Links and Updates

It’s all kicking off! It seems like I posted one of these Links and Updates just recently, and yet since then, a ton more stuff has been announced... not all of it good, though at the same time I’m feeling surprisingly upbeat about what’s on offer.

First, the not-so-good stuff. Apparently, we’re getting a new Lord of the Rings film called The Hunt for Gollum which focuses on what that character was up to between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. I’ve no idea how that’s going to work. There’s also going to be a television prequel to Legally Blonde, and a reboot of The Maze Runner. Urgh, urgh and uuuuurgh.

More interestingly, Hugh Jackman has signed on to played Robin Hood in his waning years (the film is apparently called The Death of Robin Hood, so... spoilers?) It could be interesting ground to tread, and we’re about due for another film on this subject – though it’s still not my much-anticipated Maid Marian movie that delves into what she got up to while Robin was away on Crusade.  

There’s also been some news on the long-gestating Lord of the Rings anime. Set hundreds of years before the events of the film trilogy, it centers on the Rohirrim, and is narrated by Miranda Otto herself. This piques my interest more than the Gollum movie, as it’s something different, though I can’t yet discern whether it’s going to be an original story or something lifted from The Silmarillion. Either way, it will certainly look different from anything we’ve seen in this franchise, and hopefully won’t be as beholden to the requirements of prequels (that is, setting up everything that happens in the original films) as The Rings of Power currently is.

3 Body Problem has been renewed for the full three seasons, and it’s official – if I ignore something and don’t get invested, it’ll get the conclusion it deserves (even if it doesn’t actually deserve it). Clearly I shouldn’t have bothered watching Willow or Shadow and Bone, or otherwise they’d still be going strong.

On that note, Arcane’s second season will also be its last. I’m not sure if this is a decision of the showrunners, or Netflix’s usual killer order, but two seasons feels so truncated somehow. Hopefully it will end on a high note, though there’s a disturbing lack of Mel Medarda in this footage:

The title for the next Knives Out film has been announced, and it’s Wake Up Dead Man. Hmmm...

There are rumours we’re getting a Practical Magic 2. Not sure how to feel about that one; I suppose it’s not a bad thing, but... what else has to be said? Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are apparently on board, but will Aidan Quinn return? Stockard Channing? Dianne Wiest? Evan Rachel Wood? Why not just film one of the several perfectly good prequels that Alice Hoffman has since published about the Owens family across the generations?

Philip Reeve has written a new Mortal Engines book! It would seem David Wyatt has been fully replaced by Ian McQue as the official illustrator/cover artist for this series... which leaves me with the unfortunate urge to buy the set all over again so that everything matches (I had similar trouble with Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series).

In any case, here’s the synopsis:

Tamzin Pook is a fighter in the Amusement Arcade. And what she does best is killing Revenants.

All she knows is survival, having arrived in the Arcade as a small child. She pushes away her memories, her hopes, and her fears, and she emerges into the arena to battle the Revenants--dead brains nestled in armored engine bodies. She doesn't dare to hope or wish for anything more than to survive another day.

Meanwhile, the wheeled city of Motoropolis has been taken over by a rebel faction who killed its leaders and commandeered the city. Its only hope is a teacher named Miss Torpenhow who's determined to find the Mayor's good-for-nothing son and force him to take back what's rightfully his. But to get to him, she'll need to find someone who's skilled at fighting Revenants.

With a daring abduction, Miss Torpenhow and Tamzin Pook's destinies are entwined, and so begin their adventures together...

This stand-alone Mortal Engines novel follows an unlikely crew of fighters-turned friends: Tamzin Pook, Hilly Torpenhow, mayor-to-be Max Angmering, and washed-up mercenary Oddington Doom. Together, they must find a way to outwit the assassins that are determined to drag Tamzin back to the arcade, and try to take back Motoropolis.

I LOVE this world and Reeves’s writing style, so a return to this particular dystopia is very welcome.

A new Wallace and Gromit movie is on the way, with the return of the evilest penguin this world has ever known:

(There’s also a trailer out for the third Paddington movie, but I’m still unreasonably salty about the fact that Sally Hawkins didn’t return. I just hate cast changes).

But this month’s most exciting news is that Henry Selick (the stop-motion director of Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas) is adapting Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane. That is SO AWESOME!! Perfect symbiosis of story and artist, and if Coraline was anything to go by, it’s going to be a masterpiece. Now I gotta find time to read it again...

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House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power both dropped trailers on the very same day, which can’t have been a coincidence – though this time around, they won’t be airing in tandem.

In fact, House of the Dragon starts this very week, and there’s still a bit of a wait until Rings of Power. But along with new seasons of Star Trek Discovery, Doctor Who, Star Wars: The Acolyte, Interview with the Vampire, Bridgerton and Orphan Black: Echoes, it’s a veritable lineup of geek-related media.

In fact, I might go the whole hog and make my next break (scheduled for September) a pop-culture extravaganza – it’ll give me a chance to watch all the other “box office drawcards” like Ghostbusters, Jurassic World, Mission Impossible, Dune, Furiosa, Wicked, The Hunger Games prequel, the Disney Princess movies (Wish and Moana 2), Studio Ghibli’s latest (The Boy and the Heron) and the MCU/DC movies I never caught up on. If I let it all accumulate, I could make September franchise blockbuster month or something.

Speaking of Dune, they’re releasing a miniseries prequel based on the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, and I have to say: I’m intrigued. They’re by far the most interesting thing about Frank Herbert’s magnum opus, and anything involving manipulative ladies with preternatural abilities is going to be a must-watch for me.

And on another note regarding popular franchises, there’s a Stranger Things stage-show and damn it looks good! Remember when Disney+ released a recording of Hamilton? Is there a chance Netflix will do the same for this? And why isn’t there a bigger market for recordings of musicals anyway? There’s so much stuff I’ll never get to see otherwise!

Oh, and here’s the trailer for Moana 2. I’m still a bit on the fence with this one...

And the third and final season of Vikings: Valhalla, which I’ve only just stumbled across on YouTube while getting the links for everything else in this post.

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Bernard Hill passed away last month, and all I can really say is what I wrote two years ago during my rewatch of The Two Towers – that he was one of the two MVPs of that film:

It’s a hugely underrated performance, and yet Hill pulls off the insufferable pride of a king, the innate frailty of a man, the gentleness of a devoted uncle with his niece Éowyn, and inner reserves of strength when the need arises. I’d never appreciated just what he brought to the role before, but I do now.

More recently, we also lost William Russell, most famous for playing one of the original companions in Doctor Who, and who currently holds the record for “longest hiatus between appearing and reappearing in a show as the same character,” after he left the show in 1965 and returned for a cameo appearance in 2022. It now stands as a lovely swansong to his career.

I always feel a little awkward talking about celebrity passings on this blog, as it inevitably feels a little glib, but these were two iconic actors, who by all accounts were also good men, and I wanted to say something, even while acknowledging that the real loss is felt among their families and friends.

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To finish, I trust you’ve all see this: