We may be living in a golden age of TV, but panning through all the dross to find that gold can be time-consuming and tedious. For every much-discussed hit like Severance, House of the Dragon, and The Bear, there are dozens of new original shows that barely tip the cultural needle. And with so many new streaming services competing with HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Disney Plus, it’s impossible to keep up with everything new to view. But The Verge’s TV section is ready to help. Our news, reviews, and interviews help you find the next Stranger Things or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in time to keep up with the cultural conversation. And our essays and analysis invite you to consider the deeper context of what you’re watching.
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.”
Valnet, the Canadian media conglomerate that owns a number of entertainment blogs like Screen Rant, MovieWeb, Collider, and Comic Book Resources, is the subject of a damning new report from The Wrap detailing how some of the sites have been turned into “borderline like almost sweatshop-level” content mills where underpaid employees who speak up about their working conditions often wind up being put on blacklists.
While Bandai’s upcoming Digimon mobile card game doesn’t have a release date just yet, the franchise’s newly-announced mainline anime series, Digimon Beatbreak, is set to debut this October and introduce a new generation of “emotion-devouring digital lifeforms.”
That’s according to The Wrap, which says the showrunners from Percy Jackson and the Olympians are in line to produce the show. This adds one more to the list of rumored Hasbro IP adaptations we’ve heard about, like the in-development live-action film and TV “universe” based on Magic: The Gathering, a Monopoly movie, new Clue projects, and a D&D series with Netflix.
As terrifying as FX’s new Alien: Earth series is probably going to be, it’s going to be so much more alarming if we get to see some of how things go sideways from the perspective of the USCSS Maginot’s pet cat.
To get folks hyped up for the upcoming debut of Andor’s second season on Disney Plus April 22nd, Disney has put the show’s entire first season on Hulu and uploaded its first three episodes on YouTube. Additionally, on March 13th, Andor creator Tony Gilroy will host a live, hour-long rewatch event streamed on YouTube “with select talent,” which better be code for “Diego Luna and national treasure Kathryn Hunter.”
In Government Cheese, Apple’s new comedy co-created by Paul Hunter and Aeysha Carr, an unusual family living in late ‘60s San Francisco find their lives turned upside down when the head of the house (David Oyelowo) is freed from a stint in prison.
Hampton Chambers (Oyelowo) has a plan to make it big after he invents a new kind of self-sharpening drill, but the process of making his dreams real winds up being more convoluted than he could anticipate. The show debuts April 16th.
The CW canceled its live-action Powerpuff Girls adaptation starring Chloe Bennet as Blossom, Dove Cameron, as Bubbles, and Yana Perrault as Buttercup before the series ever got a chance to air. Behind-the-scenes set photos have been floating around on the internet for years, but a full-on trailer showcasing what could have been was posted to YouTube on Thursday by Lost Media Busters.
Update: The trailer has been yanked from YouTube and The Internet Archive, while currently there is still a snippet on Bluesky.
The nonprofit Sesame Workshop production company is laying off staff, with Sesame Street still needing to find a new platform to broadcast future episodes after Max dropped the beloved children’s show in December. Production on season 56 starts next month and will feature a new “narrative-led” format.
The cuts were announced shortly after unionization efforts from 200 employees. It’s unclear how many staffers are impacted, but the company said it will “downsize significantly.”
[adweek.com]
Jack Kirby, the iconic comics artist who co-created Marvel’s X-Men and Avengers, and originated DC’s New Gods, is the subject of Kirbyvision, a new documentary from director Ricki Stern (Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, UFOs: Investigating the Unknown).
According to Stern, the doc is her way of pushing for Kirby to finally receive some of the recognition he deserves as the creative wellspring companies like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are still drawing from.
Following the debut trailer for Andor’s second season, Lucasfilm has released another brief video, with some behind-the-scenes footage and a few new tidbits — including Diego Luna in some cool sci-fi sunglasses. The show starts streaming on Disney Plus on April 22nd.
Disney is reportedly laying off 200 employees (about 6 percent of its workforce) from its ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks units.
The latest round of firings will impact ABC’s 20/20 and Nightline news magazine shows, whose production teams are being consolidated into a single unit. And Disney also plans to wind down 538, which the company bought back in 2018.
Correction: Nate Silver left 538 in 2023.
Disney Plus’ new Daredevil series is an uneven reboot that’s fighting to leave its past behind.
Apple debuted a trailer today for Side Quest, the upcoming four-episode anthology series based off of Mythic Quest. I bounced off Mythic Quest after season 2, but I liked the episodes that were separate from the main plot line. Hopefully this series channels those.
All four Side Quest episodes will be available on Apple TV Plus on March 26th, the same day as the finale of the current Mythic Quest season.
Kiana Khansmith’s (Big City Greens) Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to be a Magical Girl isn’t a fledged show just yet, but her new pilot introducing Aika (Anairis Quiñones), Zira (Bennett Abara), and Hoshi (Christine Marie Cabanos) is concrete evidence that it absolutely needs to be.
Sony is soliciting bids to bring Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune to streaming services, The New York Times reports. The company apparently expects that it will reach a deal by early April.
And now you can try refining numbers yourself on the Lumon Industries website. It’s sort of like an unsettling version of Minesweeper — though it’d be even better played on a Lumon computer.
Pokémon Horizons wasn’t a big part of today’s Pokémon Presents showcase, but The Pokémon Company is teasing Mega Evolution becoming part of the series, which makes it seem like Liko and Roy might be making a trip to Lumiose City.
During its most recent earnings call, Paramount reported that Paramount Plus’ revenue was up by 16 percent in Q4, and the streamer added 5.6 million new subscribers, bringing its total up to 77.5 million. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount expects to keep the new-sub momentum going through Q1 2025, albeit at a slightly slower rate due to its current content lineup.
[hollywoodreporter.com]
