Tabla de contenidos para May 2023 en SFX

PICARD 3: PICARDER Keith Tudor, email I have really been enjoying the latest season of Star Trek: Picard. It’s been a treat seeing the Next Generation crew reunited and it’s been fun getting to know the Titan crew. The Shrike and her captain are a formidable force and I’m enjoying all the callbacks to the 36-year history of the TNG characters. Such a shame that, like Star Trek: Discovery’s next season, these will be the last episodes. At least it looks like it will be going out on a high. SFX: As Spock is fond of saying, there are always possibilities… Robert Graham, email We are really spoilt for choice at the moment and I’m loving the fact that we’ve got Star Trek: Picard season three and The Mandalorian season three…

HALF-WOMAN, HALF OCTOPUS, all chaos energy: Ursula is an icon. Despite having just 13 minutes of screen time in The Little Mermaid, the sea witch sauntered into our lives and never left, bewitching every child who watched Disney’s animated classic. Originally voiced by Pat Carroll, Ursula casts a terrifying shadow over the forthcoming live-action remake – who could bring the beloved character to life and do the role justice? Director Rob Marshall (Chicago, Into The Woods) knew it would be tricky. “It was really daunting to think about who was going to play this part,” Marshall tells Red Alert. “I love that she was originally inspired by Divine [Harris Glenn Milstead], the wonderful drag actor, who was so original and so funny. I thought, ‘Well, who’s going to be able…

⬥ Production on season 14 continues – Russell T Davies appeared on Michael Ball’s Radio 2 show recently and said: “I watched episode four last night and I think it’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever made in my life, so I’m very, very happy with it. It’s looking so good, Michael, I love it.” ⬥ The director of the episode, Dylan Holmes Williams, responded to this comment on Twitter, saying: “As the lucky man who got to direct this incredible script, I’ve got to say I’m very excited about what we created.” ⬥ Julie Gardner recently said about production on the new series and Russell: “He’s writing amongst his best-ever work. The scripts are big and extremely ambitious. The only worry I ever have is that we get…

ONCE AGAIN – THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE – DO NOT READ THIS FEATURE IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS FOR THE END OF SEASON THREE OF STAR TREK: PICARD. Still here? Then let’s… engage. Just how long has showrunner Terry Matalas had this epic storyline in his head? “A while,” he considers, “but I never thought anyone would ever let me write it. It was just always this idea percolating in the back of my head that if Picard ever had a kid, he would have passed on this Locutus gene. At best I thought it might be a comic book I could write someday.” Yes, it was the Borg all along. “We’ve been hiding it in plain sight,” Matalas says. “The very first dialogue in the entire season…

STAR WARS: VISIONS STARTED as an experiment: a series of nine animated anthology short stories set in a galaxy far, far away, but with no relation to the main Skywalker Saga. When they were released on Disney+, the reception was rapturous; thunderous applause followed. And that’s when executive producer James Waugh – who also oversees the “Franchise Story” team at Lucasfilm – started asking: how far can Visions push Star Wars storytelling? “We always saw Visions as a framework and a platform to tell unique Star Wars stories with really interesting creators,” Waugh tells SFX. The first season, he explains, was mainly anime because the team at Lucasfilm loved the artform. Therefore, the emphasis was on animation studios from Japan telling uniquely Japanese stories informed by their culture. “That unlocked…

From the pilot of The Walking Dead through to Fear, you’ve played Morgan in over 90 episodes. Coming into this final season, did you allow that to really register? In all honesty, my mission was to not do that. It was not to spend too much time looking behind me. But having said that, there are points in the process and in the story where it’s just been unavoidable. There are people showing up from way back. There are plot points in the story that force Morgan to look at his journey and look at his life. So my mission then – a bit like the journey of Morgan, really – has kind of evolved and changed. If it was relevant to Morgan, it was allowed. If it was about…

MAGINE EVERYTHING YOU HOLD true turned out to be one gigantic lie. That’s the conundrum that threatens to devour the last 10,000 humans on Earth in upcoming TV series Silo. Based on Hugh Howey’s bestselling trilogy of Wool novels, the dystopian drama takes place after a global event wipes out most of the population. In the aftermath, a community of survivors settles into a massive bunker that stretches downwards beneath the planet’s surface. The structure protects people from the toxic atmosphere… or so they believe. What hooked showrunner Graham Yost (Justified, Speed), however, wasn’t the post-apocalyptic landscape, but the puzzles woven into the narrative. “What grabbed me about the story is, ‘Oh wow. This is a mystery. Who built the silo? When? Why? What’s going on?’” Yost tells SFX. “Then…

MOMENTS BEFORE JODIE WHITTAKER regenerated into David Tennant (what?!) in the Doctor Who BBC centenary special, fans were treated to a very special, and quite unexpected, coda. “It was the one secret that didn’t get out,” smiles Katy Manning. “Nobody knew.” The Doctor’s loveable UNIT lab assistant and, latterly, globetrotting environmentalist Jo Jones (neé Grant) was back, and this was no happy accident. Fandom partied like it was 1973. “You learn to keep secrets in this business,” Manning tells SFX. “There are all these different [Big Finish] audios that I did a long time ago and I’m unable to talk about them. It’s hard. I did one with Sir Derek Jacobi and I don’t think it came out till 18 months later. A lot of people then said, ‘So that’s…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 93 minutes Directors Scott Beck, Bryan Woods Cast Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, writer/directors of 65, were the originators of the script for A Quiet Place, and here they swap the high concept of “people vs blind-but-deadly aliens” for “aliens vs dinosaurs”. It’s an idea that has entertaining ramifications, yet the result feels far more slight and less effective than what John Krasinski eventually span from their work. Adam Driver plays Mills, pilot of a space vessel from another world whose passengers are in cryosleep. The ship is downed by an asteroid strike, crashing on Earth… 65 million years ago. The only other survivor is Arianna Greenblatt’s Koa, and the two are soon trying to reach a…

EXTRAS RELEASED 24 APRIL 2022 | 15 | Blu-ray/download/VOD Director Kyra Elise Gardner Cast Don Mancini, Brad Dourif, Marlon Wayans, Lin Shaye When M3GAN was still a twinkle in TikTok’s lens, and way before Annabelle’s creation, there was just one cinematic toy rampaging through movie theatres: the original, and best, Charles Lee Ray (Chucky for short). So it’s appropriate that Chucky has joined the likes of Freddy and Jason with his own feature-length documentary. It’s one with a difference, appropriate for a movie rooted in childhood trauma. Before the doc gets to that, however, it’s a standard film-by-film exploration of the Child’s Play franchise, talking to everyone you’d expect, including writer/director Don Mancini, the voice of Chucky Brad Dourif, and Andy actor Alex Vincent. These interviews cover more than the…

EXTRAS RELEASED 24 APRIL 1999 | 15 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT Scream really should have killed off formulaic slashers like this, in which, 13 years after a couple were killed with a steel hook on Valentine’s Day, a mental patient escapes to menace teens partying in the same spot. It’s as tame as it is generic – victims die off-screen, or with only a splash of fake blood to show for it – and the twist in the tail is pretty witless, leaving nostalgia for ’90s fashions about the only reason to watch. + Extras A choice of two aspect ratios; commentary; Making Of; trailer; gallery.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1989 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Robert Sigl Cast Dóra Szinetár, Brigitte Karner, Károly Eperjes, Hédi Temessy BLU-RAY DEBUT This slice of arthouse gothic is an interesting curiosity: set in 19th century Germany but shot in Hungary, with its mostly Hungarian cast all speaking English (later redubbed), for the international market. Dóra Szinetár plays young Laurin, whose mother dies after stumbling upon a child-killer dragging a boy in a bag. As a mystery, it’s no great shakes: given their build, there’s really only one man in the frame. Being centred on a young girl, it’s been bracketed with Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders and The Company Of Wolves, but isn’t as fantastical. Barring luridly-lit, Bava-esque dream sequences and the recurring sinister presence of a black dog…

RELEASED 4 MAY 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author CE McGill Publisher Penguin Books Writing the sequel to a beloved old novel is a delicate proposition. It could be called superfluous at best, absolutely ridiculed and dismissed at worst. For their debut novel, CE McGill takes the challenge in their stride, writing a sequel to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Surprisingly, Our Hideous Progeny is neither middling nor audaciously bad. It’s actually a real treat: a Victorian adventure novel cloaked in gothic imagery that dives into the museums and debate halls of London. Our protagonist is Mary, the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein, whose own interest in science grows inside her like a blood curse until she discovers Victor’s old diary entries, and the innocence of a girlhood passion ignites into obsession. It’s a…

RELEASED 4 MAY 240 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Nick Harkaway Publisher Corsair The future is a dark and unknowable city, where the price of a life is no longer a metaphorical question. Welcome to Titanium Noir, an adrenalised hardboiled crime pastiche that kicks off with the murder of a Titan. Titans are huge, genetically modified superhumans who are also normally super-rich, as it costs a pretty penny to get the procedure done. They can have it done repeatedly – growing larger each time – to avoid death. Being shot in the head remains terminal, though. Enter uncompromising PI Cal Sounders, who specialises in Titan cases. But this case is different, opening up enough cans of worms to make blackbird obesity an environmental threat. Titanium Noir is a bullet-paced thriller that’s…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 368 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Juliet E McKenna Publisher Angry Robot One of the joys of classical legends is the way they’re constantly retold, each new work reflecting the time of telling. In recent years there’s been a trend of focusing on the untold tales of the women involved – Briseis’s experience of the Trojan war, or Ariadne’s of the Minotaur, for example. The Cleaving continues this, telling the story of Arthur and Camelot through the roles of Nimue, Ygraine, Morgana and Guinevere. It’s Nimue’s tale, though, as this woman of the Hidden Folk, continually reinventing herself to hide her great age, stands at the side of the women she cares for, trying to not interfere in human history but constantly thwarted as she tries to protect…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 336 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Gareth L Powell Publisher Titan Books It’s always fascinating seeing how traditional, nuts-and-bolts space opera adapts itself to changing times, and Gareth L Powell has come up with a distinctive example of this in his Continuance series, which hits its second volume in Descendant Machine. Over a century after almost wrecking the Earth, humanity is still living in forced exile among the many massive ark ships of the Continuance fleet, but problems arrive when an alien race finds a way to potentially activate a massive, planet-sized ancient artefact. Soon a Continuance navigator and her intelligent scout ship find themselves in a race to reach a holy man who knows the true secret of the artefact, as an apocalyptic threat looms. Powell’s story…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Marvel Comics Writer Gerry Duggan Artist Juan Frigeri ISSUES 1-4 It’s relaunch time for Tony Stark, and Marvel are looking to the upcoming 60th anniversary of Iron Man’s first appearance by putting the character through the wringer, while also embracing his complex and varied past. The main concept here is similar to Iron Man 3, forcing Tony to go back to basics as various life issues finally catch up with him, leaving him almost penniless. To add to his troubles, there’s also a mystery villain after both him and his closest allies, and they’ve got the ownership of Tony’s old company – and all his dangerous tech – in their sights… Writer Gerry Duggan intersperses this intrigue with the narrative concept of Tony trying to write his…

RELEASED 25 APRIL 57 minutes | CD/download Publisher Mulgrave Audio AUDIO DRAMA It’s 1974, and 15-year-old Simon Perkins is at his granny’s house, laid up after being struck down by an unspecified illness. His friends don’t visit and his parents don’t seem to give a toss. “I find real life disappointing and annoying,” he grumbles at one point. “It’s just not as good as it looks on the telly.” It’s not just any TV that is comforting Simon at this time, it’s the Open University. For those too fresh of face to remember: the BBC used to regularly screen programmes for OU students in the ’70s and ’80s, with desert-dry titles like Man’s Religious Quest and Engineering Mechanics. Drifting in and out of sleep on his nan’s settee, Simon begins to…

IT’S JUST SHY OF TWO years since Netflix’s adaptation of Jeff Lemire’s Vertigo comic Sweet Tooth left us with the cliffhanger of hybrid deer-boy Gus (Christian Convery) being captured by General Abbot (Neil Sandilands) and his Last Man army. He was then thrown into a zoo pen with a pack of other hybrid children because Abbot wants Dr Aditya Singh (Adeel Akhtar) to use their stem cells to find a cure for the pandemic known as “The Sick”. With the series debuting against the backdrop of the real-life pandemic, showrunner Jim Mickle and his collaborators managed to turn the dark story into a primary-coloured fairy tale, expressing the show’s world through the childlike eyes of Gus. Taking big departures from the comic with expanded character arcs and back stories, that…

• A release date has been set for New York-set spin off The Walking Dead: Dead City – it will premiere on AMC on 18 June. • The series features an older, recast Herschel played by Logan Kim, replacing child actor Kien Michael Spiller. • New additions to the cast include Gaius Charles (Grey’s Anatomy) and Željko Ivanek (Damages). • Ivanek plays a character called The Croat, who took Herschel. • Charles plays Marshall Perlie Armstrong, “a devoted family man who is ruthless and unyielding in the pursuit of what he believes is justice.” • Charles said: “My main task, my main goal and objective, is to bring justice to our land, to our community, to protect it. And one of the biggest challenges is getting this guy named Negan.”…

THE GENESIS OF LIAM SHAW, Captain of the USS Titan-A, goes back almost a decade, to when Star Trek: Picard showrunner Terry Matalas cast Todd Stashwick on Syfy series 12 Monkeys. “We immediately got on like we’ve known each other our whole lives,” the actor recalls. It was August 2021 when Matalas contacted his friend and said, “So we’ve got a role for you in season three of Picard that we’re writing.” Stashwick says his immediate response was, “Well, great, I can’t wait to see who’s going to play it…” joking that things never pan out when people say they’re writing a role for you. “But Terry being a man of his word, about a month later, I got all the paperwork and was showing up for my fitting.” He…

EVER WONDERED WHY it’s taken so long for Lucasfilm to deliver a Star Wars show targeting the under fives? It’s a salient question, which content chief James Waugh addresses ahead of the launch of Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures. “For a long time we just weren’t sure if there was an appropriate preschool translation for Star Wars,” he explains. “But as a father, what was important was that first moment where I’d pass on what I’d learned and show my son this incredibly imaginative space that really set my mind on fire when I was a kid. The more we interacted with fans, it seemed that was not a rare story. Dads and moms wanted to introduce their kids to the galaxy sooner and share that magic.” The new series…

IF YOU LIKE YOUR HORROR WITH A HEALTHY side dish of paranoia and psychological intrigue, From is the show you might have missed. John Griffin’s series centres on a Middle-American small town that’s seemingly been beckoning people into it, then not allowing anyone to leave, since the 1800s. As if that wasn’t panic-inducing enough, once nightfall cloaks the town, shape-shifting nocturnal creatures come out of the woods to brutally murder anyone naive enough to be outside, or to let them inside. The first season established the basic rules of this cursed place, including the two factions of unwilling residents just trying to exist in this purgatory. Sheriff Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau) is the ex-military de facto mayor who rings the curfew bell every night and tries to create some semblance…

Batteries Not Included director Matthew Robbins attended USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he became fast friends with another filmmaker – a certain George Lucas. Not only that, but it was Robbins who first introduced Lucas to Ralph McQuarrie, the illustrator who was instrumental in visualising most of the Star Wars universe. “We commissioned Ralph to make four paintings,” says Robbins, recalling a collaboration with McQuarrie on a science fiction project he was developing early in his career. “He’s a genius and made us look great. George saw the paintings and wanted to meet him, so we took him with us to where Ralph was working. I remember George looking at the illustrations on the wall and saying, ‘I’ve got this science fiction movie coming up, we might want to…

RELEASED 12 MAY 15 | 113 minutes Director Chie Hayakawa Cast Chieko Baisho, Hayato Isomura, Stefanie Arianne, Yuumi Kawai Chie Hayakawa’s debut feature may be rooted in the same generational anxieties that gave us Logan’s Run, but it summons an altogether subtler dystopia, one whose low-key, prosaic nature makes it all the more chillingly plausible. In near-contemporary Japan a surplus of senior citizens is draining the economy, crippling the younger generation’s prospects and igniting hate crimes against the elderly. The government passes new legislation that legalises assisted dying in the name of the common good, appealing to traditional Japanese notions of self-sacrifice. Told with a pensive and powerful sense of restraint, the story finds its quiet horror in the smooth apparatus of it all: the paperwork, questionnaires, persuasive adverts and…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 110 minutes Thought The Blair Witch Project was motion sickness-inducing? Then steer well clear of The Outwaters. This found-footage movie is extremely hard to watch – and even harder to make sense of. The gist is that a small group of filmmakers head into the Mojave Desert to make a music video and end up dead, but everything between the setup and the stomach-churning finale is just pitch-black shakycam and ear-splitting screaming. If this was an experiment, it hasn’t proved much.…

UK/US Disney+, streaming now Head writer Jennifer Corbet Cast Dee Bradley Baker, Michelle Ang, Rhea Perlman, Jimmi Simpson EPISODES 1.01-1.06 There are plenty of burning questions in the Star Wars universe, but “What happened to the Clones?” isn’t up there with the biggest. That’s a major problem for The Bad Batch because, two seasons in, the show feels like it needs to broaden its horizons. Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, Echo and Omega, aka Clone Force 99, are still doing odd jobs for crime boss Cid, while trying to avoid Imperial entanglements. But as they see how the galaxy’s going to the dogs under the Empire, they realise they can no longer turn a blind eye. Unfortunately, it turns out the early days of Emperor Palpatine’s reign aren’t quite as compelling as they…

EXTRAS RELEASED 24 APRIL 2023 | TBC | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Kerry Shawcross Cast Lindsay Jones, Chandler Riggs, Kara Eberle, Nat Wolff If anyone was wondering what Batman would be like if he was a magical teenager with genuine bat-wings, the latest stylistic left-turn in DC’s animation output is ready to answer that question, and more. It’s a team-up between the Justice League and the characters of RWBY, a long-running animated web-series that’s American-made but heavily Japanese in visuals and approach. The story sees DC’s characters regressed to teens as they arrive in the mysterious world of Remnant, where heroes battle dangerous creatures known as Grimms. Clunky, borderline-nonsensical storytelling combined with over-obvious moral lessons (and a hilariously vague cliffhanger set up for Part Two) make for a haphazard experience. However, the…

RELEASED 24 APRIL 2023 | TBC | Download Waterworld meets Crimson Tide in this so-so post-apocalyptic thriller, set in a world where sea levels have risen so high that only two warring continents remain. Trapped on a remote monitoring platform, four soldiers debate about whether lack of contact with the outside world means it’s time to detonate the nuke in their care. For all the heated conversation, however, there’s precious little tension, humour or character development, while the final act is disappointingly anticlimactic.…

Screeners were not made available for AA Milne-desecrating horror WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY (Bluray/DVD/download), and we’re not paying good money for it – it’d only encourage them. But we can spotlight critical raves by other publications, which include “too dim to be worthy of a curious look”, “a gruelling slog” and “dreary slop”. The first of this month’s two American Genre Film Archive releases is THE SWORD AND THE CLAW (22 April, Blu-ray), a daft historical romp from 1975. Cüneyt Arkin stars as a brawling warrior raised by lions. “It’s Conan the Barbarian meets the Three Stooges” says the blurb – alas, it’s more like a slow Turkish Tarzan, complete with a dub entirely delivered in the same flat tone of voice you might use to say, “Don’t…

RELEASED 27 APRIL 336 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Nicholas Binge Publisher HarperVoyager When a mountain taller than Everest appears in the Pacific, a shadowy organisation gathers a bunch of misfit scientists and survivalists to scale the thing and find out what the dickens is going on. It may sound like the plot for one of those Doug McClure Amicus movies of the ’70s, but Ascension actually wants to be a Christopher Nolan film. The book mixes in some religious philosophising, a tragic personal arc for one of the scientists, and a whole load of multidimensional and temporal shenanigans (there’s liberal use of the word “tesseract”) to create a rum old head-scratcher of a science thriller. It’s written in an epistolary format, in the literary equivalent of “found footage” (rediscovered letters),…

RELEASED 25 APRIL 432 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author TJ Klune Publisher Tor Books You’ll look at your robot vacuum differently after reading this. In The Lives Of Puppets is a post-apocalyptic take on The Adventures Of Pinocchio, in which the world is run by androids, and there’s only one real boy left… depending, of course, on your definition of “real”. Victor has spent most of his life living in a treehouse with three robots: his adopted android father, a wonky nurse droid, and an adorably enthusiastic little vacuum cleaner. While scavenging in a junkyard, he discovers a mostly whole android who can’t remember his purpose in life, and decides to make friends – with pretty disastrous results. The Pinocchio parallels are pretty oblique, but they’re not necessary to understanding the…

RELEASED 2 MAY 429 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author LR Lam Publisher Hodderscape If you know of a prophecy concerning you, and act upon that knowledge, will your actions fulfil the prophecy or defy it? And if someone was prophesied to save their people, could they ever make the right choice with that weight resting upon them? Everen is the sole male dragon in Vere Celene, struggling to cope with the responsibility of prophecy. Dragged by magic through the Veil to the country of Loc, he finds himself part-bonded with Arcady, a young thief whose magical attempts to escape their past seem to have pulled him through. Not realising just what Everen – trapped in a human-like form – truly is, Arcady hopes that he can help with their dreams of…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Rebellion Writer Unknown Artist Mike Hubbard COLLECTION “Jane Bond”: it’s a tired piece of tabloid wordplay, trotted out whenever Ian Fleming’s superspy is tipped for a gender-flipping makeover on the big screen. But long before dodgy Photoshops of Gillian Anderson wielding a Walther PPK there actually was a Jane Bond, a copyright-baiting adventuress whose exploits appeared in the pages of girls’ weekly Tina in the late-’60s. Returned to us in this entertaining reprint collection, Jane is unmistakably of her time, riding the spy boom initiated by the Bond films to claim a place in an empowered sisterhood alongside Emma Peel, Modesty Blaise and the Girl from UNCLE. Naturally she’s armed with a groovy line in gadgetry, from handbag parachutes to smoke-bomb compacts. Unlike 007 her peccadilloes…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Image Comics/Millarworld Writer Mark Millar Artist Jorge Jiménez ISSUES 1-3 You could never accuse Mark Millar of underplaying a scene, and this return of his murderous anti-hero is about as OTT as the Kick-Ass creator gets. This sequel to 2010’s Nemesis (pitched as “What if Batman was the Joker?”) delves into the erstwhile Matthew Anderson’s backstory, drawing not only on the Caped Crusader’s formative days but also Daredevil’s. Flashing back to his childhood as the son of a pair of junkies who were executed for the deaths of nine hitchhikers by LA’s now-mayor and chief of police, it sees Nemesis inducted into the ranks of a secret society, who drop some intriguing revelations about a forgotten President in-between Carter and Reagan. With the emphasis firmly on Nemesis’s…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 74 minutes | CD/download Label Silva Screen SOUNDTRACK Never enjoying the cross-generational impact of Thunderbirds, denied the kind of shiny CG reboot given to Captain Scarlet, not even as cherishably obscure as The Secret Service, Joe 90 has quietly slipped from pop culture to become one of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s least celebrated offerings. This welcome release of Barry Gray’s original score reminds us of one crucial fact: it was blessed with an absolute banger of a theme tune. An exhilarating blend of twanging surf guitar and burbling electronics, powered as much by the fashionable cool of ’60s spy-fi as the optimism of the rocket age, it sounds like Stereolab partying with Dick Dale in Earth orbit. It may, in fact, be the single grooviest thing in…

IN 1988, DAVID CRONENBERG unleashed Dead Ringers into cinemas; a dark, twisted tale of codependent twins that set back women’s trust in gynaecology a few decades. It’s since become a classic in his varied and strange body of work, earning many high profile admirers, including actor Rachel Weisz. About four years ago, Weisz was looking for a project with a complex female relationship at the centre of it and thought about how gender-flipping the twins Elliot and Beverly Mantle in Dead Ringers would turn that whole story on its head. Annapurna Television agreed and brought in British screenwriter Alice Birch (Normal People, Succession) to develop it into a six-episode limited series. With Weisz playing the twins and also part of the writers’ room, Birch tells Red Alert that she got…

PLAYING THE SON OF STAR TREK royalty could’ve gone an entirely different way for Ed Speleers. In fact, he could’ve ended up playing another game-changing role altogether. “Initially I was actually asked to go up for a different part in a different Trek series. I think it was Strange New Worlds,” he recalls, when looking back at his journey to playing Jack Crusher. “I did a tape and nothing came of it. I was a bit disgruntled, if I remember correctly!” As he was only given certain excerpts of dialogue – known as “sides” – he can’t swear to the role he first auditioned for. But he thinks he might know… “This would be completely hazarding a guess,” he stipulates. “I’m assuming based on what I’ve seen of Strange New…

“There were never any directives to hold certain things for spin-offs” LAST YEAR THE WALKING DEAD lumbered off into the record books, ending 11 seasons of storytelling as television’s most honoured horror franchise. But coming up from behind is its cousin in undead scares and post-apocalyptic woes, Fear The Walking Dead. The first spin-off series of the franchise, Fear was devised by original Dead creator Robert Kirkman with Dave Erickson, and approached the same world-ending event through the eyes of the complicated Clark/Manawa blended family and the Salazar family of Los Angeles. Across eight seasons, the series has changed considerably, taking a more nomadic approach to its storytelling, with an ever-evolving cast. Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Daniel Salazar (Rubén Blades) and Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) are the only original characters…

Becoming the living embodiment of a Young Adult hero How do you tackle taking on an established character? It started off with the scripts, that’s the foundation block to build it all from. Then reading the books as well gave us bonus material to pull from, and then the production team were really supportive. We got to talk to Jonathan Stroud, the author of the books, and we had experts in the books providing us with glossaries and stuff for quick use on set. But I guess there does come a point where you have to take ownership for it yourself – you sort of get your hand held for a couple of weeks, and then they go, “Fly away with it”. It felt really like a supportive atmosphere to…

ET, THE GOONIES, GREMLINS – back in the ’80s, Amblin Entertainment carved out a pretty solid niche by placing kids into otherworldly situations and spinning their stories into cinematic gold. However, looking back at the early output of Steven Spielberg’s pop-culture-sculpting movie powerhouse, one title stands alone for taking the opposite approach. Released in 1987, Batteries Not Included switched the formula by swapping kid heroes for pensioner protagonists and pairing them with a bunch of cute, metal UFO visitors. In a crumbling New York tenement, we meet Frank and Faye Riley (played by real-life couple Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy), an elderly couple whose apartment building and “mom and pop” diner are under constant threat of demolition from pushy developers and their ruthless lackeys. With Faye’s health rapidly deteriorating and…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 100 minutes Director Takehide Hori Cast Takehide Hori, Atsuko Miyake, Yuki Sugiyama Painstakingly assembled over seven years, this stop-motion feature is essentially the vision of one man: Takehide Hori, whose name appears so often in the end credits he soon feels like an old friend. Set in a distant future where mankind has lost the ability to reproduce, it follows a cyborg explorer into a subterranean realm, home to a genetically engineered underclass that now views humans as gods – and a bestiary of creatures that owe a clear debt to the terrifying xenobiologies of HR Giger. It’s a tangible environment, with a grimy, industrial aesthetic that permeates every diseased detail. But while it reeks of filth and decay, Hori imbues Junk Head’s world with…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 130 minutes Director David F Sandberg Cast Zachary Levi, Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu, Rachel Zegler Back in 2019, the first Shazam! brought much-needed heart and levity to a DCEU at risk of drowning in its own portentousness. Three years on and one Black Adam later, with James Gunn and Peter Safran’s course-correct yet to bear fruit, those same qualities seem to be more needed than ever. If anything, though, Shazam! Fury Of The Gods represents something of a backwards step into the kind of overblown, CG-heavy bombast that characterised the Zack Snyder DC era. Yes, there’s still fun to be had from a wish-fulfilling premise that has foster kid Billy (Asher Angel) turn himself and his friends into invincible superheroes with the help of just…

You’re surely dying to see us discuss the leitmotifs and mise-en-scène of THE SUPER MARIO BROS MOVIE (out now) but they didn’t screen it until the day before release, so you’re (coughs) out of luck. Also proving elusive: THE POPE’S EXORCIST (out now), Overlord director Julius Avery’s take on the real-life figure of Vatican crucifix-waver Father Gabriele Amorth (Russell Crowe). Finally, 20th Century Fox are still trying to make Alien Day (26 April, 4/26, LV-426 – geddit?) a thing. Visit bit.ly/alienscreenings and bit.ly/aliensscreenings to see if ALIEN or ALIENS are showing near you.…

UK/US Paramount+, streaming now Director Lee Joon-ik Cast Shin Ha-kyun, Han Ji-min, Lee Jung-eun, Jung Jin-Young EPISODES 1.01-1.06 The digital afterlife may not be the heaven that it’s been marketed as in this sombre and contemplative Korean miniseries. Set in a near future where new laws encourage euthanasia, it opens with a lengthy, real-time sequence in which dour journalist Ja-hyun administers a lethal cocktail to his dying wife, Ye-hoo. Moments after her last breath there’s a knock on the door, and Ja-hyun is shocked to learn that Ye-hoo has agreed for her memories to be downloaded – via a chip he didn’t even know she’d had implanted – into a new virtual paradise called Yonder. Pretty soon she’s encouraging him to join her. Based on a 2011 sci-fi romance novel, Yonder…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1972-1974 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Bob Clark Cast Richard Backus, John Marley, Olivia Hussey, Alan Ormsby Though he later received Golden Raspberry Award nominations for the likes of Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, director Bob Clark’s early work has seen its critical stock rise over the decades. This box set of his three horror films amply demonstrates why. The spark for Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things came when Clark and pal Alan Ormsby went to see Night Of The Living Dead and, as Ormsby jokes, “decided to rip it off”. It’s a cut-and-shut of a movie, beginning as a warped black comedy, thick with waspish sniping, and descending into a zombie siege in its final third. Ormsby, resplendent in garish hippy threads, is an insufferable…

RELEASED 24 APRIL 2022 | 18 | Download As desperate money-making schemes go, agreeing to smuggle packages of a mysterious narcotic over the US border has to be one of the more ill-advised. Especially when said drugs turn out to be horrifying nightmare maggots which have to be swallowed to get them past the authorities. The Ruins director Carter Smith’s latest combines skin-crawling body horror with sharp critique of the film industry’s exploitation of young queer men. The finale is a little too understated, but this is still brain-searing stuff.…

RELEASED 28 APRIL 2023 | TBC | SVOD SHUDDER The latest in a long line of grief-based horrors, From Black seems to be reaching for the impact of Hereditary but ends up feeling like a cheaper version of The Other Side Of The Door. A former drug addict whose son disappeared seven years ago tries to explain to the police why she was performing a satanic ritual in her house. There just aren’t enough surprises to keep it interesting for viewers, though. Sludgy colour grading and a sullen atmosphere make this a very slow 110 minutes.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2022 | TBC | Download Director Colin West Cast Jim Gaffigan, Rhea Seehorn, Katelyn Nacon, Gabriel Rush Midlife crises seem to be catching in this melancholy SF head-scratcher. Cameron Edwin (Jim Gaffigan) is the host of children’s science TV show Above & Beyond, but his life is falling apart. He’s about to be replaced by a more cynical host, Kent Armstrong (Gaffigan again), while his wife Erin (Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn) is filing for divorce and struggling with her own thwarted ambitions. Then part of a space rocket falls out of the sky into their garden, and Cameron spirals into unhealthy obsession. Colin West’s film is a fascinating oddity, equal parts indie comedy and reality-bending drama. The homespun retro-futurist aesthetic of Above & Beyond – lab…

RELEASED 2 MAY 560 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Justin Cronin Publisher Orion Books According to John Burn-Murdoch, chief data reporter at the Financial Times, the UK and the USA are “poor societies with pockets of rich people”. It’s an insight that has brought a stark clarity to concerns over the society-wide effects of inequality. Not only do most of us prefer to live in more equal societies, but inequality causes its own problems, ranging from resentment among those struggling to get by to practical issues around attracting the migrant workers needed to carry out essential roles. These kinds of issues were, you would guess, on Justin Cronin’s mind when he sat down to write a follow-up to his monumental vampire trilogy The Passage. The Ferryman is set on the archipelago…

RELEASED 11 MAY 320 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Mat Osman Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing London is unforgiving – it eats people up. Yet it’s also magnificent, and a place that has always drawn those who need to make themselves anew. Those such as Shay, a messenger girl, hawk whisperer and fortune teller, who belongs to a religious sect that worships birds. Or Nonesuch, a child theatre actor, a Blackfriars boy, with the rare gift to hold audiences rapt. In a more egalitarian era, both would be feted and rich, but the setting of Mat Osman’s second novel is late-Elizabethan London, which regards Shay and Nonesuch as little better than guttersnipes. Both are preyed upon, both are victims – though neither would describe themselves as such. How to fight back? The solution…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Sarah K Jackson Publisher Picador Recent figures from the 5 Gyres Institute show there are 170 trillion tonnes of plastic particles polluting our oceans. Debut author Sarah K Jackson, an ecologist, uses Not Alone to examine one possibility: these particles being swept up by a hurricane that poisons every creature on Earth. Jackson meticulously details what day-to-day survival would be like for anyone not felled in this toxic storm; protagonist Katie’s problems are compounded by the fact that she has a young son to look after, too. We join them five years after the storm in their decaying flat in Hitchin, just as they’re forced to journey across a ravaged Britain. Yes, it’s another story about a lone carer trying to keep…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 320 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Nathan Ballingrud Publisher Titan Books Elon Musk would probably rethink his dreams of going to Mars if he read The Strange. Half frontier myth, half science fiction nightmare, it portrays life on Mars as exhausting, lawless, and occasionally downright horrifying. Fourteen-year-old Annabelle Crisp works at a diner in the New Galveston settlement. Times are hard and getting harder, so when a gang of creepy miners from the nearby Dig Town rob the diner, taking with them her last gift from her mother, she’s determined to get revenge. Unfortunately, it turns out there’s a lot more at stake than just stolen property. Anyone looking for hard sci-fi will be disappointed by the lack of actual science in this novel, but it’s got enough…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Black Label/DC Comics Writer Pornsak Pichetshote Artists Jeff Stokely, Javier Rodriguez ISSUES 1-4 A six-parter, this Sandman Universe title takes supernatural sleuths Charles Rowland and Edmund Paine out of their element in more ways than one. Fetching up in Los Angeles, they encounter three Thai spectres. Having died in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and comprising a snake ghost, a hollow-backed ghost and a Nak Mother Ghost, Melvin, Jai and Tanya have more interesting abilities than the English duo. They’re looked after by Dom, a human mentor, but just like the girl eviscerated in the opening scene, he’s dispatched by the feral Thai spirits menacing the city. Drawing on his own Thai-American background, writer Pornsak Pichetshote makes some salient points about being Asian-American, with Dom remarking that, “Whenever…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 187 minutes | CD/download Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA Elisabeth Sladen’s death in 2011 spelled an early end for spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures. Since then, her young co-stars have grown up. Here Anjli Mohindra returns as Rani, now a journalist still grieving the loss of her mentor. Joseph Lidster’s set-opener “Here Today” opens with Rani and Clyde (Daniel Anthony) reuniting in a London bar. Life updates quickly give way to UNIT soldiers and flying saucers. Killed in an explosion, they find themselves back in the bar with their friends – then it happens again, and again. The repeats go on long enough to start to grate, but by the end the time loop is tied up neatly in a touching romance with hints of The Man…

Lauren Milici, Senior Entertainment Writer, GamesRadar It’s probably a bit embarrassing to identify as an adult fan of Shrek, but it entered my brain in 2001 and has simply never left. In the decades since its release, it’s become something of an internet meme and spawned a universe of successful spin-offs – but it will forever be cemented in my heart as the greatest children’s movie of all time, one I still watch when I, a 29-year-old who pays taxes, am feeling down. What makes Shrek so great? It’s weird. It’s a PG movie about an ogre with a Scottish accent who hates everything and everyone (but loves mud, farting, and making candles of his own earwax) who teams up with an annoying talking donkey to rescue a rough-and-tough princess……