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First trailer for DUNE: PART THREE released

Warner Brothers have unveiled the first trailer for Dune: Part Three.

Directed and co-written by Denis Villeneuve, the film adapts the second novel in Frank Herbert's Dune series, Dune Messiah (1969). The story takes place some years after the events of the first two movies, with Paul Atreides ruling the galaxy as the Emperor. To solidify his power, he has unleashed the Fremen of Arrakis in a vast holy war, but in the process he has caused arguably far more harm than the old Emperor and the Harkonnens ever could, leading to many to conspire against him. Caught in the crossfire are his estranged wife, Chani, his mother Jessica and his old comrade-in-arms Duncan Idaho, killed during the original conflict on Arrakis but now resurrected as a ghola, a flesh-clone created by the redoubtable Tleilaxu.

Curiously, Villeneuve has been strident in bailing from the franchise at this point, although the narrative arc begun in Dune only concludes properly in the third book in the series, Children of Dune, following which there is a 3,500-year time jump to the events of the fourth novel, the almost impossibly weird God Emperor of Dune. Warner Brothers may choose to continue adapting the remaining four books in the series, but will do so without Villeneuve, who is moving on to a relaunch of the James Bond franchise. He also has an adaptation of the Arthur C. Clarke novel Rendezvous with Rama (1973) lined up.

Dune: Part Three stars Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson, Isaach de Bankolé, Charlotte Rampling, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert Pattinson, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin. It will be released on 18 December this year.

VERY STRONG RUMOUR: Obsidian Entertainment to develop a new FALLOUT game

As has been widely reported elsewhere, Microsoft have embarked on a massive restructuring of their video game business. Thousands of staff are to be laid off and around five studios are to be sold or spun off into independent businesses. Even the company's more successful studios are being reconfigured, with Obsidian Entertainment re-tasked to help Microsoft focus on its most successful IP. To this end, according to highly reliable industry insider Jason Schreier, Microsoft have commissioned Obsidian to make a new game in the Fallout series.

Obsidian Entertainment were founded in 2003 but many of the key founders had previously worked for Black Isle Studios, formerly the internal development studio at Interplay. There, several staff had worked on Fallout (1997), Fallout 2 (1998) and the original Fallout 3: Van Buren, which was cancelled when Interplay collapsed around 2003. The IP was sold in full to Bethesda Game Studios, who proceeded to develop Fallout 3 (2008), Fallout 4 (2015) and the multiplayer-focused Fallout 76 (2018). However, Bethesda partnered with Obsidian to develop Fallout: New Vegas (2010), often (but not universally) cited as the best game in the series.

In the meantime, the Fallout franchise has acquired a substantially more massive fanbase, with the arrival of the Fallout TV series on Amazon Prime Video in 2024. The show has already produced two seasons and a third began shooting this week. There have also been new tabletop games. Aside from the ongoing development of Fallout 76 through expansions, Bethesda had admitted they were still years away from starting work on Fallout 5 due to their prior commitments to Starfield (2023) and its DLC, and the in-progress Elder Scrolls VI, which will be the sequel to the 60 million+ selling Skyrim (2011). Also according to Schreier, The Elder Scrolls VI is not expected to be released before 2028 at the earliest, likely punting off any Fallout 5 to the early-to-mid 2030s, by which time the TV show will almost certainly be over.

The only Fallout game on the horizon is Fallout 3 Remastered, which has not been formally confirmed but reliable leaks suggest it is in development as a co-production between Bethesda and Virtuos Studios, who previously handled The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (2025).

Obsidian were acquired by Microsoft in 2018 and have since released The Outer Worlds (2019), Grounded (2022), Pentiment (2022), Avowed (2025) and The Outer Worlds 2 (2025). Grounded 2 is currently in Early Access.

Obsidian's regular release cadence has been extremely impressive by modern standards, especially compared to other Microsoft studios (in the same timeframe, Bethesda have only released Starfield). However, these games' critical and commercial success has been mixed; Pentiment was a critical darling but a low-key release that sold only moderately. Grounded is Obsidian's most successful game in its history, acquiring over 20 million players in a couple of years (shading even Fallout: New Vegas's success), but has largely gone unrecognised due to its perceived children's focus and not being in Obsidian's usual core RPG wheelhouse. Avowed did reasonably well (over 6 million players in its first month on sale) whilst Outer Worlds 2 was a major commercial disappointment, with both games reviewing only moderately. Grounded 2 has picked up some major plaudits in Early Access, but is largely being developed by an external partner studio.

As part of the strategic shift, work on Avowed 2 has been downgraded, with a small team to continue work whilst most shift to the Fallout game. An unannounced major new RPG project, claimed by ex-Obsidian founder Chris Avellone to be set in the Shadowrun universe, has been paused, again with the team expected to be redeployed to the Fallout game. Work on the DLC for The Outer Worlds 2 is expected to be completed shortly.

The new Fallout game will apparently be headed by Josh Sawyer, who was previously the director of Fallout: New Vegas. New Vegas writer John Gonzalez, as well as Fallout co-creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky, are all working at Obsidian and may work on this new project as well.

No information about the game's setting or title is known, and may still be in flux as apparently this strategic decision may have only been made this week. Microsoft are likely to want to call the game Fallout 5 to capitalise on interest in the series and the length of time since the last mainline release, but whether that's the case remains to be seen.

More on this when it appears.

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER sequel movie gets a trailer

A trailer has been released for the incoming new Avatar: The Last Airbender animated film.

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender is the first animated project to be released by Avatar Studios. Headed up by original Avatar: The Last Airbender creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino, they are currently working on three films and a new TV series, Avatar: Seven Havens, with the latter due to air in 2027.

The original Avatar: The Last Airbender aired in three seasons from 2005 to 2008 and became a huge hit, telling the story of Aang, the lost Avatar (the only person capable of using all four elemental forms of magic at once), and his struggle to defeat the evil Fire Lord. A sequel series, Avatar: The Legend of Korra aired in four shorter seasons from 2012 to 2014 and told the story of Korra, Aang's successor Avatar, seventy years later. Seven Havens will be set decades later and explore the story of Korra's successor, Pavi.

Avatar Aang is set much closer to the original TV series and sees the original gang reunite when another airbender is found frozen in ice. Aang learns of a mystical staff that could help restore the destroyed airbender culture, but another group called the Denied is also seeking the staff.

The film has already run into hot water, with the producers facing criticism for recasting almost the entire original voice cast from the series, despite many of them still working and their aging since the original show being appropriate since the characters are also older. The entire film also leaked online several months ago. Paramount has also annoyed fans by moving the film from a planned theatrical release to being a Paramount+ streaming exclusive.

The film will be released on Paramount+ on 25 July. Meanwhile, the second season of the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender remake recently landed on Netflix.

Murderbot: Season 1

An unstoppable killer android has decided it doesn't really want to do all that murdering any more and has decided to strike out on its own, with a personal mission to stay low and watch as much TV as possible. But the self-styled "Murderbot" is drawn into a survey mission on a planet that goes wrong, and discovers that keeping its identity a secret is going to be very difficult.

Murderbot is an Apple TV+ adaptation of Martha Wells's award-festooned Murderbot Diaries series of novellas and short novels, depicting the adventures of the titular Murderbot (note: does not do that much murdering). This first season of ten (short) episodes adapts All Systems Red, the (very short) first book in the series, but adds a lot of new material to flesh out the story.

As adaptations go, Murderbot is solid. I was wary of Alexander Skarsgård's casting as Murderbot, not because of any lack of acting skill, but because I'd always seen Murderbot as a much more anonymous character and Skarsgård has one of the most recognisable faces on television. I shouldn't have had such doubts as Skarsgård is excellent, delivering a performance that is simultaneously very human and very inhuman at the same time. The next-most-famous castmember is the splendid David Dastmalchian as Gurathin, the science team member most suspicious of Murderbot, who does a great job of making Gurathin seem like both a threat and a potential ally. But it's Noma Dumezweni's empathetic performance as Mensah that emerges as the most important, giving the team a strong moral core and Murderbot something to aspire to.

The cast is exemplerary, and this is backed up by the physical production. The show manages to feel appropriately futuristic without the generic vaguely iMac-inspired design a lot of SF shows settle on these days. Production design is impressive, and the effects are, as you'd expect these guys, very good, with a strong sense of physicality even to the all-CGI parts of the battle sequences to make them feel more real.

The show's biggest challenge might be its tone. The Murderbot books are inherently dramatic with a comedic edge to them, but the TV show perhaps leans into the comedy a bit more. This keeps the show feeling light, even its darker moments, and maybe risking being a bit too lightweight. It's again Skarsgård who helps this by ensuring the melancholic and even tragic aspects of Murderbot's situation come through.

The show's biggest comic success is its depiction of the show-within-a-show, Sanctuary Moon, in which surprisingly big hitters (like John Cho, Clark Gregg, DeWanda Wise and Jack McBrayer) get into ludicrous hijinks in short excerpts from Murderbot's favourite media. It feels inevitable at some point that we'll get to see a full episode of this madcap show.

More controversial are the short episode lengths, with most episodes only clocking in at half an hour, some less. This is an unavoidable side-effect of having ten episodes to adapt such a short (sub-150 pages) book. In retrospect it might have been better to have had five hour-long episodes, or to have binge-released the series rather than stretching it out over ten weeks, which risked becoming interminable.

The show does get better as it goes along, and the last few episodes where Murderbot has less to hide and more to sacrifice for its newfound friends, make for a compelling end to the season. But it will be interesting to see where the show goes from here, given the new few books are also extremely short.

Murderbot: Season 1 (****) is available to watch now globally on Apple TV+. A second season is in production right now for airing in 2027. Meanwhile, the eighth Murderbot book, Platform Decay, is due out later this month.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

For many years the game of foot-the-ball has been played in the back alleys of Ankh-Morpork, with teams formed from street communities coming together in sporting comradeship (involving violence and pies, not necessarily in that order). But the game is starting to turn ugly, and in the spirit of maintaining civic order, the Patrician has decided to make the game legitimate, with professionally-organised teams and codified rules. The wizards of Unseen University are invited to form a team and Archchancellor Ridcully enthusiastically agrees, with new staffmember Mr. Nutt proving an invaluable asset. But the old street game isn't going to die peacefully...

Unseen Academicals, the thirty-seventh Discworld novel, was published in 2009 and bears a somewhat difficult legacy. It was the first novel in the series to be published after Sir Terry was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, a mark that would also hang over the remaining four books in the series, with melancholic (and probably futile) analyses of what impact the illness had on Pratchett's writing. From a personal perspective, it was also the last Discworld novel that I read whilst Pratchett was still with us; the four subsequent books will be all-new to me as I wrap-up this long (long) gestating reread project.

It is also the longest novel in the Discworld series at over 530 pages in paperback, making for a surprisingly chunky volume for an author who was never keen on the shelf-destroying bricks taking up shelf-space in the fantasy sections of bookshops. The length is down to two things: Pratchett trying to do a lot more in this book than he normally attempts in a single novel, and a lessening of focus in the novel's second half. The length is even more notable than it might be otherwise because the core premise is decidedly slight. The book comes off very much as a throwback to the Discworld concept of "introduce real-life idea XXX to Ankh-Morpork and see what happens," previously achieved with the cinema, theatre, shopping centres, rock music, war, guns, post office, banks, newspapers, war (again) and tourism, and in particular to the earlier books in the series which embraced that idea without getting overwhelmed by it. Moving Pictures seems to be a particular touchstone, as that novel even gets a rare continuity mention in this one.

The book opens well with football fervour already sweeping the city and the Patrician - much chattier here than normal and, decidedly overused - decides to head off an inevitable problem by regulating it. Not willing to interfere with the game himself, he fobs the idea off on Unseen University, on the grounds they are already a sporting institution (especially the sport of eating) and have rules and a hierarchy already in place. So far so good, and the first 200 pages or so of the novel are very strong. We meet Mr. Nutt, a goblin who is trying to rehabilitate his species' unsavoury reputation single-handed and who is also a fine potential football player, as well as his friend Trevor who has promised never to play again. We also meet Glenda, our typical Hypercompetent Pratchett Protagonist Who Is The Only Sane Person In The Room, a trope which might be a bit more annoying if Pratchett wasn't so damned good at executing it.

However, the book then throws more ideas into the mix than it really has time to deal with. The former Dean of Unseen University has been poached by a rival institution in Pseudopolis and is continuing his long-standing rivalry with Ridcully from a position of (according to him, anyway) equals. The UU has also neutralised the very threat posed to reality by an evil wizard/Dark Lord by giving him the one thing greater than land or gold or magical immortality: tenure. We also touch base with Rincewind and the Luggage for the first time in a very long time, though alas they are limited here to some extended cameos. We also get hints of a romance between the Patrician and another morally-questionable ruler, Glenda's best friend becoming possibly Ankh-Morpork's first supermodel, the continued rise to criminal power by a former back-alley thug, the continued misadventures of the editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times, the City Watch getting involved...this is a book not so much stuffed to the gills, but the fins and backbone as well, and even the swollen page-count can't do them all justice.

The lack of focus can be seen with the fact we are given two reasons why UU has to form a football team. The institution is enjoying the fruits of a bequest from a deceased member, but his will stipulates they need to get on top of the situation or lose access to that cash. But then the Patrician just insists they need to form a team anyway. It feels like one of these ideas should have been jettisoned at least.

The book also feels like it can't work out what to do about Nutt. Rehabilitating a single goblin doesn't even register on the radar given Ankh-Morpork is home to the Vampire Temperance League and thousands of trolls who have agreed to abide by local laws, with werewolves serving in the City Watch and golems doing a lot of work in the city. There's nothing really noteworthy about Nutt also going against the grain of his species and being trusted, and a late-book revelation about his backstory doesn't really change that at all. As a result, a lot of the tension in Nutt's story fizzles out. If this had been a book much earlier in the timeline, that storyline would have had more legs to it.

Still, when the book works, it works well. Ankh-Morpork holds a strong claim to being the single greatest fantasy metropolis ever depicted in print, and Unseen Academical's greatest strength is fleshing that out in much greater detail. We get a strong sense of life on the Ankh-Morpork street for ordinary people that we haven't seen for a long while, and for the first time a reader can feel how the city has shifted from its medieval origins in The Colour of Magic to something more Victorian, even proto-steampunk and industrial. The atmosphere of the changing city is Pratchett's greatest triumph in the latter run of novels in the series.

But the lack of focus continues to hurt the book. For a book about football, there isn't very much football in it, and I don't get the sense Pratchett is that interested in the game. What he is interested in is the impact it has on people, and how people can wrap their hopes and fears for life itself into their support for their football team. It's an interesting theme which he does explore, but maybe in not as much depth as you'd normally expect.

Unseen Academicals (***) is well-written and amusing, with superb worldbuilding, but it is also a little flabby, somewhat overlong and unfocused, and is unfortunately towards the weaker end of the Discworld series in quality.

A previous version of this review was published in 2010.

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NIVALIS gets new trailer, name and release date

Ion Lands have revealed the release date and new name for their long-heralded futuristic game Nivalis. Now retitled Nivalis Nights, the game will hit Steam on 29 September this year. They have also released a new trailer for the game.

The game is a spiritual successor to their 2020 title Cloudpunk, which saw the player driving a flying taxi cab around the city of Nivalis and gradually getting drawn into a complex series of stories involving their passengers. An expansion almost as long as the original game, City of Ghosts, followed in 2021. The game was told primarily from behind the dashboard of the taxi, but also allowed the player to get out of the car and explore some areas on-foot with some low-fi, Minecraft-esque voxel graphics.

Nivalis Nights maintains that look, but at a much higher degree of fidelity. This time around your character is running a business, starting off as a noodle bar, but can acquire more businesses and properties. The goal is to work your way up above the clouds. However, a serial killer on the loose may throw a wrench in your plans.

The game has been delayed multiple times, as it sounds like the scope and scale became significantly more ambitious.

The game certainly looks extremely impressive. Hopefully it can avoid getting swamped by all the other games launching in August and September as they seek to get out of the way of the all-consuming behemoth of Grand Theft Auto VI in November.

Widow's Bay: Season 1

Widow's Bay is a picturesque island off the coast of New England, with wonderful sea views and friendly locals. Mayor Tom Loftis is determined to make Widow's Bay the "new Martha's Vineyard," by getting a feature in a national newspaper and website. But a great many locals are convinced the island is cursed, to Tom's disgust. The tolling of the church bell for the first time in decades and the beginning of a new series of unusual events starts to make even Tom wonder if something really strange is going on.

Widow's Bay is a new Apple TV show that attempts to merge the uncanny weirdness of, say, Twin Peaks, with more comedic sensibilities. Showrunner-writer Katie Dippold (Parks & Recreation) nails the vibe of offbeat humour just perfectly, creating a show that feels like it could be a Stephen King novel with a laughter track (perhaps inevitably, King is a big fan), or maybe a TV version of the movie Cabin in the Woods.

Matthew Rhys (The Americans) stars as Mayor Loftis, the harried everyman who is trying to make the island more attractive to investment and tourism, to the disdain of his constituents who seem to simultaneously decry the state of the economy but also complain about any attempt to fix it. Loftis is a determined believer in science and rationality...up to a point. His assistant Patricia (Kate O'Flynn) still bears the scars of a close encounter with a serial killer when she was a teenager. Local eccentric Wyck Crawford (Stephen Root) claims that disaster is about to befall the island, to Loftis's scorn...until some odd events see him reluctantly seeking Crawford's advice.

The show starts off in an episodic mode, with each episode seeing a different weird event happening on the island, with Loftis investigating and scoffing at any idea there is a supernatural explanation. Early episodes end inconclusively, with it being unclear if supernatural shenanigans are to blame or perhaps sabotage-minded locals keen to keep tourists away. Eventually the show takes a stand and a more serialised storyline develops, as the backstory of the island is developed through flashbacks to 300 years ago. The show is also not afraid to experiment; one self-contained storyline about what appears to be an evil self-help book is particularly genius. The transition from episodic to serialised also works quite well.

Superb performances by leads and bit-players alike anchor the show, with O'Flynn emerging as the most impressive player, stealing scenes from out under her more famous co-stars Rhys and Root. Betty Gilpin (GLOW) also steals the entire flashback episode she leads.

Where the show falters is in two areas. The young teens of the island, led by Loftis's son, are not particularly interesting or sympathetic, making that whole storyline fall a bit flat. The show's pacing also flags on the home straight, with the feeling that maybe eight episodes would have been better than ten to tighten up the narrative. The amount of comic invention on display is impressive, but can feel a little diluted by overuse. An entire episode where one of the characters is out of their mind on drugs also falters, though the idea is handled better than in some other shows.

But it's hard to criticise the show too much. Widow's Bay (****½) is darkly comic, occasionally scary, but mostly a well-played drama and horror where the darkness comes as much from the interior of the characters and their experiences as it does from the exterior, maybe-supernatural causes. The season is available now on Apple TV+. A second season has been greenlit.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Russell T. Davies leaves DOCTOR WHO (again), 2026 Christmas special cancelled

Russell T. Davies has confirmed that his second stint as Doctor Who showrunner has come to an end after four years, two seasons and five specials. Bad Wolf Productions are also ending their association with the franchise, and the BBC is now looking for a new production partner and showrunner to take the show forwards. As a result, the planned 2026 Christmas special has been cancelled.

It's fair to say that Davies's second stint as showrunner has been variable at best. A small number of great-to-excellent episodes were offset by some of the weakest episodes since the franchise's relaunch in 2005 (with Space Babies arguably being the weakest episode in that time), and muddled and confusing serialised plotting. More damning is that both season finales, previously a strength of Davies, were a total mess. There was clear behind-the-scenes chaos on the show, with new companion Ruby Sunday (a splendid Millie Gibson) demoted to a recurring character between seasons for unclear reasons. Ncuti Gatwa also ended his time as the Fifteenth Doctor after just two seasons, despite previously indicating he would do at least three. Spin-off show The War Between the Land and the Sea failed to make a splash (so to speak) and co-production partner Disney terminated their agreement with the BBC after just 26 episodes produced in total. Ratings tumbled across Davies's run, and the show failed to make much of an impression on Disney+ either.

The good news is that the BBC is committed to continuing to produce new Doctor Who and enhance its international profile. They recently partnered with AMC in the United States to relaunch the show's existing library there, though so far they have not committed to any kind of co-production deal. The BBC is talking to other independent production companies to see what interest there is in working on the show, and the current plan is to bring the show back with a full season rather than a single TV special.

Bad Wolf Productions was set up by ex-BBC and ex-Doctor Who personnel from Davies's first run and have produced a series of hit shows including A Discovery of Witches and His Dark Materials. They were recently acquired by Sony. Why Bad Wolf is leaving the project - despite the name, Davies is not affiliated to Bad Wolf directly - is unclear. However, ex-Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston had previously criticised the team there with having enabled bad behaviour during his own stint on the show in 2005, and indicated he would not be interested in any future cameo appearances until they left the picture.

The cancellation of the 2026 Christmas Special does mark a historical moment, as it means that 2026 will be the first calendar year since 2004 that will see no new Doctor Who content aired at all, bringing to an end twenty-one years of continuous production, a remarkable feat in modern television and almost equal to the original show's twenty-six-year continuous production run (from 1963 to 1989).

Davies himself has won some recent critical acclaim with his new drama series Tip Toe, and is already planning future projects.

Subterranean Press to shut down

In sad news, premium genre publisher Subterranean Press is to cease operations in 2027.

Founded in 1995 by William Schafer and Tim Holt, the press is based in Burton, Michigan. The press publishes science fiction, fantasy, horror and some mystery. The press was noted for being an early adopter of the luxury/limited print book format, publishing, among others, George R.R. Martin, Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, Arkady Martine, Joe Hill and Robin Hobb. Arguably Subterranean Press's success helped pave the way for the likes of Broken Binding.

According to the press release, Subterranean will continue fulfilling its 2026 and 2027 release schedule, but will terminate operations in late 2027 or early 2028 depending on the schedule being hit. Some ongoing projects will be transferred to other publishers with plans to coordinate art and design to ensure a consistency of appearance with new publishers.

Subterranean Press were due to publish three novellas by Scott Lynch in the near future to act as a prelude to his novel The Thorn of Emberlain. It is unclear how this project will be impacted.

Subterranean Press produced many beautiful editions of classic genre novels over the years, getting ahead of the rest of the game. They will be missed.