Links and Updates

It’s been a while and the news has been stacking up. There’s a lot of exciting stuff on the horizon, so let’s get into it…

More promotion for Laika’s Wildwood has been released, namely this featurette which explains how Pittock Mansion in Portland is the inspiration for one of the biggest set pieces of the film.

It’s interesting how they’re promoting the film this way instead of through straightforward story-based trailers, but – wow. Look at the details! The stained glass, the owl lanterns, the ivy-covered walls… I’m verklempt about this whole thing. I think I’ve got at least three separate groups of people excited about seeing it: my current colleagues, my former colleagues, and my friend’s kids, so there’s every chance I’ll be watching it three times in theatres. I’m foreseeing Dark Fantasy as the theme of this October viewing.

I found out about this next film completely by accident while searching for something else on Tumblr: Cartoon Saloon is releasing a new feature! It’s called Kindred Spirits and is about the relationship between the Choctaw people and the Irish during the potato famine, in which the former raised money for the latter sixteen years after the Trail of Tears. And look at it:

Nobody is doing it like Cartoon Saloon.

We’ve covered stop-motion animation and hand-drawn 2-D animation – what other practical storytelling mediums are there? How about puppetry? I have to admit I know nothing about what this Jim Henson made trailer is actually for (a game, it looks like) but just seeing puppetry like this is scratching that Dark Crystal itch. They even have a making-of featurette.

Oh, and on the subject of puppets: I haven’t actually watched A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, but here’s a behind-the-scenes look that discusses the puppet show that takes place about halfway through the first season (it starts about 1:33):

I do love a puppet show.

Another unexpected gift is that some merchandise for the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender movie (in which Aang and his compatriots are now young adults) has accidentally been leaked. Depicting all of the characters several years older than they appeared in the original show, as well as a new character we can only assume is the film’s bad guy, they’re our first real bit of promotion for the project. And they’re on t-shirts!

Hopefully this means we’ll get some real footage sooner rather than later.

The promotion for Enola Holmes 3 has begun slowly but surely, with this new poster-ish image of Enola and Sherlock. Maybe the month it drops will end up being a Sherlock-themed month, as both Young Holmes and Sherlock & Daughter are recent releases that would fit the bill perfectly.

Here’s the first teaser trailer for The Death of Robin Hood, which looks very grim and dark, but also atmospheric and intriguing. Hugh Jackman can pick whatever project he likes at this point, so obviously something about this one spoke to him (it has big Old Man Logan vibes though, especially with the presence of the little girl!)

I often mention the plethora of Hallmark miniseries that aired in the early noughties, which kickstarted due to the success of Gulliver’s Travels, originally released in 1996. Imagine my surprise when Polygon posted a tribute for its thirtieth anniversary, detailing some of the work that went into bringing it to the screen. I know I have it on DVD somewhere, I must rewatch soon…

It’s also come to my attention that David Renwick has written another script for Jonathan Creek. Titled “The Fantom of the Acropolis,” it brings back Maddy Magellan! Apparently he envisions it as a theatre production, though there are no plans to actually stage it, and the script is only available if enough people contribute to its Kickstarter campaign.

I mean, I know it will never happen, but just imagine if they got Alan Davies and Caroline Quentin back to film it! Man, that would be awesome. Also, it’s dizzying to realize this show originally aired nearly thirty years ago, and that the last episode (the rather awful “Daemon’s Roost”) was released in 2016. Yeesh.

For Valentine’s Day Polygon ranked the best Star Wars couples, and they definitely got the first and last one correct.

Dana Terrace’s Knights of Guinevere is getting picked up for a full season, which is great news! The pilot episode is still available on YouTube, and hopefully she’ll get the chance to tell this tale without a truncated ending, as she had to do for The Owl House (still mad at Disney for that one). Matt Braly (who was behind Amphibia, which I really must get to one of these days) is also crowdfunding for his new project, Clara and the Below, a dark and twisted take on The Nutcracker. Yes please! That is very relevant to my interests.

Another Supergirl poster! I don’t have much to say, only that I like the look of it. And I am rather chuffed that they’re going for Bad Girl Supergirl instead of Girl Next Door Supergirl.

The trailer for Toy Story 5 has been released – yes, it’s happening. I’m not sure how many satisfying finales they can wring out of this franchise, but so far the hits have outweighed the misses, so I’m not discounting it just yet. Sadly it would seem that Woody’s reunion with the other toys is just a temporary visit (and there’s no sign of Bo Peep) but this could be a fun little adventure – and there is some mileage in the premise of kids who have too much screentime.

I got a little sniffly at the sight of Bonnie looking considerably older though… my wee niece is officially a toddler and not a baby anymore. They grow up so fast!

Rather sad news from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer continuation: it hasn’t been picked up by the network. This is a bit of a surprise considering the names attached and the amount of publicity surrounding it (Ryan Kiera Armstrong even cried for joy when Sarah Michelle Gellar announced she’d got the part) and now it’s all over just like that.

Gotta say, I have mixed feelings though. Buffy ended about as perfectly as you could have hoped for (I liked season seven more than most) and I wasn’t impressed by the news that the revival would take place in New Sunnydale. Why on earth would you go back to that setting when the whole point of the finale is that Buffy is finally free of it? And why would anyone want to live there given the giant crater the Hellmouth left of it in the ground? Also, how would they have handled the ending of Angel? The last we see of L.A. it’s being attacked by the legions of hell.

Furthermore, it seems unlikely that either Angel or Spike would have turned up due to the twenty-plus years of aging on each actor’s face, Michelle Trachtenberg has sadly passed, and it’s difficult to imagine Xander would have been involved either – and I can pretty much guarantee they would have dealt with that by killing him off in the interim. Look, I don’t care how you feel about Xander, but the heart of the show was the original Scoobies, and the heart of that was Xander. I will argue this point if I ever find the time to get back to recapping the show.

It’s still a little disappointing though, as it would have been nice to see Buffy again. I would have watched it alongside the CW’s remakes of Charmed and Roswell, which were the three big shows of my early adolescence. But if this has been canned, why not go back and do a prequel? There are hundreds of past Slayers, which was an angle the show was never all that interested in despite how fascinating the premise could have been. A Victorian Era Slayer! An Ancient Egyptian Slayer! A Wild West Slayer! The possibilities are endless.

In a truly bizarre coincidence, the very next day after Buffy was cancelled, the meaning behind Nathan Fillon’s Instagram reunions with the cast of Firefly were revealed – an animated series that’s set between the one-and-only season and the film. Uh – okay? This has even less chance than Buffy of being picked up, as right now it’s only got some concept art, a single script, and no studio commitment.

I’m even less enthused about this than a Buffy continuation for a number of reasons: the unlikelihood of it coming to fruition, Adam Baldwin, that a midquel can’t really do much to develop the story, that I’d rather be watching more Buffy, and that awful reveal that one of the story-arcs for a potential season two was Inara getting gang raped by the Reavers and killing them all because she had injected herself with a lethal STD beforehand (they even set this up in the pilot episode – that was what the syringe she was holding as the Reavers approached was all about). Think they’ll animate THAT?