It’s been quite the wait, but the fourth season of The Witcher is almost here. In a teaser shared this weekend, Netflix finally revealed the release date: October 30. The video also provided an extended look at Liam Hemsworth as Geralt of Rivia — a casting change that fans naturally have a lot of feelings about after Henry Cavill won their hearts with his take on the character in the first three seasons. The minute-and-a-half-long clip doesn’t give away too much about season four, but we now have a proper sense of what our new Geralt looks and sounds like.
This season will also see Laurence Fishburne join as Regis, Sharlto Copley as Leo Bonhart and James Purefoy as Skellen. It’s , and the streaming company has said that the two final seasons will cover the last three books in the series: Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow and Lady of the Lake. But, fans still have more Witcher content to look forward to yet outside of the show. (the game) is on the way, though we don’t yet have a release date.
At long last, we have a release date for The Witcherseason four: October 30.
On Saturday night, Netflix released a first look at the new season, which sees Liam Hemsworth as the new Geralt of Rivia after Henry Cavill bowed out. We see Geralt’s still doing his monster-slaying thing, and the clip goes out of its way to assure Hemsworth’s got the look and action chops to carry the show for its final two seasons. Like the Cavill-led era, this new adventure for Geralt will span eight episodes, and unlike season three, thankfully release all at once.
Plot-wise, the logline notes Geralt, Ciri (Freya Allan), and Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) remain separated after the events of season three as war brews around the Continent. “As their paths diverge, and their goals sharpen,” it reads, “they stumble on unexpected allies eager to join their journeys. And if they can accept these found families, they just might have a chance at reuniting for good.” Along with a returning Joey Batey as Jaskier, the next season’s cast includes Laurence Fishburne, Robbie Amell, Meng’er Zhang, and Sharlto Copley.
Expect more on The Witcher as news about the season comes out. Until then, you’ve got the first three seasons to rewatch, along with the Sirens of the Deepanime film and Andrzej Sapkowski’s Crossroads of Ravensnovel, which stars a young Geralt and lands September 30.
Toss a coin to your witcher because Geralt of Rivia is back on the hunt. Netflix has released the first look at Season 4 of “The Witcher,” the fantasy drama series adapted from CD Projekt Red’s video game franchise and Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels of the same name. The eight-episode season will arrive on Netflix on Oct. 30.
Though the show’s white-haired protagonist Geralt was played by Henry Cavill in the first three seasons of the Netflix series, Cavill took to Instagram in October 2022 to announce that he was departing the series and that Liam Hemsworth would take over the role of the titular witcher. Season 3, which was released in two parts in June and July 2023, was Cavill’s final outing as the character.
“My journey as Geralt of Rivia has been filled with both monsters and adventures, and alas, I will be laying down my medallion and my swords for Season 4,” Cavill wrote. “In my stead, the fantastic Mr. Liam Hemsworth will be taking up the mantle of the White Wolf.”
The first teaser shows Hemsworth’s Geralt, who looks very similar to Cavill’s version, vanquish a ghostly wraith. The logline reads: “After the Continent-altering events of Season 3, Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri find themselves separated by a raging war and countless enemies. As their paths diverge, and their goals sharpen, they stumble on unexpected allies eager to join their journeys. And if they can accept these found families, they just might have a chance at reuniting for good.”
In addition to Hemsworth, the cast includes Anya Chalotra (Yennefer of Vengerberg), Freya Allan (Princess Cirilla of Cintra), Joey Batey (Jaskier), Laurence Fishburne (Regis), Eamon Farren (Cahir), Anna Shaffer (Triss Merigold), Mimî M Khayisa (Fringilla), Cassie Clare (Philippa), Mahesh Jadu (Vilgefortz), Meng’er Zhang (Milva), Graham McTavish (Dijkstra), Royce Pierreson (Istredd), Mecia Simson (Francesca), Sharlto Copley (Leo Bonhart), Danny Woodburn (Zoltan) Jeremy Crawford (Yarpen), Bart Edwards (Emhyr), Hugh Skinner (Radovid), James Purefoy (Skellen), Christelle Elwin (Mistle), Fabian McCallum (Kayleigh), Juliette Alexandra (Reef), Ben Radcliffe (Giselher), Connor Crawford (Asse), Aggy K. Adams (Iskra), Linden Porco (Percival Schuttenbach), Therica Wilson-Read (Sabrina), Rochelle Rose (Margarita), Safiyya Ingar (Keira) and more
As previously announced, Season 4 will be the penultimate season of “The Witcher,” with the series coming to a close after Season 5. The two remaining seasons of the series were shot back to back and have three novels’ worth of material left to cover: “Baptism of Fire,” “The Tower of the Swallow” and “Lady of the Lake.”
“This is the beginning of a two-season journey for our family to finally reunite and be together — hopefully forever,” said creator, showrunner and executive producer Lauren Schmidt Hissrich.
Make it a double. Photo: Lionsgate/Netflix/Everett Collection
Sexy spoilers for The Hunting Wives season one follow.
Psychosexual, violent mind games between wealthy women never have to end. Just one day after we finally got an update on Big Little Lies season three, Netflix renewed The Hunting Wives for a second season. So if you randomly saw lesbians, gay men, and straight women who love mess coming together for a hug today, that’s probably why. Vulture critic Roxana Hadadi called the first season “bawdy, tawdry, and perfectly ludicrous” so it’s no surprise that it was a wild success for Netflix, garnering over 20 million views in the U.S. over five weeks, per the streamer.
Below, the returning cast members and what we know about the next season of The Hunting Wives.
Based on a book by May Cobb, the drama follows Sophie O’Neil (Brittany Snow), a woman who moves to Maple Brook, Texas, after accidentally committing vehicular homicide and becomes obsessed with a woman named Margo (Malin Akerman) and her group of “Hunting Wives.” Spoiler: The two women end up having an affair. That would be enough for most shows, but on this one, there’s also the mystery of a murdered teenage girl to solve. By the end of the season, multiple characters die, Sophie and Margo’s husbands hate them, and they’re at the center of it all, for better and for worse.
Creator Rebecca Cutter will be back for the second season. “I’m so excited to write these amazing characters again, and I can’t wait to take the audience on another sexy, twisted, batshit crazy ride through Maple Brook,” she said in a statement. Cutter will be joined by returning cast members Brittany Snow and Akerman, who gave fans something to nibble on in a season-two promo video. “You know I know what you sound like when you’re breathing on the phone,” Margo says when she catches Sophie mid-crash-out.
Those two leads will get to play with Margo’s former lover (and the one who pegs her husband) Callie, played by Jaime Ray Newman. The returning men are Dermot Mulroney, who plays Margo’s husband, Jed, who is running for governor of Texas; Sophie’s husband, Graham, played by Evan Jonigkeit; and local teenage boy Brad, played by George Ferrier. Which of these six will make it out of season two alive?
Netflix waited three years to put out a second season of Wednesday. We wouldn’t start hunting it down just yet.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Boy meets girl, girl seeks adventure in Paris, then girl’s complicated feelings for said boy ultimately taint her ability to actually enjoy the city of love. That scenario factors into the plot of both The Summer I Turned Pretty’s final season and the newly released Netflix rom-com The Wrong Paris—although this time, our heroines, played by Lola Tung and Miranda Cosgrove respectively, make it to Paris—and get to stay, at least for a while.
On The Summer I Turned Pretty, Belly defers her acceptance to study abroad in Paris for premature marriage with Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). She then comes to her senses, calling off the wedding and moving overseas, where she fights through homesickness and language barriers to build a nice little life for herself. Of course, that independence will soon be interrupted by Belly’s ex Conrad (Christopher Briney), seen buying a plane ticket to Paris in the show’s penultimate episode. But at least she was given the opportunity to test out both versions of her future before making a choice.
That’s also true of The Wrong Paris, a silly rom-com about a Bachelor-esque reality dating show that contestants are led to believe will be filmed in Paris, France, only to learn it’s actually Paris, Texas—population 25,000. Our heroine, Cosgrove’s Dawn, takes the twist in stride, vowing to compete on the show—not for love, but some prize money to fund studying at a Paris art school. “I don’t hate this,” she says of her hometown, “I just hate that this is the only thing I’ve ever known.” Then a cowboy named Trey (Pierson Fode—also, has anyone ever actually met a cowboy named Trey?) and his comically sculpted abs waltz in. “You ain’t gonna find no man like me in Paris,” he drawls, to which she replies: “Yeah, that’s the point.” Surprise, surprise, Dawn and Trey do fall in love and later strike a bicontinental compromise—she’ll finish school, then presumably come back to Texas.
Hepburn and Astaire, near 30 years in age between them, leave Paris as husband-and-wife in Funny Face.LMPC/Getty Images
Paris has long been a place for lovers onscreen. Casablanca (1942) famously ends with Humphrey Bogart’s Rick telling Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa that they’ll always have their time in Paris, even if they can’t end up together. The European city has gotten in the way of a whole lot of love affairs ever since. Perhaps no one was more familiar with this than poor Audrey Hepburn, who starred in six films set in the City of Light throughout the 1950s and ’60s, most of which end with the idea that her lovelorn character would presumably rather return to the United States with a man twice her age than walk along the Seine solo. (Case in point: Hepburn choosing Bogart in 1954’s Sabrina—a frequent reference on TheSummer I Turned Pretty, and then Fred Astaire in 1957’s Funny Face—which has been repeatedly mentioned on Netflix’s Emily in Paris.)
Somewhere along the way, Paris became the go-to plot device standing in between a single woman and her love interest. The city represented female independence and agency—a culturally rich alternative to the happily ever after established in fairy tales.
On ’90s to early aughts TV, Paris became a surefire tactic for injecting drama into long-running “will they or won’t they?” couples. Shannen Doherty’s Brenda flees her dramatic on-again-off-again dynamic with Luke Perry’s Dylan on Beverly Hills, 90210 for a summer study-abroad program. Sarah Jessica Parker’s beret-clad Carrie Bradshaw now famously hurls a McDonald’s “le Big Mac” upon learning that “Big is moving to Paris,” in Sex and the City season two. Then her own Parisian journey with Frenchman Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov) is cut short in the series finale once Big (Chris Noth) shows up to bring her back home. On another hotly anticipated final episode, Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel Green considers moving overseas with her toddler-aged daughter for a fresh start working at Louis Vuitton after years of across-the-hall pining for David Schwimmer’s Ross. But these flights of fancy don’t last long—a brief layover on the way to domesticated bliss right back where they started.
A South African court on Friday rejected an attempt to block the release of a Netflix documentary about a man convicted of rape and murder who faked his own death to escape prison.
Thabo Bester gained global notoriety in 2023 after his arrest in Tanzania, a year after the dramatic escape from a private prison in Bloemfontein.
Authorities had believed that Bester, dubbed the “Facebook Rapist,” had set himself alight in his cell but DNA tests revealed the charred remains belonged to someone else.
Bester and his celebrity doctor partner, Nandipha Magudumana, opposed the three-part “Beauty and the Bester” documentary, arguing it was defamatory and violated their rights to a fair trial.
Judge Sulet Potterill dismissed the application, ruling that they had failed to prove that their petition was urgent, adding that the matter was “firmly in the public domain.”
However, the judge said the pair would still be free to sue for defamation if they wished, after the documentary airs, CBC News partner BBC News reported.
“A defamation claim can be instituted and damages sought. I cannot find in any way that the screening of the utterances they find to make the doctor guilty affects her right to a fair trial,” the judge ruled.
Thabo Bester with co-accused Dr. Nandipha Magudumana, Tebogo James Dipholo and Zolile Sekeleni appear at Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court on August 08, 2023 in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The suspects are facing charges related to aiding and abetting the escape of a prisoner in the Thabo Bester case.
Frikkie Kapp/Gallo Images via Getty Images
Bester had been sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for luring victims on Facebook and then raping and robbing them, killing at least one person. He now faces separate charges, including for his escape.
Doubts about Bester’s death were first raised by local media outlet GroundUp.
Police later opened a fresh murder investigation after an autopsy revealed the body found in Bester’s cell had died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head before it was set ablaze. The body was identified as that of Katlego Bereng Mpholo, according to the BBC.
Before fleeing abroad, Bester and Magudumana were thought to have lived in a villa in an affluent Johannesburg suburb.
The pair were arrested while on the run in the East African state of Tanzania in April 2023 and were deported, according to BBC News.
The film was released hours after Friday’s judgment was delivered.
The upcoming season of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime, Steel Ball Run, is set to stream worldwide on Netflix. The announcement came alongside a press release to celebrate the streaming platform’s tenth anniversary in Japan, Deadline reported.
The anime series, based on Hirohiko Araki’s manga, follows the Joestar family’s bloodline across generations as they face a variety of eccentric foes, including the time-rewinding Dio Brando. This series’ core gimmick features heroes and villains alike utilizing powerful ghosts called Stands, each of which are named after contemporary pop culture bands, and all of which posess unique elemental abilities. It’s a lot, and true to its name, it is bizarre.
It is also wildly poopular. Since its premiere in 1987, it has sold more than 120 million copies total as a series in manga anthology Weekly Shonen Jump. The manga’s art has been exhibited in the Louvre, and there have even been collabs with major fashion brands like Gucci.
Steel Ball Run, set in 1890s America, follows two horseback racers: Johnny Joestar, a paraplegic ex-jockey, and his newfound friend, Gyro Zeppeli, an enigmatic former Neapolitan executioner with the power to manipulate steel balls. After Zeppeli briefly restores Johnny’s ability to walk, he steels himself to join Zeppeli in a cross-country horse race from San Diego to New York to compete for a $50 million prize.
Said race is less Wacky Races and more akin to the 1975 cult classic film, Death Race 2000, as it sees other jockeys kitted out with special Stand powers of their own, adding to the grueling and dangerous nature of their already harrowing race.
The anime’s staff includes the following:
“Steel Ball Run is a story that depicts characters running through a grand race, staking their own beliefs,” director Yasuhiro Kimura said in a statement provided to Deadline. “My heart is pounding with excitement to be entrusted with directing this anime adaptation. The entire staff shares this feeling and is pouring their passion into daily production. I look forward to sharing our enthusiasm for this work with all of you and hope we can ride this journey together.”
As of now, Steel Ball Run doesn’t have a release date, but animation studio David Production will unveil more information on a global livestream on September 23.
Here’s the Teaser Art for STEEL BALL RUN JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, based on the manga by Hirohiko Araki!
Steel Ball Run is the seventh arc in Araki’s ongoing manga series, which was serialized from 2004 to 2011 by Shueisha. The series heralded a new continuity for the manga, which continued in its subsequent arcs, JoJolion and its current arc, JoJoLands. Among diehard fans, Steel Ball Run stands out as a universal favorite in the JoJo saga.
While JJBA being on Netflix isn’t entirely new, it may cause flashbacks for anime fans still upset by its treatment of the anime’s previous arc, Stone Ocean.
Before the series exclusively made its way to Netflix, fans treated the weekly episodic release of the series’ fifth arc, Golden Wind, as an online day of celebration dubbed “JoJo Fridays.” On JoJo Fridays, fans shared new fan art and engaged in virtual water cooler conversations about each episode’s villain of the week, their bizarre, pop music song-referential superpowers, and theorized how the show’s heroes would eek out victories.
By contrast, Netflix’s batch release of Stone Ocean‘s episodes, which the streamer failed to advertise, meant some fans didn’t know the show had more episodes to watch. Stone Ocean‘s three-part batched episode releases were basically shadow-dropped as far as fans were concerned, ending JoJo Fridays and leading some to miss the show’s conclusion.
Netflix could now go with a weekly release treatment, as they did with popular shows like Dan Da Dan, but fans will have to wait and see what happens to Steel Ball Run.
In August of 2024, Netflix announced an upcoming docuseries starring Victoria Beckham. One year later, the project is finally seeing the light of day. Victoria Beckham will hit the streamer September 10, a release date announced on Instagram with a never-before-seen portrait of the designer.
Directed by the producers of the 2024 Beckham series and Nadia Hallgren (of Becoming, the documentary on Michelle Obama), the series will follow Victoria as she splits her time between family life and work during Fashion Week. Netflix cameras were on hand last September as she organized her Paris fashion show.
Instagram content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Like the streamer’s earlier Beckham series—which retraced the soccer career of her husband, David Beckham—this new production adopts an intimate format. But it’s reportedly focused more on Victoria’s current life and her career in the fashion industry. As the head of a genuine fashion empire, the former Spice Girl is opening the doors of her studio to tell her own story for the very first time.
It’s been a particularly busy year for the Briton, with the expansion of her Victoria Beckham Beauty line, David Beckham’s knighthood, receiving the Harper’s Bazaar Entrepreneur of the Year award, and more. The documentary may also revisit rumors of family tensions, particularly with their son Brooklyn, who reportedly has had a strained relationship with his parents in recent months.
During a chat on the official Wednesday podcast—or rather, woecast—Nevermore newcomer Evie Templeton discussed Agnes coming into her own after being an unhinged stalker fan of Netflix’s favorite Addams.
After Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) lays into her at the end of the second season of the Tim Burton show, seemingly to push her to be herself in the meanest way possible, Agnes gets gutted emotionally in a way that could have been a villain origin but goes in a surprisingly positive direction.
“I think the important message in this episode is that it’s okay to stand out and it’s okay to be yourself and being yourself is the best version of yourself that you can be, it’s okay to stand in your individuality,” she said of the moment Wednesday stopped the pick-me energy dead in its tracks. “I think it’s just a moment of pure devastation. I mean, all of her efforts have really led to nothing and she’s tried so hard and put so much into this that it’s really just a moment of pure heartbreak; to be told by her idol that she’s failed and that she’s not good enough is really heart-wrenching for her.”
She noted, “I think it also acts as quite a pivotal moment because after this she sort of embraces her own individuality and she breaks out of her braids”—meaning the copycat hairstyle that made her look more like Wendy’s mascot than her idol.
Templeton’s hopes for Wednesday’s stalker-turned-crime-solving partner lie in her becoming friends with Enid (Emma Myers) instead of seeing her as competition. “Well, I think they have a lot in common. They both admire Wednesday so much, and I think they can both also recognize that beneath Wednesday’s stern, stony exterior that she has a lot of compassion inside, and she’s a very loyal friend.”
The new friendship gets solidified with their showstopping performance to Lady Gaga’s “The Dead Dance” at the gala.
“I think it’s in the moment where she’s obviously in her beautiful green dress, and she’s got her new hairstyle, that she sort of realizes that [Enid’s] be-your-own-psycho advice has really impacted her in the best way possible, and I think that’s a really important message, especially for my generation, to not feel like you have to conform, and to understand that you can break out of the mold and be yourself, and not to feel pressured into being what everyone else thinks you should be.”
Templeton continued to sing her dance partner’s praises, which is a great place for an Enid and Agnes team-up to start. “Emma is the sweetest girl. She’s so, so nice. I mean, we have a lot in common, which was great. That [Gaga dance sequence] was something that kind of connected us from the beginning.”
She hopes it solidifies Agnes’ place in the friend group as their invisibility-powered partner in mystery solving. “I really want to see that trio dynamic. I’d like to see how that progresses, like the Three Musketeers.”
David Ellison is positioning himself as Hollywood’s newest power broker, with his family preparing a bid that could put Paramount and Warner Bros. under one roof. Jason Mendez/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
For years, whispers have percolated around a potential merger or acquisition between Warner Bros. and Paramount (now under Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance, respectively). The tenor of these conversations just rose an octave thanks to reports of the Ellison family preparing for a formal bid. Will this be legacy studios’ best and last chance of creating a real rival to Netflix and YouTube? Or is it simply another experiment that stock-conscious executives hatched? Either way, such a deal would face enormous financial and creative challenges while also holding the potential to transform Hollywood.
Growing a content library for the sake of volume without any consideration for audience fit is like trying to explain the third act of Tenet to your grandmother—it’s just not going to make sense. But on paper, a combined entity would be armed to the teeth with top-notch brands and talents.
A WBD-Paramount merger would trigger an intellectual property field day with DC, Harry Potter,Game of Thrones, Dune, Lord of the Rings, The Conjuring, Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, Transformers, Sonic, A Quiet Place and Star Trek under the same corporate parent. Cartoon Network, which the current WBD leadership downsized, might live once more alongside Nickelodeon as an irresistible one-two punch in kids media (or get sold off). Imagine no longer fretting about your overall TV slate because proven hitmakers Chuck Lorre, Taylor Sheridan and Bill Lawrence all work in-house on existing deals.
“The real test would be creative and product-market fit,” Steve Morris, founder and CEO of digital marketing agency New Media, told Observer.
Theatrical stakes
As of this writing, Warner Bros. accounts for 28 percent of the domestic box office market share while Paramount sits at 6.6 percent. This varies year-to-year, though. Since 2021, Paramount has enjoyed fewer tentpole peaks (Top Gun: Maverick notwithstanding) but delivered steadier conversion of awareness to theatrical intent on a film-by-film basis by opening week, according to Greenlight Analytics, where I work as Director of Insights & Content Strategy. WB’s slate has proven streakier in pre-release tracking, but its impressive highs in awareness, interest and theatrical intent tend to best Paramount’s.
Warner Bros. targets 12 to 14 theatrical releases annually, while Paramount wants to ramp up to 15 to 20 per year. A merger will almost assuredly reduce total output. 20th Century Fox released an average of 14 annual movies theatrically between 2015 and 2019. That number has dropped to around four under The Walt Disney Company’s ownership. Reducing the number of legacy movie studios again at a time when Big Tech grows stronger in entertainment by the day might cause a full-blown panic throughout the industry.
Consolidation of this magnitude usually leads to greater franchise dependency, squeezing out mid-budget and indie fare in the process. In turn, this results in less consistent volume for movie theaters (already a problem), less leverage for talent at the negotiating table, and a race toward the middle in terms of creative programming. Not fun.
Small-screen realities
WBD and Paramount collectively accounted for just over 13 percent of total U.S. TV usage (broadcast, cable, streaming) in July, trailing only YouTube, according to Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge. If we examine combined streaming catalog demand shares, which account for all original and licensed films/TV series on-platform, in the U.S. across 2024, we get a No. 1 ranking at 23.4 percent, according to Parrot Analytics. Even accounting for overlap across both services, the combined customers of WBD (122.3 million worldwide streaming subscribers between HBO Max and Discovery+) and Paramount+ (79 million) would pack a punch.
But WBD thought volume alone would close the gap with Netflix when it smushed together Max and Discovery+. Look at how that turned out. And while select content across Warners and Paramount commands high demand, a potential combo platter wouldn’t necessarily move the engagement needle immediately.
Unlocking the full value of the combined content catalog would require a complete overhaul of the streaming user interface and experience, an endeavor that’s as costly as it is timely. In the 2020s, with subscription fatigue already gnawing at quarterly earnings and FAST growing faster than SVOD, would both leadership and shareholders really have the patience for such an undertaking?
Talent and brand tensions
As kid-in-a-candy-store exciting as it would be for content executives to have so much franchise power and top-tier talent at their disposal, the logistical nightmare of balancing so many high-profile spinning plates boggles the mind. The Ellisons may have deep pockets, but funding always remains finite in Hollywood. Leadership would need to decide how to split the pie between, say, competing talent deals such as Tom Cruise and Timothee Chalamet (WBD) versus Will Smith and the Duffer Brothers (Paramount). How would you like to be the executive tasked with explaining to the talent why one slice is smaller than the other?
No matter which way you cut it, certain talents and brands would inevitably feel shortchanged compared to others. In a town built on egos, you might as well strike a match next to a powder keg. It’s a good problem to have, but the abundance of choice doesn’t guarantee strong strategy and execution.
Speaking generally about media mergers, Comscore Senior Media Analyst Paul Dergarabedian zeroed in on the brand issue. “Do they get diluted, spun off, marginalized, or are they exploited well to get the best results? That’s got to be part of the equation,” he told Observer.
Regulatory and financial hurdles
The list of reasons why any such deal can’t or won’t happen runs equally long as why it will. The DOJ and FTC emphasize even greater scrutiny on major M&A these days. Governing bodies would almost assuredly require divestitures, especially if a deal happened before WBD officially split off its cable assets. Some percentage of linear networks on both sides would have to go. It’s hard to see CNN existing alongside CBS News, for example. Even after jettisoning TV channels, both companies would still suffer from over-exposure to the rapidly declining linear TV business. Good luck trying to explain those numbers to angry shareholders.
WBD’s streaming division profits in part because it includes linear HBO revenues. Meanwhile, Paramount’s streaming business still wasn’t consistently profitable at the time of the sale to Skydance. On top of all that, both companies are saddled with considerable debt at the moment. It’s highly possible that any potential deal is more trouble than it’s worth.
Any combination of Paramount and Warner Bros. would yield a content slate exploding with blockbuster firepower. The new company (I’m going to start saying WarnerMount from now on) would snatch the franchise crown straight from Mickey Mouse’s head as it fed its streaming and theatrical furnace a steady diet of dynamite. But creative, regulatory, technological and financial challenges rightfully threaten to cloud the starry eyes of ambitious CEOs. (I’d love to see what the Skydance team can do with Paramount on its own).
Mergers and acquisitions have not proven to be the silver bullet Hollywood hoped they would be over the last 20 years. Would Warners and Paramount be any different? Perhaps. But more often than not, this tactic has been more exposing than helpful.
Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters is a smash hit, and my theory is that it’s secretly a prequel to the 1983 cult animated classic Rock & Rule.
Odds are, you’ve at least heard of K-Pop Demon Hunters by now. The animated film is the most popular movie ever to appear on Netflix, with over 200 millions views worldwide. My teenager has been singing “Golden” on a loop for weeks and finally convinced us to watch the movie as part of our weekly family movie night.
Watching it was delightful, but I was immediately struck by how much it reminded me of Nelvana’s famous flop Rock & Rule.
In K-Pop Demon Hunters, three pop stars are responsible for hunting demons while also managing their music careers. The songs aren’t just their day job. These three women are specially trained and chosen to use their voices to strengthen a magical barrier called the Honmoon that keeps the demon king Gwi-ma from entering Earth. Over generations, various teams have sung in groups to make barrier impenetrable. The film ends with the girls finally succeeding.
Rock & Rule takes place in a far distant future Earth where humans are no longer present and the dominant forms of life are anthropomorphic versions of our pets like dogs, cats, and rats. However, the human world hasn’t been forgotten. There are references to the old world everywhere, such as Nuke York being an homage to the human city of New York.
In Rock & Rule, a nihilistic rock star named Mok is determined to unleash a demon on the world. He discovers that the only way to let the demon in is with the voice of Angel, a pop singer. Mok captures her and forces her to sing in his ritual, unleashing a demon on a his crowd of fans, until her boyfriend, Omar, shows up to sing it back into hell with their harmonies. Skip ahead to 1:07 to see the scene.
My theory is that after Gwi-ma was sealed away, only basic maintenance of the Honmoon was necessary. Future demon hunters no longer had to launch massive pop careers to hold the demon world at bay, especially when the demons started to starve from lack of souls from the human world.
Fast forward to the world of Rock & Rule. We know that there are records from the human world, and somehow Mok rediscovers the existence of Gwi-ma and his awesome power. Mok knows that music is a key ingredient to demonic access to Earth, so he begins searching for another voice to break the barrier.
His information is fragmentary, though. He doesn’t understand the necessity of harmonies, which is why his detector technology doesn’t register two voices as a threat when both Angel and Omar are singing.
Meanwhile, Gwi-ma has been imprisoned and starving for eons. When Mok breaks the Honmoon using Angel’s solo voice, Gwi-ma is no longer the erudite and smooth demon king. He’s become a ravenous monster that immediately starts eating people.
The Honmoon is still there, though, just fractured. When Angel and Omar sing together in front of millions of fans, it repairs the breech enough to send Gwi-ma back to the demon world.
None of this was likely intentional on the part of the maker’s of K-pop Demon Hunters. There’s no indication that they’ve ever even heard of Rock & Rule, but the lore slots in so perfectly that it’s worth mentioning.
“The Girlfriend” premieres on Prime Video Wednesday Credit: Christopher Raphael/Courtesy of Amazon Studios
Premieres Wednesday:
AKA Charlie Sheen — Now that Bookie has been canceled, Mr. Winning has to fall back on a docuseries that chronicles his amazing career and extensively reported personal troubles. Listen, Charlie, we’ve moved on. Unless you’re planning on hang-gliding into the Taylor/Travis wedding, we’re just not interested anymore. (Netflix)
The Dead Girls — Learn the shocking story of Mexico’s Baladro Sisters, whose day job running a successful bordello was a front for their nefarious activities as serial killers. Ah, Mexico: where running a cathouse qualifies as a respectable cover. (Netflix)
The Girlfriend — The potential for psychodrama is off the charts when an upscale mom (Robin Wright) meets her son’s new squeeze (Olivia Cooke) and decides the girl might not be on the up-and-up. Yeah, that’s what they thought about Michelle Carter, but what a catch she turned out to be. (Prime Video)
Love Is Blind Brazil — Season 5 features contestants who are all over 50 years old. Even more amazing, none of them is in prison for trying to overturn a free and fair election. (Netflix)
Love Is Blind France — Meanwhile, the land of baguettes and ennui becomes the 11th territory to get its own Love Is Blind franchise. Like the flagship American version, it’s hosted by a real-life celebrity couple — in this case, judo champion Teddy Riner and his wife, Luthna Plocus, a … a … well, someone who appears to be Teddy Riner’s wife. Gotta love that European progressivism! (Netflix)
Tempest — The safety of the Korean peninsula depends upon an alliance between a South Korean diplomat and a special agent of indeterminate national origin. Given that the character’s name is Baek San-ho and he’s portrayed by Gang Dong-won, I think we can rule out Dutch. (Hulu)
Carla Sehn as Amanda in “Diary of a Ditched Girl” Credit: Carolina Romare/Courtesy of Netflix
Premieres Thursday:
Diary of a Ditched Girl — Can a Swedish woman finally find true romance, despite having been dumped by half the population of Malmö? I know that sounds bad, but you need to understand that Malmö is only the third-largest city in that country. Heck, they don’t even have room to house everybody in Ghost. (Netflix)
Dylan’s Playtime Adventures Season 1C — New installments further the stripy animated dog’s habit of pursuing a new career in every episode. Just remember you let your kids grow up on this when you one day want to lambaste them for their lack of focus. (HBO Max)
Kontrabida Academy — A Filipina restaurant worker embarks on a journey of self-actualization when she receives lessons in assertiveness from some of TV’s top villains. See, I knew Jim Cramer could find a good side hustle if he really applied himself. (Netflix)
Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black — As Season 2 commences, former stripper Kimmie has assumed control of Bellarie Cosmetics — which is going to require a lot of adjustment on the part of the Bellarie family, who naturally assumed they had dibs based on name alone. Honestly, that’s nothing compared to the catfight Bob and Frisch are having over Big Boy. (Netflix)
Wolf King — Season 2 is the swan song for Drew, whose responsibilities as the last king of the werewolves include picking a suitable queen. I’d say the hardest part is getting the friendship bracelet to her before the show, but it would just look like I have Tay-Tay on the brain. (Netflix)
Premieres Friday:
Beauty and the Bester — Explore the twisted relationship between South African rapist-murderer Thabo Bester and celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana, who’s accused of helping him escape from prison. Gosh, so much romance this week. And to think Half-Valentine’s Day was last month. (Netflix)
Maledictions — An Argentinian politician is determined to find his missing daughter, even if it means exposing some dark secrets that could end his career. And if that doesn’t impress you, Ted Cruz’s kids are lucky he even tells them when he’s going on vacation. (Netflix)
Ratu Ratu Queens: The Series — Four Indonesian women make a new life for themselves as New Yorkers in a series that’s a prequel to the 2021 film Ali & Ratu Ratu Queens. What do you mean you don’t remember it? Girl, you’re such a Chinta! (Netflix)
The Wrong Paris — Miranda Cosgrove plays a contestant on a dating show who thought she was being sent to Paris, France, but ended up in Paris, Texas, instead. As a consolation prize, she may get swept off her feet by a charismatic cowboy anyway. Silly Miranda! That isn’t a cowboy. That’s Wim Wenders! (Netflix)
You and Everything Else — Female bonding is the leitmotif of a K-drama that charts the ups and downs of a best friendship over the decades. The final challenge is when one of the women has to be present for the other on her deathbed. That’s commitment all right, but it has its perks if you’ve had your eyes on a silverware setting. (Netflix)
Premieres Saturday:
Canelo Álvarez vs. Terence Crawford — This battle for the super middleweight belt pits reigning champion Alvarez against the upwardly mobile Crawford, a former welterweight who put on enough pounds last year to land himself in an entirely new classification. Wow, you too, huh? (Netflix)
Premieres Monday:
Futurama — Unlike seasons 11 and 12, which followed a release schedule of one episode per week, Season 13 of Matt Groening’s beloved 31st-century comedy is dumping all of its content at once, in one fell swoop. Sounds like somebody’s heard something about the future we’d rather not know about. (Hulu)
Premieres Tuesday:
Love Island Games — Season 2 sees Maya Jama being replaced as host by Ariana Madix, who’s now doing double duty as the presenting face of Love Island USA. Next up: a Kennedy Center honor! (Peacock)
Rebel Royals: An Unlikely Love Story — And to wrap up a week of upside-down courtships, here’s a juicy inquest into the controversial marriage of Norwegian princess Märtha Louise and African American shaman/con artist Durek Verrett — who, among his other questionable statements, has claimed he can rid women’s vaginas of evil spirits. Seriously, and Meghan Markle thinks we want to watch her bake bread. (Netflix)
If you haven’t yet, you can also refresh your memory on seasons one and two!
The Battle of Starcourt is the all-time event in the series so far as a red threat rises in the sleepy town of Hawkins. The Duffer Brothers’ show really fires on all cylinders in season three, which, in our opinion, is the best season of the Netflix franchise so far. It’s a true television epic with engaging character dynamics and the Upside Down lore growing more mysteriously intriguing.
Here’s what you need to remember from the season where the kids started to come of age—and faced both teen horrors and real-life ones.
After El (Millie Bobby Brown) sealed the rift to the Upside Down in season two, the bit of the Mind Flayer that left Will (Noah Schnapp) survived. To get back to its full powers in the real world, it picks Billy (Dacre Montgomery) as a host and sets about trying to absorb new lives. The more people it claims, the bigger it grows, harnessing the sliver of energy emanating from the healing rift—which might not be able to fully close now thanks to some new suspicious activity.
There’s a new threat in town
After a blackout, Joyce (Winona Ryder) notices that suddenly all the town’s magnets no longer work. Sure, it’s a small thing but call it mother’s intuition and PTSD from everything that went down in Hawkins National Laboratory; it is enough for her to tell Hopper that something is amiss. Initially she thinks it’s HNL but Hopper (David Harbour) swears he ran them out of town.
Steve and the Scoops Troop
Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is still hanging around Steve (Joe Keery) while he works at the new Starcourt Mall Scoops Ahoy location. While there, Steve parents the rest of the gang from behind the counter with the help of free ice cream. When Dustin uses his radio to communicate with his long-distance camp sweetheart, he discovers a series of suspicious Russian calls and records them. He enlists Steve and his co-worker Robin (Maya Hawke) to translate, which leads to the discovery that the Russians have infiltrated their town.
When a series of rat infestations draw enough suspicion, Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) investigate the mysterious disease that they’re carrying. The rats are drawn to eating chemicals, including fertilizer, and after eating enough of it, the critters burst into sentient goo, which also infects the living. As Nance and Jonathan follow an old lady, who becomes part of the Mind Flayer hive horde, they discover that more and more people are going missing after feasting on household chemicals.
Starcourt Mall secrets
Hopper beats the truth out of Mayor Kline (Cary Elwes), who confesses that he helped broker the sale of land to the Russians that Starcourt Mall was built on as well as land around the lake next to HNL. After investigating the abandoned lab, he and Joyce kidnap Dr. Alexei (Alec Utgoff) and take him to an off-the-grid Murray (Bret Gelman), who happens to know Russian, in order to find out just what the Russians want with Hawkins.
Meanwhile, Dustin, with the help of Steve, Robin, and Lucas’ little sister Erica (Priah Ferguson), breaks into the high-security base beneath the mall. They find that the Russians are powering an energy beam to rip the rift to the Upside Down open again but before they can escape, they’re caught.
The Mindflayer feasts on Hawkins
Billy lures more and more people to melt into the sentient goo that helps the Mind Flayer be reborn. It’s a hive mind that Will begins to sense through the part of him that still has a connection to it. He lets the gang know that “he” is back once enough people have been taken over.
This season’s personal drama between every character really heightens the tension of the imminent danger. The season starts out with El and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) being teens in love, much to the consternation of Hop, who is an overprotective dad. Joyce tries to help Hopper establish boundaries out of the love he has for his daughter but it kind of blows up before he can, and Hopper threatens Mike into cooling his relationship with El. In response, El knows something is up and breaks up with Mike but gets to find her agency through her friendship with Max (Sadie Sink).
Hopper’s anger issues give his character a weird vibe this season. For one thing, he’s really bent on getting Joyce to go to dinner with him soon after Bob’s death and gets really drunk when she stands him up. Then for the rest of the season, he is inexplicably jealous when she talks to any other guy. It’s mostly played for laughs since Joyce and Hopper are a very obvious endgame. Joyce redirects his frustrations by getting him to help with the Russians, namely by beating up the Russian Temu Terminator, who’s on their trail.
Jonathan and Nancy also get their own relationship drama to work through. When they’re both interning at the Hawkins Post, Jonathan gets a taste of male privilege as he immediately gets work as a photographer, while Nancy gets stuck on coffee duty. Likewise, Max and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) are also sort of going through it too as they help El and Mike by picking sides.
The Russians do a Red Dawn
All the pieces come together when it becomes clear that the Russians want to use their key to gain access to the Upside Down, while not knowing they’re aiding the Mind Flayer’s growth as it tries to wipe out the town. Joyce and Hopper join forces with Alexei to help stop it and when they team up with the kids, they get guided into the base below Starcourt.
Meanwhile, the Mind Flayer starts to target El to destroy her and absorb her powers. It remembers what she did and, through Billy, tells her it wants to destroy everything she loves and then kill her. She uses so much of her powers when it attacks them that it zaps her. The Mind Flayer cannot be destroyed as long as the rift isn’t fully sealed so her friends team up for a last stand at Starcourt, which involves fireworks and El tapping into her empathy to get Billy on their side. After seeing his memories, she reminds him of his love for his mother and not the darkness that made him vulnerable to the Mind Flayer, which seems to target the weak and fearful for power. Billy protects El as Joyce and Hopper stop the Russians’ key.
Hopper’s sacrifice
The Temu Terminator shows up as Joyce and Hopper try to stop the key. He and Hopper face off right by the beam, which goes haywire when it’s struck in the fistfight. Hopper looks at Joyce to let her know to let him sacrifice himself in order to save the town.
Three months later Joyce and the kids, including El, are preparing to move away and break up the Hawkins gang. Eleven finds Hopper’s letter he meant to read to her and Mike as a sendoff to the character. But it’s not much of one, as the end credits scene introduces us to another base in Russia where prisoners are being pitted against Demogorgons and “the American” isn’t chosen… yet.
Living, talking, disembodied heads in jars bring the perfect amount of ghoulish mirth to any given project—just ask Futurama. But rarely has the idea been executed with more advanced skill than in season two of Wednesday. In a new behind-the-scenes video, the VFX whizzes at Scanline VFX and Eyeline Studios walk us through the creation of Professor Orloff, a character that comes to vivid life thanks to actor Christopher Lloyd and some very cutting-edge technology.
Casting Lloyd—who played Uncle Fester in 1991’s The Addams Family and 1993’s Addams Family Values—offers a clever nod to his long-standing ties with the franchise, and you can see in the video how game he was to record his performance as Professor Orloff in such an unconventional way.
As Scanline VFX’s Derek Spears explains, Wednesday VFX supervisor Tom Turnbull was impressed with the studio’s disembodied-head work on Netflix’s One Piece. From there, Eyeline Studios’ “volumetric capture technology” became an integral part of the process, according to Eyeline’s Nhat Phong Tran.
The technology, which uses many cameras in a unique setup, was able to record Lloyd’s performance from all different angles while also showing him the already-shot scene he was a part of. That way, he could properly calibrate his reactions and know just where to direct his gaze. Then, Wednesday creators used lighting and further special effects (like all those water bubbles) to situate Professor Orloff in Burton’s world alongside Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday and her classmates, even if he never actually went to the set or interacted with any other actors.
Watch the video and marvel at how they pulled it off, making Orloff feel like a seamlessly integrated, realistically (if fantastically) rendered character rather than just a special effect.
Regrets, he has a few, Guillermo del Toro told the Toronto Film Festival on Sunday night. The good thing, though, those regrets are creative fodder for the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s next movies. “I’m 60 now. So I’ve gone from asking who I am as a father and son to regret. I’m in the regret decade. Expect a lot of regret,” the horrormeister said during a Q&A after a North American premiere of Frankenstein at the Royal Alexandra Theater in Toronto.
Speaking specifically about adapting Mary Shelley’s classic 1818 gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus — with Dr. Frankenstein played by Oscar Isaac in the adaptation and Jacob Elordi the creature he gives birth to — del Toro said he aimed to craft a story about father and son issues. Then he eventually realized his narrative included his own experiences as both a son and a father.
“I had to realize that, in the course of being a son, I became a father. And then it became about me as a father too,” del Toro told the TIFF premiere audience about the movie he directed from his own screenplay.
Guillermo del Toro and Oscar Isaac on the set of Frankenstein
Ken Woroner/Netflix
Wider themes the director also discussed included “what does it mean to be human in a time of inhumanity, war and in a moment of doubt as a race. That was true back then, and it’s true right now,” he added about the contrast between Shelley in her Romantic-era novel questioning scientific ethics and alienation after the Enlightenment, and our own tumultuous time of rapid economic and climate change.
“The Romantics were reacting with emotion after the Age of Enlightenment. They were basically punks, they were iconoclastic and broke the rules of society,” he argued. “We are there again. Emotion is the new punk. Emotion, we’re afraid of showing it. We’re afraid of seeing it. We’re in such a state of separation within ourselves. That’s the only thing that will save us, to have empathy and emotion,” del Toro added.
Having completed his latest gothic epic, del Toro teased his next projects. “This sort of closes a huge episode in my life,” he said of completing Frankenstein, a passion project that had been virtually a lifetime in the making.
Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein in “Frankenstein” directed by Guillermo del Toro.
Ken Woroner/Netflix
His creative slate includes Fury, an upcoming feature reuniting him with Isaac that appears to center on a murderous dinner where guests get popped off between courses. “It’s going back to the thriller aspects of Nightmare Alley. It’s very cruel, very violent,” del Toro warned. The veteran of creature features is also at work on an “epic” stop-motion movie.
After its tour of the festival circuit, Frankenstein is headed for a limited theatrical release on Oct. 17. The feature, which also stars Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, David Bradley, Christian Convery, Charles Dance and Christoph Waltz,will then head to streaming, getting a global bow by Netflix on Nov. 7.
The Toronto Film Festival continues through to Sept. 14.
Love Con Revenge chronicles the crimes of different people who were swinddled by people who they thought were the love of their lives. One of those people included Bridget Philips, who had been conned for over thousands of dollars by a person she deeply trusted.
Bridget Philips met Ricky Morissey on a dating app, and he confessed to her that he served in the military for 10 years and had a dog named Zeus. The veteran claimed he had lost a close friend, Clarence Williams, in Afghanistan, and told Philips that he had been suffering from PTSD. The couple moved fast with their relationship and they moved in together.
Things took a turn when Philips noticed that she was in a lot of debt after not spending any money. He also manipulated her to help him give money to his late-close friend’s family, to help them through troubled times. She suspected that Morissey took her money away, but he constantly denied doing so. Philips ended up kicking Morissey out of her house, but realized that more money has been withdrawn from her account. After investigating with Cecilie Fjellhøy, she found out that he had barely known Clarence Williams, only served in the military for three years, and that he never had a dog.
The trio, which included private investigator Brianne Joseph, tracked Morissey in Massachussetts after another woman Jeannie O’Donnell revealed she had also given Ricky thousands of dollars and felt swindled. Philips called the police to get involved, and Morrisey was ultimately arrested.
Where is Ricky Morrisey now?
On Sept. 5, 2025 Ricky Morrisey was sentenced to 3 years in prison, according to Rhode Island court records. In 2023, he was found guilty of 3 counts of Larceny, Access to Computer for Fraudulent Purposes, and Fraudulent use of Credit Card.
Meanwhile, Philips currently lives in the house she once shared with Morrisey. She recently gave birth to a baby she had with her current partner Spencer Salvas in August 2025.
Knives Out movies seem to come into our lives at times when we didn’t even know we needed them. Rian Johnson’s original 2019 film was for many (myself included) one of the last great theatrical experiences before the pandemic, bringing us a twisty mystery and a delicious villain turn from Chris Evans. 2022’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery immortalized a lot of the weirdness of those early pandemic years, with a new star-studded cast and plenty of jokes at Jared Leto’s expense.
Now, it looks like the saga’s third film, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, will be bringing an entirely new energy into our lives. On Monday morning, Netflix released the first teaser trailer for the film, just days after its premiere (and rave reviews) at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The teaser for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery not only showcases Daniel Craig’s now-beloved turn as Detective Benoit Blanc, but some of the ensemble that will be joining him, including Glenn Close, Josh O’Connor, Andrew Scott, and Thomas Hayden Church. Jeremy Renner is also part of the fray, which does raise some questions given how heavily his fictional brand of hot sauce factored into Glass Onion, but I trust that Johnson will handle that conundrum in a fun way.
A Most Dangerous Game?
Perhaps most importantly, the trailer clues us into the mystery that will bring Blanc into the events of Wake Up Dead Man. On the surface, it appears to be the sudden and inexplainable death of Josh Brolin’s Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, after he walked into a (in Blanc’s words) “sealed concrete box” and was found dead mere seconds later. While there will surely be layers upon layers to this investigation, the early glimpses of it in the trailer immediately made me think of the monastery sequence in The Last of Sheila, the 1973 film that Johnson repeatedly cited as a major source of inspiration for Glass Onion.
According to Netflix’s official description for Wake Up Dead Man, “Benoit Blanc (Craig) returns for his most dangerous case yet in the third and darkest chapter of Rian Johnson’s murder mystery opus. When young priest Jud Duplenticy (O’Connor) is sent to assist charismatic firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), it’s clear that all is not well in the pews. Wicks’ modest-but-devoted flock includes devout church lady Martha Delacroix (Close), circumspect groundskeeper Samson Holt (Church), tightly-wound lawyer Vera Draven, Esq. (Washington), aspiring politician Cy Draven (McCormack), town doctor Nat Sharp (Renner), best-selling author Lee Ross (Scott) and concert cellist Simone Vivane (Spaeny). After a sudden and seemingly impossible murder rocks the town, the lack of an obvious suspect prompts local police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) to join forces with renowned detective Benoit Blanc to unravel a mystery that defies all logic.”
Johnson wrote and directed Wake Up Dead Man, and produces the film alongside Ram Bergman and Katie McNeill. While it is the second of two Knives Out sequels greenlit under Netflix so far, both Johnson and Craig have indicated that they would love to make more films.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery will debut in select theaters on Wednesday, November 26th, before premiering on Netflix on Friday, December 12.
Jenna Anderson is the host of the Go Read Some Comics YouTube channel, as well as one of the hosts of the Phase Hero podcast. She has been writing professionally since 2017, but has been loving pop culture (and especially superhero comics) for her entire life. You can usually find her drinking a large iced coffee from Dunkin and talking about comics, female characters, and Taylor Swift at any given opportunity.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery centers on detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) attempting to figure out his most dangerous case yet. The first trailer (below) teases the mysterious death of a charming priest.
“To understand this case, you need to look at the myth that’s being constructed,” Craig says in the footage. “A man gives a sermon. He then, in plain sight of everyone, walks into a sealed concrete box. Thirty seconds later, that man is lying dead. A classic, impossible crime.”
Johnson helmed the movie from his own script. The filmmaker produced the project alongside Ram Bergman.
Here’s the logline: “Benoit Blanc (Craig) returns for his most dangerous case yet in the third and darkest chapter of Rian Johnson’s murder mystery opus. When young priest Jud Duplenticy (O’Connor) is sent to assist charismatic firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), it’s clear that all is not well in the pews. Wicks’ modest-but-devoted flock includes devout church lady Martha Delacroix (Close), circumspect groundskeeper Samson Holt (Church), tightly-wound lawyer Vera Draven, Esq. (Washington), aspiring politician Cy Draven (McCormack), town doctor Nat Sharp (Renner), best-selling author Lee Ross (Scott) and concert cellist Simone Vivane (Spaeny). After a sudden and seemingly impossible murder rocks the town, the lack of an obvious suspect prompts local police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) to join forces with renowned detective Benoit Blanc to unravel a mystery that defies all logic.”
The franchise kicked off with the original Knives Out, which Lionsgate released theatrically in 2019. Not quite two years later, Netflix bought the exclusive rights to a pair of sequels, with the first follow-up — Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery — launching in late 2022.
In his review of Wake Up Dead Man for The Hollywood Reporter, chief film critic David Rooney praised the film’s “considerable plus of Josh O’Connor as a former boxer turned priest who becomes both a murder suspect and a Watson to Benoit Blanc’s Sherlock Holmes.”
See more first-look photos, below.
Andrew Scott, Jeremy Renner, Cailee Spaeny, Kerry Washington, Thomas Haden Church, Glenn Close, Kerry Washington and Daryl McCormack.
The second season of Netflix’s Wednesdaycame to a close earlier this week, and with season three on the way, creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have just one objective: “Make it the best season of [the show] we possibly can, and continue digging deeper into our characters,” according to Millar.
In a recent Tudum blog, the duo teased some things viewers can expect the third time around. While keeping mum on spoilers, they told audiences to examine season two’s final episode, which lays “a nice breadcrumb that leads audiences to wonder…what the new adventure for Wednesday will be.” Things ended with Nevermore Academy shut down, giving Wednesday the freedom to go with with Fester and Thing to find Enid up north. But finding her missing ahem, friend isn’t the only thing she’ll have to contend with: in the episode’s final moments, Wednesday’s maternal aunt Ophelia, who she previously had a vision about, used her blood to write of the Addams’ daughter’s death.
What’s coming for Wednesday that Ophelia knows about? Millar and Gough didn’t say, but they promised viewers would see and learn more of the Addams’ extended family. More light will also be shed on Nevermore—maybe paving the way for a spinoff starring another Addams? Either way, Millar and Gough called the show “such an alchemy of writing, directing, acting, crew, streamer, studio, and fans. We remain grateful and excited to continue this journey and tell these stories with all of our partners.”
No release window for Wednesday season three yet, but we’ll have more on it as news emerges.
Robots and artificial intelligence. Far-flung galaxies and planets. Futuristic realms and alternate universes. Anyone craving a round-up of the best sci-fi films?
Science fiction is a genre that ignites our imaginations and transports us from our normal lives to mind-bending worlds. And given the pretty bleak state of the world we’re in right now, a good immersive sci-fi flick is just what we need.
Our fascination with what the future might look like launched the sci-fi genre way before our technology-obsessed age, with authors such as Isaac Asimov and H.G. Wells writing fantastical adventures and dystopian tales in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their classic novels even inspired some of the best-loved sci-fi films of our generation (I, Robot; The War of the Worlds; and more recently, The Invisible Man starring one of our all-time faves, Elisabeth Moss).
More recently, hit shows such as Stranger Things have reignited our love of science fiction and fantasy, giving a fresh take on dark underworlds and ghoulish otherworldly monsters – something once associated with teenage boys reading comic books. Did Millie Bobby Brown make sci-fi cool again? Or are all now just embracing our inner nerd with pride?
Whatever you think, there’s never been a better time to delve into the world’s offering of sci-fi flicks from Interstellar to Jordan Peele’s Nope and AI classic Her. Read on for our pick of the best sci-fi films around.
