TV Shows

Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) voted in favor (78.33 percent to 21.67 percent) of the agreement negotiated last month with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that represents the studios.

The new deal runs through June 30th, 2026, following the first time in 63 years that the unions for actors and writers were on strike at the same time.

SAG-AFTRA:

The deal includes more than $1 billion in new compensation and benefit plan funding, along with outsized gains to the traditional residuals formulas. It offers a new compensation model for performers working in streaming, with a substantial bonus on top of existing residuals structures, plus compensation escalation for principal and background actors. Additionally, the deal establishes detailed informed consent and compensation guardrails for the use of AI, hair and makeup equity, meaningful protections for the casting process, sexual harassment prevention protections and more.

Especially in a post One Piece world, there’s always some hope of Netflix’s live-action anime / manga adaptations exceeding everyone’s expectations.

But judging from the looks of the wigs and special effects featured in the new trailer for Robot Communications’ upcoming spin on Yu Yu Hakusho, we might be in for another clunker.

I mean that literally, at least judging from the lighting-challenged clip from Discovery’s fifth and final season, which Paramount Plus shared today at Brazil’s CCXP 2023.

In what looks like almost the dead of night, Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Book (David Ajala) try not to get killed by giant cloaking aliens with lava faces.

Warner Bros Discovery debuted the season 2 trailer for House of the Dragon at CCXP in Brazil today. The season’s eight episodes will start streaming on Max in summer 2024.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that House of the Dragon is bringing in some new actors, as well:

The production also announced additional actors joining the show: Clinton Liberty as Addam of Hull, Jamie Kenna as Ser Alfred Broome, Kieran Bew as Hugh, Tom Bennett as Ulf, Tom Taylor as Lord Cregan Stark and Vincent Regan as Ser Rickard Thorne.

Amazon Prime just released the season 4 teaser trailer for The Boys at CCXP in Brazil. There’s plenty of the show’s familiar satire of the US’ political and societal landscape in it, and Homelander looks like as much of a nightmare as ever.

The season comes next year.

Amazon Prime video is counting down to something to do with the new Fallout show that’s coming next year. A “live report from Galaxy News” on YouTube has a camera pointed at a Valut-Tec vault that almost certainly doesn’t have any dead people and giant roaches in it.

We’ve got a little over 30 minutes until whatever is going to happen happens.

Leading the way is the biggest monster of all, as Godzilla Minus One hits theaters. Also in theaters: John Woo’s Christmas-themed revenge movie Silent Night.

Elsewhere, season 2 of Netflix’s survival horror series Sweet Home is now streaming, the latest Indiana Jones is on Disney Plus, Baldur’s Gate 3 just got a huge update, and Fortnite OG is about to end with The Big Bang event.

Showrunner Craig Mazin said in a Variety panel that production begins on February 12th. The date’s not a total surprise, as HBO and Max content chief Casey Bloys recently said that production would start in early 2024, but now we know exactly when it starts.

Now we just need to know who is going to play Abby. Hopefully we’ll find out soon, given that the role has apparently already been cast.

You can watch all nine episodes from this playlist, as shared by Wario64. If you want to read more about the show before jumping in, check out Ash Parrish’s review of the season.

The Paramount Plus show has been renewed for a second season, but we still don’t know when it’s set to come out.

Amazon’s adaptation of The Boys only just got to college with its Gen V spin-off, but the streamer has already greenlit yet another expansion of the franchise — this time set in Mexico — courtesy of Blue Beetle’s Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, Diego Luna, and Gael García Bernal.

Vanity Fair has released some first-look photos for the Amazon-produced live action Fallout series due out in April of next year, and with The Game Awards next week, we just might get a trailer soon.

Fallout stars Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets) as Lucy, a vault dweller venturing out into the nuclear devastated world of ghouls, robots, and Roman empire cosplayers. It also stars Walton Goggins (Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers) as The Ghoul, a hundred-year-old irradiated walking corpse who, according to Fallout’s prosthetics designer Vincent Van Dyke, needed to be both gruesome and hot.

Judging from the pictures...mission accomplished.

How Agatha Harkness: Darkhold Diaries will address the events of WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is anyone’s guess.

But in a new WandaVision behind-the-scenes feature reel which also includes some new Darkhold Diaries production footage), Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness appears to be back to her old seld, and messing with the kind of magic that tends to get people roped into big crossover events.

Yukinobu Tatsu’s sci-fi / action / romance manga Dandadan tells the story of two teens who are dead certain that ghosts and/or aliens are probably real.

The manga has only been publishing for a couple of years, but Science Saru’s upcoming adaptation looks like it’s going to be pretty damn slick when it drops in 2024.

The first of three new Doctor Who episodes is about to premiere at 6:30PM GMT (1:30PM ET, and if you’re not in the UK or Ireland, you’ll find the new episodes on Disney Plus now). And after fans watch “The Star Beast,” for the first time, there will be an official post-show podcast (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts) to extend the experience.

The only odd thing about this is that Doctor Who didn’t have one before, and if you’re still wondering why every new show has a podcast, Hot Pod has tried to answer that very question.

When SAG-AFTRA finally reached a tentative agreement to bring the actors strike to an end earlier this month, the union’s insistence that its members might not be able to look over the deal before voting on it raised more than a few eyebrows.

It seemed odd that union leadership might try to get people on board with the contract without giving them a chance to read the whole thing. But now the union’s released the full document — on the Friday evening after Thanksgiving of all days.

While Star Wars continues to feature new aliens engineered in a lab for maximum cuteness, Doctor Who is moving in the opposite direction. Just look at this thing. I very much relate to Donna at the end of the clip below. The Meep, as it’s known, will make an appearance in “The Star Beast,” one of a trio of Doctor Who specials coming over the winter.

This is the second teaser for Netflix’s Gyeongseong Creature, following a release date announcement at Geeked Week earlier in the month. And while the show looks great, I am just itching to see what these creatures actually look like. I guess we’ll find out pretty soon: part one of the series starts streaming on December 22nd.

Netflix denied complaints of injuries resulting from Squid Game: The Challenge's January filming conditions that reportedly resulted in some injuries.

As Deadline reported today — a day after the game show’s release — two of the contestants have hired British personal injury firm Express Solicitors to seek compensation for their claims of hypothermia and nerve damage resulting from the filming. A spokesperson for the show told Deadline “no lawsuit has been filed” yet.

That’s according to The New York Times, which claims filmmaker Carl Erik Rinsch pocketed the millions of dollars Netflix transferred him for the production of a sci-fi series that we’ll probably never see:

Netflix wired Mr. Rinsch’s production company $11 million, bringing its total outlay to more than $55 million... Mr. Rinsch transferred $10.5 million of the $11 million to his personal brokerage account at Charles Schwab and, using options, placed risky bets on the stock market.

Rinsch and Netflix are “now locked in a confidential arbitration proceeding,” the NYT reports. He reportedly claims Netflix owes him “at least $14 million in damages.”

The Muppets Mayhem lasted just one season before Disney canceled it. Variety reported today that the show won’t get a second season on the platform.

The show followed Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem Band as they tried to record an album. Bummer for fans of the Muppet Show’s house band.

As our world’s become increasingly filled with artificial intelligence, robotic dogs armed with guns, and social media platforms run by fashy lunatics, it’s gotten harder to enjoy Black Mirror as mere speculative fiction. But even though the show doesn’t always feel as science-fictional as it used to, that’s not stopping Netflix from bringing it back for a seventh season.

And I mean that literally: the Godzilla spinoff series Monarch: of Monsters is now streaming on Apple TV Plus. But it’s not the only big release of the week, with Nintendo’s remake of Super Mario RPG out on the Switch, and the subversive Scott Pilgrim Takes Off streaming on Netflix.

Elsewhere, the excellent action game Downwell is now on Apple Arcade, and Nintendo surprise-dropped some titles at this week’s indie event: organization RPG Backpack Hero and turn-based folktale Howl.

Last year, Bandai Namco announced it would turn a short story by Toriyama into an entire Sand Land franchise. The Sand Land movie has already been released in Japan, we saw a trailer for the game during Summer Game Fest, and next spring Sand Land: The Series will “build upon the movie’s original universe” with a new anime on Hulu.

Hulu’s Animayhem booth will highlight this show along with Undead Unluck, Tokyo Revengers, and Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War at the Anime NYC convention this weekend.

As troubled as Warner Bros. Discovery’s universe of live-action projects based on DC’s comics are, none of that drama seems to be impacting Max’s Harley Quinn which has been renewed for a fifth season.

“We must have handed out at least three thousand NDAs by now,” executive producers Justin Halpern, Patrick Schumacker, and Dean Lorey said In a statement about keeping the renwal secret. “It was a big waste of paper.”

Netflix’s adaptation of author Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone series seemed like it could have been the streamer’s next big hit when it was first dropped back in 2021. But after just two seasons, Netflix has done what Netflix does, and announced that the show has been cancelled.