Disney take over Hulu streaming service

Disney have taken control of Hulu, a popular American streaming service which competes with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video in the States.

It's been speculated for some time that this was Disney's plan. Disney are launching their own streaming service, Disney+, in November this year but have been clear that the channel will only be for children and "family" programming. This left questions over Disney's ability or willingness to create material for an adult audience. It also raised questions about Disney's vast new store of films and TV shows from 20th Century Fox, which they recently completed acquiring, as many of these would be unsuitable for a family audience.

Disney's acquisition of Hulu now ends that speculation. Hulu already produce adult programming, such as the critically-acclaimed Handmaid's Tale (which is preparing to release its third season), and in fact have several more adult-oriented Marvel TV shows in development, including Ghost Rider. It is assumed that, as licences expire elsewhere, Disney will move all of Fox's adult-oriented shows over to Hulu and the younger children's shows to Disney+ (they have already confirmed that Disney+ will be the new home of The Simpsons, although presumably the likes of Family Guy would have to go on Hulu).

A key weakness of the Hulu purchase is the lack of international exposure. Hulu licences its shows to overseas partners, with Channel 4 showing The Handmaid's Tale in the UK, for example. As part of the purchase, Disney will begin expanding Hulu's overseas footprint, possibly as part of a pairing deal with Disney+ when it launches in overseas markets.

GAME OF THRONES showrunners to write and direct next STAR WARS movie

Disney have confirmed that the next Star Wars movie after J.J. Abrams' Rise of Skywalker will be written, directed and produced by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

It was previously known that Benioff and Weiss had been contracted by Lucasfilm to produce a new Star Wars film "series," along with The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson who had his own full trilogy to make (although Johnson is only contracted to write and produce, and may direct one of the films). The news today from Disney and Lucasfilm confirms that Benioff and Weiss's first movie is up first, due for release in 2022.

The subject matter of the new films is unclear, although head of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy has confirmed that both new film series will be unrelated to the Skywalker Saga (as the numbered episode films are now being called) and will be set in different parts of the Star Wars universe, in time, space or both. Some Star Wars fans have speculated that some or all of the new films will be set in the popular Knights of the Old Republic era, the setting for multiple video games and comics, but this remains speculation at the moment.

GAME OF THRONES prequel pilot starts shooting

The prequel spin-off to Game of Thrones has started shooting under the working title Bloodmoon. This is unlikely to be the final title, with George R.R. Martin preferring the title The Long Night (HBO appear to be less keen).

The pilot is shooting in the same Belfast Paint Hall studios that hosted Game of Thrones, with location shooting due to take place in Northern Ireland and several locations in Europe, including reportedly the Canary Islands.

Naomi Watts stars alongside actors including John Simm, Jamie Campbell Bower and Miranda Richardson. The series is set approximately 5,000 years before the events of Game of Thrones, in the Age of Heroes, and charts the collapse of a golden age society into the chaos of the Long Night, when the White Walkers and the Night King arose for the first time and the Wall was built. With the possible exception of the Night King, no Game of Thrones characters are expected to recur in the new series.

Jane Goldman (Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, Kingsman) is writing and executive producing the new series, with S.J. Clarkson directing the pilot and George R.R. Martin serving as a creative consultant.

If HBO greenlight the pilot, full production of the first season is expected to start before the end of the year, for a 2020 debut.

Bandai joins forces with Games Workshop to make WARHAMMER 40K action figures

In one of those news stories that makes you wonder, "Why did no-one think of his earlier?", Japanese toy company Bandai have partnered with Games Workshop to release a series of figures based on their phenomenally popular Warhammer 40,000 science fantasy setting.

Bandai are starting the line with a 7" action figure based on the Primaris Space Marine model. The figure will have multiple points of articulation and come with different weapons and equipment that can be swapped around.

They are also launching a line of Chibi figures, small or cute models which are designed to appeal to children. This line seems to be part of Games Workshop's new drive to target younger fans, following on from their recent launch of a new range of children's books in the Warhammer 40,000 setting.

These figures will be available later this year. If successful, I suspect the 7" range will quickly expand to incorporate other figures.

Square release trailer for FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

Square Enix have released a new trailer for Final Fantasy VII Remake, their upcoming remake of their classic 1997 RPG Final Fantasy VII (as indicated by the title).

Square have not yet confirmed a release date for the game, which has been in full development since 2015. They have revealed that more footage will be released next month. Square also confirmed some time ago that the game will have an episodic release, but not how many episodes or a release schedule for them. They have suggested that the release scope and schedule may be similar to the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy (which was released in 2009, 2011 and 2013 respectively).

HBO drop teaser for WATCHMEN TV series

HBO have dropped a teaser trailer for their upcoming Watchmen TV series.

Watchmen is a sequel to the graphic novel - not Zach Snyder's 2009 movie - and picks up on events thirty years after the end of the story. The trailer hints that law and order is breaking down, with a growing movement of copycat vigilantes basing their actions on the character of Rorschach from the original novel. The only major character from the original book confirmed to appear is Adrian Veidt (aka Ozymandias), played by Jeremy Irons, although some characters from Doomsday Clock (a sequel series to the original graphic novel) will also appear. Details of the story and characters are being kept close to HBO's chest.

The series is produced and showrun by Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers). It is expected to debut in autumn this year.

Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2

The Klingon War is over and the USS Discovery is poised to begin a new mission of discovery and exploration. But a fresh crisis erupts when unusually powerful signals are detected originating from distant parts of the galaxy. Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise takes command of the Discovery on a temporary assignment to investigate the source of the signals, taking the Discovery and her crew into some very strange places indeed.

The first season of Star Trek: Discovery was a mixed bag. It had utterly spectacular production values, a very solid cast and a willingness to do things differently to any Star Trek series that came before it. It also had muddled storytelling and characterisation, and sometimes overcame narrative roadblocks by simply blasting through them and damning logic, a similar approach to some modern episodes of Doctor Who (and, in its latter seasons, Game of Thrones). Discovery at its best was fun enough that you didn't care about the lack of coherence in the storytelling, but at its worst it was wince-inducingly contrived and trying to be dark for the sake of it. The fact that it was still the third-best opening season of a Star Trek show (after the original show and, arguably, Deep Space Nine) says rather more about how poor most first seasons of 1980s and 1990s series were then about Discovery in particular.

The second season is a moderate, but only a moderate, improvement. It has a much more charismatic and interesting captain in the form of Pike, played with absolutely stellar conviction by Anson Mount (who is probably thanking his lucky stars that Inhumans was cancelled). Mount plays Pike as a captain with sound judgement, ready to take risks but not crazy ones, and who absolutely trusts his crew rather than second-guessing them all the time. Ethan Peck also joins the cast as a younger version of Mr. Spock, a more rigid one suppressing his human side than the character we know from the original franchise. Peck's performance is excellent, overcoming the usual "Spock problem" of having to unleash lots of exposition and technobabble through his dramatic presence. He is probably a better Spock than Zachary Quinto (as solid as he was in the neo-Trek movies), and a fine heir to Leonard Nimoy.

The second season also dials back on the Klingon storyline, only touching base with it in a few episodes, and instead focuses on a fresh mystery, a scientific conundrum which our heroes have to solve through investigation and exploration, concepts much truer to the Star Trek mythos.

Cumulatively, these changes are all for the better. The show feels more like Star Trek, the cast is working better together and we get more of an exploration of the side and background characters, making the cast feel more cohesive as a team.

However, the show still manages to sabotage itself. The plotting and main story arc is still muddled and somewhat confusing, and the writers prefer to blast through under-developed plot points in a blaze of technobabble and hoping for the best. This isn't exactly new to Star Trek (the same problem bogged down Voyager for almost its entire run) but it feels more egregious in the modern TV age. Characterisation for the regulars is mixed, with Michael Burnham still feeling a little too under-developed as our key protagonist but the scripts getting into the motivations and psyches of characters like Stamets and Saru in a more interesting fashion. Tilly, a highlight of Season 1, does feel a little too readily used as comic relief and like an over-indulged child in several episodes, which is a disservice to both the character and actress.

The plotting problems culminate at the end of the season in two episodes which feel contrived at best, with the writers more interested in resolving fan questions about canon rather than organically developing a logical conclusion to this story arc. It's not helped that the final big space battle is a confusing mess of beams and explosions that even Michael Bay would find nonsensical.

The second season of Star Trek: Discovery (***½) is therefore a bit variable in quality: outstanding sets (especially the recreation of the Enterprise bridge), actors and effects, but confused storytelling, continuity and characterisation. The way the story falls out does make sense (even if the route there doesn't always) and it does leave the series with a very interesting new setup to explore in Season 3, but it does feel a little frustrating that show still isn't hitting the high points of the shows that came before it, or even those of the other big space opera series on the air, The Expanse, which is comprehensively owning space at the moment. Discovery is available to watch on CBS All Access in the United States and Netflix in much of the rest of the world.

Angel: Season 3

The team at Angel Investigations are on top form, solving new mysteries and enhanced by the addition of Winifred Burkle - an astrophysicist with a gift for science and research - to the team. As Fred settles in (having spent five years imprisoned in another dimension), the team have to face the consequences of past actions, as Wolfram & Hart continue to undermine their operation and Darla returns...with a surprise for Angel.

The second season of Angel was a success, with a great main story arc and lots of excellent character development, especially for Angel, a character you'd assume by now had been fully explored. The third season is more or less a direct sequel to the second, but the writers pull back on some elements they feel had already been explored in sufficient depth, such as making Angel a darker character or having Wolfram & Hart constantly being behind whatever evil is going on in any given episode.

They also - thankfully - don't explore the camp fantasy world of Pylea again. Although a nice change of pace, Pylea outstayed its welcome at the end of Season 2 and we can do without going there again. Instead, the consequences of the Pylea trip play out several times over the course of the season, particularly for Fred (a winning performance by Amy Acker) and Cordelia (an ever-improving Charisma Carpenter).

If Season 3 has a major problem, it's in its structure and pacing. The writers clearly decided that some storylines in previous seasons had been allowed to dominate too many episodes, so this season each story arc unfolds much more intensely, usually over 3-4 episodes max, separated by stand-alone episodes. This means that stories have much greater verve and pacing, but it also means that the growing narrative momentum of the season keeps being reset with stand-alone episodes, which vary in quality immensely. The story arcs, revolving around the return of Darla, the campaign against Angel by his old enemy Daniel Holtz (a fine performance by Keith Szarabajaka) and the birth of a child with a surprising destiny, are all pretty solid, but the gaps between the stories feel contrived at best.

The season also makes a series of curious decisions regarding characterisation which are still highly controversial. Wesley has been getting more ruthless and capable since the first season, but the way he goes full-on dark and borderline amoral at the end of the season feels a bit undercooked. It makes him a far more interesting character in the final two seasons, sure, but the way he gets there feels implausible. There's also the implication that Wesley, a thirty-something guy who's been around the block a few times, makes the decisions he does because he gets turned down by a woman he likes, which feels like a very juvenile motivation point.

There's also the treatment of Cordelia as a character. Through most of Season 3 she undergoes tremendous growth and improvement as a member of the team and ends up being arguably the most well-adjusted and empathetic member of the crew, which given where she started so long ago (in Buffy Season 1) is remarkable. The end of the season throws this development into some doubt. This is less of a problem in Season 3 itself, but paves the way for Season 4, where Cordelia's character is thrown under the bus in a manner that is still highly contentious.

Still, Angel's third season (****) is highly watchable with some impressive storylines, cliffhangers and dramatic moments. Character development is a mixed bag, and some of the stand-alone episodes are painful, but overall it remains a solid addition to the series, and paves the way for the more impressive (if more controversial) fourth year. It is available now as part of the complete series boxed set (UK, USA).

Russian Doll: Season 1

Nadia Vulvokov is celebrating her 36th birthday - the same age at which her mother passed away - at a party thrown by her friends in New York. Tragically, she is run over by a yellow cab shortly afterwards. But then she wakes up back at her party again, with the exact same sequence of events playing out (unless she changes them). She makes it to the next day, only to die in another freak accident and wake up back at her party. Nadia realises that time and fate are playing a strange game with her, and she rushes to try to find an answer to the mystery of why her life is now going in circles.

Many are the TV show and movie which have "done a Groundhog Day", trapping a lead character in a time loop and seeing how they escape from it. It's a concept rooted in science fiction but played out for both humour - as the character can do what they want without consequence, as the timeline will just reset again - and tragedy. Many of these takes on the same concept are worthy (most recently, the surprisingly solid SF film Edge of Tomorrow) but few of them explore it to the depth of Russian Doll.

Russian Doll is a Netflix series co-created by Natasha Lyonne (who also stars as Nadia). At first it appears to be a comedy, with Nadia's time loop played for laughs. Very quickly it expands beyond that to incorporate elements of family drama, romance and tragedy. The show handles the tonal variation with skill, propelled by Lyonne portraying Nadia as an unflappable, hard-bitten New Yorker who's seen it all but has deep-seated insecurities and vices. In its second half, the show expands to become more of an existential exploration of depression and addiction, and certainly becomes a lot heavier-going. But the show avoids disappearing up its own posterior by refusing to get dragged down into cynicism. The ultimate message of the show is upbeat and hopeful, which is what elevates it beyond being yet another modern TV show wallowing in grimdark.

Russian Doll is a fascinating show to watch, a puzzle which the viewers can unpick at the same time as the characters. Is the time loop being generated by Natasha herself due to her tragic family backstory or an external force? Is the building's unusual history to blame? Was is the drugs Natasha was taking at the time? Was it one of the people she spoke to at the party? Each of the show's eight episodes adopts a fresh take on the concept and develops it further, going far beyond the usual surface exploration of the idea that movies can allow. But the show avoids repetition smartly by throwing a few massive curveballs into the story, which gives it new angles to explore and keeps things fresh up until the end of the story.

Russian Doll is also brilliantly paced. Eight episodes, each less than 40 minutes long, means it has time to explore the concept but not get too bogged down in the details. Each scene feels necessary, well-thought out and vital towards resolving what it is going on. The only major downside to the series is one that is more potential than actual: Russian Doll was pitched as a three-season show and I literally can't see where two more seasons would take the story. They certainly aren't necessary, as Season 1 ends in a strong manner. At the same time, after this season I wouldn't bet against the production team producing something else worthwhile.

Russian Doll (*****) is a thought-provoking meditation on life, death and existence. It's part science fiction, part hipster dramedy and part existential thriller. It's the best thing Netflix has put out in a good few years and is well worth a watch. It is available worldwide on Netflix now.

Disney confirm STAR WARS movies will resume in 2022, alongside AVATAR movies and INDIANA JONES 5

It turns out that the "long hiatus" for Star Wars that Disney has been planning won't be that long after all: the next Star Wars movie after The Rise of Skywalker will arrive in December 2022, a relatively modest three years later.

Rumours persist that one or both of the new Star Wars trilogies will be set in the time period explored by video games such as Knights of the Old Republic.

That's still a retreat from Disney and Lucasfilm's previous stance, which seemed to be heading towards getting two or more Star Wars movies into the cinema every year, similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's approach. However, the box office failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story appears to have spooked Disney and they have now backed off from "over-exploiting" the franchise.

That doesn't mean that the future is Star Wars-free however. There will be a Star Wars movie released every other year from 2022 for at least three movies, and they will be interspersed with four more movies in James Cameron's Avatar series. There are also multiple animated and live-action Star Wars TV series in development for the Disney+ streaming service, with the first live-action show, The Mandalorian, due for release late this year or early next.

Lucasfilm are also now actively working on a fifth Indiana Jones film, which is expected to be Harrison Ford's swansong in the role.

The current release schedule is as follows:

• December 2019: Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker
• December 2021: Avatar 2
• December 2022: Untitled Star Wars Film 1
• December 2023: Avatar 3
• December 2024: Untitled Star Wars Film 2
• December 2025: Avatar 4
• December 2026: Untitled Star Wars Film 3
• December 2027: Avatar 5

There is no indication what the new Star Wars movies will actually be about, however. Game of Thrones producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have been developing a new series of films, as has The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. However, both series are apparently on the backburner until Weiss and Benioff complete all Game of Thrones-related responsibilities later this year, and until Johnson's next movie is released, also later this year. It is possible that the two trilogies could be released on a rotating basis (meaning there's potentially three more Star Wars movies to follow these ones, taking us up to 2032!).

Various other proposed stand-alone Star Wars movies, such as a Boba Fett film, appear to have been killed. Others, such as the proposed Obi-Wan movie, have been re-purposed as TV proposals instead.