Future Stories

DeWanda Wise as Kayla Watts in Jurassic World Dominion Image: Universal Pictures Oh, so you thought Ellie Sattler was cool? That Alan Grant was cool? That Owen Grady was cool? In two weeks, they’ll all be bowing to Kayla Watts. Kayla Watts is one of the new characters introduced in the upcoming Jurassic World Dominion and she’s like Indiana Jones with a pilot license. Played by DeWanda Wise, who is best known for roles on Netflix’s She’s Gotta Have It and The Harder They Fall , Kayla at first doesn’t want to get swept up in the dino-driven adventure. But, of course, she does and all the rest of the characters are better off for it, because she’s incredibly well-plugged into everything going on and also has a heart of gold. And sure, it’s a bonus that she’s suave as hell and just plain fun to watch. io9 sat down with Wise to discuss the character and, in the below video, you can watch her talk about just how she was able to craft Kayla to be as formidable and awesome as she i...

The United States Oakridge National Lab Frontier Supercomputer is the first exaflop supercomputer. The Frontier system is the first true exascale machine with an HPL score of 1.102 Exaflop/s. The No. 1 spot is now held by the Frontier system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the US. Based on the latest HPE Cray ... Read more

Gif: Warner Bros. Marvel’s movies and shows may still grab most of the headlines, but the DC Extended Universe is only getting bigger and better. DC’s films and HBO Max series continue to get more robust, with a wide variety of projects far beyond just Batman , Superman , and the Justice League , which promise to include new and interesting takes on DC Comics’ stable of characters in the works. What follows is an up-to-date list of everything DCEU-related that’s on the way: DC movies heading to theaters, as well as DC streaming movies and shows coming to HBO Max . Last updated 5/30/2022. What’s the next DC Movie? DC League of Super-Pets Release date: July 29 (in theaters) The DC film everyone has been waiting for! Well, not really. But when you’re making movies with comic book characters, it makes sense to make films for all ages and this animated feature looks suitably silly and cute for a younger generation. Plus the voice cast— Dwayne Johnson , Keanu Reeves, Kate McKinn...

Screenshot: Lucasfilm Star Wars is definitely no stranger to cute, toyetic designs . From the droids of A New Hope all the way to the collectibles tastemaker that is Grogu, the franchise has a knack for cutesy designs easy to transform into must-have toys. So that its latest series, Obi-Wan Kenobi , was primed and ready to go with the next potential toy hit is no surprise—what might be a surprise to some fans is just how quickly it turned around. Hasbro, like many collectibles and toymakers lately, has been unable to escape the ongoing, overlapping shipping crises brought about by the aftershocks of the equally ongoing covid-19 pandemic. So the fact that there isn’t merchandise for L0-LA59, or Lola to her fans, on shelves timed with her buzzy arrival in the first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi isn’t too much of a surprise. (It’s due out starting late summer 2022, and into the fall.) But what might be surprising to Star Wars fans—especially ones now used to seeing toys months i...

Charly (Anne Winters) preps for action. Photo: Michael Desmond/Hulu When The Orville: New Horizons arrives on Hulu this week , fans will notice a new face among Captain Ed Mercer’s ( Seth MacFarlane ) crew: Charly Burke, a young ensign whose navigational talents have landed her a spot on the bridge. In “Electric Sheep,” the first episode, we quickly get to know her—and her intense personality. Without spoiling anything that happens in the episode, let’s just say Charly has been through a lot and she’s tough as nails as a result. But does she have a lighter side? “It’s possible,” actor Anne Winters (13 Reasons Why) told io9 at a recent Orville press day. “She definitely grows in the season and I’m excited for everyone to see her arc, because she has a massive storyline and is coming in with such a strong point of view ... but yeah, you might see a bit of a lighter side. I guess actually, I would really be curious to see what the audience has to say about that, because even Char...

Tesla Senior Vice President, Powertrain and Energy Engineering, Drew Baglino discusses the long term issues building the battery and electric vehicle supply chain. This was at a Stanford University event. Drew talked with Yi Cui, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Director of the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy and Will Chueh, Associate Professor ... Read more

Image: Disney+ As Disney+ comes off a weekend packed full of news and reveals from Star Wars Celebration, it’s rather quietly dropped the trailer this Monday morning for its newest live-action adaptation of its classic animated film,  Pinocchio , coming from director Robert Zemeckis. While the only good look you get of the titular puppet is in the still above, you can tell that Disney is determined to make the live-action version as much like the animated movie as possible—for good or ill. I revel in no small amount of irony at the title card declaring this film is from the studio that brought you the CGI Lion King (the 2019 version) that was poorly received by critics, and deemed passable enough for a family audience. But with some actual cast members on set, Pinocchio is an opportunity for Disney to show off its ability to merge animation and live-action. While that could lead to a more exciting final product, putting the real-life Tom Hanks next to anthropomorphized CG v...

Image: Netflix I know a grand total of three people care about Dragon Ball in this day and age, but we’ve got a new trailer and it looks wonderfully bonkers. Alas, the voyage of Avenue 5 seems to be coming to an end. Riverdale continues to Riverdale the hell out of itself. Now look alive, Gold Leader, spoilers on your tail! Fast X Daniela Melchior revealed her new Fast X look on Instagram. Thor: Love & Thunder Thor: Love & Thunder now has an official theater standee courtesy of Drissi Advertising. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero Toei Animation has also released a short teaser for its new Dragon Ball movie releasing next month in Japan. The Power Following the year-and-a-half production shutdown, Deadline reports Leslie Mann and Tim Robbins have exited Amazon’s adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s The Power . The Handmaid’s Tale Variety also has word Alexis Bledel will not return for the fifth season of The Handmaid’s Tale. The Mandalorian However, THR ...

Image: Respawn/EA/Lucasfilm The last few years have been interesting for Star Wars as an IP. While the theatrical films more than made their money back (for the most part), and the franchise has seen a recent surge in the TV and books space, its gaming presence has been a bit messier. Both DICE and EA’s multiplayer-focused Star Wars Battlefront titles have earned solid fanbases and sold well, but Battlefront II 2017 in particular was plagued by bad press in relation to loot boxes and gambling addictions , and the LEGO Star Wars games simply existed. If the ‘90s and early 2000s were home to some great games from the franchise, the mid-to-late 2010s left much to be desired by comparison. All of that is to say that no one was expecting Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to take off the way it did in 2019. Developed by Apex Legends/Titanfall developer Respawn, it originally seemed like a decent-ish character action game cribbing from the beloved Souls games and starring the average-l...

Capt. Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane) and Cmdr. Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki) on the bridge of the Orville. Photo: Ali Goldstein/Hulu The Orville ’s much-anticipated third season premieres this week, and io9 got a chance to see a few episodes in advance. No spoilers here, but while you don’t need to have seen seasons one and two, the new season, dubbed New Horizons , does contain some callbacks to what’s come before. io9 asked creator and star Seth MacFarlane how he went about keeping the show accessible to newcomers, especially since the show’s making its Hulu debut with season three, while also building on its existing mythology. “It’s a really good question that occupies a lot of my thoughts at all times,” MacFarlane told io9 over video chat at a recent Orville press day. “That’s always the balance. You want to reward the fans for sticking around and watching the show. And from a writing standpoint, it’s fun. You’ve laid the groundwork, and season three of a show is where ...

Image: Lucasfilm The one-two punch of Star Wars Celebration , along with the premiere of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s first two episodes, have made for a pretty packed weekend. Even if you didn’t watch the daily livestreams of what was going on in Anaheim, it may have been a tad difficult to escape the orbit Disney and Lucasfilm’s moon-sized IP . Whether you’re a fan of the franchise’s ever continuing TV output, their renewed effort towards good video games, or their literature, there’s a lot of interesting things on the horizon. For many, the most exciting bit of news falls on The Mandalorian: its upcoming third season looks to have a much bigger scope in a way that eclipses the previous two outings for Din Djarin and Grogu . Perhaps that’s to be expected for the flagship of Star Wars’ new lease on life, but from the sound of things, the wait for February 2023, and the driiiiiiiip feed of information that’s surely to come, is going to feel like torture for many. Speaking of 2023, we fina...

Image: Lucasfilm The animated side of Star Wars has served as home to some of the franchise’s most interesting works. When Star Wars Visions was released last year, it offered us different glimpses of George Lucas’ science fantasy world, through the eyes of powerhouses in Japanese animation such as Studio Trigger, Science SARU, and Kinema Citrus. It was also pretty freaking sweet, which is why it’s an extremely good thing that it’s coming back for a second season. Revealed on Sunday during the final day of Star Wars Celebration, the beloved animated anthology has some new shorts up its sleeve. Rather than pulling from Japanese animation again, the second series of shorts will become much more global: along with Japan, studios from Chile, the United Kingdom, France, South Africa, South Korea, India, Ireland, and Spain are said to be offering their own takes on the sci-fi franchise, each with their own styles. And of course, Lucasfilm proper in California will get in on the ac...

Screenshot: Lucasfilm/Disney+ At the final day of Star Wars Celebration 2022, Lucasfilm and Disney+ have released the trailer for the second season of the hit animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch . It continues the tale of a band of “defective” Galactic Army clones that are on a journey to be more than obsolete as the Empire grows. During the panel for season two, a short clip of the season premiere was shown of Omega and Tech on a beach, trying to get their ship to take off, but their efforts are waylaid by the arrival of crab-like creatures. The new season will kick off with a short time jump, and our heroes will all be sporting new looks to show for it—Omega gets a helmet, for example, while Hunter rocks a pretty sweet scarf. As the trailer shows, the Batch has got their work cut out for them in trying to find a place in the galaxy. They’ll be facing even bigger threats, but find at least one potential new friend to make in the form of Commander Cody, who we’ll finally fin...

Image: Paramount After many many delays, Tom Cruise comes roaring back to the big screen for 2022 with Top Gun: Maverick . Directed by Tron: Legacy’s Joseph Kosinski, the sequel to the late Tony Scott’s original 1986 film brings back Cruise’s hypercompetent Navy airman Pete “Maverick” Mitchell as he’s conscripted to train a new generation of fighter pilots. Those who’ve seen it, both critics and regular folks alike, have really taken a shine to it. Some have even called it one of Cruise’s best roles in years, if not ever . It’s no surprise, then, that Maverick is doing incredibly well for its first weekend. Deadline reports that in North America, the film’s currently opened at $134 million, and is expected to take home $151 million overall by the end of the holiday weekend. Across the globe, the film’s made an impressive $248 million across the globe, as of Sunday morning. Already, it’s breaking records as Cruise’s best box office debut in his 40-year career, supplanting the $...

The cast and crews of The Mandalorian, and Ahsoka, sit with Grogu at Celebration. Image: Disney This is why Star Wars fans love Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau. Two days after showing fans the first ever footage of The Mandalorian season 3, the pair decided to do more. Once again, they found themselves on stage at Star Wars Celebration , and though they could have just showed the same footage over again to a presumably new audience, they didn’t. They showed that, plus a bunch more. The Mandalorian returns in February 2023 for its third season , and during Saturday’s “Mando+” panel at Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, CA, the producers duo brought the goods. Besides the amazing Ahsoka reveals covered in another article , we learned that Rick Famuyiwa, a director since season one of The Mandalorian , is now an executive producer in season 3, and that Greef Karga himself, Carl Weathers, is very likely to return as director too. (This after Friday’s news that Bryce Dallas Howard will...

Image: Disney Animation You may recall that towards the end of 2021, the Animation Guild was in contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) for animation writers to have pay on par with writers for live action productions. If you have Twitter and follow several high profile people in the animation space, you’re likely aware of the #NewDeal4Animation. After a brief holiday break , those negotiations have been continuing in the months since, and it now appears that some kind of agreement has been reached. On Friday, the Guild announced that the new, tentative deal struck with the AMPTP will provide retroactive wage increases and “significant gains” for animation writers. Among its many changes, this new deal will address the treatment of streaming services (dubbed “new media” (streaming services), and will create a labor management committee with the goal of “addressing studio specific issues.” According to the Guild, the new contract ...

Image: Lucasfilm Tales of the Jedi ’s mysterious arrival on the schedule of Star Wars Celebrations had fans all over speculating what the animated series could be. Now, as producer Dave Filoni revealed at the convention, we know it’s far from what people were expecting. And yet, still kind of a surprise. Revealed during Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, Tales will be a six-part short animated series developed by Filoni with Lucasfilm animation, and co-written in part with The Clone Wars scribe Charles Murray. The series is just six episodes long, split into two, three-episode anthologies: one that follows Ahsoka Tano across various points of her life, from her birth to her exploits after the rise of the Empire and perhaps beyond, while the other will depict a young Count Dooku , master to Padawan Qui-Gon Jinn (played in part by both a returning Liam Neeson, as well as Neeson’s son), before his exit from the Jedi Order and his fall to the Dark side. In a trailer released to fan...