Hollywood actor Mickey Rourke, EastEnders actress Patsy Palmer, and former British MP Michael Fabricant are among the contestants who are reportedly set to compete on Celebrity Big Brother.
The series is set to return to Virgin Media Two and ITV1 tonight following last year's explosive season that saw controversy with The X Factor judges Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne making remarks about other celebrities.
There has been speculation that Oscar nominee and former boxer Rourke - known for The Wrestler, 9½ Weeks, and Sin City - will join the 2025 line-up.
Recently, the 72-year-old has starred in the US version of The Masked Singer, the Roman Polanski-directed comedy The Palace, and the parody Not Another Church Movie.
Last year, Palmer returned to play Bianca Jackson on EastEnders after becoming a DJ more than a decade ago.
She thanked the BBC soap's crew last month for a "few months of love and history making" ahead of her stint coming to an end on screen.
Palmer has previously competed in BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing in 2005 with professional dancer Anton Du Beke. In 2023, she featured on ITV's Dancing on Ice where she was partnered with skater Matt Evers.
At the 2024 UK general election, the Tory Party's Fabricant lost his seat in Lichfield, Staffordshire to Labour's Dave Robertson.
Fabricant had been a serving MP since 1992 and was on a celebrity edition of Channel 4's First Dates for Stand Up to Cancer.
It has also been claimed that the new series of Celebrity Big Brother will have retired Olympic athlete Daley Thompson, The Only Way Is Essex star Ella Rae Wise, TV presenter Angellica Bell, and RuPaul's Drag Race UK series four winner Danny Beard among the housemates.
Two-time Olympic decathlon champion Thompson set a then-world record at the 1984 Los Angeles games and won the BBC Sports Personality prize that same year.
Bell, a Celebrity MasterChef winner who rose to fame on CBBC, has presented radio programmes, The Martin Lewis Money Show, and The One Show.
Also reported to be appearing are the singer Chesney Hawkes, chat show host Trisha Goddard, comedian Donna Preston, pop star JoJo Siwa, Love Island star Chris Hughes, and Coronation Street actor Jack P Shepherd.
The One and Only hit-maker Hawkes was asked if the rumours were true during an appearance on BBC Breakfast on Friday. He replied that he had "no idea what you're talking about".
Shepherd is known for playing hairdresser David Platt on Coronation Street for the last 25 years and recently has been involved in a failed hit-and-run scam in Weatherfield.
YouTube personality Siwa is no stranger to reality shows, having been on Dancing with the Stars, the US version of Strictly Come Dancing, The Masked Singer, and Dance Moms, as well as being a judge on So You Think You Can Dance.
Hughes, who rose to fame on the ITV2 reality dating programme Love Island, briefly began a singing career with fellow Love Islander Kem Cetinay before moving to become a sports broadcaster.
Preston has appeared in the Netflix supernatural series The Sandman and the ITV comedy panel show Hey Tracey!.
Goddard has presented her eponymous talk show and appeared on the ITV celebrity competition series Dancing on Ice in 2020.
Last year, Goddard told Hello! magazine that she had been diagnosed with secondary breast cancer, also known as stage four cancer, for which there is treatment but no cure.
The London-born presenter previously recovered from breast cancer some years earlier after a 2008 diagnosis.
After emigrating to Australia in the 1980s, she became the first black news anchor on Australian TV and went on to host TV shows in the UK and US.
A spokesperson for Celebrity Big Brother said: "Any names suggested for Celebrity Big Brother are purely speculation."
Before the series began airing on ITV, the controversial reality show was last on Channel 5 in 2018 before being cancelled by the channel.
Celebrity Big Brother, hosted by AJ Odudu and Will Best, returns at 9pm on Virgin Media Two and ITV1.
A spin-off show called Celebrity Big Brother: Late & Live will follow on Virgin Media Two and ITV2, which will see the return of last year's winner, reality star David Potts.
Source: Press Association
