Newstime: The Stories You Might Have Missed This Week

From film to TV, gaming to comics and everything in between, here’s what you might have missed in pop culture news this week.

TV

Fans of the 2014 period-horror series Penny Dreadful were treated to their first trailer for the new spinoff series, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels earlier this week. Starring Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer as a shapeshifting demon, the new series is swapping out Victorian London for 1930s Los Angeles. The show is set to premiere on Showtime on April 26.

We still have another week to wait for the premiere of Star Trek: Picard, but Jean-Luc Picard himself, Patrick Stewart, has confirmed that the series has already been picked up for a second season via his official Twitter account. Aussie Trekkies will be able to access the new show via Amazon Prime from January 23.

We are about 10 days away from the premiere of #StarTrekPicard, so it’s a delight to share with you that we’ve been renewed for a second season! Excited to get back to work and for you to see what our amazing team has created for season one.
📷:@cararobbins @GettyImages pic.twitter.com/YpVn173TkE

— Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) January 13, 2020

Silence of the Lambs character, FBI profiler Clarice Starling, is reportedly getting her own TV series via CBS. Previously played by Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs and by Julianne Moore in Hannibal, there is no word who they are currently eying to take on the role in this new series, though word is that Hannibal Lecter will not be making an appearance.

Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, is trading in Jedi robes for vampire fangs, and has recently confirmed he will play a role in the upcoming second season of the vampire comedy series What We Do In the Shadows.

Whilst Hamill also famously voiced the killer doll Chucky in last year’s Child’s Play reboot, SyFy has recently announced that the writer of the original films, Don Mancini, has officially been tapped to serve as the showrunner on a new TV series dubbed Chucky, which has already been given the greenlight to commence work on a full season.

Another new show to get a full season order is another of CW’s ever-growing Arrowverse spinoffs, this time being Superman and Lois starring Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch. The series will see the characters juggling their everyday lives and the trials of parenthood.

So it begins. The official Amazon Lord of the Rings twitter account has just announced that the cast for their epic series is now complete, and that filming will begin in earnest next month.

A grand journey is defined by its travelers. Meet the first members of our fellowship. #LOTRonPrime. A THREAD.

— The Lord of the Rings on Prime (@LOTRonPrime) January 14, 2020

FILM

In local news, an epic, fictionalised re-telling of the life of legendary Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, reveals the essence behind his notorious life. Featuring a cast of award-winning Australian and international stars, True History of the Kelly Gang is now out in select theatres in Australia until it will be available to stream via Stan on January 26.

Sydney actor Mojean Aria is currently hard at work filming his biggest role yet in Warner Bros.’ new sci-fi thriller, Reminiscence. Cast alongside Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson and Thandie Newton, the role is an exciting one for the upcoming star.

Scarlett Johansson is set to don her Black Widow costume one more time in her own solo film being released in May this year. A new trailer dropped earlier this week showing off a better look at the film’s main villain, Taskmaster.

Another superhero to get a new trailer this week was Vin Diesel’s Bloodshot, being released by Sony. Slated for release on March 13, Bloodshot follows the story of marine Ray Garrison who is resurrected from the dead using nanotechnology.

Sony also nearly broke the web this week when it released the trailer for the second film in their new Venomverse franchise, Morbius. Starring Suicide Squad’s Jared Leto as Marvel’s anti-hero Morbius the Living Vampire, what really sent fans into a frenzy were the connections to the MCU’s Spider-Man films via a cameo featuring Michael Keaton’s Vulture, and even a quick glimpse of a poster featuring Spidey himself.

Leto’s successor as DC’s Joker, Joaquin Phoenix, has not only cinched a much-anticipated nomination for the Oscar for Best Actor, but the film itself has taken out a whopping 11 nominations in all – a new record for any comic book movie, and is only the second comic book movie in history to be nominated for Best Picture.

Congratulations go to singer Billie Eilish, who has officially become the youngest artist in history to write and record an opening sequence song for a James Bond film. Eilish is providing the title track for Daniel Craig’s final Bond outing in No Time to Die, and joins the ranks of artists like Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Paul McCartney, Tina Turner and Adele.

The #NoTimeToDie title song will be performed by @billieeilish. Billie has written the song with her brother @finneas and is the youngest artist in history to write and record a James Bond theme song. pic.twitter.com/Qd5cYIRlmg

— James Bond (@007) January 14, 2020

ANIMATION

Great news this week for Satoshi Kon fans, and especially good news if you like Tokyo Godfathers. GKids announced a while ago that they were working on a 4K restoration of this classic 2003 film, but now they’ve also announced a brand-new English dub for it too, set to release in March.

Pokémon has shown off a video for the next film in the series, which makes a total of 23 now. Pokémon: Coco is being led by Tetsuo Yajima, the same writer-director from 2018’s Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us, one of the Pokémon films that managed to stand out well above the rest, so his return is a welcome one. The film releases in Japan on July 10.

Netflix has announced the worldwide distribution of the anime adaptation of Paru Itagaki’s Beastars manga, which will cease being exclusive to Netflix Japan on March 13. Beastars is the highly critically-acclaimed story of Legosi, a timid, sensitive, anthropomorphic wolf in a world that is culturally divided by herbivores and carnivores, who must try to co-exist.

GAMING

The folks over at Humble Bundle announced the “Humble Australia Fire Relief Bundle” earlier today, with 100% of proceeds going towards the RSPCA, WIRES, and the WWF. Currently sitting at around $36 AUD for 30 PC titles, including Hollow Knight, Void Bastards, and Euro Truck Simulator 2, the bundle has raised over $410,000 USD to help our affected wildlife.

The Humble Australia Fire Relief Bundle has over $400 in incredible games for just $25. 100% of the proceeds go to help the wildlife and animals affected by the Australian bushfires. https://t.co/FnGAJp4Anm pic.twitter.com/90tjXQdNLh

— Humble Bundle (@humble) January 16, 2020

A new trailer for the remake of Resident Evil 3 has dropped, giving us a look at the new, improved and horrifying Nemesis. Capcom managed to sneak an easter egg of Nemesis into their Resident Evil 2 demo late last year, where you can hear him growl his phrase ‘STARS’. The trailer now shows us how he looks for the remake and he is definitely one of the Umbrella Corporation’s most sinister-looking creations.

Sony has announced that they will not be featuring any Playstation content this year at E3 2020. This will be the second year in a row they haven’t attended E3, after citing last year they wish to engage with their community in inventive new ways and this year assuring fans they will still attend to other consumer events. More news still awaits us for the Playstation 5, which is set to launch during the holiday season of this year.

Nintendo announced the last DLC fighter in the Fighters Pass for Super Smash Brothers Ultimate overnight. In a nearly 40-min update, Mr. Sakurai unveiled Byleth, from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, as well as some additional Mii Fighter Costumes (including Cuphead), another Fighters Pass (with 6 more DLC characters!), and capped it off with a DLC announcement for FE3H, titled Cindered Shadows.

With the conclusion of its holiday event, Apex Legends has a new event starting which will feature seven new game modes. The event, hosted by the legend Pathfinder, has been called The Grand Soirée arcade. Some of the new modes include duos with only gold weapons, a fast-paced mode where the ring doesn’t stop closing, a third-person mode, shotguns and snipers with limited armour and heaps more. As usual, there are also a heap of new prizes and skins for players to claim during the event, which will run from January 14-28.

An announcement has revealed the remake for Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII has been delayed. The delay adds an additional month to our wait, which was originally scheduled to release on March 3, but will now be pushed back to April 10. Square Enix Producer Yoshinare Kitase explained that the necessity of the delay was so they could apply a final polish to the FF7 remake. However, April 10 also happens to be Good Friday this year, meaning stores will be closed for the public holiday and we may have to wait just a little bit longer to get our hands on it. In the meantime, we still have the latest trailer to feast our eyes on.

Speaking of delays, the team over at CD Projekt Red announced early this morning that their highly-anticipated game, Cyberpunk 2077, is being pushed back to September 17th, to allow for some final testing, fixing and polishing.

We have important news regarding Cyberpunk 2077’s release date we’d like to share with you today. pic.twitter.com/aWdtR0grYV

— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) January 16, 2020