Professor X in the X-Men film from Marvel Studios;
• February 21 (59,000): according to director James Gunn, he could get the role of Lex Luthor in the film “Superman”;
• February 22 (151,000): Will play young Wilson Fisk in the second season of Daredevil: Born Again;

• February 26 (51,000): Will play Voldemort in HBO's Harry Potter;
• February 27 (53,000): according to insider data, can replace Vin Diesel in Fast and Furious 11;
• February 27 (216,000): according to an insider, the actor was offered the main role in the next film adaptation of the Hitman game;
• February 28 (53,000): in the new DC cinematic universe he will play Hush, Batman’s enemy;

• March 4 (5000): received the role of Albert Wesker in the new film based on the Resident Evil game from director Zach Cregger;
• March 7 (6200): Replaces David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown in Terrifying 4;
• March 10 (27,000): expressed a desire to play One-Punch Man (a manga and anime character) in a movie;
• March 11 (26,000): will play Vovan in the prequel of the series “Real Boys” on TNT;

• March 11 (19,000): will return to the screens in the sequel to “Anora”, work on which is already underway;
• March 11 (43,000): approved for the main role in the Russian version of “Terminator” from Fyodor Bondarchuk;
• March 11 (26,000): together with Alexander Petrov, he will play in the humorous film “Runner and Archer” - a parody of “The Flash” and “Arrow”;
• March 12 (5700): will play the grown-up Luffy in one of the episodes of the second season of the One Piece series.

The fictional one stands apart news dated March 3 about a fake scandal. Allegedly due to a violation of the vote counting procedure by Kieran Culkin, victorious in the category “Best Supporting Actor”, they were deprived of an Oscar, and based on the results of an “honest” recount, the American Film Academy awarded the statuette to Borisov. The post received more than 205,000 views, and received a note from VKontakte moderators for alleged false information. “There have been complaints about this post and the information in it may be misleading. Treat it with caution,” reads the warning from the social network.

When clicking on the “More details” button, the user is redirected to “Digital Comfort Center”, where he is asked to read about how VKontakte works with the content posted there. “Our role as a communications platform is to facilitate access to reliable information and limit the spread of potentially harmful and misleading content,” the text states at the beginning.

“Completely fictitious high-profile news or fake scientific research is not always easy to distinguish from real ones. Their spread sometimes leads to consequences even outside the Internet: it creates unjustified panic, artificially increases the demand for essential goods, encourages the treatment of serious diseases with methods harmful to health, and provokes hostility and intolerance. We are wary of the dissemination of exactly this kind of information.”

At one of the points approved, that the social network considers it important to warn users about possible misinformation, but emphasizes: “Humor, creativity and personal position on our platform are not moderated in any way, as long as they do not contain direct insults, threats or other serious violations of the rules. If such content is limited, it will be for a reason other than misleading.” Later again TBC: “We also do not consider jokes, parodies, memes and other manifestations of a sense of humor to be false information and do not take any measures against them.” Despite these statements, the satirical news about Borisov still received a label for potential disinformation.

By allegations social network, its team checks every request from users who send complaints about posts that are allegedly misleading. Moreover, it is stated that with the help of neural networks and other technologies, the platform itself proactively monitors content. However, the fictitious news about Borisov receiving an Oscar after a recount of votes is the first time in several years that the Verified editors encountered a warning about possible misinformation on VKontakte. At the same time, we repeatedly found there records with a false informationwhich sometimes replicated on social networks for years.

Also "VKontakte" reports, which is constantly improving its approaches to content moderation and working on new features that it claims will help users recognize potentially inaccurate posts. However, the incident with the banner on the post about Borisov shows that social networks have room for improvement. For example, she could mark satirical communities with a special icon so that users who do not subscribe to the public would immediately understand that this is a parody. After all, if the authors in the page description do not hide the fact that they publish fictitious news, then a warning about possible misinformation in only one post looks at least ridiculous.

Cover photo: collage "Checked"

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