SFX October 2021

WELL LOKI HERE Rob Graham, email Thoroughly enjoyed Loki, which had an enjoyable finale and promising first appearance from Jonathan Majors as He Who Remains or the next big Marvel villain, Kang the Conqueror. The multiverse set up here could open up all sorts of possibilities for the MCU, especially as the franchise gets older; if it continues to be a huge box office hit it could last decades and this could be a way of bringing back and recasting dead characters through the multiverse. I personally think the return of Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers is inevitable even if they are recast. And recasting T’Challa by introducing a version from another universe would still honour the late Chadwick Boseman. After all, how many times has the Joker…

DARREN SCOTT EDITOR RAVES Great returns for The Walking Dead and Titans. Feels as though there’s much more at stake. Looking forward to bingeing horror movies from now until Halloween. RANTS There’s really no need to be toxic in fandom. Just enjoy what you enjoy and let other people watch what they want. IAN BERRIMAN DEPUTY EDITOR RAVES Pleased to see that another of Usborne’s ’70s kids’ series The World Of The Unknown is getting a reissue (Monsters, on 30 September). Enjoyed Gazelle Twin’s hour-long horror soundtracks playlist for 6 Music: bit.ly/gazhorror. RANTS I quite like the 1990 remake, but do we really need any more versions of Night Of The Living Dead? Just watch the original, it’s a classic. JONATHAN COATES ART EDITOR RAVES Nothing cheers the soul like…

There’s a word I don’t use very much – no, it’s not that word, I probably do use that quite a lot – because it’s something that tends not to be thrown around in relation to modern cinema that often. That word is “masterpiece”. That’s how I feel about Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it – the scale, the beauty, the sound, it’s all quite breathtaking. Who knows where it will land in a world that largely doesn’t realise it predates, and indeed directly influenced, a lot of the blockbuster sci-fi franchises – and probably doesn’t care to educate itself otherwise. I know we’d be robbed if we don’t get to see Part Two. You’ll see that we’ve tried to dip a little into…

LONG BEFORE THE WITCHER’S Geralt, there was his mentor, Vesemir – and now, the cocky monster hunter is taking centre stage in The Witcher: Nightmare Of The Wolf. From director Kwang-II Han, executive producer Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and screenwriter Beau DeMayo, the animated origin story unfolds before the events of the TV series. The movie follows Vesemir as he faces the demons of his past, while contending with a rising new threat… with Geralt nowhere in sight. “When you’re thinking of cracking the world of The Witcher without Geralt or Yennefer or Ciri, it’s like, ‘So, we’re going into Gotham without Batman, Robin or Jim Gordon. Got it,’” DeMayo tells Red Alert. “What helped, and what was so natural when I started thinking about the script, is that The Witcher…

ONE OF THE MOST lauded non-superhero comic books of the early 2000s was Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Vertigo series Y: The Last Man. In it, the world experiences a sudden event where every mammal which has a Y chromosome just dies, except for an unassuming, underachieving 20-something, Yorick Brown, and his pet capuchin monkey called Ampersand. Equal parts thriller, gender exploration, romance and political potboiler, Y: The Last Man seemed like a cert for adaptation to film or TV. But it’s taken almost 20 years for FX’s Y: The Last Man series to finally come into being. After several development iterations and creative changes, it was playwright Eliza Clark’s take on the book that ultimately won out, starring Ben Schnetzer as Yorick, and Diane Lane playing his mother,…

→ Lock up your daughters! Ellen Burstyn returning to the realm of The Exorcist for sequel trilogy. Halloween’s David Gordon Green directs part one, targeting 13 October 2023 release. → I May Destroy You’s Michaela Coel joining Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, along with Dominique Thorne as Ironheart. → Battle Of The Planets heading to the big screen, written by F9’s Daniel Casey. → Cobra Kai breakout star Xolo Mariduena in the frame for DC’s Blue Beetle. → Ryan Reynolds reveals Free Guy 2 is already in development. → Taika Waititi’s Flash Gordon leaping from animation to live-action. → Idris Elba voicing Knuckles in Sonic The Hedgehog sequel. → Broken City’s Brian Tucker is the new screenwriter for Blumhouse’s Spawn. → Found footage superhero tale Chronicle to get female-focused sequel. →…