Home//SFX/July 2019/In This Issue
SFX|July 2019The Ed ZoneBy all rights 2019 should have been the year of Star Wars. After all, not only are we getting Episode IX, the final film in the Skywalker Saga, there’s the first live-action Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, and a final season of Dave Filoni’s animated series The Clone Wars to look forward to. But after Solo came and went, my Star Wars loyalty wavered. Instead, all my excitement was reserved for two other cultural titans: Avengers: End-Game Of Thrones. But after attending Star Wars Celebration in Chicago and seeing what Lucasfilm has cooking (p34), Star Wars has returned to its rightful place at the pinnacle of my affections. It’s also been a bittersweet month for Star Wars fans as we learnt that Peter Mayhew has died at the age of…1 min
SFX|July 2019NEW KID ON THE BLOCKSubscribe at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/alien19 SCI-FACT! A Child’s Play television series is also in the works from the original film’s writer Don Mancini. Released in 1988, Child’s Play beatToy Story to the punch. But instead of sentient toys who keep their true nature secret from humanity, Chucky is a murderous doll possessed by the spirit of a serial killer. After six (increasingly outlandish) sequels, the series has finally gone down the reboot route and given Chucky a 21st century makeover. This time it’s Aubrey Plaza’s Karen Barclay who gives her 13-year-old son Andrew (Gabriel Bateman) a Buddi doll named Chucky for his birthday. However, this contemporary Chucky isn’t brought to life by voodoo magic. Instead, he’s a hi-tech AI toy with a glitch in his programming, allowing him to control technology and…3 min
SFX|July 2019TOY STORY 4Get sci-fi news and features at gamesradar.com/sfx SCI-FACT! The Second Chance antique shop in Toy Story 4 was established in 1986 and has the street number 1200 – just like Pixar. TS3 WASN’T MEANT TO BE THE END 1 With Andy going to college and the toys finding a new home with Bonnie, Toy Story 3’s ending felt like the perfect finale. But Pixar didn’t see it that way. “[Writer] Andrew Stanton was adamant that it was never intended to be the end,” producer Jonas Rivera tells Red Alert. “It’s just the ending of a movie. What really unlocked it [for us] was the truthful observation that it’s the ending of Andy’s story, but Andy, as important as he is, was always the external story. The real internal story is…2 min
SFX|July 2019GRAVE SIGHTGet sci-fi news and features at gamesradar.com/sfx SCI-FACT! Moira Kirland worked with actor Paul Blackthorne on both Medium and Arrow before she cast him for The InBetween. Think about how many genre shows there have been about people who have the power to “see” visions of the past, future, or the spectral plane. Yeah, it’s a lot. From Firefly to The Ghost Whisperer, there’s a plethora of series set around mediums trying to help others via their gift. But how many shows revolve around the ones who aren’t so hot about helping? New supernatural mystery, The InBetween, follows the path least taken with Cassie Bedford, a young woman who has chilling visions of dark things that happened, or will happen. She even interacts with dead folk that only she can…3 min
SFX|July 2019TROI STORYSCI-FACT! Asked about the TNG crew possibly appearing in the Picard spin-off, Sirtis claims: “We know nothing about Patrick’s show.” I thought I was reading me!” says Marina Sirtis of new play Dark Sublime. “I just attached to it on a visceral level. I’ve never played a part that’s so close to me in real life, and that’s terrifying because it’s a vulnerability that I kind of lay all out there.” Sirtis (aka Counsellor Deanna Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation) plays Marianne, former star of Dark Sublime, a late-’70s/early ’80s sci-fi show on ITV. It’s the story of her relationship with an old friend and what happens when a young fan pays her a visit. “I remember Tom Baker talking in an interview about the purity of fan…2 min
SFX|July 2019STRANGE VISITORSCI-FACT! Miller and Romita Jr. chronicled Daredevil’s early days in 1993 miniseries, Man Without Fear. While he has long been associated with Batman, Frank Miller is a massive fan of the Man of Steel. Now, with artist John Romita Jr., the Dark Knight Returns creator is embarking upon his first series starring the Metropolis Marvel in Superman: Year One, a three-issue, large-size miniseries from DC’s Black Label imprint. “DC executive editor Dan Didio asked me if I’d be interested in doing Superman, and my response was, ‘I thought you’d never ask!’” laughs Miller. “Out of all the superheroes, Superman is the one I’ve been wanting to have a crack at. He was the first superhero I fell in love with, as before I could even read I watched the old…2 min
SFX|July 2019SUBSCRIBE TO SFXSUBSCRIBE FROM JUST £10.25! Online myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/Alien19 Phone 0344 848 2852 (Quote Alien19) FREE COPY OF ALIEN: ISOLATION When you upgrade to a six-month subscription for only £20.50! Subscriber Benefits ▶ Never miss an issue – delivered directly to your door! ▶ Save up to 62% on the shop price ▶ Exclusive subscriber-only covers! Terms and conditions Gift is only available for new UK subscribers. Gift is subject to availability. Please allow up to 60 days for the delivery of your gift. In the event of stocks being exhausted we reserve the right to replace with items of similar value. You can write to us or call us to cancel your subscription within 14 days of purchase. Payment is non-refundable after the 14-day cancellation period unless exceptional circumstances apply. UK calls…1 min
SFX|July 2019OFF THE MAP“CAN A MAP DETRACT FROM FANTASY RATHER THAN IMPROVE IT?” One thing I learned early in my writing career as a fantasy novelist was that people get really animated about maps. Weirdly so, I thought at first, but then of course I joined Twitter and got to experience the debate To Map Or Not To Map in full. A 2007ish, idle comment by the author of the First Law series Joe Abercrombie (well before he became the all-powerful ruler of the genre he is today) sparked quite a debate on the subject. Do fantasy books need a map? He came down against them, although I don’t think Joe was ever as militant about it as some believed, especially in light of his later books containing some. But there was a…3 min
SFX|July 2019THE MAN IN THE RON MASKPOP QUIZ: HOW MANY LINES DOES BOBA Fett have in The Empire Strikes Back? If you said “four”, give yourself a pat on the back. Few characters in cinema history have made a bigger impression with such minimal screentime for no reason other than the fact they look really flippin’ cool. So it comes as little surprise that Lucasfilm’s first ever live-action Star Wars series, set to debut on new streaming service Disney+ later this year, should centre on a Mandalorian’s (mis)adventures through the galaxy. Played by Game Of Thrones’ Red Viper, Pedro Pascal, the eponymous Mandalorian has the potential to be every bit as enigmatic and charismatic as Star Wars’ most notorious bounty hunter. He even has one over Boba Fett in the mysterious stakes – no one even…5 min
SFX|July 2019THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVEPALPATINE’S A CLONE The first post-Jedi appearance of the Emperor came in Dark Empire, a comic taking place in the now defunct Expanded Universe (or Legends). There, the evil Emperor used a mixture of science and magic (otherwise known as cloning technology and an ‘essence transfer ritual’) to put his nasty spirit into a cloned body. Obviously, EU lore has been wiped out of the new canon, but clones do still exist, and it would be a nice full circle to bring them back into the main film franchise. Also, if Matt Smith does appear in The Rise Of Skywalker as rumoured, could he be playing a young Palpatine? FORCE VISION/HOLOGRAM There’s a good chance we’re only getting a technical return of the Emperor through the medium of a Force…3 min
SFX|July 2019KEEP YOUR COMPOSERBack in 2016, after scoring the Dark Knight trilogy, Man of Steel and Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Hans Zimmer told the BBC, “I have officially retired from the superhero business,” suggesting that BvS “was very hard for me to do, to try to find new language”. So it’s a pleasant surprise to see Zimmer’s name in the credits for Dark Phoenix. How did Kinberg entice him back? “A few ways. One was by begging – that sometimes works. He’s a hero of mine. I’ve been writing my screenplays to his scores for years now,” says Kinberg. “I just started stalking him via email. Finally he came to Montreal, where Dark Phoenix was shot, to do a concert and I at least got him to agree to come and…1 min
SFX|July 2019CUMMINGS TO AMERICAVic calls herself a “townie” and there’s an exploration of classism influencing the story, as she’s a working class artist. How did that impact your understanding of her? In terms of the class struggle, that was something Jami [O’Brien, showrunner] really brought to the show and deepened that groove that Joe Hill had explored in the book. It really served as a metaphor for me, regarding Vic’s feeling of isolation and entrapment and inability to escape both the world that she lives in, and also her own mental processing. Within the horror elements of the series, what really got to you? Manx’s eyes. It was terrifying. The first time I came up close to Zach in his make-up, he was completely transformed. There’s a line where I’m talking about looking…1 min
SFX|July 2019OFF THE CUFFEYou’re fluent in Superman mythology. Did you have any “pinch me” moments this year? This whole process for me is a pinch me moment. We’re playing with such incredible characters, such immensely famous characters like General Zod, Brainiac and Lobo. It’s the kind of thing where we were able to take real risks with these characters and take them in directions that you’ve never seen before. You see at the end of season one that General Zod’s won. We’ve never seen a story where he’s won. He is now the emperor of Krypton. He achieved his ultimate goal, which he has wanted forever in the comic books. Then we get to explore Brainiac in a way he’s never been seen on screen. And, then we get to bring Lobo to…1 min
SFX|July 2019HOW DOES THE HANDMAID’S TALE DIFFER FROM THE BOOK?As the series continues to get picked up for new seasons, the places where Bruce Miller and his writers diverge from Atwood’s source material become more apparent. A television series needs a lot of story engine to keep moving forward, and by the end of season three, there will be 36 hours of the series. Thus, finding new directions to take the narrative is imperative. Here are a few changes they’ve made already… OFFRED’S NAME In the book, Offred never reveals her pre-Gilead name. In the series, we know it is June, which is the name many readers surmised from clues left in Atwood’s text. THE CANADIAN SURVIVORS In the series, characters such as Luke and Moira get major narrative expansions that explore how they are coping in their new…1 min
SFX|July 2019MEN IN BLACKTHE STORY BEHIND THE SF AND FANTASY OF YESTERYEAR 1997 “IT DOESN’T FEEL LIKE 22 YEARS AGO in some ways but it feels like a really long time ago in other ways,” laughs director Barry Sonnenfeld, recalling the shoot for Men In Black. “I don’t know any franchise that goes five years between the first and second, then ten years between the second and third, but somehow that’s what happened. I’m really proud of the movie, but it was a really hard one to pull off.” Back in 1997, there was little expectation for Sonnenfeld’s high-concept space adventure. Based on a relatively unknown comic book from author Lowell Cunningham and illustrator Sandy Carruthers, its story focused more on demons, vampires and the undead than the clandestine existence of aliens on…8 min
SFX|July 2019UBER MENSCHWhat’s “Smithereens” about then? This is a story about what it’s like to kidnap someone, rather than what it’s like to be kidnapped. Chris is a guy who’s in an extreme situation, and he’s not a kidnapper any more than I am or you are. But it’s what he’s driven to to get answers. It’s really a story about grief, and it’s full of heart. Hypothetically: you’ve kidnapped someone. Who would you demand to speak to? I’m Irish myself, so the Catholic Church! The organisation. That’s the thing that makes me the most angry. You just want to go, “How can you preach that and practise that? Answer the question!” Which is what this film is about. That you go, “I want to speak to the top guy. I will…1 min
SFX|July 2019NO HOLDS BARREDSeason three introduces a new villain to the show: Sallinger, played by Jeremy Bobb, whom you may have seen as slimeball literature professor Mike Kershaw in Russian Doll. “He comes in early on when it’s discovered that he’s doing some illegal things,” Bobb tells SFX. “When he figures out they’ve learned some of the stuff he’s been up to, he gets pretty angry. Then it’s, ‘What can I get on [Jessica] and a couple of people in her group that can help me keep this secret, and maybe keep doing it?’ They egg each other on for a while, until it gets way out of control.” Though the name doesn’t ring any bells, fans of the comic may recognise him… “There is a character that he’s drawn from,” Bobb teases,…6 min
SFX|July 2019And Now Their Watch Is Ended…THE END OF GAME OF THRONES is the end of an era. Not only for television, which it redefined as a blockbuster medium. Nor its fans, who have followed every death, twist and battle with obsessive devotion. But its cast, for who the show’s end represents the passing of eight years of work and life. SFX sat down with eight stars to find out how it feels to leave Westeros behind… SOPHIE TURNER (Sansa Stark) I think Game Of Thrones means everything to me. It’s been my adolescence, it’s been half of my life basically, and the only half I can really remember. It’s my family. I had substitute fathers, substitute uncles, substitute brothers. I met my best friend on there. It’s the best acting class I could have ever…8 min
SFX|July 2019DETECTIVE PIKACHU▶RELEASED OUT NOW! PG | 104 minutes ▶Director Rob Letterman ▶ Cast Ryan Reynolds, Justice Smith, Kathryn Newton, Bill Nighy It sounds like a cheese dream. The first ever live-action Pokémon movie, starring Ryan Reynolds as a wise-cracking talking Pikachu who wears a little deerstalker hat and solves crimes. But not only is Detective Pikachu somehow real, it’s one of the funniest, most visually accomplished and fanpleasing videogame adaptations that’s ever been made. Our reluctant hero is Justice Smith’s Tim, a former Pokémon trainer who’s travelled to Ryme City – a Poké-metropolis awash in neon and noir – to look for his estranged father, a detective presumed dead after a car crash. What he finds instead is his father’s surviving partner – a talking Pikachu with amnesia, who only he…1 min
SFX|July 2019YEARS AND YEARSUK BBC One, Tuesdays US TBC ▶ Showrunner Russell T Davies ▶ Cast Russell Tovey, Rory Kinnear, T’Nia Miller, Ruth Madeley episode 1.01 “Our Friends In TheNorth, but moving 15 years into the future”: a brilliant pitch you’d think had been done before. But no, Russell T Davies is the first to plant his flag on this territory. Kicking off in 2019, then leaping to 2024, part one of his family saga efficiently introduces likeable Manuncian clan the Lyons and establishes the tone, which mixes bewilderment at the state of the world with down-to-earth domestic drama – a scene that signals cracks in Daniel Lyons’s relationship via a spat about washing your hands seems characteristically bathetic. Thanks to a strand about a Lyons kid’s desire to become “post-human”, it’s actually…1 min
SFX|July 2019CHAMBERS Season One▶ UK/US Netflix, streaming now ▶ Showrunner Leah Rachel ▶ Cast Sivan Alyra Rose, Uma Thurman, Kyanna Simone Simpson, Nicholas Galitzine EPISODES 1.01-1.10 While we’re pretty certain the NHS doesn’t screen for such things, every horror fan knows that body transplants from psychopaths are a very bad idea. Initially, the hoary old haunted spare part chestnut appears to be the basis of Chambers, a teen-fronted twist on The Hands Of Orlac featuring a vengeful ticker rather than murderous hands. But as the series progresses you realise there’s more going on. This is hinted at in the opening episode when Navajo reservation escapee Uncle Frank tells his mixed-race niece, Sasha, “In four hours the entire universe had to conspire together to save your life.” He’s not wrong. Her new heart materialises…1 min
SFX|July 2019JAMES MCAVOYWas it a challenge to bring all of Kevin’s personalities to the screen? → Yeah, a daunting challenge, just trying to wrangle that much versatility out of yourself, so that people don’t start to just all be the same. They have to exist, but they can’t all exist in your comfort zone as a performer. How important is the relationship with Casey? → The relationship with Casey offers Kevin, the Collective and the Horde all an opportunity to sort of… if not redeem themselves, then to find a new way to look at it all. He represents the broken. She represents these people that the Beast and the Horde are fighting to represent and avenge, and maybe to – I don’t know – inherit the world for? What does Night…1 min
SFX|July 2019The SirenEXTRAS ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | DVD Originally titled TheRusalka, this siren tale draws on Slavic folklore. A grieving man searches for the monster that killed his husband. Meanwhile, a mute man falls in love with the beautiful, troubled young woman who seems to inhabit the lake. Guess the connection. All the actors are good, there’s some lovely cinematography and the first half has a strong ambience. But as the film crawls along, it does start to feel like you’re just watching three Urban Outfitters models standing around in a lake. + Extras None.…1 min
SFX|July 2019HO W TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HI DDEN WORL D▶ RELEASED 10 JUNE (download 27 May) 2019 | PG | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download/VOD ▶ Director Dean DeBlois ▶ Cast Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, F Murray Abraham, Cate Blanchett While plenty of movie sagas keep their characters in a state of arrested development, How To Train Your Dragon has never been afraid of evolution. This is a world where geeky outsider Hiccup can become a Viking chief, and events have consequences, whether it’s the loss of a limb or a loved one. The new spanners in the works for this third instalment are ruthless dragon hunter Grimmel (played with sinister relish by F Murray Abraham) and a love interest for Hiccup’s scaly bestie, Toothless. And because of the saga’s past form, you’re never quite sure if this trilogy closer is going…1 min
SFX|July 2019FRANKISSSTEINGet sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx ▶ RELEASED 23 MAY 344 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Jeanette Winterson ▶ Publisher Jonathan Cape Just over 200 years ago, while staying in a Swiss villa, an 18-year-old woman came up with an idea which created a genre. Since then, Frankenstein has been re-realised and reimagined many times, creating more classics of book and screen in the process, but the most interesting versions have always been ones which re-examined the core questions of the novel. What makes us human? Can that ever be replicated in our creations – and how would we react to them if it could? This latest take on the tale, by Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit author Jeanette Winterson, tackles just those questions, and is based…3 min
SFX|July 2019SALT SLOW▶ RELEASED 30 MAY 214 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Julia Armfield ▶ Publisher Pan Macmillan Sometimes a collection of short stories comes along that keeps you up through the night, pulling you from one page to the next. Julia Armfield’s debut collection is just such a book, its bite-sized pieces of fantasia telling tales of strange women and what lurks beneath their skin. Armfield won the White Review Short Story Prize for “The Great Awake”, a ghostly piece about an insomniac city where sleep takes on physical form and separates itself from its hosts. But that’s far from the only treasure here. “Mantis” tells the story of a girl whose skin shreds and whose muscles spasm, but who still yearns to be pretty. Then there’s “Stop Your Women’s Ears…2 min
SFX|July 2019CHILDREN OF RUIN▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 576 | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Authors Adrian Tchaikovsky ▶ Publisher Macmillan For all that science fiction and fantasy are closely related fields, the odd eyebrow was raised by Adrian Tchaikovsky taking the 2016 Clarke Award for Children Of Time. Tchaikovsky was, after all, a fantasy writer having an away-day from his regular gig, better known as the author of fantasy sequence Shadows Of The Apt. Which perhaps goes to show how genre categories can limit the imaginations even of genre readers because, as Children Of Ruin proves, should there be any doubt, Tchaikovsky is no hard SF dilettante. Rather, he’s a nerdy hard SF mechanic, a man who, to judge by the Children books, is fascinated by the way the genre enables him to tinker with ideas…2 min
SFX|July 2019SMOKE IN THE GLASS▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 334 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Chris Humphreys ▶ Publisher Gollancz People who don’t read many fantasy novels think the genre doesn’t change much, but this one proves how far it’s come. Elements of it are badly dated in the wrong way. The most obvious is in its quartet of civilisations – the world is split into four, with the different areas now coming into contact with each other for the first time as one seeks to conquer the rest – which are just too analogous to real-world historical ones. Going from the Precolumbian-like Ometepe to the Greco-Roman Mediterranean Corinthium to the Vikingesque Midgarth is like switching areas in a theme park, and while the main characters are well-drawn, the supporting ones feel dropped in to…1 min
SFX|July 2019THE NICE AND ACCURATE GOOD OMENS TV COMPANION▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 320 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Matt Whyman ▶ Publisher Headline There’s no denying that this lavish Making Of spreads the word as decreed on high, with party line toed throughout. Even so, you couldn’t realistically hope for a better companion to the Good Omens TV series. While occasionally repetitive – there’s only so many times you can read how Neil Gaiman scripted the show after a last request from his co-author Terry Pratchett; or about the epic scale of the lavish BBC/Amazon production – this is superior stuff. As well as wrangling contributions from all the surviving key players (among them Gaiman himself, the stars, director Douglas Mackinnon, and Pratchett’s long-time assistant and “representative in this world” Rob Wilkins), author Matt Whyman editorialises a little…1 min
SFX|July 2019WAR OF THE REALMS▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Marvel Comics ▶ Writer Jason Aaron ▶ Artist Russell Dauterman ISSUES 1-3 Thanks to his legendary source material, few Marvel heroes are quite as well-suited to world-shattering confrontations as Thor, and over the years the son of Odin has starred in a whole selection of lurid and apocalyptic showdowns. Now Marvel have made him the centrepiece of their latest splashy crossover, but while the results are as loud and extravagant as you’d expect, War Of The Realms is also a showcase for the worst excesses of event comics storytelling. Part of the problem is that this is actually the climax to a years-long saga that’s been running in the main Thor title since 2014, and which for new readers will feel like stumbling by…2 min
SFX|July 2019PETER CANNON: THUNDERBOLT▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Dynamite Entertainment ▶ Writer Kieron Gillen ▶ Artist Caspar Wijngaard ISSUES 1-4 If you find DC’sWatchmen sequel Doomsday Clock morally dubious then this anarchic and affectionate postmodern reinvention of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s landmark 1985 series could be the antidote. Ostensibly a revival of the old Charlton character who provided the template for Watchmen’s malevolent Ozymandias, it sees Kieron Gillen highlighting all sides of his multi-faceted character, as Peter Cannon is pitted against an evil alternate-universe version of himself. It boasts many sly nods to Moore and Gibbons’s opus: for example, the first issue begins – just as Watchmen finishes – with a fake alien invasion. And when one of Cannon’s cohorts meets a sticky end, they leave a Rorschachstyle imprint behind. It’s…1 min
SFX|July 2019WORLD WAR Z▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on PC ▶ Also on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 ▶ Publisher Focus Home Interactive VIDEOGAME Regardless of how you feel about the Brad Pitt movie it’s adapted from, this game perfectly captures the horrors of a pyramid of zombies attempting to overcome anything to feast on your grey matter. Masses upon masses of the ambling, groaning things move at quite a pace, and seeing your entire horizon fill with Zeds, as they’re known, is quite the visual spectacle. It’s also spectacular fun to mow them down with a full arsenal of weaponry, including a very bloodthirsty chainsaw. It channels Valve’s Left 4 Dead as much as it does its movie source material though, leaning heavily into four player co-operative gameplay (online or offline with…1 min
SFX|July 2019FASHION KILLERNEWS INTERVIEWS INSIGHT CHUCKY! Get sci-fi news and features at gamesradar.com/sfx SCI-FACT! In Fabric is produced by Rook Films, the company behind the celebrated Ben Wheatley’s work. To look at the films of Peter Strickland is like being transported into a rarefied universe, somehow both familiar and otherworldly. “I guess that’s what I look for personally when I watch a film – I want to lose myself in something,” he says over coffee at London’s Hospital Club. “I don’t want to see real life. I don’t want to see social realism. I get enough of that reading the paper!” From his 2009 debut, the rape-revenge drama Katalin Varga to Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and The Duke Of Burgundy (2014) – films immersed respectively in Italian giallo and 1970s soft-core erotica…4 min
SFX|July 2019AERIAL ASSAULT→ Hulu bringing Marvel icons Ghost Rider and Daimon Helstrom to TV. Agents Of SHIELD’s Gabriel Luna plays Ghost Rider again – but the show will have a brand new continuity. → Jordan Peele’s rebooted Twilight Zone gets a second season. → Paging Warwick Davis! Disney+ planning a series spinning off from George Lucas and Ron Howard’s 1988 fantasy Willow. → 2013 zombie rom-com Warm Bodies also getting a TV incarnation. → Vincent Cassell on villain duties in Westworld season three. → Into The Spider-Verse’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller to develop a Spidey-flavoured TV universe for Sony. → Netflix cancelling Santa Clarita Diet after three seasons. → Nickelodeon developing new, teen-centric Star Trek animated series. → Laura Donnelly to star in Joss Whedon’s Victorianfantasy The Nevers. → Fox chopping…1 min
SFX|July 2019JON STEINHAGENWhat’s the pitch? Franz Kafka died of starvation secondary to laryngeal tuberculosis on 3 June 1924 in a sanitarium. Here, he awakens cured, attended by a giant insect named Gregor. Then he’s recruited to assist in investigating a string of deaths: the victims show signs of having been hanged, but a rope is never found. The main suspect is a man whose “act” is to hang himself, but he can’t be connected to the crimes. Did you have to do much research? I own a book called The City Of K: Franz Kafka And Prague. The surprising things came in the tiny details: Kafka’s vegetarianism, and his intense religious research. I made use of the latter. How long did it take to write? Two months, working every day. The idea…1 min
SFX|July 2019TAKING FIVEGet sci-fi news and features at gamesradar.com/sfx SCI-FACT! New showrunners, Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, were executive producers and writers on Once Upon A Time Is it possible to live with a moral compass after the apocalypse? That’s a question The Walking Dead has explored, and now it’s migrated to Fear the Walking Dead, specifically through Morgan Jones (Lennie James). A survivor from The Walking Dead’s pilot, Morgan is starting his second season on the spin-off series, doublingdown on his commitment to humanity with his intention of building a system to help other survivors in need. Also starting their second season, as executive producers and co-showrunners, are Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, who tell Red Alert that what it means to do good is at the heart of the narrative…3 min
SFX|July 2019THE CLARKE AWARDGet sci-fi news and features at gamesradar.com/sfx SCI-FACT! The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s sequel to the first Clarke winner The Handmaid’s Tale, will be published in September The Clarke Award, says its director Tom Hunter, is in rude health. This year the award received 124 submissions, compared to 46 a decade ago. These are figures that reflect how a mix of publishers, both literary and genre imprints, now value the prize so highly. It also reflects, says Hunter, how so many writers, from all kinds of backgrounds, are “playing with science fiction’s toolkit” as they tackle subjects such as climate change. It makes Hunter optimistic for the Clarke’s future: “I’m thinking how do we get to 50 [in 2037] and what will we look like at that point?” SEMIOSIS Sue Burke…3 min
SFX|July 2019SECOND LIFEGet sci-fi news and features at gamesradar.com/sfx SCI-FACT! Executive producer Jeffrey Bell was the showrunner for the final epic season of Joss Whedon’s other series, Angel. When Agents of SHIELD hit its 100th episode in season five, just about everyone assumed the stretch of episodes afterwards would culminate in the series finale. Showrunners Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen even titled it “The End,” but as it turns out, it wasn’t. The series got picked up for two final seasons, so if you thought there was already closure in the season five finale, as Coulson (Clark Gregg) spent his dying days with May (Ming-Na Wen) in Tahiti, well then… surprise, there wasn’t. Clark Gregg is definitely back for season six, but as executive producer Jeffrey Bell tells Red Alert, he’s only…3 min
SFX|July 2019First ContactGet in touch! Email sfx@futurenet.com FacebookFacebook.com/SFXmagazine Twitter @SFXmagazine, #SFXcontact PostSFX, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Christian Horsfield, email After the division caused by The Last Jedi, my enthusiasm for Episode IX had waned. However, the new trailer has firmly restored my hope in the galaxy far, far away! The action looked fantastic and the familiar sight of Lando and Chewie in the Falcon, the sensitive use of old footage of Carrie Fisher, the mirroring of The Phantom Menace trailer and the glimpse of the Death Star were evidence of a clear attempt to link the closing episode of the Skywalker saga to Episodes I to VI. Robert William Graham, Facebook Like everyone else my jaw dropped at that familiar laugh at the end. To quote Han Solo in…7 min
SFX|July 2019Penny DreadfulSINGLE FRENCH FEMALE I like to bang on about how horror isn’t mean-spirited and is actually all about hope and the will to survive. Well this month it’s not! If there’s a theme this month, it’s that everyone is awful. First of all there’s Greta, an enjoyably bonkers throwback to the “bitches be crazy’” subgenre which brought us Fatal Attraction, Single White Female and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. In this iteration the nutter is elegant, tiny French lady Isabelle Huppert, and the target of her obsession warm-hearted Chloë Grace Moretz, who makes the grave mistake of returning Huppert’s handbag after she leaves it on the subway. Huppert’s obviously having a marvellous time with the genre and the two play terrifically off each other, but the moral of the…3 min
SFX|July 2019FINAL DESTINATION“THIS MOVIE, IT’S ABOUT THIS new generation: what they’ve inherited, the light, and the dark. And asking the question as they face the greatest evil: ‘are they prepared? Are they ready?’” JJ Abrams dropped this tantalising info nugget in the first five minutes of the Episode IX panel at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago. Little did the 2,000 people in attendance know that 90 minutes later, the galaxy’s ‘greatest evil’ would be on everyone’s lips. For Emperor Palpatine is back in Episode IX. Or, as everyone discovered mere moments after a familiar cackle sent shivers down collective spines, he’s back in The Rise Of Skywalker. The how and why is still a mystery (though we have some theories which you can read on p38), but Palpatine’s return is revealing. Where…4 min
SFX|July 2019PETER MAYHEWWHEN STAR WARS ERUPTED in 1977, it gave a shot of fame to everyone – not just the billboard-friendly faces but the unseen troupers too, the talent encased in gold plating or masked by the black visage of a Sith Lord. Anthony Daniels. Dave Prowse. Kenny Baker. Their modestly British names were enshrined on the backs of bubblegum cards and breathless pages in Star Wars Weekly, as synonymous with that galaxy far, far away as the topline players. “The big chance came, and so I took it,” remembered the late Peter Mayhew, who brought rangy, soulful life to Chewbacca, Han Solo’s Wookiee sidekick. “Star Wars was such a unique opportunity that I couldn’t refuse. It’s an opportunity that only strikes once, so you might as well make the most of…4 min
SFX|July 2019SHADES OF GREYFirst falling in love with Jean Grey after seeing some artwork by artist Neal Adams when he started work as a gofer at Marvel in 1969, Chris Claremont was determined to update the erstwhile Marvel Girl when he took over from Len Wein as writer of the All-New, All-Different X-Men with 1975’s #96. “Neal Adams is an exceptional artist and storyteller, and his Jean Grey was like the ultimate redhead girlfriend,” laughs Claremont, who was initially paired with artist Dave Cockrum before John Byrne assumed penciling duties with #108. “Comics were vastly different conceptually back then than they are today. Each team had its girl and the X-Men’s was Marvel Girl. The way that Dave Cockrum was drawing her was consistent with how she’d been presented up to that point,…2 min
SFX|July 2019ZACH IN TIMECharlie Manx goes through a dramatic progression with prosthetics. Were you prepared for such an exhausting process? I’ve really been open to and interested in the idea of an opportunity that would allow me to immerse myself in a character, and transform in a way so that was something that I haven’t actively pursued. That was obviously an aspect of this experience that was really appealing. One of the first things I said to Jami and all the producers was I really feel like one of the only ways that we can accomplish this is if we get Joel Harlow, who is an incredibly talented special effects make-up artist. I’ve worked with him on the last two Star Trek films. I just knew that if I was going to undertake…1 min
SFX|July 2019PLAYING ZODHow do you respond to the perception that Zod is the villain? I think it’s more complex. People often say to me, “Are you a good guy or are you a bad guy?” I often say, “Am I a good guy who does bad things? Or am I a bad guy who does good things? I’m not sure, but, I’m just a guy.” In Zod’s mind, it’s all about protecting Krypton and saving Krypton. He has seen that future. It’s very difficult to convince people who haven’t seen that future what he’s doing is for the right reasons. His ruthlessness is because he has no time to waste. He cuts through time. He doesn’t even spare fools, let alone suffer them. I get they see him as the villain, but…1 min
SFX|July 2019SUITING UPRAY-BANS, SHARP SUITS AND protecting Earth from the scum of the universe. Classic style never dates, it just comes back again. “We’re sort of reigniting it,” says producer Walter F Parkes, keeper of the Men In Black franchise for over 22 years. While Will S mith and Tommy Lee Jones defined the dapper alien-zappers across three movies, latest entry Men In Black: International – a sidequel, if you must, not a reboot – introduces two new agents in the form of Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, reunited after their turn together in Thor: Ragnarok. “We all felt that Men In Black 3 completed not quite a trilogy, but the end of a story was told,” Parkes tells SFX. “The revelation that, in fact, the relationship between Tommy and Will was…7 min
SFX|July 2019SUPER MADYOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW anything about Brightburn. If you’ve seen the poster, watched the trailer or read anything about James Gunn’s top secret “evil superhero” horror project, it’s only because the filmmakers didn’t have a choice. If it was up to director David Yarovesky, you wouldn’t even know what the film was about until you watched it. “I have memories of walking into Cloverfield and my friends telling me I was going to see Voltron,” laughs Yarovesky, only half joking. “It was this big mystery that came out of nowhere. If you read a blurb of the Brightburn plot in some trade announcement two years ago, it would have been a pretty boring introduction to a pretty exciting idea. So we went completely dark. Some of my closest friends…3 min
SFX|July 2019SEARCH FOR THE HEROTHE NETFLIX/MARVEL TV universe is dead – or, at least, on its last legs, stumbling towards an open grave. We first had reason to suspect it’d come to this when Iron Fist got the chop on 12 October last year. Cancellations for Luke Cage and Daredevil pretty much confirmed it long before official word came in February. Why did the axe fall? There are various theories. The imminent launch of streaming service Disney+ means any continuing Marvel shows on Netflix would effectively act as ads for a competitor’s brand. Then there’s audience figures: Netflix don’t reveal them, but some analytics suggest that Daredevil’s US audience fell by 57% between the last two season openers. Finally, churn just seems to be part of the streaming giant’s modus operandi, a preference for…5 min
SFX|July 2019WHISKY IN THE JAP?You spend a lot of time swigging from bourbon bottles. What are you actually drinking? I’m just drinking bourbon. Really?! Yeah. Every time… Noooo, I obviously don’t drink at work. I still work for Disney! We were just wondering if you’re sick of drinking iced tea, or something like that… No, it’s peppermint tea, and it’s lovely! I mean, it’s better than watered-down Coca-Cola or something. That’s a little inside scoop for you!…1 min
SFX|July 2019AVENGERS: END GAME▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 181 minutes ▶ Directors Anthony Russo, Joe Russo ▶ Cast Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Josh Brolin After 21 films of absolutely unprecedented big-screen world building and heroics, the Marvel Cinematic Universe brings its Infinity Saga to a rousing conclusion with Avengers: Endgame. Not a conclusion in the truest sense of the word – the Marvel machine will run as long as Kevin Feige and co continue to produce the most popular films on the planet. But there’s a sense of finality that makes it feel like a true event in this era of never-ending franchise fare. And while this is a very different beast from Infinity War – less a series of showdowns with giant…4 min
SFX|July 2019THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 93 minutes ▶ Director Michael Chaves Cast Linda Cardellini, Roman ▶ Christou, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Raymond Cruz A stealth addition to the Conjuring Universe, The Curse Of La Llorona brings a centuries-old myth from Mexico to ’70s LA. La Llorona translates as “the weeping woman”, but it might as well have been “the shrieking woman” given the massive overreliance on jump scares involving Llorona appearing unexpectedly and making a loud screeching noise. If that’s your thing then Curse offers cheap thrills, but anyone after depth, narrative or originality can go cry. The story goes that Llorona was a woman who fell for a man who gave her two children. When he left her she was driven insane with grief and drowned the kids. On realising…2 min
SFX|July 2019WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS Season OneUK BBC Two, Sundays US FX, Wednesdays ▶ Showrunners Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement, Paul Simms ▶ Cast Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou episodes 1.01-1.05 Sometimes it’s the small things that nudge a comedy from “I suppose I could manage a chuckle” to “barking out loud in laughter”. In What We Do In The Shadows – the new show spun off from the 2014 movie – it’s the fact that Laszlo the vampire always shouts “BAT!” before he morphs into one. At first it’s mildly amusing, but as the episodes pass it gets funnier and funnier. It’s just one of many, many funny moments in this wonderful mockumentary series, which follows the lives of four vamps living in Staten Island. Batty Laszlo is played by Matt Berry, who seems to have waited…1 min
SFX|July 2019THE SOCIETY Season One▶ UK/US Netflix, streaming now ▶ Showrunner Christopher Keyser ▶ Cast Kathryn Newton, Rachel Keller, Alex Fitzalan, Toby Wallace EPISODES 1.01-1.10 The high concept of The Society seems to be not having a high concept. Other recent shows that riffed off William Golding’s The Lord Of The Flies sci-fied up the idea, leaving the writers to point out, “This isn’t really a show about teenagers on an alien planet/people stuck under a giant dome, it’s actually an exploration of humans creating a functioning society from chaos.” But with The Society, you can’t help thinking Golding himself probably considered that as a title before coming up with something more evocative. This a show proud of its influences. It begins with all the highschool teenagers in a small New England town returning…2 min
SFX|July 2019THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PARTEXTRAS ▶ RELEASED 3 June 2019 | U | Blu-ray (4K/3D/standard)/DVD/download ▶ Director Mike Mitchell ▶ Cast Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz Alongside some killer gags and knowing self-awareness, the biggest weapon in The Lego Movie’s locker was surprise. What looked, on paper, like a cynical big-screen toy ad turned out to be a funny, inventive breath of fresh air. It was also built around a final-act twist that transforms the way you watch The Lego Movie 2. Because once you know that Bricksburg – now the more overtly sci-fi Apocalypseburg – is the plaything of an actual real-world family, every minifig action is viewed in the context of the kid “controlling” them. They’re less characters in their own right than pawns in a grander…2 min
SFX|July 2019LEVEL 16EXTRAS ▶ RELEASED 27 May 2018 | 15 | Download A feminist high-concept chiller from Canadian director Danishka Esterhazy, Level 16 sees a group of girls hothoused in a mysterious school which teaches them how to be feminine, compliant and agreeable. A mystery with an on-the-nose message, this is a clever low-budget curio with lofty ambitions. Chilly set design and a great reveal are rewarding, but a focus on concept over character keeps the audience at arm’s length. Intellectually impressive but emotionally lacking. + Extras None.…1 min
SFX|July 2019IRON SKY: THE COMING RACEEXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD No one could accuse this sequel to the 2012 tale of invading Moon Nazis of not delivering on its lunatic premise. A reptilian Hitler riding a dinosaur? You got it. That doesn’t, of course, mean that it’s any good… 20 years on, Obi (Lara Rossi) leads a group to the centre of the Earth and encounters a race of reptilian shapeshifters. The production values are pretty good, but its attempts at satire fall flat, and many characters are irritating. + Extras None.…1 min
SFX|July 2019GONKS GO BEATEXTRAS ▶ RELEASED 27 MAY 1965 | U | Blu-ray/DVD ▶ Director Robert Hartford-Davis ▶ Cast Kenneth Connor, Terry Scott, Frank Thornton, Arthur Mullard The title sounds like pure ’60s whimsy – so right for a kitsch curio once damned as “the worst British film ever made” – but that’s actually a laser-sighted marketing exercise in just three words. Directed by cash-in king Robert Hartford-Davis, Gonks Go Beat chases two fads with equal cynicism: the gormless ragdoll toys that swept the world long before Furbies and Beanie Babies, and the kind of finger-snapping, bikini-shaking pop musical that kept Cliff Richard on the big screen. Sounds like a deeply unlikely mix, doesn’t it? Hold on, let’s pour some low-budget science fiction over that… Carry On manchild Kenneth Connor is bumbling galactic…1 min
SFX|July 2019Batman vs Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesEXTRAS ▶ RELEASED 3 JUNE (download out now) 2019| 12 | Blu-ray/DVD/download ▶ Director Jake Castorena ▶ Cast Troy Baker, Eric Bauza, Darren Criss, Baron Vaughn “Gotham is bonkers,” says Michelangelo. He’s right. So bonkers that shoving the Ninja Turtles and their enemies into Gotham City isn’t as odd as you might think. Sure, the Turtles have a bunch of bad guys who look like giant human animals, but Batman has Man-Bat, and a million more weirdos. As Alfred dryly observes, “Monsters, certainly Gotham is in more need of those.” Actually, it is – this is DC’s best animated movie for years. It’s packed with fan service, including deep cut references. “We’re not aliens, we’re Turtles,” Donatello says, referring to a 2012 rumour that Michael Bay was rebooting the Turtles…1 min
SFX|July 2019THE PASSENGERS▶ RELEASED 30 MAY (ebook out now) 406 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author John Marrs ▶ Publisher Del Rey Crammed with pageturning hooks, The Passengers is literary heroin, an irresistible combination of high-concept scenario, technofear, conspiracy thriller, social satire and lurid personal tales. None of it particularly subtle, but all of it hugely entertaining. In the near future, the UK has become the first country in the world to operate a completely driverless car road network, with the government ignoring fears about how the vehicles’ AIs have been programmed to react in the event of potential collisions. That is until a terrorist called the Hacker hacks into eight of the allegedly unhackable cars, sealing in their passengers and setting them on a collision course. He then demands that the members…1 min
SFX|July 2019SNAKESKINS▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 416 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Tim Major ▶ Publisher Titan Books Within the first few pages of Snakeskins a man rejuvenates by shedding his old body, which lives independently and self-aware for a few moments before disintegrating. It’s a horrific image, and a thoughtprovoking concept. You assume the book is going to explore the morality of a race that survives by creating beings with an in-built death sentence. Sadly not. Snakeskins is 95% plot plot plot. In an alternate, ultra-isolationist, almost contemporary Great Britain, a group of ever-healthy übermensch “Charmers” are feared and loathed by the hoi polloi, but have somehow managed to take over the government. Of course there’s a conspiracy going on, and of course a group of disparate people (a journalist, a…1 min
SFX|July 2019MASTERS OF COMICS▶ RELEASED 4 JUNE 184 pages | Paperback ▶ Author Joel Meadows ▶ Publisher Insight Editions • Comics journalist Meadows visits the studios of 21 of the world’s best comics artists. • It’s an impressive selection of talent, and it’s good to see a book devoted to covering the artistic side of comics. • Each chapter follows a Q&A format, with Meadows asking questions about process, covers, their working days and so on. • The book gives a decent insight into the working lives of comics pros. • The photographs of the studios themselves, perhaps unsurprisingly, aren’t that revelatory; these are mostly functional working spaces.…1 min
SFX|July 2019ALSO OUTThat Adrian Tchaikovsky is prolific, isn’t he? Children Of Ruin (see page 102) isn’t his only newie: there’s also WALKING TO ALDEBARAN (30 May, Solaris). This novella follows an astronaut lost in the tunnels of a weird alien artefact. Political corruption and a serial killer’s secrets feature in THE FORGOTTEN GIRL (out now, Titan). Rio Youers’s dark mystery centres on a busker who learns his girlfriend has the ability to selectively erase someone’s memories… Social media and encryption inspired Stewart Hotston’s TANGLE’S GAME (out now, Abaddon). This tech thriller follows a woman on the run in a world where an unhackable blockchain links everyone and everything. Neatly timed to coincide with the new film, X-MEN: THE DARK PHOENIX SAGA (out now, Titan) is the latest prose version of a classic…1 min
SFX|July 2019MAJOR X▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Marvel Comics ▶ Writer Rob Liefeld ▶ Artists Rob Liefeld, Brent Peeples, Whilce Portacio, Scott Hanna ISSUES 1-3 While Major X is Rob Liefeld’s first new Marvel character for three decades, the motorcycle-helmeted mutant is little more than a variation on one of his previous, more memorable contributions, namely the X-Men’s timetravelling cyborg Cable. Three issues in, this six-parter is essentially a flashback to Liefeld’s heyday at the House of Ideas, as Major X fetches up in 1991 alongside an even shaggier Beast, M’Koy, where they face off against not only the original X-Force but also a sinister alternate Merc With a Mouth, Dreadpool. Liefeld pencilled the first issue himself, and its opening scene of our hero with his boot on the face of…1 min
SFX|July 2019SHARKEY THE BOUNTY HUNTER▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Image Comics ▶ Writer Mark Millar ▶ Artist Simone Bianchi ISSUES 1-3 With a seemingly endless stream of new comics being announced, keeping up with the prolific output of Mark Millar can be exhausting – but if his latest title is any indication, maybe he needs to slow down his rapid-fire pace. Sharkey The Bounty Hunter sees Millar back in sci-fi mode, with an abrasive comedic tone that’s closest to his early 2000 AD work, and a plot that feels more like a lost, below-par Vin Diesel vehicle from the early 2000s, in which a bad-ass has to look after an annoying kid. It’s the story of Sharkey, a purple-skinned alien bounty hunter who gets unwillingly saddled with a youngster called Extra-Billy while hunting…1 min
SFX|July 2019DRESSED TO KILLHad you followed Peter Strickland’s work before you came onboard In Fabric? No. I was sent the script and my agent was like, “Here’s the script. Don’t read it yet. We’re going to send you some of the stuff that he’s done, to put it in context.” But I ignored him and just read the script! I thought it was really interesting. I didn’t foresee what you see on screen now but you got a sense of the world that he was going to paint when you read it. So I read it and then he sent me Berberian Sound Studio and Duke Of Burgundy and I said, “Okay, this is an adventure I’d like to go on.” Do you see it as a horror movie? The moment with the…2 min
SFX|July 2019UNHOLY REDEEMERAfter rebooting Buffy, BOOM! Studios is resurrecting Angel in a new monthly series by writer Bryan Edward Hill and artist Gleb Melnikov. But while she has reverted to her high-school days, her soulmate is still around the age David Boreanaz was when he portrayed him in 1997. “That means I have to take my time before diving head-first into a love story,” says Hill. “Because while Buffy has to mature, in many ways, Angel does as well.” Hill will alternate between his contemporary adventures and historical exploits. “One of the first words I said to BOOM! was ‘Highlander’,” he laughs. “I loved how those characters could have a riveting story in the present, but we would see an equally interesting story of their past, and how the past and present…1 min
SFX|July 2019DOLL HOUSESCI-FACT! To prepare for Annabelle Comes Home, Mckenna Grace kept a journal as Judy Warren. She’s back. Everyone’s favourite creepy doll is returning for the third instalment in the Annabelle legend, and the seventh movie in the expanded universe that began with James Wan’s 2013 chiller The Conjuring. After prequels Annabelle and Annabelle: Creation, the story shifts to after The Conjuring, as demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) place the possessed Annabelle doll ‘safely’ behind glass in their artefacts room. Needless to say, the doll has other ideas, awakening malevolent spirits to target the Warrens’ 10 year-old daughter Judy (Mckenna Grace) and her babysitters (Madison Iseman, Katie Sarife). “I wanted it to take place over the course of one night,” says Gary Dauberman, the writer of…2 min
SFX|July 2019AFTER LIFEJOE CRAMER David Scott Freeman in Flight Of The Navigator THEN NOW Vancouver-born Joe Cramer was the 13-year-old star of Flight Of The Navigator – the story of an ordinary kid who accidentally hitches a ride on a spaceship and ends up eight years in the future. His adult life has been rather less glamorous, however, and in 2016 – after several run-ins with the law – Cramer pled guilty to charges of bank robbery. He’s now telling his story in Life After The Navigator, a documentary in production from the makers of Life After Flash. (lifeafterthenavigator.com) Would you like to go back to the role? It was such an awesome experience and I would love to do something. I think it would be cool to do some kind of…1 min
SFX|July 2019NEWS WARP→ By the power of Grayskull! Noah Centineo is the new He-Man in the Masters Of The Universe reboot. → Rami Malek and Ana de Armas joining Bond 25, now filming in Jamaica. → Fantastic Beasts 3 to be released 12 November 2021. → The Conjuring’s James Wan producing bigscreen version of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. → Terry Rawlings, editor ofAlienandBlade Runner, has died aged 85. → Travis Knight to direct bionic remake The Six Billion Dollar Man. → Quentin Tarantino says his Star Trek movie is still “a very big possibility”. → Michelle Yeoh joining the Avatar sequels. She’ll play Dr Karina Mogue. → John Goodman and Billy Crystal voicing Sully and Mike in Monsters At Work, aMonsters Incspinoff coming to Disney+ in 2020.…1 min
SFX|July 2019LOVECRAFT ACTUALLYSCI-FACT! Oakmont was designed with the help of actual urban planners. There’s a good chance you’ve read a story by master of horror HP Lovecraft, but stepping inside one for Lovecraftinspired detective game The Sinking City is a different kettle of (freaky) fish. Playing as former US Marine turned private eye Charles Reed, you head to the city of Oakmont to find out the truth behind your strange dreams of tentacled things terrorising a city. Its inhabitants are trudging on despite being in the grip of a bizarre flood that’s turned streets into rivers, infesting them with strange, unknowable monsters. Naturally, Reed ends up unravelling a plot involving a cult and forbidden secrets that threaten not just the city, but the wider world. “In a way the detective gameplay has…2 min
SFX|July 2019ILLUSIONIt’s hard to place Paula Volsky’s Illusion in the canon of fantasy literature. Part alternate history, part revolution re-telling, with a touch of a secondary world feel, it feels like a crossbetween Gaslamp and Steampunk before those terms were as commonplace as they are now. It’s almost Steelpunk in its sensibilities, and if written now might almost be considered YA (it’s certainly a coming of age story) if not for its length, its literary language and its lavish historical detail. “Volsky’s work has a mastery of both language and illusion” Until Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series was published, it was hard to point to another series of books that does quite what Volsky does in Illusion and the other entries in her Parallel Universe series. It combines an almost unnatural feeling…3 min
SFX|July 2019KEEP UP WITH THE CLONESTECHNICALLY, WE’VE KNOWN HOW THE CLONE WARS ends for years – y’know, the Republic turns into the Empire, Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, and Order 66 wipes out the Jedi. But the end of The Clone Wars – the animated series set during the long-running skirmish between Republic and Separatist forces – remains something of a mystery, seeing as the show was cancelled in 2013 following Disney’s Lucasfilm buyout. We’ll soon be getting closure, however, as the much-loved series is getting an unlikely reprieve via 12 new episodes on soon-to-launch streaming service Disney+. Longstanding showrunner Dave Filoni (also a veteran of Star Wars: Rebels) is back at the helm to pick up stories that have been gestating for years – including the Siege of Mandalore, a critical skirmish that takes…3 min
SFX|July 2019NOT ANOTHER JEAN MOVIEEVEN IN A CINEMATIC LANDSCAPE WHERE superhero movies regularly retell the same origin stories over and over (here’s looking at you, Spidey) audiences may have an uncanny sense of déjà vu with Dark Phoenix. Hang on, hasn’t this franchise done this story already? Well, yeah, back in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). But there are two good reasons why this all makes sense. First, the X-Men cinematic universe was rebooted into a parallel time in Days Of Future Past (2014). Secondly, and far more importantly to Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg, “I don’t think we actually did the Dark Phoenix story in The Last Stand.” In this regard he’s in tune with fans. The Dark Phoenix saga in the comics chronicled Jean Grey/Marvel Girl’s transformation into the mind-bogglingly powerful and…6 min
SFX|July 2019THE ZOD COMPLEXKRYPTON IS STILL HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO. Set two generations before Superman’s home planet explodes, the TV series follows Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe) the Man of Steel’s grandfather. When time traveller Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos) arrives from the future with a warning, Seg must make the toughest decision of all: prevent his world’s impending doom or allow its destruction in order to ensure baby Kal-El rockets to Earth and grows into the universe’s greatest champion. The problem is, season one finale “The Phantom Zone” left the good guys out for the count. Seg managed to beat the Collector of Worlds, Brainiac (Blake Ritson), but both were whisked away to the interdimensional prison known as the Phantom Zone. Adam found himself bottled in one of Brainiac’s shrunken cities. In addition, Superman’s…6 min
SFX|July 2019REBEL ALLIANCEFOR TWO SEASONS, BRUCE Miller’s television adaptation (and expansion) of Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, has earned its status as pinnacle dystopia. While zombie plagues, unsustainable planets and technological subversion are all chilling, there’s nothing quite like the horror of Gilead made real. The exceptional cast, led by Elisabeth Moss as Offred/June, and Miller’s harrowing contemporary riffs on Atwood’s three-decade-sold narrative have made the series a global must-watch. It’s become watercooler television so bleak and absorbing that most viewers find themselves emotionally spent by the end of a typical hour, which is why season three’s new tagline of “Blessed be the fight” feels like it’s coming at a time when the women of Gilead, and the rest of real humanity, need it most. The season two finale sets…5 min
SFX|July 2019JUMP TO ITIt nearly happened: a genre-busting team-up between two of the studio’s biggest franchises, mashing the black-suited operatives of the Men In Black with Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill’s underachieving cops Jenko and Schmidt. “I remember when I got a phone call from the then-president of Columbia, saying, ‘Pull over, I have to tell you something,’” Parkes tells SFX. “He said, ‘What about mashing up Jump Street and Men In Black?’” The producer acknowledges with a smile that it’s “almost like a marketing executive’s dream – but when you really come down to it, the two franchises [operate] on very different principles. Jump Street takes ordinary undercover cop ideas and plays them as big and broad and goofy as you can. It’s genius. I love all the Jump Street movies. “Men…1 min
SFX|July 2019TRIPLE THREATBLOODY TECHNO LOGY, EH? Black Mirror, satirist Charlie Brooker’s darkly twisted science fiction anthology show about life in a world saturated with smartphones, ever-more-efficient gadgets and the often dehumanising effects of social media, returns to Netflix for its fifth season soon. SFX is trying to chat to Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones over the phone, but our line keeps hissing and crackling ominously. Is this the work of some malevolent algorithm trying to stop us from getting to the truth about the new episodes? Unlikely. When we finally get a clear signal, Brooker offers an alternative, typically self-deprecating explanation: “I was so boring your phone exploded.” That’s not true, of course. Both Brooker and Jones are a delight – witty, thoughtful and clearly excited about sharing the fruits of…7 min
SFX|July 2019CLOCKING OFFWhat’s Gillian like? She’s very sassy! She makes snarky comments all the time. She’s always commenting on things that are happening around her. With Jessica’s last assistant, Malcolm, it was clear she didn’t reallywantone. It’s very much the same – mostly it’s at arm’s length. But I think Jessica understands that Gillian is coming from a place of concern and love. Even though she doesn’t necessarily appreciate all her snark, she understands that she’s just looking out for her. What do they clash over? Mostly time. Gillian loves to be on the clock, so if it’s past five Jessica will say, “Do this”, and she’ll say, “Well, it’s five o’clock. I’ve got to go!” What’s your take on her backstory? I think the position she’s found herself in was hard…1 min
SFX|July 2019MARIA LEWISSOMETIMES, IT TAKES A WHILE FOR THE world to catch up – it was 2014 when Maria Lewis pitched the idea of The Witch Who Courted Death. While she sold Who’s Afraid?, her much acclaimed novel about a female werewolf and its sequel Who’s Afraid Too?, publishers weren’t keen on the idea of an urban fantasy where, to quote Lewis, “The main character was a queer woman with a limb difference.” Fast-forward five years and, while progress has often been maddeningly slow, things have changed. “Not only is representation and diversity something publishers want to have on their roster, it’s commercially viable,” says Lewis. “You’d like to think there’s a hunger for stories like that, but the reality is they only get greenlit if there are similar examples that have…4 min
SFX|July 2019POSTMORTEMTime travel quibble #1: Reality can’t be changed unless you remove an Infinity Stone from the timeline? How does Steve appear as an old man at the end? Time travel quibble #2: If Gamora can travel from the past and live in the present, why can’t Steve use his Pym Particles to go back and bring Tony/Natasha/Vision to the present? Time travel quibble #3: If Bad Nebula uses Good Nebula’s last vial of Pym Particles to travel to 2023, how does Thanos and his army get there? Anyone spot Howard the Duck? And nice to see sJarvis (James D’Arcy). Thor confirmed for Cant wait. What does Natasha’s death mean for the movie Tony and Cap both get perfect endings, and Cap wielding Mjolnir is a transcendent moment. No post-credits scene,…1 min
SFX|July 2019GOOD OMENSUK/US Amazon Prime, 31 May Showrunner Neil Gaiman Cast David Tennant, Michael Sheen, Miranda Richardson, Adria Arjona, Michael McKean, Jack Whitehall episodes 1.01-1.06 Anyone who’s been waiting nearly 40 years for a TV sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, your prayers (or, perhaps, demonic incantations) have finally been answered. Good Omens opens with a witty monologue from God and some frenetic animated graphics that are straight out of The Book. But these words are lifted directly from Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s much-loved 1990 novel about an angel and a demon joining forces to prevent the apocalypse, which Gaiman himself has adapted. Deciding to recast God (voiced by Coen Brothers favourite Frances McDormand) as, basically, The Book turns out to be a stroke of genius. The novel itself…3 min
SFX|July 2019STAR TREK: DISCOVERY Season TwoUK/US: Netflix, streaming now ▶ Showrunner Alex Kurtzman ▶ Cast Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug ▶ Jones, Anson Mount, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman EPISODES 2.01-2.14 Two things were promised for Discovery’s second season. One was a move away from the war footing of the show’s first year in favour of more actual, y’know, star trekking. The other was that by the season’s end we’d understand how it linked up with the rest of the franchise. While this run of episodes isn’t free of bumps in the mycelial road, it does honour both these pledges. We pick up immediately after season one’s cliffhanger ending. Discovery is face-to-face with the USS Enterprise under the command of Christopher Pike (Anson Mount). A series of seven “red bursts” have been detected around the galaxy, and Pike’s…2 min
SFX|July 2019ReviewsHOME ENTERTAINMENTGLASS EXTRAS ▶ RELEASED 20 May 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download ▶ Director M Night Shyamalan ▶ Cast James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Anya Taylor-Joy Long before the superhero genre ate the world, Unbreakable marked an intelligent, surprisingly soulful take on comic book mythology. Its creator, M Night Shyamalan, seemed set to be the new millennium’s heir to Hitchcock and Spielberg, destined for a career of suspenseful, high-concept crowd-pleasers. Then his mojo crumbled, reducing him to a punchline, a name that could elicit jeers if it flashed up in trailers. The dream of Unbreakable 2 – the sequel everybody wanted – became a threat, not a promise. How could the man who made The Happening ever do justice to the film we imagined in our heads?…4 min
SFX|July 2019IN THE AFTERMATHEXTRAS ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1988 | 12 | Blu-ray ▶ Director Carl Colpaert ▶ Cast Tony Markes, Rainbow Dolan, Kenneth McCabe, Kurtiss J Tews Ten years before Ghost InThe Shell, director Mamoru Oshii made a peculiar animated film called Angel’s Egg. Bought by a US company who clocked its surreal charms, a lunatic decision was made to film extra live-action sequences in an attempt to make it more appealing to a wider audience. The result is this fascinatingly strange hybrid. In the animated strand, Angel (a young, er, angel) travels to a post-apocalyptic Earth carrying a giant egg. In the filmed sections, Frank (Tony Markes) stumbles through a post-nuclear wasteland searching for water. The animation is stylish and evocative and, although clearly filmed on the cheap, the live action…1 min
SFX|July 2019The Devil’s NightmareEXTRAS ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1971 | 18 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT In this wildly camp slice of Belgian-Italian gothic/sexploitation, a bus-load of lost tourists spend the night at a spooky castle (on their arrival a gargoyle falls off a tower, the doors open and close on their own, and a butler declares, “Do not be alarmed, the castle is full of traps.”) Soon they’re being offed one-by-one by Erika Blanc’s succubus in a manner vaguely related to the seven deadly sins. It’s nonsense, but fairly entertaining. + Extras None.…1 min
SFX|July 2019MEGA TIME SQUADEXTRAS ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2018 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD ▶ Director Tim van Dammen ▶ Cast Anton Tennet, Jonny Brugh, Morgan Albrecht, Milo Cawthorne Sharing the loose, slackerish vibe of What We Do In The Shadows – along with star Jonny Brugh – this lo-fi Kiwi comedy mixes crime movie, Chinese mythology and the paradoxes of time travel. Anton Tennet is John, one of a gang of dimbulb crims bringing something less than terror to suburban New Zealand. Staging a heist at a local Chinese antiques shop, he steals an ancient bracelet that grants the power to pop back in time – and accumulates cross-temporal duplicates of himself in the process. How much multiple gormlessness can reality take? Watch and see. Tennet is winning as the clueless but eternally…1 min
SFX|July 2019SNOWPIERCER▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2013 | 15 | SVOD ▶ Director Bong Joon-ho ▶ Cast Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, Song Kang Ho NETFLIX We don’t usually review six-year-old movies when they hit Netflix, but we’ll make an exception for this overlooked gem, which never made UK cinemas, still has no British DVD, and was barely noticed when it debuted on Amazon last Autumn. Adapted from a French graphic novel, it’s set 17 years after a scheme to fix global warming instead created a new ice age, and follows the few survivors as they circle on a preposterously elaborate train – luxurious for the elite front-enders, miserable for the oppressed tail-enders. When Curtis (Chris Evans) leads an uprising, an odyssey towards the engine begins. Evans – think Cap, but…1 min
SFX|July 2019(ROUND UP)Based on a documentary about a man who dealt with trauma by building a miniature World War II village, WELCOME TO MARWEN (out now, Blu-ray/DVD) sees Steve Carell’s character projecting friends and neighbours onto dolls, imagining they’re his protectors from Nazi soldiers. We said: “Robert Zemeckis finds moments of inspiration, and Carell is affecting in places, but the feeling generated is mostly of a missed effort.” A government scientist wakes up in a cell in WHITE CHAMBER (out now, VOD), where she’s interrogated using heat and cold, an electrified floor, and acid. Featuring one set and an anarchist political angle, it’s a decent low-budget British sci-fi; think Cube meets V For Vendetta. THE DEADLY BEES (out now, Blu-ray) is an obscure effort from horror anthology specialists Amicus. Despite the talent…1 min
SFX|July 2019ACROSS THE VOID▶ RELEASED 6 JUNE 480 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author SK Vaughn ▶ Publisher Sphere Across The Void has been written under a pseudonym by an established author who also has movie writer-director credits – a sneaky touch, as now you’re wondering who it is, too – and it’s being touted as a cross-between The Martian and Gone Girl. Naturally, you’ll end up comparing it to both… but alas, it’s not fit to lick their book covers. It’s actually a crunching collision of two writing styles: one good, one bad. The good comes from the book’s The Martian-style techie side, as a lone astronaut, May, battles to survive after a mysterious calamity afflicts her ship. Accompanied only by its AI, she bounces from one desperate life-threatening problem to another, and…1 min
SFX|July 2019SHADOWBLADE▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author Anna Kashina ▶ Publisher Angry Robot As a romance, Shadowbladeisn’t particularly romantic, and as a fantasy it isn’t fantastic either. The setting, all deserts and schools of scholars and assassins and vicious emperors and queens, is vaguely Arabian Nights, which does at least set it apart from the Eurocentric majority of Western fantasy, but nothing that happens in the plot is unexpected, and you’ll spot the villain of the piece early on. It’s tempting to blame that on the romance aspect of the novel, as romance seems to be a genre where certain things are expected (not least that two people can meet, instantly experience a lust so powerful it translates into an understanding of the other person’s personality, then…1 min
SFX|July 2019THE PLAGUE STONES▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 496 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author James Brogden ▶ Publisher Titan Books Starting your supernatural horror novel with the dedication “To Grenfell” is a pretty bold move, and one that could, in less dexterous hands, have felt cheap. Fortunately James Brogden’s social folk horror, which mixes issues of modern bureaucracy and corruption with a mirroring tale of 14th century plague victims, treads that line just carefully enough to work. Trish, Peter and their son Toby are a family living in a dodgy estate when a mysterious opportunity arises for them to move to the beautiful village of Haleswell. The catch? Trish must act as custodian of a sacred stone that wards off an ancient evil. With shades of Shirley Jackson and a black vein of humour,…1 min
SFX|July 2019REISSUESPick of the paperbacks this month: Peng Shepherd’s debut THE BOOK OF M ( 13 June, HarperVoyager). This post-apocalyptic tale is set in a future where people are losing their shadows, and with them their memories. Violent anarchy ensues, of course. We said: “Shepherd writes with an economical but evocative sense of place and a deft hand when it comes to sketching her protagonists’ emotions. There are a few too many redshirts and contrivances, but the splendidly ambivalent pay-off is well worth the ride.” In Angela Chadwick’s XX ( 6 June, Dialogue Books), scientists develop a method to create new life from two egg cells… but every resulting “XX” baby is a girl. Naturally, not everyone is happy with this state of affairs, with politicians railing against fatherless families and…1 min
SFX|July 2019NAOMI▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher DC Comics ▶ Writers Brian Michael Bendis, David F Walker ▶ Artist Jamal Campbell ISSUES 1-4 Since arriving at DC, acclaimed writer Brian Michael Bendis has been tackling established characters and reviving old favourites at a rate of knots, but his latest release marks his first new ongoing series for the company, as well as being a distinctive new take on superhero storytelling. Co-written with David F Walker, Naomi follows the titular character, an African-American teenager whose quiet smalltown life is up-ended when a brief visit from Superman leads to her discovering that this wasn’t the first superherorelated occurrence in her town. The tale of how this mysterious long-ago event connects with the adopted Naomi’s origins is what drives these first four issues. Bendis…1 min
SFX|July 2019DAYS GONE▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Reviewed on PlayStation 4 Pro ▶ Also on PlayStation 4 ▶ Publisher Sony VIDEOGAME There’s a moment when, unarmed and out of fuel, we feel genuinely vulnerable in this vast open world. It’s not because of the bandits roaming the woods – we’ve taken down our share – it’s the shriek from the dark and the knowledge that somewhere close by 300 “Freaks” (28 Days Later-like zombies) can smell our blood. Sony’s latest juggernaut release comes hot on the heels of Horizon Zero Dawn and Spider-Man, and in many ways it poaches ideas and controls from both of them (as well as old Sony staples such as Uncharted and The Last Of Us). There’s a comfortable feel to the game that could be interpreted as…2 min