I’m a Virgo is creator Boots Riley at his best — even once the brilliant series reveals what kind of familiar story it’s not so secretly telling the whole time.
During Ubisoft Forward 2023, Adi Shankar, producer on the Netflix Castlevania series, mounted the stage wearing light-up wraparound glasses (??) and clothes that can only be described as futurepunk on a budget, to introduce the trailer for Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix — an animated series that looks like Far Cry: Blood Dragon and a diehard Ubisoft fan’s fever dream.
After all the drama surrounding (HBO) Max’s The Idol from Sam Levinson, one would hope the show might actually have something interesting to say that warranted co-creator The Weeknd’s pre-premiere theatrics. But as Variety so elegantly puts it, at two episodes in:
“It’s a bit frustrating to watch a show so plainly and plaintively depict the quest towards perfection in a way that seems so clumsily unable to get to ‘consistently pretty good.’”
Netflix’s animated King Kong spinoff, Skull Island, premieres later this month — and now we have a brand-new trailer. As expected, it’s full of huge beasts like a squids, crabs, and a big ol’ dog. And, of course, there’s Kong himself. The series starts streaming on June 22nd.
With the next MCU series set for a Disney Plus debut on June 21st, the marketing for Secret Invasion is winding up, but with a spy twist this time. Instead of just dropping yet another trailer, it’s stored on this dedicated site that requests a password (RSD3PX5N7S), which is conveniently listed in the tweet.
Figuring out which characters are Skrulls in hiding will hopefully be a little harder than that.
It hasn’t even been a full year since we saw Baby Colin Robinson grow back into an adult energy vampire, but What We Do In the Shadows is set to make its season five return to FX on July 13th.
The end of season 3 of Ted Lasso sure felt like a finale for the show, but we still don’t have confirmation either way. Now Apple seems to be teasing that things aren’t quite over yet — but whether that will come in the form of a new season or a spinoff isn’t clear. Nate isn’t talking, though.
Should the Screen Actors Guid’s upcoming talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers not result in a new labor contract that both sides agree on, the entertainment labor union will be in a position to strike now that an majority of SAG-AFTRA’s members voted to authorize the move.
As Variety notes, SAG-AFTRA’s vote to strike comes as the WGA’s ongoing strike enters its sixth week.
Disclosure: The Verge’s editorial staff is also unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East.
Members of the Writers Guild of America spoke out against the deal, as seen in a report in Deadline. Several with membership in one or both guilds tweeted complaints that the DGA had “made a deal behind our backs” and didn’t get “close to no AI source material.”
WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser was quoted in another Deadline article today:
If [AMPTP President] Carol Lombardini thinks negotiating with the DGA while we’re out on strike is some kind of trump card, she’s going to find out that her 2007-08 playbook doesn’t belong in the negotiating room; it belongs in a museum.
Because it sure was a packed week in the world of entertainment. We’ve got the excellent sequel to Into the Spider-Verse; a brilliant revival of Street Fighter; remakes of the classics games System Shock and Etrian Odyssey; and the season finales for Yellowjackets and Ted Lasso. Oh, and if you pre-ordered Diablo IV, you can dig in a little early.
