Entertainment – Page 3

Civil war is brewing in the wasteland in Fallout S2 trailer

culture, Entertainment, fallout s2, prime video, streaming television, Trailers, TV trailers / Rejus Almole / November 13, 2025

Purnell, Goggins, MacLachlan, and Moten all return for S2, along with Moises Arias as Lucy’s younger brother, Norm, and Frances Turner as Barb Howard, Cooper’s wife and a high-ranking Vault-Tec executive. Justin Theroux joins the S2 cast as Mr. Robert House, founder and CEO of RobCo Industries, as well as Macaulay Culkin (possibly playing Caesar) and Kumail Nanjiani, both of whom appear briefly in the new trailer.

The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) has been searching for his family for 200 years. YouTube/Prime Video

The trailer opens with Maximus chatting with another denizen of the wasteland, who insists that while he’s seen lots of crazy and unnatural things in his struggle to survive, he’s never seen good people. Maximus has met one good person: Lucy. But his acquaintance isn’t having it. “I would be a good person too if I grew up in some cozy impenetrable home,” he says. “Wouldn’t have to steal and stab and fib all the time just to get by.”

Lucy, of course, has been challenged to hang onto her fundamental decency while navigating the brutal surface world, hardening just enough to do what’s necessary to survive. She’s now looking for her father with a new motive: to bring him to justice, “so people know that how they conduct themselves matters, and they don’t give up hope.” (We catch a few glimpses of Hank, most notably experimenting on a mouse in the lab, with disastrous results.) The Ghoul, for his part, is looking for his family; it’s the only reason he’s hung around for 200 years. Meanwhile, civil war is brewing, and you just know our main cast will all end up caught up in the conflict.

The second season of Fallout premieres on December 17, 2025, on Prime Video.

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Super Mario Galaxy Movie trailer introduces Princess Rosalina

culture, Entertainment, film trailers, Nintendo, Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Trailers / Kris Guyer / November 12, 2025

Nintendo officially announced The Super Mario Galaxy Movie in September with the briefest of teasers, showing a napping Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom before panning out to reveal the film’s logo. Its 2026 release just happens to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the gaming franchise.

The main voice cast is returning for the sequel: Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, Keegan-Michael Key as the anthropomorphic mushroom Toad, and Kevin Michael Richardson as Bowser’s advisor and informant Kamek. We’re also getting two new cast members: Brie Larson as Princess Rosalina, protector of the cosmos and the Lumas; and Benny Safdie as Bowser, Jr., Bowser’s son and heir to the throne. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are also back, as is screenwriter Matthew Fogel.

The imprisoned Bowser features prominently in the trailer, as we see him in his mini-prison creating a painting of himself with Peach—and losing his temper when Mario dismisses it as “trash.” But that was just a momentary lapse, the “old Bowser talking,” as he continues to work through his personal demons. Then we see Mario and Peach jumping into a cosmic portal. We catch glimpses of Peach and Toad in an underwater world and a desert world and Peach showing off her fighting skills. Then Bowser Jr appears, vowing to take his father “now.”

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie hits US theaters on April 3, 2026, and will be released in Japan on April 24, 2026.

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The Running Man’s final trailer amps up the high-octane action

culture, Entertainment, film trailers, Paramount Pictures, The Running Man, Trailers / Mike M. / November 10, 2025

It’s shaping up to be an excellent season for Stephen King adaptations. In September, we got The Long Walk, an excellent (though harrowing) adaptation of King’s 1979 Richard Bachman novel. Last month, HBO debuted its new series IT: Welcome to Derry, which explores the mythology and origins of Pennywise the killer clown. And this Friday is the premiere of The Running Man, director Edgar Wright’s (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver, Last Night in Soho) take on King’s novel of the same name. So naturally Paramount has released a final trailer to lure us to the theater.

As previously reported, the 1987 action film starring Schwarzenegger was only loosely based on King’s novel, preserving the basic concept and very little else in favor of more sci-fi gadgetry and high-octane action. It was a noisy, entertaining romp—and very late ’80s—but it lacked King’s subtler satirical tone. Wright expressed interest in adapting his own version of The Running Man in 2017, and Paramount greenlit the project four years later. Wright and co-screenwriter Michael Bacall envisioned their film as less of a remake and more of a faithful adaptation of King’s original novel. (We’ll see if that faithfulness extends to the novel’s bleak ending.)

Per the official premise:

In a near-future society, The Running Man is the top-rated show on television—a deadly competition where contestants, known as Runners, must survive 30 days while being hunted by professional assassins, with every move broadcast to a bloodthirsty public and each day bringing a greater cash reward. Desperate to save his sick daughter, working-class Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is convinced by the show’s charming but ruthless producer, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), to enter the game as a last resort. But Ben’s defiance, instincts, and grit turn him into an unexpected fan favorite—and a threat to the entire system. As ratings skyrocket, so does the danger, and Ben must outwit not just the Hunters, but a nation addicted to watching him fall.

In addition to Powell and Brolin, the cast includes Lee Pace as lead Hunter Evan McCone; Jayme Lawson as Ben’s wife, Sheila; Colman Domingo as Bobby Thompson, game show host; Michael Cera as the rebel Bradley Throckmorton; William H. Macy as a man who aids Ben; David Zayas as Richard Manuel; Emilia Jones as Amelia, a hostage civilian; Karl Glusman as a Hunter; and Katy O’Brian and Daniel Ezra as two other contestants on the show.

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Netflix drops a doozy of a trailer for Stranger Things S5

culture, Entertainment, netflix, Stranger Things S5, streaming television, Trailers / Mike M. / October 30, 2025

We’re a few weeks away from the debut of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things—at least the first of three parts of it—and Netflix has dropped one doozy of a trailer that shows things looking pretty bleak for our small-town heroes of Hawkins.

(Spoilers for prior seasons below.)

As previously reported, S4 ended with Vecna—the Big Bad behind it all—opening the gate that allowed the Upside Down to leak into Hawkins. We’re getting a time jump for S5, but in a way, we’re coming full circle, since the events coincide with the third anniversary of Will’s original disappearance in S1. The fifth season will have eight episodes, and each one will be looong—akin to eight feature-length films. Per the official premise:

The fall of 1987. Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna. But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown. Complicating their mission, the government has placed the town under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding. As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time.

In addition to the returning main cast, Amybeth McNulty and Gabriella Pizzolo are back as Vicki and Dustin’s girlfriend, Suzie, respectively, with Jamie Campbell Bower reprising his role as Vecna. Linda Hamilton joins the cast as Dr. Kay, along with Nell Fisher as Holly Wheeler, Jake Connelly as Derek Turnbow, and Alex Breaux as Lt. Akers.

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New Starfleet Academy trailer debuts at NYCC

culture, Entertainment, New York Comic Con, paramount plus, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, streaming television, Trailers / Rejus Almole / October 12, 2025

Rosta’s Caleb is front and center in the new trailer. We see him as a child with his mother (Tatiana Maslany), who is torn away from him by armed guards as Nus Braka cackles, “You hold on to how much you hate me right now, kid. It’ll keep you warm at night.” Cut to Captain Ake finding the now-grown Caleb and recruiting him to the Academy with a promise to help him find Nus Braka—presumably to exact some kind of revenge. We get to see instructors put the new cadets through their paces as they strive to be worthy of the Starfleet uniform. Love might be in the air for Caleb. And Captain Ake seems to have her own twisted history with Nus Braka.

As Ars senior editor Sam Axon pointed out in 2o23, there have been Kobayashi Maru references throughout the franchise, as well as substantial plotlines about the academy in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, among others. There were also Starfleet Academy video games in the 1990s for various platforms.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premieres on January 15, 2026, on Paramount+.

First look at Strange New Worlds S4

Let’s be honest, the third season of Strange New Worlds has been pretty uneven. But a course correction could be in the offing, judging by a four-and-a-half minute clip from the upcoming fourth season that was unveiled at NYCC. It’s an extended sequence in which Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and his crew respond to a distress signal from another ship, only to encounter a massive space storm that knocks out almost all their systems. They decide to take a shuttle to a nearby planet to gather some much-needed iridium to power their warp drive. (Is anyone else hearing echoes of Galaxy Quest and the hunt for a replacement beryllium sphere?)

Still, the tone does seem more of a return to form for the series. (For what it’s worth, producer Akiva Goldsman has attributed the S3 issues in part to production delays as a result of strikes and staffing changes.) The fourth season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is slated for release sometime next year. The series has already been renewed for a truncated fifth and final season of six episodes.

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A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms teaser debuts at NYCC

culture, Entertainment, Game of Thrones franchise, George R.R. Martin, HBO, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, streaming television, Trailers / Tim Belzer / October 9, 2025

A squire and his hedge knight: Dexter Sol Ansell plays “Egg” (l) and Peter Claffey plays Dunk (r). Credit: YouTube/HBO

This being a Game of Thrones series, there’s also an extensive supporting cast. Ross Anderson plays Ser Humfrey Hardyng; Edward Ashley plays Ser Steffon Fossoway; Henry Ashton as Egg’s older brother, Prince Daeron “The Drunken” Targaryen; Youssef Kerkour as a blacksmith named Steely Pate; Daniel Monks as Ser Manfred Dondarrion; Shaun Thomas as Raymun Fossoway; Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Plummer, a steward; Steve Wall as Lord Leo “Longthorn” Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden; and Danny Webb as Dunk’s mentor, Ser Arlan of Pennytree.

It’s a good rule of thumb in the Game of Thrones universe not to get too attached to any of the characters, and that probably holds true here, too. But Knight of the Seven Kingdoms also seems to be aiming for a different, lighter tone than its predecessors, judging by the teaser, which has its share of humor. Martin has said as much on his blog, although he added, “It’s still Westeros, so no one is truly safe.”

Since Dunk is a humble hedge knight, there are lots of scenes with him trudging through mud and rain, and jousting will apparently feature much more prominently. “I always love Medieval tournaments in other pictures,” Martin said during a NYCC panel. “We had several tournaments in Game of Thrones, they were in the background, but not the center. I wanted to do something set during a tournament. I sent (the TV writers) a challenge: Let’s do the best jousting sequences that were ever done on film. My favorite was 1952’s Ivanhoe.”

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms debuts on HBO on January 18, 2026.

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Trailer for Anaconda meta-reboot leans into the laughs

Anaconda, creature features, culture, Entertainment, film, film trailers, Jack Black, paul rudd, Sony Pictures, Trailers / Tim Belzer / September 17, 2025

Sony Pictures has dropped a trailer for its upcoming horror comedy, Anaconda, a meta-reboot of the 1997 campy cult classic—and frankly, it looks like a lot of fun. Starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black, the film will arrive in theaters on Christmas Day.

(Spoilers for the 1997 film below.)

The original Anaconda was your basic B-movie creature feature, only with an all-star cast and better production values. The plot revolved around a documentary film crew (Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, and Owen Wilson) who travel to the Amazon in search of a long-lost Indigenous tribe. They take on a stranded Paraguayan snake hunter named Serone (Jon Voight, affecting a hilariously bad foreign accent), who strong-arms them into helping him hunt down a 25-foot green anaconda. He wants to capture the animal alive, thinking he can sell it for over $1 million.

The snake has other ideas, chowing down on the boat’s skipper and the crew’s sound engineer and still hungry for more. The remaining crew’s efforts to survive are hampered by Serone, who still wants the snake alive and even kills one of the crew members himself. So it’s really a form of justice when he’s eaten by a 40-foot queen anaconda at the film’s end.

Anaconda wasn’t well-received by critics, but it made a decent showing at the box office, grossing about $136 million globally. It has since become a cult classic, one of those “so bad it’s good” offerings. It was even nominated for six Razzie Awards, including for Worst Screen Couple (Voight and the animatronic anaconda).

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Fallout S2 teaser brings us to New Vegas

culture, Entertainment, Fallout TV series, prime video, streaming television, Trailers / Mike M. / August 20, 2025

Prime Video has dropped an extended teaser for the much-anticipated second season of Fallout, widely considered to be among the best TV adaptations of a gaming franchise. In our 2024 year-end roundup, Ars senior editor Samuel Axon wrote that the first season gave us “a specific cocktail of tongue-in-cheek humor, sci-fi campiness, strong themes, great characters, and visceral violence [that] came together into a fantastic show.” The second season looks like it will bring us more of the same, along with a major new character drawn from the Fallout: New Vegas game. We even got a glimpse of a Deathclaw.

(Minor spoilers for S1 below.)

For the uninitiated, Fallout is set two centuries after nuclear warfare between the US and China destroyed civilization in 2077—an alternate history version of 2077, in which post-World War II nuclear technology ushered in a retrofuturistic society. Some lucky survivors took refuge in various underground vaults; others were left to scavenge a meager existence on the highly radioactive surface.

In S1, we met Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), a young woman whose vault is raided by surface dwellers. The raiders kill many vault residents and kidnap her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), so the sheltered Lucy sets out on a quest to find him. Life on the surface is pretty brutal, but Lucy learns fast. Along the way, she finds an ally (and love interest) in Maximus (Aaron Moten), a squire masquerading as a knight of the Brotherhood of Steel. And she runs afoul of a gunslinger and bounty hunter known as the Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a former Hollywood actor named Cooper Howard who survived the original nuclear blast, but radiation exposure turned him into, well, a ghoul.

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They’re golden: Fictional band from K-Pop Demon Hunters tops the charts

animated film, culture, Entertainment, film reviews, films, K-Pop Demon Hunters, netflix, Reviews, streaming television / Paul Patrick / August 12, 2025

The fictional band Huntr/x, from K-Pop Demon Hunters, has a real-world hit with “Golden.”

Netflix has a summer megahit on its hands with its animated musical feature film, K-Pop Demon Hunters. Since its June release, the critically acclaimed film has won fans of all ages, fueled by a killer Korean pop soundtrack featuring one earworm after another. The biggest hit is “Golden,” which just hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart. (The last time a fictional ensemble topped the charts was in 2022 with Encanto‘s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”)

K-Pop Demon Hunters is now Netflix’s most-watched animated film of all time, and that’s not just because of the infectious music. The Sony Animation team delivers bold visuals that evoke the look and feel of anime, the plot is briskly paced, and the script strikes a fine balance between humor and heart.

(Spoilers below.)

The film deftly lays out the central premise in the first few minutes. In ancient times, demons roamed the Earth freely and preyed upon human souls, until a trio of women—gifted singers and demon hunters—created a magical protective barrier with their voices known as the Honmoon, trapping the demons behind it. The Honmoon has been maintained ever since by subsequent musical trios/demon hunters from each generation. The dream is that one day, the Honmoon will become so strong it will turn “golden” and seal away the demons forever.

Naturally the demons, led by their king Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun), don’t want that to happen, but the latest incarnation of demon hunters—a K-Pop band called Huntr/x—is close to accomplishing the Golden Honmoon. Rumi (Arden Cho) is the lead singer, Mira (May Hong) is the group’s dancer/choreographer, and American-born Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) is the rapper and lyricist. But Rumi harbors a secret: her father was a demon, and she is marked by the telltale purple “patterns,” which she keeps hidden from her bandmates.

Hoping to destroy the Honmoon once and for all, Gwi-Ma sends five of his demons to form a K-pop boy band, the Saja Boys, led by Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop). Their popularity soon rivals that of Huntr/x and threatens the Honmoon—just as Rumi’s patterns spread to her throat and weaken her singing voice.

How it’s done, done, done

Mira, Rumi, and Zoey take a timeout from fighting demons to carb-load with ramen. Netflix

That’s a big problem because their new hit single, “Golden” (performed by South Korean singer/songwriter Ejae), spans an impressive three-octave range, eventually hitting an A-5 on the chorus—a high note usually reserved for classically trained operatic sopranos. (Ejae’s performance on this song has impressed a lot of YouTube vocal coaches.) And the first live global performance of “Golden” is supposed to be the event that ushers in the Golden Honmoon. It’s a soaring, impeccably constructed “I Want” tune typical of Disney princesses.

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Review: The Sandman S2 is a classic tragedy, beautifully told

culture, Entertainment, Neil Gaiman, netflix, Reviews, streaming television, The Sandman, TV reviews / Mike M. / August 9, 2025

I unequivocally loved the first season of The Sandman, the Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s influential graphic novel series (of which I am longtime fan). I thought it captured the surreal, dream-like feel and tone of its source material, striking a perfect balance between the anthology approach of the graphic novels and grounding the narrative by focusing on the arc of its central figure: Morpheus, lord of the Dreaming. It’s been a long wait for the second and final season, but S2 retains all those elements to bring Dream’s story to its inevitably tragic, yet satisfying, end.

(Spoilers below; some major S2 reveals after the second gallery. We’ll give you a heads-up when we get there.)

When Netflix announced in January that The Sandman would end with S2, speculation abounded that this was due to sexual misconduct allegations against Gaiman (who has denied them). However, showrunner Allan Heinberg wrote on X that the plan had long been for there to be only two seasons because the show’s creators felt they had only enough material to fill two seasons, and frankly, they were right. The first season covered the storylines of Preludes and Nocturnes and A Doll’s House, with bonus episodes adapting “Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope” from Dream Country.

The S2 source material is drawn primarily from Seasons of Mists, Brief Lives, The Kindly Ones, and The Wake, weaving in relevant material from Fables and Reflections—most notably “The Song of Orpheus” and elements of “Thermidor”—and the award-winning “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” from Dream Country. This season’s bonus episode adapts the 1993 standalone spinoff Death: The High Cost of Living. All that’s really missing is A Game of You—which focuses on Barbie (a minor character introduced in A Doll’s House) trying to save her magical dream realm from the evil forces of the Cuckoo—and a handful of standalone short stories. None of that material has any bearing on the Dream King’s larger character arc, so we lose little by the omissions.

Making amends

After escaping his captors, regaining his talismans, tracking down the rogue Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook), and dealing with a Vortex, S2 finds Morpheus (Tom Sturridge) rebuilding the Dreaming, which had fallen into disrepair during his long absence. He is interrupted by his sibling Destiny’s (Adrian Lester) unexpected summons to a family meeting, including Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Desire (Mason Alexander Park), Despair (Donna Preston), and Delirium (Esmé Creed-Miles).

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Invasion S3 trailer hints the series is finally finding its stride

Apple TV Plus, culture, Entertainment, Invasion, streaming television, Trailers / Rejus Almole / August 5, 2025

Chances are you haven’t been watching Invasion, an Apple TV+ sci-fi drama overshadowed to some extent by two of the streamer’s other sci-fi shows, Silo and Foundation. Yes, Invasion has received mixed reviews for its ponderous pacing (especially in the first season). Even its fans may admit to having something of a love/hate relationship with the show. But the cinematography is gorgeous, and the writers are clearly trying to explore some ambitious themes, with variable success. Apple TV+ just released a trailer for the upcoming third season that suggests this series with so much promise might finally be hitting its stride.

(Some spoilers for first two seasons below.)

Invasion was created by David Weil (Hunters) and Simon Kinberg (best known for writing and/or producing several X-Men films, as well as The Martian, which was nominated for several Oscars). The first season focused on the initial stages of the titular alien invasion, portraying the events through the eyes of ordinary people around the world—the series is in English, Japanese, and Pashto—as they come to terms with the existential threat Earth is facing. In fact, the aliens take a back seat to the human interactions, which irritated some viewers eager to see actual aliens in a show about an extraterrestrial invasion.

The full-on invasion closed out the first season. A much stronger, action-oriented S2 essentially re-invented itself to explore how our surviving main characters adjusted to their brave new world, as well as the occasionally terrible decisions that had to be made in order to survive. The aliens rapidly took over, with humans relegated to small safe zones. It was still a bit of a slow burn, but it set up several intriguing elements for S3, which takes place two years later. And the aliens are evolving. Per the official premise:

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Peacemaker S2 trailer finds our anti-hero in a parallel world

culture, Entertainment, HBO Max, Peacemaker, san diego comic con, streaming television, Trailers / Mike M. / July 28, 2025

HBO Max dropped the hotly anticipated full trailer for S2 of Peacemaker—James Gunn’s Emmy-nominated series spun off from his 2021 film, The Suicide Squad—at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

As previously reported, the eight-episode first season was set five months after the events of The Suicide Squad. Having survived a near-fatal shooting, Peacemaker—aka Christopher Smith—is recruited by the US government for a new mission: the mysterious Project Butterfly, led by a mercenary named Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji). The team also includes A.R.G.U.S. agent John Economos (Steve Agee) of the Belle Reve Penitentiary, National Security Agency agent and former Waller aide Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and new team member Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks).

Project Butterfly turned out to be a mission to save Earth from an alien species of parasitic butterfly-like creatures who took over human bodies. The misfit members of the project eventually succeeded in defeating the butterflies in a showdown at a ranch, and even survived the carnage despite some severe injuries.

Cena, Brooks, Holland, Agee, and Stroma are all back for S2, along with Nhut Lee as Judomaster and Eagly, of course. Robert Patrick is also listed in the S2 cast, reprising his role as Chris’ father, Auggie. New cast members include Frank Grillo as Rick Flagg Sr. (Grillo voiced the role in the animated Creature Commandos), now head of A.R.G.U.S. and out to avenge his son’s death; Tim Meadows as A.R.G.U.S. agent Langston Fleury; Sol Rodriguez as Sasha Bordeaux; and Michael Rooker as Red St. Wild, described as Eagly’s “nemesis.”

The events of S1 played out within the old DCEU, while S2 takes place in the new DCU, but Gunn has said that those earlier events are nonetheless considered “canon,” apart from the cameos by DCEU Justice League members. S2 is part of Gunn’s “Gods and Monsters” slate; Cena’s Peacemaker even made a brief cameo in Superman. This time around, Chris will be struggling “to reconcile his past with his newfound sense of purpose while continuing to kick righteous evil-doer butt in his misguided quest for peace at any cost,” per the official synopsis.

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