Future Stories

Image: Lego Nintendo puts the spotlight on Mario so much that when they turn their eye to his younger brother Luigi , it makes those moments shine all the brighter. So it goes with Lego: as of a couple months ago, the green plumber has his own Super Mario Starter Course, and now he’s getting some sets all to himself. Well, and the ghouls n’ goblins that want a piece of his overalls. A trio of expansions will be arriving in 2022 all themed around Luigi’s Mansion, that wonderfully charming subseries where Luigi Mario goes to haunted houses and busts ghosts with a vacuum cleaner. For $30, the Lab and Poltergust set will feature Professor E. Gadd and his laboratory, where you can test those phantom catching skills with a Poltergust that comes with a Strobulb accessory. Catching the Gold Ghost will reward you with a coin, if you needed some incentive to hunt that jerk down. The second set, Entryway, will be priced at $40 and has you coming up with a creative way to beat Bogmire. You...

Image: Sony Pictures/Marvel We’ve covered weekend box offices for the month of October pretty extensively. It was hard not to with big tentpoles like Venom , Dune , and Halloween Kills , and it seems to have paid off in the long run, because domestically, things were the best they’ve been for theaters in a fairly long time. Overall, October should have an estimated box office of $638 million from the United States. That take home is said to be the largest domestic box office for theatrical films since February 2020, and has now surpassed July as the highest grossing month of the year. Accounting for this weekend, the month’s top 5 are all from big franchises: Venom 2 ($190 million) , No Time to Die ($130M) , Halloween Kills ($85M), Dune (nicely at $69M), and The Addams Family 2 ($52M). That’s good news for franchises overall, but not so much for the new releases closing out the month. My Hero Academia: World Heroes Mission did the best of the new batch, coming in four...

Image: Netflix/Riot Games Next week, Netflix and Riot Games will finally release the first act of episodes for Arcane . The animated series based on Riot’s popular League of Legends will tell the story of fan favorite Champions Vi (voiced in the show by future Hawkeye Hailee Steinfeld ) and Jinx (Ella Purnell), and what led to them becoming estranged. To celebrate the series’ impending arrival, Netflix has got a new trailer showing the chaos that’ll follow the sisters as they find themselves on opposing sides. Vi and Jinx’s conflict will play out as a war brews between the twin cities of Piltover and Zaun. Piltover’s the pristine city for the elite with fancy clothes and armored enforcers, Zaun’s underground for the have-nots finally sick of being screwed over by Piltover, you know how these things go. However things shake out between the two cities, the mad tinkerer and the gauntlet-wearing enforcer will be duking it out while hashing out their long simmering family issues. ...

Image: Universal Pictures The recent string of Halloween movies have been fairly serious affairs about generational trauma and an unkillable brute mowing his way through a single town. You wouldn’t thing a rock song would go well with the franchise, even with Rob Zombie having once a duo of reboot films, but Halloween Kills begs to differ. Before the weekend started, Universal put out a music video for “Hunter’s Moon,” the song from Swedish rock band Ghost that plays during the end credits of Kills. The band’s frontman Tobias Forge explained earlier in the month that the song came about when the film’s producer Ryan Turek hit the band up about making a song for Kills . He’d already had some songs that fit the bill, and “Hunter’s Moon” was one he thought specifically that would work with what the film was going for. “When I knew that there was gonna be a song called ‘Hunter’s Moon’ in a Halloween film, it was pretty easy to come up with a theme that would simplify the ly...

Image: Disney The original Hocus Pocus is a fixture for most households on Halloween season, and Disney’s been promising a sequel for years . In lieu of an actual trailer for this Halloween, Disney revealed a new slate of characters who’ll be joining the Sanderson sisters’ (again played by Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimi, and Better Midler) second adventure. Joining to the cast of Hocus Pocus 2 will be Hollywood’s resident monster man Doug Jones , Veep alums Tony Hale and Sam Richardson (also of the pretty good   Werewolves Within! ), and Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham . Jones, you may remember, played the zombie Billy Butcherson, who went on to help the kids of Salem defeat the Sanderson sisters and his ex, Winnie (Midler). They’ll be joined by Whitney Peak, Lilia Buckingham, Belissa Escobedo, Juju Brener, Froy Gutierrez, Taylor Henderson, and Nina Kitchen. The younger actors you’ve likely seen in shows like Teen Wolf or the short-lived ABC series, The Baker and the ...

Something’s definitely strange in this neighborhood... Image: BBC It’s been a long almost 11 months since we last had The Doctor and friends on our screens, but at last, she’s back! And things are looking a bit different this time around, as the end draws near for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor. Come talk about the first episode of Doctor Who season 13, Flux , and let us know what you thought of a suitably apocalyptic Halloween! When does Doctor Who: Flux air? The first episode of Doctor Who season 13, aka Flux, airs Sunday, October 31 at 2:25 p.m. ET in the U.S. and 6:25 p.m. GMT in the UK. “The Halloween Apocalypse” is a few firsts for the show, in that it’s both technically the closest Doctor Who has ever had to a literal Halloween special —sci-fi spooks are the usual in Who , sure, but having a “festive” episode not set around the traditional Christmas period is a welcome change. But it’s also the start of an experiment modern Doctor Who hasn’t really explored before, and it...

Image: Sony Pictures When the first trailer for the new Resident Evil movie dropped earlier this month, it looked like a cheesy, expensive horror flick with an...interesting soundtrack choice. Lest you think that was a mistake on the marketing team’s front for what’s meant to be the start of a six-movie series , it’s apparently not, because the film’s version of a “Jill Sandwich” joke—calling back to the original Resident Evil game after she’s almost crushed by a ceiling trap—is corny as hell . Yesterday, Sony put out a character trailer spotlighting Welcome to Raccoon City’s new cinematic version of the STARS agent, played by Hannah John-Kamen. At one point, Jill snatches a sandwich from future series baddie Albert Wesker (Tom Hopper) and declares, “It’s Jill’s sandwich now.” It’s a groan worthy line to be sure, and yet it weirdly fits? After all, Resident Evil is a franchise that’s no stranger to cheese, especially when it comes to Jill as of late . Outside of that, the vig...

Image: NBCUniversal You wouldn’t think that Fortnite would be the place you go to if you wanted to see hot millennial versions of the classic Universal Monsters , but anything’s possible in 2021. For the holiday season, the popular battle royale is holding a festival dubbed “Shortnitemares” featuring a short form miniseries called “We Will Be Monsters” that’ll try what the Dark Universe failed to do and modernize those classic monsters for a new audience. The setup is, the Bride of Frankenstein will be trotting around the globe and saving monsters like the Mummy and Dracula from untimely ends. From there, they’ll...who knows, maybe Jekyll will be the ultimate big bad. Directed by Rick Famuyiwa of The Mandalorian (and one of several ex-helmers of the Flash movie), the first episode has already dropped in Fortnite, and here’s a trailer giving a short glimpse of what you can expect. The remaining three shorts will hit in early 2022.  It all sounds utterly ridiculous, but ma...

Image: Blumhouse When the first Paranormal Activity came to theaters in 2009, it spawned its own franchise and revitalized the found footage genre of horror films. Then it got...not particularly great, hence the reboot Next of Kin . Coming out alongside it, Paramount’s released a documentary about the making of the entire series for those invested in the films. Unknown Dimension: The Story of Paranormal Activity features interviews from cast and crew members of the first six films, who all talk about the making of their respective movies and the gradual rise of the series overall. The documentary comes courtesy of a successful indiegogo campaign from 2019, and its existence will be especially important to longtime fans. Unknown Dimension marks the first behind the scenes look at the franchise, which hasn’t ever offered any such insight in the DVD releases of their films. “ Unknown Dimension will literally be the first time where cast and crew from all six films assemble,” ...

Image: Warner Bros. Dune has a stacked cast of actors both established and on the rise, from Timothée Chalamet as supposed messiah Paul Atreides and Rebecca Ferguson as his mother Jessica to Jason Momoa as lovable warrior Duncan Idaho. But few of the film’s stars have the “oh, it’s that guy!” energy of character actor Stephen McKinley Henderson. As Thufir Hawat, Henderson’s computer man for House Atreides isn’t the showiest role in the film, but it hasn’t stopped people from taking notice of his character...and also that cute parasol he sports while walking around the desert planet of Arrakis. Henderson’s been around as an actor for decades, but in an interview with Vulture , he admitted that he never thought he’d be “in a film of this stature.” It was only recently that he really began to think of how his journey as a film and TV actor changed, which he partially attributed to Vulture listing him as one of the great character actors working today. What’s more, he hadn’t read t...

Image: Marvel Games Since Insomniac Games showed up with Spider-Man in 2018 for the PS4, Marvel’s been doing their best to build a resume of successful AAA games. They’ve mostly been good at it — Spider-Man: Miles Morales was pretty good, and Spider-Man 2 proper should be pretty good as well; the Guardians of the Galaxy game from this week has been a pleasant surprise — and now the publisher has a new developer in their pocket. Yesterday, Marvel announced a partnership with Skydance’s New Media division that’ll see the creation of a new action-adventure game based on another Marvel character. New Media will be headed up by its president Amy Hennig, who gamers will know as the writer of the Legacy of Kain series and as creative director and writer for Naughty Dog’s first three Uncharted games. (She’s also the writer for Square Enix’s Forspoken, releasing next spring.) In a press statement, Hennig expressed excitement for the new partnership. “The Marvel Universe epitomizes...

Image: Adult Swim When adult swim canceled The Venture Bros.   after a solid seven-season run over a year ago, the reaction was pretty strong. Earlier this year, the network announced a TV movie for Blu-Ray and HBO Max, and now there’s been a sizable update for the upcoming movie that’s exciting despite how little it ultimately says. Yesterday, co-creator Jackson Publick (aka Christopher McCulloch, who primarily voices Hank Venture and the Monarch) tweeted the first page of a Venture Bros. script. Dubbed a “long form special” and crediting fellow co-creator Doc Hammer, Publick said: “Things are happening.” It’s not much to go on, sure, but the fandom is certainly excited to get some kind of Venture update. The series has a history of sizably long breaks between seasons and not always having anything to show until things are completely or almost done. The largest gap so far has been between seasons four and five (2010-2013) and five and six (2013-2016). But there some anima...

SpaceX orbital launch table saves some launch mass by providing nitrogen, hot oxygen and hot methane to ignite the engines. I think connecting the outer engines to the fuel supplied for ignition will save a few tons from the booster. SpaceX will hopefully launch the Super Heavy Starship to orbit in the next month or ... Read more

After burying those lightsabers, Daisy Ridley will deal dreams. Image: Lucasfilm Daisy Ridley’s first foray into sci-fi? Pretty good . The next one? Not so much . Hopefully the third time will be the charm for the Star Wars actor as she’s about to headline a few film called Mind Fall . Deadline reports that Rey Skywalker herself will play a character named Ardis Varnado in the new film, which will be directed by Mathieu Kassovitz ( Amélie ) from a script by Graham Moore ( The Imitation Game ). Ardis is a high-end drug dealer, only in this story the drug of choice is memories. In Mind Fall , other people’s memories are the popular drug of the day, with people giving up theirs for pocket change and others paying top dollar to have brand new memories implanted in their heads, which then ostensibly become their own. However, Ardis is eventually accused of murdering one of her clients and when she begins to try and solve the case, she realizes not all of her memories are actually ...

HE’S BEHIND YOU! Screenshot: Compass International Pictures Halloween Kills featured a lot of nods to the 1978 original Halloween , bringing back characters from that groundbreaking film to examine how the past 40 years have treated them. But one fan-favorite character didn’t make the cut, for obvious reasons: Lynda, played by P.J. Soles, who meets her demise at the hands of Michael Myers while talking to her close friend Laurie Strode ( Jamie Lee Curtis ) on the phone. In a new interview with Yahoo Entertainment , Soles looks back at some of her formative films (and shares an anecdote about almost being cast in Star Wars ). Of Halloween , she recalls not wanting Lynda to die because she was having such a good time making the movie. “I knew it was my last scene, so as I’m falling out of frame, I just kept grunting. John [Carpenter] had to say ‘Cut,’ because I wouldn’t stop! I didn’t want it to end. That was three weeks of pure joy. Jamie was 19, and Nancy Loomis [who played Anni...

Jake Kasdan at the UK premiere of Jumanji: The Next Level at BFI Southbank, in London, on December 5, 2019. Photo: Stuart C. Wilson (Getty Images) We only know three things about Amazon’s Red One , a Christmas movie the company touts will be “a globe-trotting, four-quadrant action-adventure comedy, imagining a whole new universe to explore within the holiday genre .” We know the star and the writer—and now that we also know the director, we’re really, really excited. Red One will be a double reunion for Dwayne Johnson , who is supposedly going to play the biggest, beefiest incarnation of Santa Claus that has ever been put on screen. The script is being written by Chris Morgan, who penned Furious 7, Fate of the Furious , and the spin-off Hobbs & Shaw . Now, I want you to just think for a second about a Christmas movie with the energy and action of a Fast & Furious movie, but instead of Vin Diesel, it’s Dwayne Johnson in a Santa suit and a fake white beard. Pretty good,...

All sorts of bounty hunting, monkey mania, magic and sci-fi abound this month. Image: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Studios, Lucasfilm, and Paramount+ The Nerd’s Watch just got an upgrade. After years of customizing the most enjoyable titles in sci-fi, fantasy, and horror movies and TV from the “original” streamers, io9 has decided to kick things up a notch. Folks, there may be too many streaming services. You’re still going to get all the best new films and TV coming to Netflix , Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and HBO Max, but now we’re adding Paramount+, Shudder , and Peacock to the list (plus others when relevant). That’s a lot of content so, to help, the whole io9 team is pitching in from now on. We’ll leave you to guess who wrote which blurbs (mwuahahaha). Take a gander at the best of what’s streaming in November 2021. If you’re just interested in the services you subscribe to, you can get to them directly here: What’s coming to Netflix in November 2021? What’s coming to Hulu...