Books

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Though it’s a bit mind-boggling to hear Lionsgate refer to American Psycho as “potent and classic IP,” the news that Luca Guadagnino is directing the studio’s new reboot is definitely intriguing. The question now: who’s gonna be Patrick Bateman?