Tabla de contenidos para March 2025 en SFX

WHILE THE KING OF the Monsters celebrated his 70th birthday in 2024, nearly five decades have passed since Marvel released its first Godzilla title in 1977, which represented the giant kaiju’s first foray into American comics. Now Godzilla is returning to the House of Ideas in a sequence of six one-shots, leading into an epic crossover later this year. Set in different eras, they’ll see the God of Destruction coming into conflict with Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men and Thor in the coming months. But first up is the Fantastic Four in their ’60s heyday. “My editor Mark Paniccia was the one who came up with the idea of throwing these characters together. When he contacted me and said, ‘Fantastic Four versus Godzilla’, I was already sold, and when he…

AFTER LAUNCHING DYNAMITE Entertainment’s Warner Animation line last year, ThunderCats is now spawning a spin-off series. Written by Ed Brisson and drawn by Rapha Lobosco – who previously collaborated on the ThunderCats: Apex one-shot, ThunderCats: Lost gives a darker tone to the feline warriors’ flagship title. “The challenges here push the team in ways that force them to abandon the moral code the mainline ThunderCats operate under,” Brisson tells Red Alert. “The Lost team has a clear goal: establishing a new home for the Thunderians. But their mission comes with some major twists – ones even the team themselves aren’t fully aware of. They’re carrying a secret cargo – an item critical to ensuring their species’ survival. Unfortunately, that cargo slips through their fingers and recovering it becomes a huge…

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Does this season feel bigger? It always feels big to me, but coming to South Africa feels like, “Oh, this is a little different. This is a big jump.” Everything screams scale and excitement. We’re going to spread our wings a little more. I’m confident that this will be our best season. And I like that it feels like camp – all the actors stay in the same place. We’re working our balls off. It gets super-hot, but that bonds you. Where do we find your character this season? Last season was quite formative for him, spending time away from Moiraine. Now, after the rebonding, she sees him in a different way, and he sees her in a different way. They’re equals and that’s what he wants. This season is…

★ The fifth and final season is due to launch on Netflix later in 2025. Filming began on 8 January 2024 and wrapped on 20 December. ★ Writing for the fifth season began way back on 2 August 2022 – the entire season had been mapped out prior to season four being filmed, due to the pandemic. However, the season five finale was altered following feedback to season four. ★ Some unused ideas for the second season have been used in season five. ★ The Stranger Things writers team has described season five as “if season one and four had a baby which was injected with steroids”. ★ Rumours that the season will be split into two parts – as with season four – have not been confirmed. ★ Returning…

▶ RELEASED 21 MARCH U | 85 minutes ▶ Director Gints Zilbalodis → This CG-animated indie film, created by Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis, received a publicity boost recently when it was nominated for two Oscars: Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature Film. It’s a flood myth without humans or words. The hero is a black cat with wide yellow eyes which convey curiosity and fear in equal measure. At first its home is a verdant green landscape with man-made structures but no people. Then a flood comes, the water rises remorselessly, and the cat must take refuge on a small sailboat, together with an amiable capybara. Soon there are more voyagers: a lemur super-hoarder with its basket of trinkets, an amusingly lunkheaded Labrador, a selfless crane that might be…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 100 minutes ▶ Director Ariane Labed ▶ Cast Mia Tharia, Pascale Kann, Rakhee Thakrar → Based on a 2020 novel by Daisy Johnson, this is the directorial debut of Ariane Labed, best known for her leading role in Attenberg. And it’s not hard to trace a line from the antisocial, sexually naive, animalistic character she played in said Greek drama. It follows the meek July (Mia Tharia) and dominating September (Rakhee Thakrar), sisters who while not twins are often snapped in matching outfits by their photographer mother, and practically joined at the hip. Their strange behaviour – whichincludes barking and growling – sees them labelled freaks at school. After July becomes the victim of cyber-bullying, the family decamp to Ireland for a holiday. You…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1984 | 18 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Toshiharu Ikeda ▶ Cast Mari Shirato, Jun Etō, Kentarō Shimizu, Yoshirō Aoki BLU-RAY DEBUT Let’s get two things straight for starters. This Japanese film doesn’t feature a mermaid. And there’s no reference to a legend. Someone call Trading Standards! Director Toshiharu Ikeda is best known for gruesome 1988 horror Evil Dead Trap. So it confounds expectations that Mermaid Legend kicks off as a sensitively drawn portrait of ruthless capitalism, in which fishermen fall foul of the machinations of developers. A diver’s husband is murdered while she’s underwater. Surviving attempts to off her too, the shell-shocked Migiwa (Mari Shirato) hides out, eventually returning to enact bloody vengeance. As events progress, things become increasingly heightened. Migiwa lives through impossible damage; by the…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | N/A | Download → Fearing an imminent return to a mental institution, a psychologically troubled internet camgirl takes revenge on an abusive world in this indie horror. Building to a viciously bloody, borderline absurd finale, this is a tough, frequently grisly watch, anchored by Elle O’Hara’s performance as Cara, as steely as she’s vulnerable. Hallucinatory scenes show director Hayden Hewitt has a gift for horror imagery, but it’s the more grounded moments that prove the most disturbing.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1983 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Kinji Fukasaku ▶ Cast Hiroko Yakushimaru, Hiroyuki Sanada, Etsuko Shihomi BLU-RAY DEBUT This bonkers dark fantasy represented a second bite of the apple for director Kinji Fukasaku. Like his 1978 Star Wars cash-in Message From Space (a previous Eureka! Masters Of Cinema release), it’s a loose take on 19th century epic novel Satomi Hakkenden. Legend Of The 8 Samurai similarly looks to the West, its writer advised to draw not only from George Lucas’s space opera, but Indiana Jones. Flash Gordon also leaps to mind. Featuring blasts of cheesy soft rock, it’s all turned up to 11. Following an escaped princess who gathers eight “dog-warriors” to take on the undead clan who slaughtered her family, it’s a stylish production, richly…

▶ RELEASED 28 FEBRUARY 1978 | 18 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Carlos Puerto ▶ Cast Ángel Aranda, Sandra Alberti, Mariana Karr, José María Guillén BLU-RAY DEBUT Testing the moral boundaries of post-Franco Spain, this entry in the Eurosleaze canon may introduce itself with a sober, Open University-style lecture on black magic – “There exists an aesthetic of evil” – but its titillating intentions soon become clear as a pair of newlyweds find themselves in the clutches of occultists. With only four main players and one key location, it’s essentially a creepy, lusty chamber piece, exploiting the fear and fascination of the ’70s swingers’ scene. The Satanic seduction premise is a slim excuse for the orgiastic action, but it rallies for an authentically nightmarish final sequence, as illogical as it is haunting.…

▶ RELEASED 27 FEBRUARY 438 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Adrian Tchaikovsky ▶ Publisher Tor → Space-set science fiction can fall anywhere between big, cerebral ideas, and the adventure and excitement we crave from Star Wars. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest, Shroud, manages to straddle both extremes, as the author delivers a pacy adventure that keeps you thinking, even when its protagonists are in extreme peril. In this standalone tale, the human race has left Earth far behind, as greedy corporations colonise the galaxy in the name of profit. They make no secret of the fact that their employees are little more than a commodity, chemically and genetically manipulated to work in outer space. In order to protect the bottom line, they’re kept in hibernation until their services are required. Narrator Juna…

▶ RELEASED 27 FEBRUARY 292 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author James Alistair Henry ▶ Publisher Moonflower Books → The north-south divide has been a feature of British life for as long as anyone can remember. But what about the east-west divide? It’s a gap, contends James Alistair Henry, that still affects us culturally today. In the novelist’s reading, the Saxon east is a dog-eat-dog place, whereas the Celtic west is rather more chilled. Demonstrating this case is complicated by the invasion of 1066, which overlaid a new ruling class upon England. But what might the country look like had this never occurred? What would a polytheistic London be like to move through? These are questions Henry answers in Pagans via an approach rooted in alternate history, one in which the…

▶ RELEASED 13 MARCH 268 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Cheon Seon-ran ▶ Publisher Doubleday → For those of us of a certain disposition (and, um, age), a few bars of the theme for The Adventures Of Black Beauty are enough to get us all misty-eyed. Once a horse fan, always a horse fan. So this writer may not be the most objective reviewer for a book about two teenage girls and a robot plotting to save the life of an ailing racehorse. Ten years from now, robots have taken over every job from bank clerk to… jockey? Yes, in this translation of an award-winning Korean novel, the replacement of human riders with lighter-weight robots means racehorses are breaking records and raking in ever more filthy lucre. The fact that…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 279 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Molly O’Neill ▶ Publisher Orbit Books → A long-haired, green-skinned woman mythologised as evil, but who has more of a heart than you might have believed… no, it’s not the Wicked Witch of the West, but Jenny Greenteeth, a “river-hag” of English folklore, who takes on a quest to save her new friends in this engaging debut by Molly O’Neill. Jenny is shocked when a witch is thrown into her lake one spring day. Despite her carnivorous nature, she chooses to rescue Temperance and learns of the new parson who is stirring up hatred in the local village. Except he’s not just a parson but in fact the Erl King of European myths, come to spread his evil to a…

▶ RELEASED 4 MARCH 144 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Amal El-Mohtar ▶ Publisher Arcadia ​→ If you’re not familiar with folk music, your image of it probably consists of hippies wearing sandals, drinking cider, and singing about “maidens fair” with a finger in one ear. And yes, okay, there certainly are plenty of maidens about, but the typical tone is a lot less peaceful than you might imagine. This lyrical new short novel, from one of the authors of the Hugo-winning This Is How You Lose The Time War, is steeped in the rhythms and sensibility of folk music. Specifically, it draws on the tropes of traditional ballads: songs that tell stories, often with a fantastical edge. In a small town named Thistleford, the Hawthorn family sing folk songs…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Marvel Comics ▶ Writer Spencer Ackerman ▶ Artists Julius Ohta, Javier Pina ISSUES 1-4 In a world where it’s increasingly difficult to see tech billionaires as good guys, Tony Stark’s status as an ultra-rich ex-weapons manufacturer makes him a challenging character to write. Marvel’s latest reboot for the character takes an interesting approach to this problem, by enlisting political journalist Spencer Ackerman onto the creative team for a story that – in certain ways – tackles the reality of corporate politics head-on. This new volume opens with Tony in a bad place and trying to finally recover control of his company Stark International, only to face a takeover from the evil Roxxon Oil that also threatens to exploit his Iron Man technology. “Over-the-top comic-book storytelling…

Babylon 5 1993-1998, 110 episodes, six TV movies Apple TV+, Prime Video Richard Edwards, former SFX Editor WHEN BABYLON 5 landed on Channel 4, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I loved Star Trek: The Next Generation, of course, and The X-Files was the show everyone talked about. But with its famous five-year plan, overlapping storylines and cast of morally ambiguous characters, J Michael Straczynski’s ambitious space opera felt like a genuine game-changer. My dad may have scoffed when teenage me claimed it was “like Star Trek, only more realistic” but, three decades later, I stand by it. While Jean-Luc Picard and the gang were busy upholding the Prime Directive, pretty much everyone on Babylon 5 – whether they be human, Minbari, Centauri or Narn – acted in…

THE SUN IS SETTING NEAR CAPE Town, South Africa, and SFX is driving to set. Dry fields and desert sprawl around us; cranes carrying huge lights pierce the darkening orange and blue sky. Our car pulls up at an artificial beach where a pirate harbour has been built. Wooden huts sit above water with gangways and planks between them. Boats are moored and kept in place by ragged rope. Fake fruit and fish are ready to be sold. The details are impeccable. When night quickly takes over, torches are lit and actors, dressed as ruffians and sea merchants, take their places. The illusion is so great that it feels dangerous – like anyone could draw a sword – until the director calls cut and everyone breaks out in smiles. This…

Where do we find Rand this season? There’s a real difference with season two where people wanted him to be the Dragon and Rand didn’t want it. Now, Rand has an agency. He wants to fulfil the prophecy, and he’s looking for people he can trust. Egwene gives him that, but he can’t show himself fully to her because she’s afraid of the dark side of him. Then he’s with [member of the Forsaken] Lanfear who accepts him fully, the dark and the light, and at the same time, he balances her out, because he brings the lightness out of her. But she’s the Devil. You can’t love the Devil, or can you? Then there’s Moiraine, who has been with him for a long time, but now she doesn’t see…

Ross: We spent a full year filming this season. By the end, we’d captured over 650 hours of footage. So, needless to say, this is our biggest and most ambitious season yet. It’s like eight blockbuster movies. It’s pretty insane. Matt: At the same time, we think it’s our most personal story. It was super-intense and emotional to film – for us and for our actors. We’ve been making this show together for almost 10 years. There was a lot of crying. There was so much crying. The show means so much to all of us, and everyone put their hearts and souls into it. And we hope – and believe – that passion will translate to the screen. Matt: But while this might be the end of the story…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A |118 minutes Director Julius Onah Cast Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Shira Haas, Harrison Ford Tasked with not only proving that Marvel can get back on track following the stumbles of 2023 (in part due to creeping superhero fatigue) and can do so without the audience-boosting laughs, self-referential nods and cameo power that Deadpool & Wolverine could deploy, this latest Captain America outing finds itself a little too overburdened to land as smoothly as it might. Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson remains a charismatic character, and his take on the Cap mantle is different in attitude and action to Steve Rogers, but around him, Brave New World as a film is trying so hard to ape The Winter Soldier that it can’t help but look inferior by comparison.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! U | 89 minutes ▶ Director Peter Hastings ▶ Cast Pete Davidson, Isla Fisher, Lil Rel Howery, Peter Hastings → The brains behind the Captain Underpants franchise take a welcome leap into the world of Dog Man, its graphic novel spin-off, in this enjoyably nutty adventure. Dog Man is a police officer who ends up with a man’s body and a dog’s head after an accident. Like a furry RoboCop, this law-enforcement hybrid lives to solve crimes; unlike RoboCop, he also enjoys fetching balls. His nemesis is evil cat Petey (Pete Davidson), a ginger puss who has all sorts of wicked schemes on the go, including cloning a baby version of himself (voiced by Lucas Hopkins Calderon) and trying to reanimate a psychotic dead fish named Flippy…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | 15 | Download → The real monster in this neatly circular little ghost story is the lack of appropriate psychiatric care offered to new parents. Poor Meredith is struggling with a newborn and a completely useless partner – but when she tells her therapist that she’s seeing ghosts and fantasising about murder, no actual help is offered. So while, yes, there are a couple of decent jump scares and some truly horrible gore images, what’s really scary is how plausibly tragic the whole heartbreaking story feels.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | N/A | SVOD SHUDDER This indie horror basically asks “What if you were ghosted by a ghost?”. After the alienated Alex takes a shine to her latest app hook-up, Kyle, she sees him with another woman – then is shocked to learn that he died a while ago. It’s a challenging role for former New Mutant Blu Hunt (certain sequences resemble trippy POV porn), who acquits herself well. But they should have splashed on grotesque car crash victim prosthetics for the undead Kyle. And ultimately it all boils down to a controlling boyfriend drama.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1987 | PG | Blu-ray ▶ Director Gary Goddard ▶ Cast Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, Meg Foster, Courteney Cox BLU-RAY DEBUT Masters Of The Universe landed too late to capitalise on either the post-Star Wars fantasy slipstream or the popularity of the He-Man toys and cartoon. With no iconic theme tune, no Prince Adam and few of the franchise’s heroes and villains, this overly serious live-action adaptation also bears little relation to the gloriously silly source. In addition, the magic of Eternia is lost as the adventure relocates to Earth, with local kids Julie and Kevin (Friends’ Courteney Cox and Star Trek: Voyager’s Robert Duncan McNeill) proving a poor substitute for Ram Man, Orko, Trap Jaw and co. Frank Langella does his best to ham things up as…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 352 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Elly Griffiths ▶ Publisher Quercus → Elly Griffiths knows her way around a crime thriller, having penned the popular Dr Ruth Galloway series (among others). With The Frozen People she’s tackling sci-fi, although the book’s fantastical elements are presented without sensationalism, enabling her to continue that mainstream, down-to-earth realism. Here we’re introduced to detective Ali Dawson and her engaging cold-case team. On behalf of the British government, their task is to investigate past crimes by time-travelling back to witness who did what. They can’t stop anything from happening, but they can at least find out the truth. Which is all well and good, until Ali travels back to London in the 1850s and can’t get home again. Meanwhile, in the…

▶ RELEASED 27 FEBRUARY 400 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Breanne Randall ▶ Publisher Aria → In a small Californian town, three sister-witches run a shop selling tea and books. They spend their spare time at home with their cats, baking. Everything seems perfect; their lives are basically a Pinterest board the author has labelled “Cosy vibes”. But all is not what it seems. Calliope, Eurydice and Thalia lost their mother years before, a disappearance tied to a mysterious magical Dark Oak (basically a MacGuffin – the tree isn’t really given much explanation). A dark witch named Lucien starts hanging around, a man Calliope can’t stop thinking about – usually naked. And nasty wraiths are on the prowl, with murder on their minds. As you may have worked out, it’s…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 240 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Clive Bloom ▶ Publisher Bloomsbury Academic → Alan Moore’s recent novel The Great When explores the notion that London has a shadow self – a fantastical other realm where all of humanity’s ideas about the city are made manifest. Though Moore himself features only fleetingly in London Uncanny, this “gothic guide to the capital in weird history and fiction” offers a similar thesis. Clive Bloom’s book is about the resonances between real life strangeness and fictional events, taking in everything from Edgar Allan Poe to David Bowie, Hammer horror and Arthur Machen via the Invisible Man, Hellraiser and Aleister Crowley. For example, one section of the book moves from the infamous Enfield Haunting to ghosts of a very different kind: ABBA…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher IDW ▶ Writer/artist Tom Scioli ISSUES 1-3 Like The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen with added kaiju, this three-parter pits Godzilla against various vintage science heroes, fictional and factual. Opening in New York in the Roaring Twenties, it turns Jay “Great” Gatsby into an unlikely action star when the love of his life Daisy Buchanan is lost at sea after Godzilla devastates the city. This prompts him to assemble G-Force, whose members include a cyborg Jules Verne and the Time Machinist. Big G is often a background figure, as Tom Scioli portrays Jay, Daisy and her husband Neil Buchanan’s tragic love triangle, before turning Daisy into the latest Bride of Dracula. The story also boasts Sherlock Holmes, who doesn’t really get any complicated conundrums to solve, and…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Skybound/Image Comics ▶ Writer Joshua Williamson ▶ Artist Tom Reilly ISSUES 1-3 Skybound’s shared Energon Universe has been one of the more surprising comics success stories of the past couple of years. Having started with sci-fi adventure Void Rivals and developed in the rebooted Transformers, it now brings in iconic action figure line GI Joe (while several of the characters like Duke, Scarlett and Destro have previously appeared in their own miniseries). The key to all of this is Energon, the highly coveted extraterrestrial fuel (and Transformers juice) that arms manufacturers MARS Industries and terrorist organisation COBRA intend to exploit on Earth. The Joes are on the case, but their enemies are many steps ahead of them… Writer Joshua Williamson and artist Tom Reilly deliver a…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on PS5 ▶ Also on Xbox Series X|S, PC ▶ Publisher Yellow Brick Games VIDEOGAME This thrilling action game about slaying giant monsters is almost completely ruined by its story: a crap, overly verbose visual novel where bland fantasy archetypes drone at you until you start wishing that it wasn’t the monsters you were slaying. You take control of Brynn, a warrior exploring a generic fantasy land in search of lore, loot, and large beasties to take down. You’ve got your sword (yawn), your bow (zzz), and also several nasty spells (hooray!). It’s great to play a game where the fire and ice you summon can start infernos that spread, or chill you to the bone. The magic here has to be used with…

TAKE A GANDER AT DIRECTOR Paul WS Anderson’s now three decades-long film CV, and literary adaptations remain few and far between. Aside from his 2011 action-centric take on Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, Anderson has instead bathed in the bloody glory of videogame adaptations, like his Resident Evil movies, or in the horror milieu more generally with Event Horizon. But the call of the printed word, specifically the siren song of fantasy novelist George RR Martin’s short story “In The Lost Lands” (published in the 1982 anthology Amazons II), has wooed Anderson into new territory. “It’s an adult fairy tale with bone-crunching violence and horrific surprises,” Anderson tells Red Alert. “Looks-wise, it’s very different to anything I’ve done before. I really wanted to embrace the mythic fairy tale quality of…

IT’S 15 YEARS SINCE ANDY NYMAN AND Jeremy Dyson first premiered their play Ghost Stories to rave reviews and gangbusters box office. But despite the show’s acclaim and popularity – even inspiring a film version in 2017 – it never enjoyed a UK-wide tour. Until now, that is. Ghost Stories took to the road on 17 January, and will eventually finish its run at Cardiff’s Millennium Centre on 2 August. A decade and a half on from that first production, its writers are clearly stoked that their play has been dusted down once more, and are keen to let us know that, even if you’ve seen it before, it won’t be quite the same experience this time round… “It’s the original production, but Jeremy and I and the creatives constantly…

AFTER VENTURING into comics with Dracula The Return: Cult Of The White Worm, Dacre Stoker – and co-author Chris McAuley – are continuing his great-granduncle Bram Stoker’s blood-soaked legacy with illustrated story book Shadows Of The StokerVerse. Lavishly illustrated by 2000 AD artist Clint Langley, it features 20 short stories, written by McAuley with Dacre’s input, that journey way beyond the bounds of Bram’s original 1897 novel. “We’re no longer solely looking at Victorian London, as we have stories which even go into the wild reaches of Wales and into the myths of my homeland, Ireland,” explains McAuley, who hails from Ballymena, Northern Ireland. “With regards to Dracula, the StokerVerse keeps the original villain of the story in line with what Bram outlined. We use the sets of notes which…

♦ Several writers have been announced for season two of Doctor Who. Juno Dawson, Inua Ellams, Pete McTighe and Sharma Angel-Walfall join Russell T Davies in the line-up for the next eight episodes. ♦ Dawson said: “I started watching Doctor Who with my grandma when I was 10 years old in the 1990s. From writing fan fiction for an audience of one, to scripting the best TV show of all time is truly a dream come true. I can’t wait for fans and newcomers to see the new season.” ♦ Ellams said: “For as long as I can remember television, I’ve been a Doctor Who fan. I started watching when I was 10 in Nigeria. The show invited me to dream, to live beyond my reality. Getting to write for…

CROSS SOUTH Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho’s exceptional filmography, the only universal truth that’s become clear throughout his 25-year directing career is that he won’t conform to expectations, even in the wake of success. “I have strange taste,” a self-deprecating Bong acknowledges to SFX. “It’s not like I intentionally try to make my films super-weird, but that’s the response I get once the film is made. They’re hard to put my finger on, and especially the marketing team – they always have such headaches trying to figure out what my film is about.” Inspired by author Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, Mickey 17 is Bong’s more expansive and blackly comedic exploration of humanity’s near future, one in which environmental catastrophe has pushed our species into the far reaches of space…

How does the scale of something like this compare to, say, Bond? We’re building stuff on that scale, but they don’t have to withstand an Aston Martin car chase. Horses, yes. Cars, no. I met somebody who took rock samples from when we were shooting in Tenerife [in season two] and matched it completely with the columns we were building in a studio. This season’s on a huge scale, especially compared to season one, when we were just the seven main cast members. There weren’t so many other people. Now, you look on the call sheet and see someone is cast number 376 and realise how much we’ve expanded. Where do we find Moiraine in this season? She doesn’t really understand why she’s in the Aiel Waste. Rand has gone…

SWEDISH ARTIST SIMON Stålenhag’s milieu is crafting intriguing character-based narratives that are supported by his haunting paintings, often featuring retro-futuristic technology existing in traditional landscapes. Graphic novel The Electric State, his 2017 post-apocalyptic hit, is an intimate tale about the human Michelle explaining how she came to be on the road with the robot Skip to find her long-lost younger brother. It’s cinematic, moody and builds to a big reveal, making it one of Stålenhag’s most loved books. Not surprisingly, it attracted the interest of Hollywood – specifically AGBO, the production company founded by Joe and Anthony Russo – before it was even published. Andy Muschietti was attached to direct and the screenplay adaptation was undertaken by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. From 2017 to 2020, the writers and the…

DESIGNING FOR THE FUTURE On Discovery I used specific brands as inspiration, people that were doing futuristic looks, and also the way they construct. Iris van Herpen is phenomenal in terms of her otherworldly looks, which are really quite fabulous. We actually got her to send her stuff and she invited me to her shows in Paris. Just seeing them in person is even more magical than seeing them when you look at them online. Another designer that I used a lot – and a lot of people that do sci-fi use them, because I can always see them in other peoples’ costumes – is Gareth Pugh. Alexander McQueen, especially. There’s some Sarah Barton, obviously. We did a lot of Rick Owens; Michelle wore a lot of Rick Owens in…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! See bit.ly/peoplesjoker for details ▶ 15 | 92 minutes ▶ Director Vera Drew ▶ Cast Vera Drew, Kane Distler, Lynn Downey, Nathan Faustyn → It’s a miracle that comedian Vera Drew’s “indie Batman queer coming of age film” exists, and even more so that it’s available for audiences to watch given its use of characters owned by DC. Clearly “Fair Use” and a lengthy disclaimer can go a long way. Drew (who directs and also co-wrote the film) stars as Joker the Harlequin, a struggling anti-comedian battling depression and gender dysphoria in an even-moredystopian version of Gotham watched over by a hardline Batman. Unexpected hope comes in the form of fellow stand-up Jason Todd/Mr J (Kane Distler, styled as Jared Leto’s Joker from 2016’s Suicide Squad).…

UK/US Disney+, streaming now ▶ Showrunner Jon Watts, Christopher Ford ▶ Cast Jude Law, Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Kyriana Kratter, Robert Timothy Smith, Nick Frost EPISODES 1.01-1.08 The latest Star Wars TV show feels like a throwback to a more civilised age – and for all the right reasons. Not only does the effortlessly fun Skeleton Crew deliver a pitchperfect imitation of classic Amblin movies from the ’80s, it’s also the first Lucasfilm offering in ages that doesn’t require any advance revision to make sure you understand what’s going on. Because Skeleton Crew is a standalone adventure that just happens to use the vast Star Wars galaxy as a sandbox. It may be set in the same post-Return Of The Jedi time period as The Mandalorian, The Book Of Boba Fett and…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2025 | 15 | DVD/download → Say what you will about the Devil but he certainly puts it about. The latest entry in the Satan-spawn genre finds a demonic bundle of joy left on the doorstep of a remote Scottish monastery, to be cared for by an order of nuns. This Luciferian riff on the Moses myth is well-shot and benefits from a real world location. But the storytelling often feels stilted, and despite some effective atmosphere there’s a lack of essential dread. + Extras None.…

Hugh Grant flexes some different acting muscles in A24 horror HERETIC (out now, 4K/Blu-ray/DVD), in which two young Mormon missionaries visit his Mr Reed, then find they’ve been locked in… We said: “A tense, talky thriller which thrusts fascinating theological questions to the forefront gives way to something much sillier.” Sole bonus: a commentary by writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Set 200 years before Frodo’s time, anime movie THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM (3 March, 4K/Blu-ray/DVD) explores the conflict that gave Helm’s Deep its name. We said: “Spirited performances and a rich seam of references ensure this is a worthy prequel.” Extras: three featurettes (27 minutes). In Germanlanguage thriller THE UNIVERSAL THEORY (out now, Blu-ray), a physicist attending a conference is tangled up…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 320 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Gareth L Powell ▶ Publisher Titan Books → Having already written a trilogy starring a gun-wielding, fighter-pilot monkey (the Ack-Ack Macaque saga), Gareth Powell is clearly an author unafraid to let his freak flag fly. Future’s Edge, at first glance, feels like it could capture a similarly lurid approach, but what we get is an oddly haphazard space opera that never quite figures out its dramatic tone. The book follows Ursula Morrow, an ex-archaeologist stranded in an alien refugee camp thanks to an incursion of multi-dimensional entities trying to wipe out all life in the galaxy. Most of humanity is already dead, and Ursula might be key to saving what’s left thanks to her encounter with an ancient alien artefact.…

▶ RELEASED 27 FEBRUARY 256 pages | Hardback ▶ Authors Daniel Falconer ▶ Publisher HarperCollins → The story of Helm Hammerhand and his hither-to-unnamed daughter Héra, this anime version of one of Tolkien’s untold tales is a lot better than its disappointing box office would suggest. Much of the reason for that is beautifully laid out in this book. The Rohan society we first met in The Two Towers is analysed, adapted and built upon with great sensitivity, no doubt thanks to the inclusion of Middle-earth experts Alan Lee and John Howe, plus a wealth of expertise from LOTR stalwarts Wēta. Author Daniel Falconer, who worked as a concept artist on the film, interviews all the leading voices here, from producer Philippa Boyens to director Kenji Kamiyama and everyone in between.…

▶ RELEASED 27 FEBRUARY 300 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Ronnie Turner ▶ Publisher Orenda Books → Once upon a time, there were two sisters who killed their parents. Or maybe it was just one of them? Neither sister was convicted of a crime, but everyone knew their story, so they ran away to the other side of the country to build a new life on a haunted island. Unfortunately, the stories followed them… The act of storytelling shapes everything in this book, as everyone from kids to creepy old women in the woods has a tale (or 12) to tell. The main narrative is told from two perspectives: Lily, the younger, prettier sister that everyone likes; and Silas, an islander who hopes to extricate Lily from the clutches of…

▶ RELEASED 27 FEBRUARY 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Nydia Hetherington ▶ Publisher Quercus → “The foul witch Sycorax” is an unseen character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest – dead before the play begins, she is the mother of Caliban, a “blue-eyed hag” who was expelled from Algiers and arrived on the island pregnant. This novel looks at the life that led her there, tying in a failed historical invasion and an examination of a life lived in chronic pain. Raven – later named Sycorax by the townspeople – is born to a wise woman and her husband just outside an unnamed city. The locals’ suspicion of witchcraft and outsiders hangs over everything, while Sycorax’s attempts to build a life, using her medicinal potions and knowledge of the coming storms…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher DSTLRY ▶ Writers Brian Azzarello, Stephanie Phillips ▶ Artist Danijel Žeželj ISSUES 1-4 Indie comics publisher DSTLRY launched with the promise that they would do things a little bit differently. That’s certainly the case with Life. This six-part thriller is split into two stories, “Pros” and “Cons”, that can be read in any order, with each issue presented as a flip book. In “Pros”, ex-con Bobby leads his crew to an abandoned planet in the hopes of pulling off a final heist, little realising that the former mining colony isn’t as uninhabited as he’d thought. In “Cons”, a group of Earth’s most notorious killers are forced to live out every moment of their multiple life sentences thanks to a twisted form of experimental punishment. That…