According to Deadline, Netflix has greenlit and is now looking to cast competitors for The Golden Ticket, Eureka Production’s new Willy Wonka-inspired reality series that “will challenge players not just physically, but mentally as they navigate games, tests, and temptations designed to probe their instincts, resilience, and ability to thrive in chaos.”
It’s also the third best-selling book on Amazon. Meta, meet the Streisand effect!
[The New York Times]
Netflix’s upcoming remake of Stephen King’s Cujo feels poised to tap into people’s newfound fondness of taking their dogs everywhere, and the film might wind up being directed by Darren Aronofsky according to The Hollywood Reporter.
[hollywoodreporter.com]
Netflix’s terrible adaptation of The Electric State is as soulless as it is uninspired.
Meta is in the midst of attempting to block a memoir from an ex-employee detailing accusations of misconduct at the company. Behind the scenes, Meta has apparently also been badgering Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, sending repeated emails asking him about his plans to review Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams (you can read a preview of his newsletter below). He writes:
In my 27 years of reviewing and editing newspaper books sections, no company has ever done this with me.
[washingtonpost.com]
Disney Plus’ new Daredevil series is an uneven reboot that’s fighting to leave its past behind.
After making his Disney Plus debut in Daredevil: Born Again, Jon Bernthal’s take on Frank Castle / The Punisher is coming back for his own MCU special à la Werewolf by Night and Guardians of the Galaxy. Per Entertainment Weekly, Bernthal will co-write the special’s script with Reinaldo Marcus Green (We Own This City), who will also direct. Details about the special are thin, but Marvel TV head Brad Winderbaum teased it as “a shotgun blast of a story.”
While The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim wasn’t exactly worth a trek to the theater, you might want to check it out when it starts streaming on Max on February 28th.
If you’re trying to stay huddled and warm under the covers while enjoying a good ebook, there are tiny robotic fingers — triggered by a wireless remote you can keep under the blankets — that clamp onto e-readers and tap the edge of the screen to turn the page for you.
Book Riot and Wirecutter both have recommendations, but you can find many versions on Amazon for less than $20.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission.
Marvel’s latest Captain America movie.
Nothing is official until HBO confirms it, but Deadline is reporting that John Lithgow is in talks to play Dumbledore in the network’s upcoming Harry Potter reboot series scheduled to debut some time next year.
Disney Plus’ new animated Spider-Man series wants you to appreciate what being a community-focused hero looks like.
The company is amping up its fight against Amazon with a new frontier: ebooks.
Great catch by our friends at 404 Media — a declassified WWII-era US government guide to sabotaging fascism is currently the 5th-most downloaded ebook on Project Gutenberg.
The motivating factor for writing the guide, according to a passage within it, is that citizen saboteurs were highly effective at resisting the Nazis during World War II, and the Office of Strategic Services wanted to detail other ways sabotage could be done.
Seems relevant!
In what kinda feels like a play to the “TV and movies have gotten too sexy” crowd, Netflix is moving forward with a Little House on the Prairie reboot from executive producer / showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine (The Boys) that the streamer describes as “a kaleidoscopic view of the struggles and triumphs of those who shaped the frontier.”
Many SFF readers know of Harlan Ellison’s development-hell anthology The Last Dangerous Visions, which was posthumously released to tepid reviews last year. Paul Kincaid’s recent essay delves into the cultural impact of Ellison’s earlier Dangerous Visions books and the broader transformation of science fiction — as well as how Ellison’s own (checkered, though it’s not a major theme here) position in the genre shaped both.
[strangehorizons.com]
Though Greta Gerwig’s new Narnia feature will eventually make its way to Netflix, the movie will reportedly have a two-week theatrical run ahead of its streaming debut in 2026.
Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine offers a history of the biggest player in streaming.
Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu gets at the heart of what makes vampires an eternally fascinating fixture in our sexual imaginations.
Our staff writes about the best books they read over the course of the year.
John Chu’s Wicked sequel was always going to need some sort subtitle to set it apart from Part One, and it seems the studio has decided on calling it Wicked: For Good — an allusion to one of the songs we’ll all probably be humming to ourselves next year.
Director Kenji Kamiyama’s new Lord of the Rings anime film feels like what happens when you try to turn a footnote into a feature-length story.
It took a lot of technical know-how to create Dune: Part Two’s mesmerizing score, and this new video from Expressive E breaks down how Hans Zimmer made it happen using a fleet of Osmose synthesizers.
Alison Schapker sees Dune: Prophecy as a story about the ebb and flow of institutional power.
Lots of folks are probably watching F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu before Robert Eggers’ new remake premieres later this month. Obviously, the 1922 film played a huge rule in influencing Eggers’ ideas about how to present the classic vampire tale. But in a new interview with Deadline, he explains how seeing the original on VHS before it was remastered gave him a deep appreciation of how real it could feel.
The era of the LLM means you now have to figure out whether you are talking to another person — or just some bot. There’s one sci-fi author who focused on just that.
[www.programmablemutter.com]
Jon M. Chu’s Wicked adaptation gets at the heart of what makes musicals such a spectacular form of storytelling.
Our sister site just released a new book with Insight Editions called Year of the Ring. It’s an incredibly fun (and totally comprehensive) look at the history of the franchise and its fanbase.
You can re-live the adventure through a series of thoughtful and humorous stories that chronicle the original trilogy and its impact on culture. It also makes a great gift for the Tolkien fan in your life — or yourself!
HBO’s new Dune prequel series sharpens the Bene Gesserit’s history into a pointed drama that calls for some patience.
But Marvel’s WandaVision follow-up stuck the landing by spelling out the secrets that were hiding in plain sight.
