Finagling "The Fantastic Four"

"The Fantastic Four: First Steps" is the third big budget attempt to launch a movie franchise with the Fantastic Four superhero team.  These have been tough characters to crack for a number of reasons, chief among them being that the heyday of the Fantastic Four comics was back in the 1960s.  Instead of trying to modernize them the way that the previous films did, "First Steps" chooses to lean into the retro vibe, taking place in an alternate universe that looks an awful lot like 1964.  Our main characters also feel like superheroes of another era - larger than life celebrity do-gooders with a long list of powers and accomplishments.

Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) is a brilliant scientist whose body stretches like rubber.  His wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) controls light, can make things invisible, and creates energy shields.  Sue's brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) can become a flying, flaming Human Torch.  Finally there's Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss Bachrach), The Thing, a strongman who appears to be literally made of stone.    All four got their powers from "cosmic rays" during a space flight a few years ago, and have since then kept busy fighting villains and bringing peace to the world.  However, this is all prologue.  Our story starts when two things happen - Reed and Sue discover that they're expecting their first child, and a Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) comes to Earth, heralding the imminent arrival of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), an implacable cosmic being who goes around literally eating planets.

The production design is the best thing about the film.  We don't just get a 1960s themed Marvel movie, but the kind of comic-book retrofuturist world where the Fantastic Four have a robot assistant named H.E.R.B.I.E. (Matthew Wood), get around in a flying "Fantasticar," and it turns out there's a hidden subterranean civilization led by a cranky Mole Man (Paul Walter Hauser), who Sue Storm brokered a peace deal with before the events of the film.  I was a little taken aback at how broad and cartoonish some of these elements were at first, but I got used to it quickly.  By the end, I was reminded that it's been an awfully long time since we've had a superhero film that's properly family friendly, and we could use more of them.  And with the big focus on family the film keeps emphasizing, it feels appropriate that "The Fantastic Four" is very all-ages.

And ultimately, I think that's why "First Steps" works.  Yes, it's goofy a lot of the time.  Yes, the CGI baby isn't always convincing.  Yes, they tried to stuff too much into one film, so it doesn't feel like some storylines and character arcs quite came together.  Apparently John Malkovitch got left on the cutting room floor somewhere.  However, it commits to telling one story from start to finish, gives us crystal clear stakes and motivations for everyone involved, and delivers plenty of excellent spectacle along the way.  It's an old fashioned, earnest superhero story in the best way, with the fate of the world in the balance, and the heroes being faced with tough moral decisions - but we know that they'll choose right in the end.  I'm not really a fan of Galactus, because he's a very one-note villain, but he sure does deliver on scope, and ultimately he feels like the right kind of threat for this kind of superhero story. 

Compared to the previous iterations of these characters, these versions of the Fantastic Four feel more idealized, and more functional as a team and family unit.  This is great for the superheroics, but also makes them less interesting to follow as characters.  Ben Grimm is lonely, but doesn't deal with any self-hatred.  Johnny expresses some frustrations, but is not the hothead loose cannon in any sense.  We learn plenty about them through their interactions with each other and with other characters, but no one on the team gets the spotlight individually for long enough for any real character development.  Reed and Sue experiencing new parent anxieties and trying to protect their kid are probably the biggest real arcs.  

I don't know if a sequel is in the cards, but we'll be seeing more of these characters very soon in the upcoming "Avengers" movies.  Hopefully they'll get a little more fleshed out there, even with the limited time.  I'm not sure if these are the best screen versions of the Fantastic Four, but they're certainly strong enough to warrant a few more appearances in the MCU.  

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State of the Superhero, 2026

2026 is going to be a big year for superhero franchises, but let's recap 2025 first.  The big winner was the newly rebooted "Superman," which cleaned up at the summer box office, but also signals that James Gunn isn't too keen on embracing family audiences.  The heightened level of violence and the tie-ins to the very adult second season of the "Peacemaker" series mean a more limited audience.  Over in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (hereafter the "MCU"), none of their three theatrical releases did as well as Disney hoping, with "*Thunderbolts"/"The New Avengers"  putting in especially concerning numbers for a summer release with good reviews.  Disney is also scaling back their Disney+ shows, having finally released the long-delayed "Ironheart," "Wonder Man," and "Daredevil" series.

So, what's coming up in 2026?  The Sony Spider-verse is extinct at this point, with the very limited exception of the third "Spider-verse" movie tentatively scheduled for 2027.  However, Tom Holland's Spidey will return in "Spider-man: Brand New Day," the big MCU release for the summer.  The hope is that this will be the start of a new trilogy for the character.  However, the real test for the continued viability of the MCU will be "Avengers: Doomsday," which has announced a massive cast and has already had its release date moved back once, to December.  This will be the first "Avengers" film in seven years, and attempt to provide some kind of climax to Phases Four, Five and Six of the MCU.  I expect that both films will make a lot of money, and solve none of the franchise's problems.

Currently, the only MCU live action series scheduled to premiere on Disney+ in 2026 are the second season of "Daredevil: Born Again," and "Vision Quest," which is the sequel series to "WandaVision" featuring Paul Bettany's Vision.  After crossover attempts with some of the features, the MCU is no longer going to try and tie in their streaming series into the feature continuity so heavily.  We'll still get some cameos, like characters from "Davedevil" reportedly showing up in the next "Spider-man" movie, but probably not more situations like "The Marvels" or "Thunderbolts" where major characters who were introduced in one of the streaming series go on to headline a film.  This should reduce the concerns about too much "homework" to keep up with the current releases.  It is not looking good for "She-Hulk" on the big screen.    

Over at DC, James Gunn is taking his time.  He's not sticking to a wider roadmap, but claims he's greenlighting films based on whatever finished scripts are ready to go.  So "Supergirl" with Milly Alcock is coming in June, which has an uphill battle as a female-led superhero movie, but does have the benefit of a good director in Craig Gillespie and good source material behind it.  The other DC release is a much smaller horror film, "Clayface," featuring a Batman villain who can change his appearance at will.  The only live action DC series in the works for 2026 is "Lanterns," which will feature not one, but three Green Lanterns in the DC equivalent of "Training Day."  They have the right cast, with Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre playing Hal Jordan and John Stewart, but I'm curious whether the tone is going to be closer to the feature films or the more adult series like "Peacemaker" and "The Penguin."  

What's concerning are the titles that aren't anywhere on the schedules for 2026 or 2027.  Aside from "Spider-man," the MCU hasn't made a sequel to any of its films released since 2020, and has fumbled several already announced titles, including "Blade" and "Armor Wars."  We still get announcements for projects in development, but not much concrete.  I don't see another three-movie year for the MCU for the foreseeable future.  DC is in better shape, and 2027 should see sequels to both the 2025 "Superman" and "The Batman" if everything works out.  However, it also quashed some projects, including the "Sgt. Rock" movie that was potentially going to be directed by Luca Guadagnino.  

As superhero films continue to recede at the box office, we'll likely see the MCU and DC offerings continue to shrink.  They won't be totally gone anytime soon, but it's clear to me that their dominance of the box office is quickly fading, and we're likely to see a transition away from interconnected universes back to individual character franchises.  Batman, Superman, and Spider-man will all be okay, but everyone else will need to watch their step.

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Honoring "The Las Culturistas Culture Awards"

Award shows haven't been doing well over the past few years.  Their ratings have been sinking and their cultural cachet has plummeted.  Therefore, it's the perfect time for  a satirical awards show to rear its head.  It's time for the "Las Culturistas Culture Awards 2025," honoring the best of pop culture.

Hosted by the "Las Culturistas" podcast hosts, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, the ceremony runs an efficient ninety minutes, the winners have all been notified in advance, and all the boring parts of the ceremony have been effectively curtailed, leaving all the bits of an award show that the majority of people care about - spotting celebrities, fun musical numbers, well-edited clip packages, and zippy presenter banter.  It helps that Rogers and Yang are comedians, and able to both land a joke and pull off a song-and-dance number with enthusiasm and flair.  Everyone involved is aware that the awards are totally arbitrary, and the point is just to enjoy themselves and the spectacle of it all.  Will the award for "Most Amazing Impact in Film" be awarded to shirtless Jeff Goldblum in the thirty year-old "Jurassic Park" just to get him to come to the ceremony?  Yes it will.  Will the obvious product placement (Dunkin, Volkswagen) and promotional appearances (Jamie Lee Curtis for "Freakier Friday," in theaters August 8th) be delivered with a knowing wink at the audience?  Yes, it will.  

I haven't listened to "Las Culturistas" much beyond clips of a few random interviews, as I figured out quickly that the show is not for me.  It's obsessed with the pop part of pop culture to a degree that I will never be, and is especially focused on all the drama and gossip that I try my best to avoid.  However, I appreciate that it's so unapologetic about serving its audience of women and members of the LGBT community.  The "Culture Awards" came about from a bit on the show, where the hosts would randomly announce nominees for silly categories like "The Creatine Award for Straight Male Excellence" or "Tiny Woman, Huge Impact."  Whoever decided to let them take over the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles and do the same thing with all the pageantry and glitz of a real awards show is a genius.  The best thing about the "Culture Awards" is that it makes no attempt to appeal to everybody, the way too many other awards shows have.  There were a couple of geek-adjacent categories for me, like "Best Batman Woman," where the winner was a fake Riddler henchgirl, but most of the focus was on fashion, music, and lots of celebrities I had never heard of.  And I didn't mind at all, because the show was so entertaining.  

And this is a valuable thing.  The woman-centric parts of pop culture have too often been framed as existing in opposition to the male-centric parts of pop culture, and the played up rivalry is simply tiresome and not necessary.  Aside from a vague mention of terrible things happening in the country right now, the "Culture Awards" sidesteps all politics, and leans into the celebration of all that is fabulous and iconic.  Lisa Rinna is called on to model all the Outfit of the Year categories, and walks away with the trophy (a spray painted West Elm doorstop).  Matt and Bowen dancing to Lady Gaga's "Abracadabra" and substituting the "In Memoriam" montage with an "In Absentia" montage of all the celebrities who passed on participating is fabulous stuff.  The point of view provided by "Las Culturistas" exists in reaction to nothing else except the pop culture that it adores, and the awards show stands on its own without bothering to justify itself or explain itself.  

The "Culture Awards" ceremony aired on Bravo in August, and may be the most interesting thing they've produced in years.  It's currently available on Peacock.    

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"Eddington" Gets Halfway There

Let's see if I can write this review without getting too political.

Ari Aster's latest film, "Eddington" reminds me an awful lot of his last one, "Beau is Afraid."  Not only is Joaquin Phoenix returning to star as Sheriff Joe Cross, but the whole film takes place in a heightened version of reality where Joe's deepest fears and insecurities seem to be amplified.  However, this time the film's reality is closer to our own.  "Eddington" takes place in a small New Mexico town in 2020, right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

This isn't the first film to try and address the conspiracy and paranoia that ran rampant in the United States thanks to the pandemic and social media, but this is probably the most ambitious in its scope to date.  A dark satire of the culture wars and political polarization, Aster uses "Eddington" to take aim at just about everybody.  Joe refuses to wear a mask, for reasons he can't ever seem to articulate, but the dislike seems to be tied to his distrust of the government, embodied by Eddington's mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal).  Buzzword-spouting Ted is the ex-boyfriend of Joe's mentally fragile, perpetually ailing wife Louise (Emma Stone).  After a few clashes with Ted, Joe decides to run for mayor himself, enlisting the help of his underlings Guy (Luke Grimes) and Michael (Michael Ward), the only black officer in town.  Tensions escalate when the BLM protests hit Eddington, led by Sarah (Amelie Hoeferle), a social justice influencer.  Conspiracy theories are everywhere, many of them being parroted by Joe's hostile mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell), and a cult leader, Vernon Peak (Austin Butler), who Louise becomes infatuated with.  

The first half of the film is everything that Aster does well - putting together these incredibly anxiety-ridden scenarios, ratcheting up the tension scene by scene, and creating plenty of terrible people for us to alternately laugh at and despair of.  I love all the little details of the worldbuilding, from hardly anybody wearing a mask correctly, to somebody always filming in every public space, to the new data center Ted is trying to get built having a ridiculous name that is both a Reddit and a "Pokemon" reference.  I could argue that Ari Aster is unfairly mean to the BLM protesters, who are a bunch of annoying white kids whose idea of discourse amounts to a lot of self-flagellation and unhelpful theatrics, except that the film goes on to prove them mostly right.  I really enjoyed when Joe started taking matters into his own hands, revealing his own biases and blind spots.  However, this is where "Eddington" started going off the rails.

Up until the third act I was on board with how Aster was treating the politics - trying to represent all viewpoints and concerns, showing the absurdity of everyone's behavior,  and taking the opportunity to clap back against some of the most ridiculous antics.  However, past a certain point he tips completely over into conspiracy fantasy in order to raise the stakes and set up a big action finale.   This derails the more interesting examination of Joe as an increasingly troubled, morally compromised man, and sticks us in pure genre territory for almost the entirety of the rest of the film.  The big action finale also winds up being kind of a dud, because the cinematography becomes unreasonably dark and difficult to see.  Sorry Darius Khondji, but I had to read the Wikipedia summary afterwards to figure out what happened.  "Eddington" is also very long in the tooth at 149 minutes.  It's not as long as "Beau is Afraid," but there are a lot of unnecessary digressions and rambly dialogue-heavy scenes that wore on my patience.  And a few good retorts aside ("You're white!"), the pitch black humor wasn't to my taste.

Still, I admire what Ari Aster accomplished here, successfully addressing difficult material and blending satire, paranoid thriller, and character study.  The use of social media as a storytelling device is handled very well. The assembled cast is impressive all around, with Joaquin Phoenix continuing his streak of playing hapless, incoherent men struggling in vain against an uncaring universe.  Joe is a fairly sympathetic picture of someone who falls prey to conspiratorial thinking and develops a persecution complex, though his flaws are always very clear and his comeuppance is well deserved.  I also want to highlight a few performers new to me, including Michael Ward, Amelie Hoeferle, and William Belleau as a Pueblo officer who shows up in the second half.

However, with current events unfolding the way that they are, "Eddington" can't help feeling premature as an examination of the COVID era.  The more I think about some of its treatment of the various players, the more tone deaf the film comes across, even if you take all the events that unfold as being from Joe's very subjective and biased point of view.   The shaky existential underpinnings of "Eddington" don't help matters, leaving too much open to interpretation.  I expect that that the conspiracy theorists will inevitably totally misread and embrace the film's narrow, cynical POV as justification for their own beliefs, instead of taking its timely warnings to heart.

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"Poker Face," Year Two

What I appreciate the most about "Poker Face" is that it's committed to its format.  Following the lead of the old case-of-the-week anthology detective shows of yore, every new episode means a new location with almost an entirely new cast.  And to that end, "Poker Face" is a gold mine for performances by character actors, or in a few cases bigger stars getting to stretch some acting muscles that we haven't seen them use in a while.  This season has its ups and downs, but there are a lot more hits than misses, and Natasha Lyonne continues to be a lot of fun as the human lie detector, Charlie Cale.  We get twelve episodes this year, up from ten last season.  

Some of the highlights this year include Kumail Nanjiani and Gaby Hoffman as dueling Florida cops, John Cho as a charming con artist and Melanie Lynskey as his latest mark, Giancarlo Esposito and Katie Holmes running a funeral home, John Mulaney as a desperate FBI agent, Sam Richardson and Corey Hawkins working at a big box store, Method Man running a gym, and Justin Theroux as an assassin.  My favorite guest performance of the year, however, is Eva Jade Halford as a pint-sized psychopath who Charlie encounters while working as a lunch lady at a fancy prep school.  "Poker Face" is also amassing a nice roster of recurring characters, including Simon Helberg as Agent Clark, a helpful FBI agent, Patti Harrison as Charlie's new gal pal Alex, and finally the voice of Steve Buscemi as a sage trucker who Charlie encounters over the CB radio.  

Like last year, there are some season-long conflicts and antagonists to deal with.  Benjamin Bratt is nowhere to be seen, but Charlie has gotten on the wrong side of mobster Beatrice Hasp (Rhea Perlman), and is on the run from her for the majority of the year.  I'm happy to report that these episodes are as good as the stand-alone ones, and offer the chance for bigger setpieces and larger scale stories.  However, "Poker Face" remains at its heart an ode to the media of the 1970s and '80s, and everything is refreshingly low-tech.  Well, mostly low-tech.  The few times when we move out of that milieu tend to feel tonally off.  For instance, the season opens with Cynthia Erivo playing quintuplets caught up in a murder investigation of one of the sisters.  The digital effects aren't all that complicated or showy, and Erivo does a fine job, but this brand of spectacle doesn't feel like it's in the spirit of the show.  The big car chase in the finale, however, feels like something out of "Smokey and the Bandit" or "Cannonball Run," and is exactly right.

The performances, however, remain the main event.  One of the chief pleasures I get out of the show is seeing actors pop up who I haven't crossed paths with in a while - Jasmine Guy, Lauren Tom, John Sayles in a rare acting role, and Katie Holmes, who I feel like I totally lost track of for a decade at least.  This was always part of the fun of older whodunnit shows like "Murder She Wrote," which would often feature veteran actors from Hollywood's Golden Age proving that they could still chew scenery with the best of them.  "Poker Face" affords its guest cast the chance to play some different characters - Alia Shawkat as an evil temptress, Margo Martindale as a school principal with a secret, or Richard Kind in what looks an awful lot like a dramatic role.  Not quite a dramatic role, but pretty close. 

After the end of the first season, I liked "Poker Face" but I wasn't sure that it could maintain the same level of quality over multiple seasons.  Not only did the second season prove me wrong, but it now feels like it's at the forefront of the recent trend of longer seasons of streaming shows that look and behave more like traditional television.  So as long as Rian Johnson and company keep making this show, I'll keep watching.     

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Notes on "Ne Zha 2"

"Ne Zha 2" is currently the highest grossing film of 2025.  It's a Chinese animated retelling of events from the life of the mythological figure Ne Zha.  It's also a sequel to the 2019 "Ne Zha" film, which did very well at the box office, but nowhere near what the sequel has achieved.  "Ne Zha 2" is a bona fide phenomenon, having grossed roughly $2 billion worldwide, and the Mandarin version even took $20 million in the U.S., though the English dub flopped.  My parents, who never talk about movies, brought this one up in conversation unprompted.  So, it brings me no joy to report that I've seen both "Ne Zha" films and I don't like either.

Based loosely on the classical novel "Investiture of the Gods," this version of Ne Zha (Lu Yanting) is a bratty child reincarnation of a demon, who is born to loving human parents (Lu Qi, Chen Hao).  He and his spirit brother/best friend of Ao Bing (Han Mo), the son of a Dragon God, Ao Guang (Li Nan), were killed in the first movie and are revived by Ne Zha's master Taiyi Zhenren (Zhang Jiaming) into new bodies.  However, Ao Bing's new form is damaged, so Ne Zha's goal is to become an immortal and join the sect of the Taoist, Wuliang (Wang Deshun), to help get Ao Bing a new body.  However, the immortal Shen Gongbao (Yang Wei), a group of troublemaking dragons, and a few other enemies are going to make that very tough for him.     

If this plot sounds rather complicated and unwieldy, that's because it is.  I soon gave up trying to keep any of the characters and their motivations straight, because it depends heavily on being familiar with certain tropes of Chinese literature and mythology that the movie assumes that you already know.  It helps to just think of Ne Zha and anybody he likes as the heroes, and everyone else is probably going to be a villain for various reasons that ultimately aren't too important.  The first half of the movie is mostly humorous and farcical, as you'd expect with your average animated kids' film.  Ne Zha and Ao Bing are stuck sharing a body, and Taiyi Zhenren tries to pass off Ne Zha as a model student and candidate for immortality to Wuliang.  There's a lot of tiresome toilet humor in both of the "Ne Zha" movies in a way that is very Chinese, but not any more appealing to me than when Western comedies resort to it.   

The second half of the movie is pure spectacle, with the various gods and demons going to battle against one another.  There are lots of beautiful, large-scale fighting sequences, interesting creature designs, and big dramatic confrontations rendered with plenty of lovely CGI animation.  The Chinese animation industry has been steadily improving over the past decade to the point where the level of quality is on par with most of the Western studios.  "Ne Zha 2" significantly improves on the first "Ne Zha" visually, and the spectacle is the best thing that it has going for it.  Unfortunately, it wasn't good enough to be worth watching simply for the lights and colors, and I found the story too incoherent to be invested in.  There are so many fake out deaths and resurrections, it never felt like there were any meaningful stakes to the battles.  And did I mention the film runs 143 eye-watering minutes?

The character of Ne Zha is appealing and fun, and I understand why he's popular.  He's a naughty little stinker of a kid, but with superpowers and a heroic destiny.  I expect that the audience that will have the best time with him will likewise be children, who may not be so bothered by the movie's byzantine worldbuilding and overly busy plotting.  However, for me "Ne Zha 2" has very little that I find appealing, and too much that I found myself patiently tolerating. That's not uncommon for me with certain kids' films, but I was hoping for better from a movie with this much hype and fuss around it.  Then again, I've found very few of the big box office winners out of China and Japan to my taste, so I guess this is just par for the course.  

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My Most Anticipated Series of 2026

It's a challenge to write these lists so far in advance - four of the titles from last year's posts were delayed to 2026, and "Anansi Boys" from the 2024 list is still in limbo, but that was never the point of these posts.  The point is to start off the year looking forward, trying to get a sense of what the streaming landscape looks like, and making some predictions about what I think the most interesting new shows are.  The titles below may not make it to your screens in the calendar year 2026, but they've already generated enough buzz to be on my radar, so keep an eye out for them.

The Vampire Lestat (AMC+) - This is season three of "Interview With the Vampire," obviously, but if the show wants to do some rebranding, as we pivot to more Lestat-centric stories, I'm going to take advantage.  The trailer is glorious.  I can't wait.

Cape Fear (Apple TV+) - The thriller series will star Javier Bardem, Patrick Wilson and Amy Adams.  Bardem playing a psychopath again is going to be an event, and I'm looking forward to him putting a different spin on Max Cady.  What has me a little worried is this material being stretched to fill ten episodes, which means expanding the story significantly.

Neuromancer (Apple TV+) - Graham Roland, the creator of "Jack Ryan" and "Dark Winds" is the guy who is finally getting an adaptation of "Neuromancer" made.  Apple TV+ science-fiction offerings have been pretty solid to date, so I'm hopeful that they'll do right by William Gibson and the cyberpunk community.  Callum Turner and Briana Middleton will star as Case and Molly.  

The Wanted Man (Apple TV+) - This one is from George Kay, the creator of "Hijack" and "Lupin."  The plot looks pretty typical - a crime boss escapes from prison to seek revenge and save his criminal empire.  However, the protagonist is being played by Hugh Laurie, which is enough to get me onboard.  Laurie's kept busy, but he hasn't had too many lead roles lately.     

Lanterns (HBO) - Kyle Chandler and Justin Pierre will star in this new DC universe limited series as a pair of superpowered Green Lanterns, but what really has me excited is the involvement of co-creator Damon Lindelof, whose track record since "Lost" has been pretty solid.  The actual showrunner is Chris Mundy, best known for "Ozark," who is no slouch either.

Vision Quest (Disney+) - Terry Matalas is showrunning the new Vision series, which means Todd Stashwick is in the cast!  And James Spader is back as Ultron!  Several other MCU AI, including EDITH and FRIDAY will also be making appearances, but there's no sign of anyone from the "Agatha" cast.  I'm holding out hope that these shows have more connections.

The Altruists (Netflix) - From Graham Moore and James Ponsoldt comes a dramatization of the rise and fall of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.  Julia Garner and Anthony Boyle will star as Catherine Ellison and Sam Bankman-Fried respectively.  I've been wary of the recent spate of Silicon Valley miniseries, but the talent involved has me cautiously intrigued here. 

Ride or Die (Amazon Prime) - So, this is an assassin action-adventure series starring Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer, set mostly in a mall?  This was apparently the subject of a bidding war when it was first announced, and Peyton Reed is directing the pilot.  Details are still pretty scarce, but Bill Nighy is playing the villain, which is usually a good sign. 

The Boys From Brazil (Netflix) - Jeremy Strong will star in a Nazi hunting limited series from Peter Morgan of "The Crown."  It's based on the Ira Levin novel, which was previously adapted as a Franklin Schaffner film starring Gregory Peck.  This might get pushed back due to Strong also starring in the delayed "9/12" first responder action series for Paramount+. 

New Sunnydale (Hulu) - Finally, the new "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" legasequel has a finished pilot, directed by Chloe Zhao, and starring Ryan Kiera Amstrong as the newest Sunnydale slayer.  There's no guarantee that this is going to series, but if it does it'll be soon, I'm rooting for it.  I'd love to know what the Scooby gang has been up to lately.  

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