Table of contents for December 2024 in SFX

“I WAS OBSESSED WITH Superman,” admits director Peter Ettedgui. “I remember growing up and getting my dad to do me a badge of the Superman crest.” But it was when Christopher Reeve starred in 1978’s Superman that he really got hooked. The story of Reeve doesn’t simply begin and end with him playing the Man of Steel, of course. In 1995, he was left paralysed after a horse riding accident. “[It was] just that irony that the man who incarnated the hero with all the superpowers now couldn’t move a muscle.” Yet Reeve’s third act, so brilliantly chronicled in Ettedgui and co-director Ian Bonhôte’s new documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, shows just how he was determined to campaign for those with similar disabilities. “I remember all that so vividly,…

A LITTLE OVER A decade ago, when executive producer Ronald D Moore (Battlestar Galactica) was given permission by author Diana Gabaldon to adapt her beloved historical/sci-fi Outlander books into a streaming series, there was no cause to worry about endings. At the time, much like George RR Martin with his fantasy series A Song Of Ice And Fire, Gabaldon had written seven novels and many short stories detailing the epic life of Second World War nurse Claire Randall, who touches a standing stone and is sent to 1743 Scotland, where she meets Highlander Jamie Fraser. There was more than enough story! The television series, starring Caitríona Balfe as Claire and Sam Heughan as Jamie, has also become a global hit. And with the release of “Part II” of season seven…

AS COMIC BOOK CREATOR Paul Grist says, “getting an annual was an end of year treat and a proper companion to the weekly comic.” Now Rebellion are set to release the first 2000 AD Annual in 24 years – along with the second Treasury Of British Comics Annual. “The 2025 2000 AD annual will hopefully look and feel just like the annuals that readers remember,” says editor Jonathan Stevenson. “I even got out my tape measure to make sure that it’s the same size as its predecessors!” Both volumes alternate new strips with classic reprints. The 2000 AD Annual 2025 includes includes a Strontium Dog strip by Si Spurrier and Hayden Sherman, and a Rogue Trooper tale by Alex Paknadel and Jake Lynch. “In our story, our cavilling quartet take…

What was your introduction to the world of Wicked? I’m not a massive theatre fan. I’m cinema through and through, I like big cinematic films. So I went to see it a couple of times once they started talking to me. I realised it was an alternative view of Oz and I thought, “I can get into this.” We’re not trying to remake The Wizard Of Oz. We’re trying to do a different point of view, which is perfect. Is it hard to not get whisked away in the land of Oz and go overboard on the magic? Not really, mainly because we did everything practically. You get lost in it initially with these crazy ideas, but then because you’re gonna have to make it, it kind of grounds you,…

CONCRETE JUNGLE Gavin Bocquet: When you start, there’s always that element of, “How do we achieve this?” It’s not like you can go and shoot this on the streets of London. It doesn’t exist. With this, I hadn’t read the novels, but I knew roughly that we were going to need to create this underground silo. That was going to be a challenge because, although the budget was good, there’s never enough money, time or stage space to do what you have to do. So the first thing was to conceptualise what this world looks like. We had six or eight weeks of concept work, doing research, and showing it to [showrunner] Graham Yost and [director] Morten Tyldum. The general feeling was that the architectural style should reference Eastern socialist…

SFX IS DEEP IN GEEK conversation with Jay Lycurgo, the young British actor who’s making a name for himself on several high-profile genre shows. Before all that, he’d already dabbled with pop culture icons with his early role as a non-speaking “Train gang” member in The Batman, filmed in 2020. A role in a Hollywood movie took some adjusting to for the then 22-year-old, following the “few little things” he’d filmed up to that point, including an episode of daytime soap Doctors. “I didn’t really know much about the industry, so everything was quite overwhelming,” he recalls. “I just felt so stiff. You have to get a good enough experience to start feeling really comfortable. Still, to this day, you find your struggles with it. “But at the beginning, you…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 125 minutes ▸ Director Damien Leone ▸ Cast David Howard Thornton, Lauren LaVera, Elliott Fullam, Samantha Scaffidi Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the shower… Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane got off pretty lightly compared to what Damien Leone puts his characters through in the bathroom for the third instalment of his demonic clown franchise. Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) is back – laying in wait for five cobweb-covered years following the events of Terrifier 2 until his nemesis Sienna (Lauren LaVera) gets out of psychiatric care, just in time for her worst Christmas ever. But this is more than just gore – there’s lore, with the connection between the leads expanded. It’s reminiscent of Nancy returning to Springfield…

UK/US Prime Video, streaming now ▸ Creator Tom Moran ▸ Cast Jessica Raine, Peter Capaldi, Nikesh Patel, Benjamin Chivers EPISODES 2.01-2.05 Season one of The Devil’s Hour may have been open-ended, but it also felt perfectly self-contained. The story of a grimly driven man, Gideon (Peter Capaldi), forced to relive his life over and over in an attempt to prevent an impending disaster, it was creepy, enigmatic and mesmerising. Did it need further expansion? Season two feels less focused but even more enigmatic as it embraces its “alternate timelines” structure to flash backwards, forwards and sideways. Gideon now has an accomplice, having made care worker/cop (delete according to timeline) Lucy Chambers (Jessica Raine) aware of her past life too. Reluctantly she joins his crusade to discover the identity of a toy shop…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1988 | PG | Blu-ray ▸ Directors Andrew Morgan, Chris Clough, Alan Wareing ▸ Cast Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Sheila Hancock, Terry Molloy BLU-RAY DEBUT For all its nostalgic trimmings, this silver anniversary season finds Doctor Who reborn after a turbulent few years. Scripted by future Rivers Of London author Ben Aaronovitch, “Remembrance Of The Daleks” delivers a confident, muscular opener, returning the show to its birth year of 1963 for a trad army vs monsters adventure that also feels thrillingly new. “The Happiness Patrol”, meanwhile, weaponises its own camp for a witty piece of SF satire, complete with Sheila Hancock’s thinly-veiled Margaret Thatcher surrogate Helen A and a confectionery-crazed foe a writ away from Bertie Bassett. Official 25th anniversary romp “Silver Nemesis” pales next to…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED 18 NOVEMBER 2024 | 15 | Blu-ray/download The work of an editor for indie darlings Benson & Moorhead, this time-loop tale is the sort of thing they’d make. After a robbery, a brother and sister lay low in a farm existing outside time. But when the day arrives to go home, unseen forces demand payback first… The sibling relationship is well played, and the film makes a virtue of its cheapness. But good luck flowcharting how the hell it all slots together. + Extras Commentary; bonus scene; storyboards.…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | N/A | SVOD SHUDDER This somewhat unfortunately named British indie draws horror from the difficulty a child can have accepting a parent’s death, as the isolated, Grand Designs-esque home of young Isaac is invaded by something with his late father’s grinning fizzog. Never fully spelling out the source or motivation of its shapeshifting entity, it has fairly predictable beats. Millennium FX’s skittering critter supplies some shiversome imagery, though, and the avant-garde nest it constructs in the woods also impresses.…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED 11 NOVEMBER 2007 | 15 | 4K/Blu-ray ▸ Director Oliver Hirschbiegel ▸ Cast Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jeffrey Wright Of the four films based on Jack Finney’s 1954 novel The Body Snatchers, The Invasion is, by consensus, the weakest link. But it has at least acquired some additional resonance now, thanks to Covid-19. Rather than being replaced by pods which grow into emotionless doppelgangers, here people are taken over from within, as an infection integrates alien DNA. You could call it pandemic prophecy, but that would be dangerously close to endorsing a conspiracy theory, as the takeover’s further facilitated by a flu vaccine, developed with suspicious speed… actually the humanity-robbing infection, of course. Such delivery methods may have more plausibility, but the idea of a…

▸RELEASED 5 NOVEMBER 336 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸Author Julie Leong ▸Publisher Hodderscape This is the cosiest of cosy fantasies – the kind of novel that should be devoured while sitting in a sunny window with a mug of hot chocolate in one hand and a happy purring cat on your lap. It’s the story of Tao, a runaway who travels the countryside using her powers as a seer to tell the “small fortunes” of the book’s title. While she can see bigger events in the lives of the people she meets, it’s safer simply to tell them trifles: tiny snippets that come true without getting her into trouble. As a Shinn (think: Asian), she already deals with everyday racism from the unenlightened villagers of her adopted homeland. Tao doesn’t think…

▸RELEASED OUT NOW! 464 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸Author Alexis Henderson ▸Publisher Bantam Books Turns out, everyone disappointed that they didn’t get their letter from Hogwarts at age 11 might not have missed their chance to go to a magic school after all. Lennon Carter is in her mid-twenties, with a failed career and a failed engagement, when she gets her call to enrol at the mysterious Drayton College. There, on a campus tucked away in a hidden pocket of space and time, students with special abilities are taught to harness the force of their will. Because this isn’t YA, though, there’s no evil wizard to worry about. Instead, the threat is closer to home. Lennon falls for her brooding advisor, but he tells her to keep her distance for her…

▸RELEASED 7 NOVEMBER 272 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸Authors Helen Phillips ▸Publisher Atlantic Books Sometimes, it’s the sheer mundanity of a dystopia that makes it work. Never mind elaborately dressed teenagers battling to the death on live TV; instead, how about those website pop-ups asking how much personal data you’re willing to surrender to advertisers, but everywhere all the time? In the near future, AI is so sophisticated and pervasive that vast swathes of jobs have been automated and every taxi ride, doctor’s visit or corner shop trip is a gauntlet of targeted upselling. Unemployed due to the tech she helped develop, May signs up for experimental surgery to pay the rent. One set of facial recognition-fooling adjustments later, May splurges some of her windfall on a family holiday to the…

▸RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸Publisher Dark Horse Comics ▸Writers Gerard Way, Shaun Simon ▸Artist Chris Weston ISSUES 1-4 Gerard Way, creator of The Umbrella Academy (plus, y’know, occasional international rock megastar) returns to comics with co-writer Shaun Simon, artist Chris Weston, and colorist Dave Stewart for this surreal six-issue series that feels like a throwback to the mind-bending days of DC’s Vertigo imprint. Loo is a care assistant working at Paradise Gardens, a strange (and strangely isolated) retirement home. While most of its residents appear to be human, some of the staff and patients are bizarre creatures – a fact that goes entirely uncommented upon. Loo has no memory of her life before the facility, but when a superhero is brought in for treatment, that starts to change. Meanwhile, her boss Dr…

The fifth season of Happy Days is best known for two things: the episode where the Fonz literally “jumps the shark” on water skis, coining the term for when a show runs out of ideas; and the episode where an alien comes to visit, “My Favourite Orkan”, in which the world was first delighted by the late, great Robin Williams. It’s been just over 10 years since Williams died, and he left us an embarrassment of riches to remember him by: his electrifying stand-up; being the proxy dad to a troubled Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting; his terrifying performance in One Hour Photo. He was the genie, Mrs Doubtfire, and the World’s Greatest Dad. But before all that he was Mork, and the old VHSes of off-air recordings of…

CENTRING ON crimes in the comic book industry, Alex Segura’s novels Secret Identity and the upcoming Alter Ego also feature excerpts from so-called lost comic series The Legendary Lynx. Purporting to be the work of fictional creators Carmen Valdez, Doug Detmer and Annie Bustamante, they are actually the handiwork of Segura and artist Sandy Jarrell, and have now been collected and enhanced in a new graphic novel from Mad Cave Studios. “Pretty early on, I knew Sandy and I were going to expand on the comic book sequences in Secret Identity,” Segura tells Red Alert. “The pages in the novel were vignettes – a brief scene, a splash page, a final page – but they hinted at a greater story, one that played a pivotal part in the novel itself.…

WHEN HE FIRST SAW “WHAT IF…? Kahhori Reshaped The World” from the Disney+ show’s second season, Arihhonni “Honni” David was overjoyed that there was now a Marvel character who belonged to the Haudenosaunee People – and in particular the Kanien’kehá:ka, the People of the Flint, commonly known as the Mohawk. Teaming up with artists David Cutler and Jim Terry respectively, he and fellow indigenous author Kelly Lynne D’Angelo have now both contributed to Kahhori: Reshaper Of Worlds, a new one-shot that sees her crossing over to the Marvel comic book universe. “When Kahhori was first introduced I went to my parents’ place to show my little brother,” recalls David. “I wanted him to know there was now a Mohawk superhero and not only that, she was also from the same…

“I’M NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO OPEN IT…” SAYS JON M CHU as he brandishes one of the most sought after, iconic and highly valuable books of all time in his hands. The book in question? One of only 10,000 original first printings of L Frank Baum’s fabled The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. The book that gave us wicked witches, cowardly lions and ruby slippers, a book that’s captured the imagination of the young and the young at heart. But as much as SFX covets the precious item, we’re sitting with the director to discuss his own chapter in the ever-expanding legacy of Oz. Because this very book, since its release in 1900, has inspired not only one of the most beloved films of all time, a Muppet movie and a…

IF ALL YOU KNOW OF CAPTAIN NEMO is James Mason’s suave submariner in 1954 Disney classic 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, think again. In fact, prepare to take the deepest of dives into a man so thoroughly mysterious that even his name means “nobody”. “We’re basically trying to do the origin story,” says producer Xavier Marchand of Nautilus, a new 10-part series that returns Jules Verne’s enigmatic hero to the screen. “I always thought it would make a great, cracking adventure story for the entire family.” “It just felt like a really cool, unique take on how did that character and the Nautilus come to be,” adds Michael Matthews, director of the first four episodes. “Then there’s all the Jules Verne worldbuilding opportunities. “You’re in the 1800s and you’re blending…

In The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself, Lycurgo played the eponymous bastard son, Nathan. “It taught me a lot,” he says of the Netflix fantasy series, cancelled after a single season. “I actually went to a restaurant yesterday and there was a woman working there and she said, ‘I feel like I know you from somewhere. Oh my god, Bastard Son!’ “Every single tweet, every person who comes up to me talking about Bastard Son says ‘I don’t know how that got cancelled, it was so good, and the cliffhanger was amazing’. “I’m like, ‘Well, yeah.’ The stories are so great. I guess that’s all we can do. I was so upset when we got cancelled. Sometimes it’s just out of your control. But it’s an incredible memory that…

SERIES TWO OF BEING HUMAN climaxed with the notorious Box Tunnel massacre. Over the series three finale and series four premiere, viewers witnessed a massacre of a different kind, however. Three of the show’s lead characters – Mitchell (Aidan Turner), George (Russell Tovey) and Nina (Sinead Keenan) – were killed off in a series of body blows that would have been the death knell for most series. But Being Human was a show about picking yourself up after death and just getting on with it. “As I recall, all of those decisions were made early enough in the storyline in process that it didn’t have too much of an impact,” says showrunner Toby Whithouse. “We knew, obviously, that Aidan had gone. Russell had said he only wanted to do one…

THE BLU-RAY release of Blake’s 7 series one offers optional new effects for every episode. “In the end the whole thing came to about 459 shots,” says Chris Thompson, part of the team that created the new visuals. “The original effects are still quite beloved. It was an incredibly talented modelling unit banding together and against all adversity trying to do the best they could.” Blending CG with old-school practical models, the Blu-ray team was determined to preserve the aesthetic of the series. “It needed to look in keeping with the time,” says Thompson. “We had to focus on what its contemporaries were doing but also keep it very Blake’s 7, rather than just copying Star Trek or Star Wars. A good example is the Liberator always comes at you…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 127 minutes ▸ Director Parker Finn ▸ Cast Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage, Kyle Gallner The killer ghoul who always leaves them smiling is back for more in this sequel to 2022’s sleeper horror hit. And while its lethal MO is starting to lose something of its shock factor, there are enough gory frights and creepy chills in Parker Finn’s New York-set follow-up to justify a second outing, by and large. This time around it’s comeback-trail pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) who’s inherited the evil curse, having witnessed her drug dealer (Lukas Gage) bludgeon himself to death with a bar weight. That means it’s now her turn to be tormented by people with grotesque grins on their faces – visitations that make both Skye…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 95 minutes ▸ Directors Sam Eggers, Max Eggers ▸ Cast Brandy Norwood, Andrew Burnap, Kathryn Hunter, Neal Huff An attempt to blend psychological horror with dark comedy, The Front Room works fitfully but also sometimes feels more like a club comic’s mother-in-law joke soundtracked by a theremin. Roundly ignored across the pond, this film by Sam and Max Eggers – twin brothers of The Witch and The Lighthouse’s Robert – stars Brandy Norwood as Belinda, already struggling with job aggravation, pregnancy worries and financial issues. After the father of her husband Norman (Andrew Burnap) dies, they’re asked (and financially induced) to move his stepmother Solange (Kathryn Hunter) into their home. Cue debates over child-rearing, religious attitudes, race and the pressure cooker build of tension between…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1922 | 15 | Blu-ray ▸ Director Benjamin Christensen ▸ Cast Benjamin Christensen, Clara Pontoppidan, Oscar Stribolt, Astrid Holm BLU-RAY DEBUT Pioneering Danish filmmaker Benjamin Christensen believed silent film best captured “thoughtful dreams, fantasies and adventures”. Over a century on, his extraordinary, unshakeably creepy Häxan suggests he was onto something. Part academic lecture, part crowd-thrilling sensation and a whole black mass of undiluted nightmare, it charts an occult history, from ancient Egyptian cosmology to medieval witch trials, possessed nuns and beyond. Now impressively restored with a skin-prickling score by Matti Bye, its images seem more striking, more primal than ever. + Extras No fewer than three alternate cuts, including a 1968 version narrated by Beat Generation icon William Burroughs. There are alternative scores by Geoff Smith and…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | N/A | Download Discovering your parents have basically adopted your high school sweetheart is scary, but there’s worse to come in this creepy domestic horror, in which a mysterious cult and a couple of even more mysterious kids serve as unlikely therapists for a family with plenty of deep-seated issues. It’s unmistakably a low-budget effort, with strong TV movie vibes, but a solid emotional core makes it pretty effective nonetheless.…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1969 | 15 | Blu-ray ▸ Director Gordon Hessler ▸ Cast Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Uta Levka BLU-RAY DEBUT Though billed on the poster as “Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tale of the living dead”, the only thing this AIP film shares with his short story – not even a supernatural tale – is its title. And while it uses the Poe theme of burial alive (here, the box is a coffin), even that isn’t really the focus. A witch doctor’s ritual curse is more to the fore, in a film which for its time has a surprisingly critical attitude to colonialism. Otherwise, the script is a messy melange of 19th century clichés: a dash of Jack the Ripper here; some Burke and Hare-style graverobbers…

▸ RELEASED 21 NOVEMBER  384 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobooks ▸ Author Gail Simone ▸ Publisher Orbit Books Flame-haired, polyamorous (at least in her latest iteration), and ever capable of despatching multiple enemies and downing multiple drinks, Red Sonja is a character who has much to recommend her. Since being created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel back in 1973, partially based on a character from a story written by Robert E Howard and latterly transposed into Conan’s Hyborian Age, she has energetically cut a swathe through her different incarnations. This latest version is the work of Gail Simone, the writer who, from 2013, helmed a run of Sonja comics for Dynamite Entertainment and has a track record in reimagining female characters who have toiled too long under…

▸RELEASED OUT NOW! 304 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸Author Andrew Michael Hurley ▸Publisher John Murray A remote settlement on the Yorkshire/Lancashire border, Barrowbeck is not like other places. Or perhaps – and this idea says much about why Andrew Michael Hurley’s latest book is so unsettling – there are many places like Barrowbeck: remote and rural, idyllic on a sunny day, but where dark and ancient forces lurk. Those who live here do so on sufferance as guests – or prisoners. The dangers of Barrowbeck are made clear by the opening chapter. Set two millennia ago, maybe longer, “First Footing” follows desperate “marshfolk”, exhausted and on the run from raiders, as they search for somewhere safe to live. The valley of Barrowbeck offers sanctuary, but the old gods reserve the right…

▸RELEASED OUT NOW! 416 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸Author Stephen Baxter ▸Publisher Gollancz What would humanity do if we perceived we were under alien attack? How would we react at a psychological level? Such are the questions that animate Stephen Baxter’s latest novel. One answer to all these questions is, of course, that we would do different things. So it is that when “lumes”, short for “luminous menaces”, literally start to consume Neptune, the fear that these strange “semi-sentient cannonballs” have been sent to cause havoc results both in the establishment of a starship-building programme and the creation of “the Mask”, a vast structure that hides the Solar System from prying eyes. Fast forward 1,000 years and the starship Lightship has travelled back from a colony planet. Its crew includes Muree,…

▸RELEASED OUT NOW! 304 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▸Authors Mikaella Clements, Onjuli Datta ▸Publisher Simon & Schuster Maybe every small town has a bogeyman. A story about someone, sometime, who did something terrible, and now haunts a particular neighbourhood, waiting to grab anyone out past curfew. In this brilliantly visceral queer horror, the local legend is that a cave off the beaten track holds a monster that eats people. Angelina and her brother Patrick don’t believe it’s real, until one night it is, and the only person who might be able to save them from its insatiable appetite is Jagvi – the woman they’re both in love with. Decidedly not a book for kids, this is a heady novel of desire and despair. The prose is seductive; co-authors Mikaella Clements and…

▸RELEASED 7 NOVEMBER 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸Author Lorraine Wilson ▸Publisher Solaris People often draw a distinction between their lives online and in the “real world”, as if the two are entirely unrelated. It’s not true, as the politics of the last few years has repeatedly proved. Lorraine Wilson’s still, strange novel makes this literal. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world haunted by the ghosts of a collapsed internet, now free to cause chaos in the physical realm. Katerina works as a herbalist in an isolated village. When a boy named Stefan arrives, bringing with him a string of strange happenings, the locals begin to turn on Katerina, forcing her and Stefan to head out in search of his father and an answer to a mysterious digital plague. Wilson conjures…

▸RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸Publisher Image Comics ▸Writer Kieron Gillen ▸Artist Stephanie Hans GRAPHIC NOVEL After the 20 issue-long Die, Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans have opted for something more compact for their next collaboration. It starts in familiar post-apocalyptic territory, with teenagers Lori and Annette waking one day to discover that most other people have inexplicably vanished. With the pair clashing with Droog-style gang The Dogs in their search for food, the narrative initially adopts a grim survivalist tone, before veering off into the fantastical as they encounter some haunting Angela Carter-esque wolves, and a pair of brightly-coloured giant alien humanoids. Hans allocates several full-page splashes and other large panels to spectacularly depict these gargantuan creatures, but Gillen never reveals the Giants’ precise nature or origins, just as he never specifies…

Tell us about your protagonist. Edie Morikawa is the heist’s runner – thieves that traverse the catacombs of the space station. The story opens with them finishing a prison stint after their ex-partner in crime betrayed them eight years ago. Now they’re starting over, but their ex-bestie has one last job for them… Who or what is a Hammajang? It’s a Hawaiian Pidgin word meaning messed up. It’s from the Hawaiian word “hemahema”, meaning awkward or unskilled, and the Pidgin word “junk”, meaning broken or bad. Did anything in particular spark the idea? A tweet, believe it or not! Something along the lines of “Childhood friends-to enemies-to-lovers hits different.” Which in my imagination met the idea of two backstabbing thieves begrudgingly reunited for one last job. How long did it…

Do you recall your first interaction with and impression of Wicked as a show? I had friends who worked on the original Broadway show, working in the costume shops. So I had this backstage view of what that process was like early on. Then to see it realised on stage, to experience that world that they created was really amazing. I was really blown away by what they had done. When you started work on the film, were there any costumes that you immediately knew would be a challenge? It was really the overall world. When you experience the musical, you have an idea emblazoned in your head about how beautiful this world is. So the challenge for me became, how do I recreate that vision and still pull in…

SOMETIMES THE UNIVERSE CORRECTS ITSELF FOR the better. Way back in 2016 when Legendary Entertainment bought the rights to sci-fi author Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, self-professed devotee Denis Villeneuve was quickly attached to direct a film adaptation of the first book and develop a spin-off streaming series about the powerful, all-female Bene Gesserit order. Villeneuve’s two Dune films became critical sensations and secured a green light for the streaming show. As often happens in Hollywood, all the creatives announced in 2019 to be developing the show were men, which promptly earned the vocal criticism of Herbert’s granddaughter, Kim Herbert. Five years on, the series has been through a creative gender realignment and arrives as the HBO/Sky Original Dune: Prophecy, showrun by genre veteran Alison Schapker (Alias, Fringe), directed by Anna…

WHEN JUSTIFIED’S Graham Yost started adapting the first instalment in Hugh Howey’s Silo trilogy, Wool, for television, something quickly became clear: the debut season would end at the book’s midpoint. “We just knew that Juliette going over the hill and seeing 50 other silos was a great way to end a season,” he tells SFX. “Then, in the writers’ room, we had to ask: ‘How do we start season two?’” So how do you restart a show that has – spoilers – killed off so many of its most important characters? Silo’s pilot introduced the Beckers, played by Rashida Jones and David Oyelowo, a happy couple told by their overlords that they can have a baby. You see, the Beckers live in an underground silo where the inhabitants know nothing…

LET’S BE REAL: STAR TREK FANS raised on The Original Series, or Star Trek: The Next Generation, have had no qualms, over the last decade, about talking trash about the latest Trek streaming shows. But there’s been one show mostly spared, and that’s Star Trek: Lower Decks which, after a slightly bumpy first season, has become one of the best reviewed and cross-generationally appreciated Trek shows because of its unabashed adoration for every iteration of the universe’s canon. Created by Mike McMahan and launched in 2020, Lower Decks is only the second animated Trek show, taking the very dusty baton from 1973’s The Animated Series. Featuring an original crew on an original ship, the USS Cerritos, it’s most interested in shining a light on the ensign crew members working their…

Back in early 2011, as series three of Being Human was airing, the show also unleashed a spin-off in the form of the eight-episode webseries Becoming Human. Set in a school, it starred returning character Adam (Craig Roberts) as an uncouth 46-year-old vampire trapped in the hormonal body of a teenager, alongside stroppy werewolf Christa (Leila Mimmack) and a recently murdered ghost, Matt (Josh Brown). The series concentrated on the search for Matt’s killer in five-to-10 minute bitesize chunks. “I wanted to call it The Naughty Step,” recalls Whithouse. “That was just met with a wall of indifference. The notion of online shows was very, very new at the time, to the point that when we were given the commission, we didn’t really understand what that meant. To be fair,…

▸ RELEASED 1 NOVEMBER 12A | 104 minutes ▸ Directors Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui There is no greater story of heroism than Christopher Reeve’s. Severely paralysed in 1995 after a horse-riding accident, the actor who played the first ever movie Superman proved to be a Man of Steel in more ways than one. Vowing to walk again, he campaigned for disability rights like no other. All of which is conveyed in this tear-jerking documentary from Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui (McQueen), which mixes talking heads interviews with highly personal archive footage following Reeve’s accident. Despite the title, the film doesn’t dwell too much on the four films Reeve made as Krypton’s favourite son, although there are some choice anecdotes, including meeting his first partner Gae Exton in the lunch queue…

UK: Sky Atlantic/NOW, Mondays US: HBO, Mondays ▸ Showrunner Lauren LeFranc ▸ Cast Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Clancy Brown EPISODES 1.01-1.08 There seems to be mileage in taking a crime classic and mapping a Batman villain onto it… While Todd Phillips’s first Joker film was (ahem) inspired by Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy, this miniseries about Colin Farrell’s titular criminal mastermind is effectively The Sopranos relocated to Gotham. A spin-off from 2022’s The Batman, it picks up in the wake of that film, with parts of the city still flooded following the Riddler’s attack. Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb (cruelly nicknamed the Penguin because of the way he walks) is a mid-level gangster who spies an opportunity to grasp control of the underworld by pitting the city’s crime…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED 18 NOVEMBER 1962 | 15 | Blu-ray ▸ Director Ray Milland ▸ Cast Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon, Mary Mitchel BLU-RAY DEBUT An AIP production, this low-budget nuclear thriller sees a suburban family fortuitously surviving an atomic strike on Los Angeles after setting out on a fishing trip with their caravan. They must then survive the lawlessness that follows. Ray Milland (who also directs) is the father who turns survivalist to protect his family; heartthrob Frankie Avalon the teenage son gleaning a little too much excitement from taking potshots at hoodlums. “The women”, as they’re referred to, make up the numbers. Though no doubt deemed hard-edged at the time, it seems quaint compared to The War Game or Threads. The blast deaths all occur off-screen, there isn’t…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2024 | 15 | SVOD ▸ Director Euros Lyn ▸ Cast Damian Lewis, Kelly Macdonald, Bo Bragason, Harry Baxendale SKY CINEMA “But I like garlic,” puzzles Rowan Radley, baffled by his dad’s revelation that he and his whole family are vampires. It turns out garlic intolerance is specifically linked to blood-drinking – and that it’s basically the only bit of classic vampire mythology that applies in this slightly daft adaptation of Matt Haig’s YA horror-comedy novel. Well, that and the blood part. When Rowan’s older sister Clara loses control and kills a boy, their strait-laced parents call in rock ’n’ roll deviant Uncle Will to help. He’s more of a liability than a rescuer, and his chaos leads a wannabe vampire hunter right to their door. Despite…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2018 | 15 | Blu-ray One for the Venn diagram intersection of Scream/Buffy fans, this slice of heavy meta turns the slasher on its head, as the killer is the protagonist. Sam (Fran Kranz) can’t help it, mind. Controlled by an evil mask, he’s initially unaware, calling geeky pal Chuck (Alyson Hannigan) for guidance. Brisk and neatly structured, it makes witty use of captions. But ultimately it is just another summer camp massacre. + Extras Two commentaries; six interviews; more.…

Recent movies now coming to shiny disc include DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (4 November, 4K/Blu-ray/DVD), After Wade Wilson learns the TVA are set to delete his universe, due to Wolverine’s death in Logan, he hops realities to find a replacement. We said: “The funniest in the series by some way.” Bonuses include director/Ryan Reynolds commentary and 43 minutes of bits and bobs, including three deleted scenes. LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (out now, 4K/Blu-ray) is framed as a recording of a US talk show whose guests include a girl possessed by a demon. We said: “Immaculately paced, with alarmingly outré moments of body horror.” Bonuses include four interviews and critical commentary. The Limited Edition adds a book and six art cards. In LONGLEGS (out now, 4K/Blu-ray/DVD) an FBI agent (Maika Monroe)…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 528 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Jeff VanderMeer ▸ Publisher Fourth Estate It’s been 10 years since we first ventured into Area X. Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance) was released over the course of a year and immediately became a landmark of recent science fiction. The series, about a remote area of North America mysteriously transformed – perhaps by alien intervention – was a gripping mixture of body horror, bureaucratic thriller and ecological themes that defied easy categorisation. This unexpected fourth volume takes us back in time to before Annihilation, with a trio of prequel novellas. In “Dead Town”, set 20 years before Area X formed, a group of biologists are studying the local flora and fauna when an ominous stranger arrives. In…

▸RELEASED OUT NOW! 448 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸Author ML Wang ▸Publisher Del Rey Suzanne Collins was pretty clear about the allegories at the heart of the Hunger Games books, but many readers missed them anyway. That’s unlikely to happen with Blood Over Bright Haven. Yes, it’s a fantasy novel, but it’s about as subtle as a rage-bait thread on X. Sciona Freynan is an ambitious mage, determined to make her mark on the magic-powered society of Tiran. No woman has ever been admitted to the halls of the Tirasian Magistry before, and not everyone’s pleased about their smashed glass ceiling. As an insult, Sciona is assigned an unqualified assistant: Thomil, a refugee from the Blighted world beyond the city. But the two bond over the ways the world oppresses them,…

▸RELEASED 12 NOVEMBER 256 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸Author Ramsey Campbell ▸Publisher Flame Tree Press Sixty years on from the publication of his first book, Ramsey Campbell is still writing horror that feels fresh, contemporary and surprising. Who else would mark that anniversary with a novel that’s as much a very English comedy of manners – with an unassuming lead character crying out to be played by Ben Whishaw at his most diffident – as it is folk horror? When driving instructor Leo Parker returns from a trip to the German Alps, he doesn’t return alone. He was visiting a remote mountain village that was twinned with his home town in a symbolic gesture of rapprochement after the Second World War. But Alphafen is a place with many dark secrets, both…

▸RELEASED 12 NOVEMBER 400 pages | Paperback/ebook ▸Author CJ Rivera ▸Publisher Angry Robot In a future where cyborg adornments are both the key to longevity and a fashion statement, one company aims to be the ultimate disruptor by developing organic enhancements. One problem: farming the organic material is highly unethical. It’s not something genetics pioneer Rosio Arata wants anything to do with, until an unscrupulous businessman finds the leverage he needs to force her to. The Final Orchard desperately wants to be Black Mirror but ends up more like The Uglies, thanks to its parallel plot structure, with one storyline following the children who are being grown to be harvested. Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but it’s obvious this is what’s happening a few chapters in, and it’s not clear…

▸RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸Publisher Oni Press/EC Comics ▸Editors Sierra Hahn, Matt Dryer ▸Artists Various ISSUES 1-3 In terms of comebacks, few come quite as unexpected as EC Comics rising from the grave. The company that pioneered lurid and gorgeously grotesque horror comics, EC was huge in the ’40s and ’50s before censorship and an anti-comics moral panic (with Seduction Of The Innocent, a book by a psychiatrist, claiming that they led to juvenile deliquency) brought their reign to an end. Now, in league with indie publisher Oni Press, EC is back, bringing its very particular blend of attention-grabbing horror to a modern audience. Their first two titles are Epitaphs From The Abyss and Cruel Universe , both of which stick closely to the EC formula: they’re anthologies with multiple self-contained stories…

▸RELEASED 5 NOVEMBER ▸Running time 129 minutes ▸Format CD/download/cassette ▸Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA Twenty-five years ago the fledgling Big Finish Productions released its first ever officially licensed Doctor Who audio drama. The Sirens Of Time starred all of the company’s returning Time Lords – at that point Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy – in a four-part story that took the unusual approach of keeping the three Doctors separate for most of its run, only uniting them in the final episode. The Sirens Of Time was a slightly shaky start to the range. The story – Gallifrey faces the latest big threat to its existence, and it’s all tied to the Doctor’s actions at three different points of his life – was steeped in the boring Time Lord bobbins…