This year’s San Diego Comic-Con occurred at what is arguably a very tenuous and transitioning era for the entertainment industry. As filmmakers, producers, and studios sought to build interest for future offerings, it happened in the backdrop of lingering issues about content choices and economic models. While this summer has seen the release of the film with the biggest revenue haul of all time, Avengers: Endgame, and The Lion King made more than a half-billion worldwide this weekend, the box office this year is also considered to be “one of the most disastrous on record,” as anything which wasn’t about either a Marvel Studios superhero or a live-action remake of a Disney cartoon has flopped or under-performed. Hollywood’s reliance on going back to the well of known franchises with new continuations of Godzilla, X-Men, and Men in Black led to them all being rejected by audiences and critics, and brought about terms in the press like “reboot fatigue.”
Over on the television side of things, issues related to the idea of “Peak TV,” or more specifically “Peak Streaming” have cropped up. The idea of Peak TV has been around for years, and basically posits television production of scripted entertainment is expanding to the point of being unsustainable. According to a research report released by the FX network, there were 495 original scripted streaming, cable, and broadcast series in 2018. That’s a lot of choices, but it’s also too many hours of the day to be eaten up watching TV, even great TV, for almost anyone to really enjoy, and that’s coming from someone like me who was raised by a television set as a child.
If there’s a lot of content, the platforms on which the content is offered are also multiplying to the point of wondering how many streaming apps will people shell out $10-$15 every month for until it becomes “too much.” Netflix’s shares plunged almost 14% by the end of last week after releasing an earnings reports which indicated the streaming service had lost over 100,000 subscribers in the United States over the last quarter, signed up only about half of the new users internationally that the company had predicted, and was in the red by about $600 million over the period. All of this follows reports indicating they’ll burn through over $3 billion this year and issued a junk bond to raise another $2 billion in order to produce and market original material as more and more content gets pulled away from Netflix, with titles like The Office and Friends leaving soon.
That material is going bye-bye because the major studios and content providers are soon-to-be competitors who want to use the stuff they’ve produced for their own platforms, with the entry of Disney (Disney+), Warner Bros. (HBO Max), and Apple (Apple TV+) into the game sure to put more pressure on Netflix’s subscription figures. Analysts and industry executives believe Netflix may have no choice but to introduce advertising into their service at some point. But this is an option Netflix has flatly denied as being under consideration, for either the short or long term—and maybe for good reason. When I mentioned the situation to a friend on Friday, her response to the idea of ads on Netflix was: “I would cancel that shit tonight if they did that.”
So with all the above being said, here is some of the movie and TV news, as well as trailers and previews, which came out of this year's Comic-Con.
- There’s been a lot of news for Star Trek fans over the last week.
- Created by Mike McMahan, whose experience includes working on Rick and Morty, Lower Decks will focus on the support crew of one of Starfleet’s least important ships, the U.S.S. Cerritos. The 10-episode first season of the animated series will premiere in 2020.
- There will be six new episodes of Short Treks. According to executive producer Alex Kurtzman, “some of the Short Treks will involve Spock, Number One and Pike, and then there will three new stories,” with two of them animated. One of the Short Treks will be a teaser for the new Star Trek: Picard and will fill in some of the gaps between Star Trek: The Next Generation and Picard.
- Quentin Tarantino is still working on his R-rated Trek film which he calls “Pulp Fiction in space.” It is still up in the air whether he will just produce the movie, or also direct.
- Star Trek: Discovery will return and is now set at the furthest point into the future yet for a series in the Trek canon, with indications being the crew ended up in the 31st century after the events of the season 2 finale. It was also revealed the crew did not end up where they thought they would, and a new character named Book, played by Supergirl’s David Ajala, will be introduced.
- The biggest Star Trek news of Comic-Con was the release of a new trailer for Star Trek: Picard. It provides new details about the series, which is set around the beginning of the 25th century in the Trek timeline after the destruction of Romulus. The story will involve a woman with a mysterious background, the Borg, the return of Data (Brent Spiner), and the involvement of Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). Also, some other familiar characters will show up along the way, too.
- When I first heard the idea of a sequel to Top Gun being thrown around, I thought it was really dumb and a reach. Beyond the fact director Tony Scott is no longer here with us, the original movie is such a product of 1980s “America: Fuck Yeah!” homoerotic cheese, I didn’t think a sequel could recapture the tone. And yet, when I first watched the trailer for Top Gun: Maverick, I sat there with a dumb grin through the whole thing, and was totally sold on it. Directing duties go to Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion, Tron: Legacy) this time, with Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, Glen Powell, Jennifer Connelly, and Miles Teller rounding out the cast. Teller will portray Bradley Bradshaw, the son of Goose (Anthony Edwards), and Val Kilmer will reprise his role as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky. The film is currently at the center of a controversy over Maverick’s jacket.
- Rick and Morty will return in November for 10 episodes. The delay between seasons three and four, more than two years, was complicated by negotiations over budget and content. The result was an order for multiple seasons and 70 episodes of the series. Justin Roiland’s and Dan Harmon’s animated dramedy will also feature the voice talents of Paul Giamatti, Sam Neil, Taika Waititi, and Kathleen Turner this season, as well as possibly a time-travel episode and the return of Mr. Meeseeks. However, no word on whether the series will return to the Evil Morty storyline in season four.
- Last year, a documentary about the life of Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, was a surprise hit. This time around we’re going to see if audiences are up for a dramatization about Mister Rogers. Based on Tom Junod, the Esquire journalist who profiled Rogers in 1998 and credited that encounter with changing how he viewed life, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood follows a journalist named Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) as he interviews and writes a profile of Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) centered around the idea of “heroes.” I have to admit I’m as much of a cynical bastard as the next guy, but I started crying watching this trailer.
- Based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels, as well as multiple adaptations in various formats including both table-top and video games, Netflix’s The Witcher is a deconstruction of classic fairy tales. Henry Cavill of Man of Steel Superman fame stars as Geralt of Rivia, a mercenary trained from childhood to slay monsters. Netflix has high hopes this can garner interest from the same fantasy audience which flocked to Game of Thrones. Sapkowski is serving as a consultant on the series, and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich has indicated the series will be based more on the books than video games.
- At some point, I fully expect the right wing to go nuts about the joint production by HBO and the BBC of His Dark Materials. Based on the trilogy of books by Philip Pullman, the series will star Dafne Keen (Logan), James McAvoy (Dark Phoenix), Ruth Wilson (Luther), and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) and is set in a world where people’s souls exist outside their bodies in animal forms based on the person's personality. In this reality, the papacy was abolished after John Calvin somehow became Pope, leading to the Catholic Church being moved to Geneva, Switzerland, and the resulting entity exerting control over most aspects of society as “The Magisterium.” A young girl named Lyra (Keen) sets out on a quest to find her kidnapped friend, which leads to revelations about the true nature of reality and a substance called “dust.”
- Director Tom Hooper’s follow up to his 2012 debut Les Misérables is a bit of a conundrum. I know of no one who was pining away for a live-action adaptation of Cats. Based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, which itself was based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, the film stars James Corden, Judi Dench, Jason Derulo, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson, and other newcomers. But the trailer for the Steven Spielberg produced film was met with great derision online, and a general sentiment that the whole think is an uncanny valley level of disturbing.
- A big question surrounding Damon Lindelof’s adaptation of Alan Moore’s Watchmen has been whether it will be a re-imagining of the property or a sequel to Moore’s story. The trailer released at Comic-Con indicates its more of the latter. Set ten years after the events of the graphic novel, Ozymandias’s plan seems to have come undone. Taking the philosophy of Rorschach to heart, police officers wear masks and act as vigilantes. And the memory of Doctor Manhattan lingers. This version of Watchmen will feature Regina King, Jeremy Irons, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, and Jean Smart.
- It Chapter 2 is the grownup half of Stephen King’s story, as “The Losers Club” reunites as adults to find the evil they thought had been vanquished as children has returned to Derry, Maine. If the subtext of the first film was the hidden horrors of small-town life, and the false veneer of childhood innocence, which is given physical form in Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard), Chapter 2 is is more about adult regrets, personal demons, and the scars we struggle to move past and overcome all our lives. Director Andy Muschietti is joined by Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Isaiah Mustafa, Bill Hader, and others this time around.
- To say the final season of Game of Thrones has been contentious among its fan base is an understatement. It led to widespread griping about story choices, accusations of sexism toward the characters for the creative decisions taken, and even a petition to redo the season with “competent writers.” So it is no surprise the Comic-Con panel for the series this year was contentious and mired in some of the same controversies which hung over the final season.
- Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who portrayed Jaime Lannister, was booed when he defended Jaime’s conclusion with Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) as being “great” and “perfect for that character’s ending … It made sense to me.”
- Series showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss decided to skip Comic-Con due to “scheduling conflicts.” This was met with widespread derision online, and was even mocked at other panels during Comic-Con, with Seth Rogen responding to questions about whether Preacher’s final season will be satisfying by saying: “I’m here, at least, so I think that’s a good sign ... I’m willing to show my face.”
- The cast of the show argued that much of the criticism of the final season, as well as of Benioff and Weiss, was a “media-led hate campaign.”
- A prequel series with the working title Bloodmoon, starring Naomi Watts, is currently shooting in Europe. It will be an all-new, original story based on George R. R. Martin’s backstory for Westeros in A Song of Ice and Fire, introducing new houses and explaining how Westeros came to be the way it was in Game of Thrones.
- Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville was renewed for a third season by Fox back in May after some ambiguity about its fate. The series, which was originally thought of as a comedic parody of Star Trek, has become much more than just that. The series will not return till 2020, but not to Fox television. The Orville will be a Hulu exclusive series. The acquisition of Fox’s entertainment library by Disney may have facilitated the move, since Hulu is now controlled by the “Empire of the Mouse.”
- The CW’s stable of DC universe shows will undergo some changes, endings, and crises as the “Arrowverse” is set for a major event.
- Series creator Jonathan Nolan has stated the theme for the third season of Westworld is “The New World.” Aaron Paul and Vincent Cassel join the cast as the action moves beyond the park.
- After Avengers: Endgame, the question of how things would shift for Marvel Studios lingered. Without three characters who’ve been their main draws into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it becomes where do they go for “Phase IV” and beyond. The answer is to both familiar and unorthodox places. Among the announcements:
- Mahershala Ali will be the MCU’s version of Blade, the role most famously portrayed by Wesley Snipes previously.
- Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster will become the newest FEMALE version of Thor in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder, which will also confirm Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) as the first explicitly LGBTQ main character within the MCU.
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will be a martial arts fantasy film, and feature Tony Leung as The Mandarin, and it is the REAL Mandarin this time.
- Black Widow has been likened to the MCU’s version of a Jason Bourne film. The film will feature Scarlett Johansson in the title role opposite David Harbour as Russian super-soldier Red Guardian, Florence Pugh as assassin Yelena Belova, O.T. Fagbenle as love interest Rick Mason, and Rachel Weisz as the spy Melina. Ray Winstone may be the villain Taskmaster, who will be in the film.
- The Eternals were created by Jack Kirby at Marvel after he left the New Gods behind at DC, and they seem to share similar DNA. The origin of human life in the 616 Marvel universe gets very intelligent design with the Celestials (i.e., the giant aliens seen in Guardians of the Galaxy) causing three strains of life. There are biologically unstable “Deviants,” of which comic-book Thanos is considered to be. There are normal humans. And there are Eternals, who are immortal cosmic beings that often resemble characters from Greek mythology. The film will be directed by Chloé Zhao and feature Richard Madden as Ikaris, Angelina Jolie as Thena, Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo, Lauren Ridloff as Makkari, Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, Salma Hayek as Ajak, Lia McHugh as Sprite, and Don Lee as Gilgamesh, the Forgotten One.
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is being called “scary,” with director Scott Derrickson stating he wants to take the sequel into a “gothic, horror” tone.
- According to Marvel Studios head honcho Keven Feige, after 2021 there will be sequels to Black Panther and Captain Marvel, James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and the addition of onetime Fox properties the Fantastic Four and the X-Men.
- One wrinkle in the MCU this time around is the addition of television series to the Disney+ streaming service. However, unlike previous Marvel TV offerings, these will directly involve characters from the movies and will inform aspects of the characterizations and plot for the greater MCU storyline moving forward.
- Hawkeye — The series will see Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) training Kate Bishop, the female version of the character from Matt Fraction and David Aja’s comics series.
- WandaVision — Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff will be reunited with Paul Bettany’s Vision. It is set AFTER the events of Infinity War where Vision died, and the people involved state things will get "weird." It will draw inspiration from the House of M series as well as Tom King’s suburban Vision storyline, and will also feature an adult Monica Rambeau from Captain Marvel, who will be played by Dear White People’s Teyonah Parris.
- Loki — The series will feature the return of Tom Hiddleston’s character through timey-wimey means. The version of the character in the series will be the one from Endgame who escaped with the Tesseract, and was still in asshole mode.
- Falcon and the Winter Soldier — The series will focus on Steve Rogers’s sidekicks combating the return of Daniel Bruhl’s Baron Zemo from Captain America: Civil War. Bruhl’s Zemo was seen in promotional material at Comic-Con in a purple mask more in line with Zemo’s comics look.
- What If? — The animated series will feature the voices of the actors from the MCU and will be narrated by Jefferey Wright as The Watcher, who will show the timelines where events from the films went a little differently.
- Based on the graphic novel by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, and brought to the small screen by Eric Kripke (Supernatural) as well as Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (the same production team behind AMC’s Preacher), Amazon’s The Boys envisions a world with superheroes, but those superheroes are either arguably insane or assholes. The series attempts to deconstruct the genre with a subtext of how the powerful use “celebrity to manipulate people,” and push the public to act against [their] own best interest.” It features Karl Urban (Bill Butcher), Jack Quaid (Hughie Campbell), Karen Fukuhara (The Female), Elizabeth Shue (Madelyn Stillwell), Erin Moriarity (Starlight), Chace Crawford (The Deep), Antony Starr (Homelander), Jessie T. Usher (A-Train), Laz Alonso (Mother’s Milk), and Tomer Capon (Frenchie). Comic-Con moderator Aisha Tyler told the audience for The Boys: “If you’re here with your kids, you’re a terrible person…it’s a fucking grown-up show. If you’re easily offended—please pounce.”
- There have been many, many attempts to strike lightning again after James Cameron’s time with the Terminator series. Director Tim Miller’s Terminator: Dark Fate seems to throw out everything after Terminator 2: Judgment Day, with the movie described as a sequel to Cameron’s 1991 film. Linda Hamilton is back as Sarah Connor for the first time since T2. Arnold Schwarzenegger also returns, and is joined by Mackenzie Davis (Halt and Catch Fire), Natalia Reyes (Birds of Passage), Gabriel Luna (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), and Diego Boneta (Rock of Ages). The film’s story was penned by Cameron and involves a new, modified liquid metal Terminator (Luna) sent from the future by Skynet in order to terminate Dani Ramos (Reyes), a hybrid cyborg-human named Grace (Davis), and her friends.
- Based on the critically acclaimed Bong Joon-ho film of the same name, the TBS adaptation of Snowpiercer has gone through a tumultuous development process. The current executive producer is Graeme Mason, the creator of Orphan Black. However, the series was originally adapted by Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) before he was fired over creative differences. When the network asked for reshoots of the pilot, the pilot’s director, Doctor Strange’s Scott Derrickson, refused to return as a show of solidarity with Friedman and a “radically different vision” for the series offered by Mason. The basics of the story remain the same. An acceleration of global warming prompts a desperate attempt to stop it. A chemical is dispensed into the atmosphere in an attempt to drop global temperatures. It works too well. Temperatures not only drop, but crater causing Earth to be covered in ice and killing almost all life. Decades later, the only pockets of surviving humans are aboard the Snowpiercer, a massive train which circles around the globe, running on perpetual motion. People’s placement in the train is based on social class, with rich at the front in luxury, and the poor in the back living in squalor. Daveed Diggs fills the Chris Evans role for the TV adaptation, except this time the character is recruited by the folks at the front of the train to help track down a killer.
- Zack Snyder returns to the zombie apocalypse with Netflix’s Army of the Dead. This is Snyder’s first feature since leaving the production of Justice League after the death of his daughter. The resulting film, which was finished by Joss Whedon, has been the source of protests from fans who want Warner Bros. to release a “Snyder Cut” of Justice League. With Army of the Dead, Snyder follows up on his 2004 remake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead with a heist film. Mercenaries attempt to raid a quarantine zone full of zombies and other things. The film will feature Dave Bautista, Garret Dillahunt, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Raul Castillo, Chris D’Elia, Theo Rossi, and Ana de la Reguera.
- The fourth season of The Expanse finds the series moving from SyFy to Amazon. Based on the novels by James S. A. Corey (the pen name of writing collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), The Expanse imagines a future where humanity has expanded out to settle most of the solar system. However, the dynamics of the situation have led to new divisions, new ways to exploit, and a conspiracy around the discovery of a “protomolecule,” which has far-reaching implications for humanity’s destiny. Season 4 is based on the fourth installment of the book series, Cibola Burn, in which the crew of the Rocinante are dispatched to a colonial world known as Ilus to settle a dispute between the corporation claiming the world, and the settlers who touched down on it first. The planet is also home to the remnants of the alien civilization which created the protomolecule.
- Co-written and directed by James Grey, Ad Astra (meaning “to the stars” in Latin) is set in the not-too-distant future where after an event called “The Surge” astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is sent on a quest to find his father (Tommy Lee Jones) at the edge of the solar system, 20 years after his father left on a one-way mission to Neptune in order to find signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
- Directed by Louis Leterrier, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a ten-episode prequel to the 1982 fantasy film directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, The Dark Crystal. Just like the original film, it features animatronic puppets created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop and designs based on creations by Brian Froud. The story involves a world powered by a crystal at its heart, and the crystal is dying. It has been corrupted by the evil Skeksis. Three Gelfling—Rian, Brea, and Deet—embark on an adventure to stop it.
- The Amazon series Carnival Row, created by Travis Beacham, imagines a world where human and fae live side by side … kinda. A war between the sides has left many of the fae refugees. Many have ended up on Carnival Row, a street in a Victorian London-esque town where fae refugees are often mistreated. However, a serial killer, which is neither human or fae, is attacking residents. Detective Rycroft Philostrate (Orlando Bloom) and fae Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne) hunt the perpetrator while also dealing with their feelings for each other. The creators and actors have pointed out the subtext of immigration, class, and how societies treat an underclass. And this was a point of contention during Comic-Con, with Bloom claiming San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer left an event for the series after he realized it “involved creatures being disparaged and mistreated (as with today's immigration situation).” The mayor’s office denied the accusation.
- The FXX series Archer has been renewed for an eleventh season, and next year will see an end to the detour of the last three years. At the end of season 7, the events of the series have occurred in the mind of Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) as he lay in a coma. Season 11 will see Archer waking up and doing “spy shit” again.